|
Title: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: rovchris on July 14, 2013, 11:51:06 AM How do you determine if an alt currency blockchain has been compromised?
For example - with powercoin when someone managed to create an entirely new blockchain and double spend their coins. The reason I ask is - I would like to add a crypto payment service for existing customer websites - but as I will be shouldering the risk and giving them FIAT I would just like to be sure that I am not going to be a charity giving away free money. I am keen to make the service for all alt coins that can be traded on exchanges - I realise low hash rate coins would be very susceptible to this kind of attack. Also how do you know that you are mining on the correct blockchain? Any advice or guidance would be much appreciated. Title: Re: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: AgentME on July 14, 2013, 12:12:38 PM You could detect if the blockchain you're on gets changed, but you can't do anything about it. If you stay on the old chain, no one else will be there with you and you'll cut yourself off from the network.
If there were an easy way to protect against 51% attacks in a decentralized network, don't you think bitcoin would have implemented it already? Title: Re: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: rovchris on July 14, 2013, 12:25:59 PM OK thanks.
I only wanted to detect if the blockchain had been compromised before exchanging the alt currency for FIAT, I was not planning on preventing the attack! Title: Re: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: digitalindustry on July 14, 2013, 12:52:05 PM You could detect if the blockchain you're on gets changed, but you can't do anything about it. If you stay on the old chain, no one else will be there with you and you'll cut yourself off from the network. If there were an easy way to protect against 51% attacks in a decentralized network, don't you think bitcoin would have implemented it already? this is a little narrow minded - there are certainly benefits to all information , blanket saying that "nothing can be done" is very simplistic. Title: Re: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: Hydroponica on July 14, 2013, 12:54:15 PM How do you determine if an alt currency blockchain has been compromised? For example - with powercoin when someone managed to create an entirely new blockchain and double spend their coins. The reason I ask is - I would like to add a crypto payment service for existing customer websites - but as I will be shouldering the risk and giving them FIAT I would just like to be sure that I am not going to be a charity giving away free money. I am keen to make the service for all alt coins that can be traded on exchanges - I realise low hash rate coins would be very susceptible to this kind of attack. Also how do you know that you are mining on the correct blockchain? Any advice or guidance would be much appreciated. BTC already has the only way to prevent a 51% attack. A ridiculously high hashrate ;) It's possible, I suppose, one would just need to aquire more than 200+ TH/s, and, be able to aquire more each day, to account for the daily increase in hashrate Title: Re: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: mullick on July 14, 2013, 01:19:53 PM How do you determine if an alt currency blockchain has been compromised? For example - with powercoin when someone managed to create an entirely new blockchain and double spend their coins. The reason I ask is - I would like to add a crypto payment service for existing customer websites - but as I will be shouldering the risk and giving them FIAT I would just like to be sure that I am not going to be a charity giving away free money. I am keen to make the service for all alt coins that can be traded on exchanges - I realise low hash rate coins would be very susceptible to this kind of attack. Also how do you know that you are mining on the correct blockchain? Any advice or guidance would be much appreciated. BTC already has the only way to prevent a 51% attack. A ridiculously high hashrate ;) It's possible, I suppose, one would just need to aquire more than 200+ TH/s, and, be able to aquire more each day, to account for the daily increase in hashrate Proof Of Stake Title: Re: Detecting a compromised Alt Currency Blockchain Post by: defaced on July 14, 2013, 01:29:22 PM Proof Of Stake |