Bitcoin Forum

http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/

The guys that wrote this aren't forum trolls, but people that have studied and studied this over and over.

Really????? How can Ghash be so destructive?

1. People are in denial
2. Ghash's strength lets it get an unfair advantage (selfish miners like this)
3. Ghash official un-decentralized bitcoin (now we can not longer say it is decentralized, but distributed like Ripple)

This is another problem with PoW in general as implemented currently by Bitcoin.  The actually system encourages this kind of thing to happen because people are incentivised to do it.  If Bitcoin is to stay strong the system needs to be changed so that people are incentivised to keep it decentralized.  

So what do you suggest we should do about it other than post threads that spread FUD?

Because I can almost guarantee to you that no changes will be made to the protocol.

Sorry, don't get me wrong, I too have tried to "come up" with a solution but the only solution is to change the protocol which means change BTC to an alt.

So any suggestions?

I disagree. I think people are making a problem where there isnt one.

I agree with you.  I am just a normal user and don't know how to come up with a solution.  I have read that Gavin has been thinking about this and is possibly going to write something in the code. 

It seems like to me the important thing that I can do is to keep awareness on this issue. 

Yes, this thread's title is FUD, but the linked article is very real thoughts about the issue.

Ignoring it won't make it better. 

Bitcoin is on a path towards something ugly.

I really love Bitcoin and so I am bringing up this issue.  Even if I can't come up with the answer and you can't, hopefully somebody else will think upon it and come up with the answer if enough people show support. 

Simply ignoring it won't make it go away. 

Can you elaborate on which of the articles' points you disagree with?

The problem was there long before Bitcoin core was released.

The answer to the problem is that we (the community and miners) should stick united and try and fight it.

I find that to be a bigger problem due to the fact that people are greedy.

We want a trustless system based on trust (amongst us)?

Nope....

thats because you "trust" ghash wont abuse the power they now have.

but bitcoin is meant to be trustless, where no one has such amount of power.

if only there was code that no mining collective can go beyond 40%, it would be a trustless network again

Is there any evidence for GHash double spending the coins so far? Only a few days ago they issued a press release, denying any plans to do so. As the biggest mining pool, GHash has done a lot to the Bitcoin sector. People need to remember that before indulging in death threats and name calling.

+1
i have personally never done any death threating, as i think that GHASH has too much common sense to shoot thmselves in the foot. the point that still has to be made is that there is no protocol code to make bitcoin a truly trust less network.. right now people have to trust that GHASH wont be dumb

FTFY  ;)

GHash guys built that gigantic mining pool through 3-4 years of hard work. They won't be stupid enough to destroy all of their effort, just for a few million $$$ (if they do double spending, it is the maximum amount that they could gain).

Bitcoin is supposed to be trust-less. In essence, we are currently putting a LOT of trust in ghash for them to do the right thing. They have so far, but that's not the point - we shouldn't even be having this conversation.

+1

My thoughts about POW,

If you do an analogy between a network FIB (forwarding information base) and Longest prefix match
bitcoin is building the fasted string match up ever made ..., 

Perhaps that is true. But what can be done about this right now? As far as I know, the Bitcoin foundation does not have the rights to remove 51% attack susceptibility. And don't tell me that we should shift to some crappy altcoin.  ;D

And the biggest problem is that we can't change the protocol otherwise BTC becomes an alt  :-\

I think I've commented way too much on this and I don't want to be obsessed about it. This will be my final post on this topic.
In my view, Ghash is ACTIVELY attacking bitcoin by allowing their hash rate to get that high, even if it is not over 51%.
They are causing btc to lose value, and people to lose confidence in btc.
Who cares about whether they will attack or not - they already are.

Solution?
Even if they were to make two separate pools, one for their hosted cloud hashing and one for those who wish to join their pool, that would psychologically do something positive by making the pie chart not look so bad. That is an easy solution, even if it is merely psychological.

Otherwise I cannot fathom why people who have enough hash rate to go solo, join an already large pool like Ghash. Eligius is free too, why not join them? Or p2pool? Or better yet, why not go solo?

And beyond that, people as a general rule should not be mining on the biggest pool. If you follow that rule, no pool will be extraordinarily larger than any other.

And for all those who want to not bother doing anything about it, sure, let's talk about someone changing the code. That will never happen.

K, I'm done. Gonna find another topic to obsess about now!

If the rest of the network has less hashrate than the dishonest network then they can't do anything about it other than be observers.

Really? Care to elaborate a bit your reasoning?

Sure!

Let's say we have another 51% gain from GHash, that means all you can do is watch as they find blocks.
Bad case scenario they perform a 51% attack.

Plain simple protocol rules really  ::) ::) ::) ::) ::)

No, they can't.

And yes the attacker can choose what goes through or not.
At least that is what I get from the "51% attack".

The attacker can control the way transactions flow.

This is not  Ghash but a PoW problem. Something like DPoS or something else yet unknown might be the answer to this centralisation.

Thank you :)
That is exactly it, the only problem is that it wont be Bitcoin anymore......

It doesn't matter if the honest nodes don't want to accept anything from the attacker.
The attacker has enough hashrate to change the rules.

Seriously, either I didn't get what a 51% ownership of the network is, or you still don't understand the dangers of it.
Don't know which.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable on the subject can elaborate.......

EDIT:

Start from here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

then read this: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/

The chance of an outright 51% chance is quite small as it doesn't make economic sense. The bigger worry, IMO, is the ability to decide which transactions to include which in effect means they control Bitcoin.

If, say they decide that they are not going to include Counterparty transactions, the execution time for Counterparty is immediately doubled to 20 mins and with a huge variation. The fact that a supposedly decentralised coin is almost controlled by 1 person/group is very scary

Have you?

Once again,
Thanks brother :)

K maybe I'm not over the obsession yet.
"Why is the rest of the network powerless to ignore blocks from the malicious entity?"
Maybe because the malicious entity is more powerful than the entire rest of the network. That's the whole point of 51%. There's no ganging up on the malicious entity because it is more powerful than every other mining pool combined.

So we would just be watching.

Remember that also the 51% can also do attacks like reject blocks found from other pools. We are literally helpless at that point.

Because with that much power they can create the longest chain AFAIK.
They can do much more too....

^^^^ This

discus fish seems to be catching up

https://blockchain.info/pools

Indeed they are!

Probably, since people are pointing their miners elsewhere.

God I wish we could solo-mine again :-[

oh well

I'm solo mining with a Jalapeño! hahaha!!! Absolutely retarded but at least I can brag about it!

My other miners are in a pool though - not Ghash obviously. And not Discus either.

In that blog post the hacking, distributed guys lay out what they seem to think would be a good solution.  It would require a hard fork and looks like it would make large pools impractical, which I guess is the point.

Anyway, I would not be dismissive of the danger as there are lots of unfair things a 51% miner can do that wont destroy bitcoin but clearly make it centralized.

Good Luck!

What solution exactly? I must have read a different blog than you did. I read a good description of some of the less-discussed attacks made possible by significant percentages of the network's hashing power. But I read precisely zero descriptions of ways to fix the problems.

I can't think of any ways out of this problem. Maybe make it such that probability of getting a block doesn't scale linearly with hash power? But then that would have other problems.

There is the Lamport sig solution, but it loads the blockchain somewhat. Other than that it sounds like GHash would kill the golden goose if it were to launch an attack...

GHASH Feeses sucks

Any idea how to do this? sounds interesting but it seems quite difficult to find a mathematical way to do this...

Ghash stands for everything that Bitcoin is against.

Yes:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321630.msg3445371#msg3445371

These guys really really want to be the people that discovered a flaw in Bitcoin.

What they seem to ignore is that a pool is a group of willing participants. They deny the social aspect as being a possible solution.

Everyone knows it is a threat, some thinks it is more serious than others, but what can we do? The author suggested nothing except this:


What is this "small but critical changes"? Is he talking about PoS?

I always do analogy to some networking problems like the one in the news about net neutrality

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-06/24/net-neutrality

lets say that ghash, btcguld are like verizon, comcast, etc ... also is like when a single politcal party is too powerful ...

 

Please stop arguing when you dont understand crap.

Having a longest chain doesnt mean they can change the rules. The rules are set by nodes.

In the event of 51%, there will be a folk of blockchains. The network can react by completely ignore blocks from the attacker (updating client required). This is a complete hard fork. Hence we only see this as disruptive attack. Its still a damage to bitcoin.

Now, since GHash is a pool, the second they do this attack, its clients will move their hashrate else where and GHash will have nothing but shot themself in the foot.

The practicality of this attack is close to nil. There is better way of hurting btc for far less the cost.
 

CoiledCoin used merged mining similar to Namecoin. LukeJr was able to use Eligius' combined hashing power to execute a 51% attack against the new CoiledCoin blockchain. The Eligius-mined blocks contained no transactions, effectively slowing the function of the Coiledcoin network to a crawl. The same could be done with Bitcoin.

I don't really think Ghash.IO has any intent to do anything but profit from being the largest pool any more than I thought Tycho intended to harm Bitcoin when Deepbit was the front runner. The possibility exists that a government or other entity that wants to harm Bitcoin does not need to invest a fortune in equipment to do damage. They can simply use your equipment to do it. PoW is a flaw that needs to be corrected before Bitcoin exits beta and becomes production software. Many would say Bitcoin is no longer in beta because the market cap says so. If that's true then this problem needs to be solved now before anyone loses any more money to this experiment.

It seems to me that what is required is more pools that are as easy to join and as efficient as GHash. We just need more competition. Once the difference in pool returns is small enough, the incentive for miners to move to a smaller pool to protect BTC overall will overcome the advantages of GHash over any other pool. Basically, BTC Guild and others need to get better. The rest of the community should be subsidizing the underdogs and helping them catch up.

You're missing a key point is that Eligius miners dont mine or care for scamcoins hence Luke can effectively disrupt the network for a long time ( he becomes a single largest miner in that scamcoin's network).

Another point is the scamcoin's participants are not robust enough to effectively ignore Eligius. Everyone is in it for pump and dump ( get rich quick scheme)

 

FIFY

If ghash were to launch this kind of attack then the value of bitcoin  would decrease, leading ghash miners to have an incentive to leave the pool making it difficult to sustain such an attack.

I wonder if they would they notice the decrease in price before it's too late? When I was mining heavily I would go for days without even checking my miners. Pissed me off one time because I found a blown hd5970 and checked my hash rate on Deepbit only to find out that it stopped working 3 days prior.

Good, then I made my point. They wouldn't notice before it's too late. That argument is flawed.

The remedy of a decrease in price if a pool passes a threshold is also ridiculous because they may not be in it for the money. They may be a mini LukeJr clone and just be interested in the destruction.

In other words, we won't fix this ahead of time any more than we fixed transaction malleability before people lost money so you need to fuck off and take your money out of Bitcoin if you don't want to lose it. Yeah, mass adoption is right around the corner dude. lol

The solution to this "problem" could not be simpler.
We need more free pools.
Why is Eligius, with its difficult to comprehend CPPSRB payout system the only free alternative to free GHASH??

Simply make a free pool that is simpler to understand than Eligius and BAM...  problem solved.

GHASH interface  is cleaner than Eligius, and its payout scheme is easier to understand than Eligius'.

Shit Eligius pays out 105% NMC because many people can't even sign a transaction to get their share from the pool.

LukeJr and WK are smart and they're not lowering their standards to accommodate anyone.


What really sucks is that people like the OP here are sitting around complaining rather than pro-actively setting up a free pool to compete against GHASH.


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Yay another 51% attack thread.

I don't think ghash will ever even plan any of that shit, they are profiting way too much already by people buying their gh/s and they get a huge % of their mining.

Are you going to pay for it? Free pools aren't free for the operator. You need an ulterior motive to run a free pool.

Spam it with ads or something, people browsing stats can look at ads at the same time and the ads pay for holding the server up? Wouldn't this be the easiest solution?

Servers don't seem that expensive anyway.

I agree with this fella.  Just because ghash.io hasn't done anything dishonest thus far doesn't mean it can't happen in the future.  Plus, having this much hash power in one location should external influences try and take over ghash.io is still an overall threat to the network.

Interesting idea but I don't think spam would work because it's not a website were talking about. You don't sit and watch your pools front page all day.

Servers come in all sizes and speeds. They aren't grossly expensive but they aren't free. Here's a nice one for $10k
http://www.allhdd.com/7945h2u-ibm-system-x3650-m3-1x-intel-xeon-6-core-l5640-2-26ghz-4gb-ram-mga-g200e-2x-gigabit-ethernet-2u-rack-server-new-bulk-pack-.html

Agreed, there is no point for them to try anything malicious with all those profits from pool fee.
Even if something is to happen, i believe it would be fixed in short time.

But that kind of uncertinty is definetly not something bitcoin comunity should be proud about, in this insanely expensive market capitalisation to have such vonerabilities is something that should never come even as a possibility.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but if the Bitcoin Foundation is supposed to support the health of the bitcoin community couldn't they set up a free pool to compete with Ghash?  They could limit membership or something.  I guess that would really hurt the other pools, but Ghash is already doing that.

That's not stupid but it would still have the effect of concentrating power in the hands of a few board members. Probably still a better idea than what we have now. I'm not sure where they would house the equipment; do they even have a brick & mortar office yet?

How about we ban morons like you who just post random dumb posts that never answer a question.

You're just proving your stupidity.

Bitcoin miners are not mining scamcoins on Eligius. They're mining BTC. Your air head just doesnt get it does it?

Your implied message is absolutely sickening to the core. Think hard about what you just said and find the fault that makes it incompatible with a trustless network.

Did you're mother have any children that lived dumb fuck? I guess you're too fucking stupid to realize the same things your stupid ass thinks could happen only to an altcoin can happen to Bitcoin too. Come back when you grow up and learn to recognize subtleties. My ignore list just keeps growing.

Good job digging yourself a bigger hole dumb ass.

You forget the part that miners mining bitcoins have financial incentives which they dont with scam coins.

Now i dont feel sorry for you at all losing money to the scams, suck living a hater's life.

There are other 0% fee pools out there.

Ghash is very good at marketing and making their stats pages, and website in general look very "pretty"

remember to read my interview with them on 51% and more - http://fuk.io/cexio-ghashio-jeffrey-smith-interview-exclusive/

You had some good questions, too bad he didn't answer them at all.

Thats the problem, if government or other malicious entity decides to attack Bitcoin it will set up a few pools and offer big incentives or force a couple of the bigger pools and it will easily kill Bitcoin. This so totally anti decentralized that I am surprised that we have reached this stage.

Its not simple, somebody deciding to attack will simply set up a few pools and offer rewards.

This is an inherent flaw in any PoW coin.