This is a standard problem in cryptography and has a standard solution. In other words, it is a bug in the bitcoin protocol and implementation.
I invite you to provide us with a hyperlink to a _single_ ECDSA implementation that dealt with ecdsa inherent malleability prior to Bitcoins existance (or our implementation of the fix in Bitcoin Core).
The bug and its obvious solution have been known to the bitcoin developers for over three years.
And fixed in Bitcoin Core all this time too!
They have been acting like an animal caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, frozen with fear.
LOL. I can assure you, there is no fear involved.
The only effect of this kind of third party malleability has on ordinary Bitcoin payment activity with competently written wallet software is a fairly mild denial of service attack (blocking payments using unconfirmed coins) and mild cosmetic issues; irritating, no doubt, but not more than that. There exists (or used to) less well written wallet software that misbehaves more severely, but there is no rescuing of that-- and it's up to each user what wallet software they run. Because of prior malleability attacks via closed off malleability vectors we're fairly experienced with what the effects of malleability are, to the extent that there has even been an academic paper written on the subject.
So-- to set the stage, we have a fix to a denial of service attack (S-flip ECDSA malleability) which was discovered by Bitcoin Core contributors and had never previously occurred on the network at any scale, but where deploying the fix would deny service to all users until they changed software. Deploying the fix, which was implemented, tested, and included in Bitcoin core for a long time requires only miners changing their software to enforce it and presumably could be done in a couple hours if there were a need. (and whom could have done so at _any_ time, regardless of what Bitcoin Core did-- even against our advice, ... and with trivial effort, since we'd already written it and integrated it but left it off.)
Bitcoin Core changed behavior to the fix compatible form and encouraged others to do so, it also implemented and tested the filtering but left it off so as to not deny service the vast majority of users. Through continual efforts to encourage parties to upgrade we reduced impacted transactions that down to around 5% before anyone performed the particular attack... and at that point we activated the fix in Bitcoin Core on the basis that 5% disrupted completely is better than 100% bothered whenever the attacker feels like it.
At the same time, virtually every alt-coin; most developed completely after this issue was known, including many that have no relation to the Bitcoin codebase (and even at least one that specifically advertised itself as being malleability immune!)-- remain vulnerable.
Meanwhile, what have you done to aid any of this? As far as I can tell absolutely nothing. You complain about leadership-- I think that's nonsense and that we've acted prudently, professionally, and intentionally... but, ignoring this disagreement, if you think it's more "leadership" is needed, why are you exhibiting a total failure to provide it? Is it that you are "frozen with fear", enh?
Please, if you're going to continue with this style of barely informed insults and personal attacks, I'd prefer you remove yourself from this sub-forum. Or better, why not save some of your attacks for those people throwing similar insults at Bitcoin Core, calling it reckless for actually moving forward with the fix at this time? One of things I find most fascinating about human behavior is that no matter how diametrically opposed people's views are their ability to unify behind being shitty towards people who _give_ them things for free seems to known no bound.
I'm sorry if I created the impression the problem would not have been solved if the core devs had done nothing. That was not my intention. I should have written more clearly.
Indeed, if the core devs had not implemented a fix, they would have simply been bypassed. Perhaps this would even have been a good thing. (I am one of the people who believes that multiple implementations of bitcoin are essential for its future growth and that the present mono culture is ecologically untenable.)
In one breath you say "mono culture is ecologically untenable", but yet you attack a strategy that is specifically constructed to be inclusive and avoid unnecessarily driving out implementations with fewer resources behind them out of the ecosystem. You recognize that technically anyone could have fixed it, yet ignore your own completely failure to do so (or, seemingly, anything else productive in this context)-- in our case, we had a specific intention to preserve diversity in the ecosystem by not forcing updates on other implementations and their users, but you have no such excuse, arguing that it should have been done years ago. Remarkably, I find the seeming lack of logical consistency in your arguments more offensive your incivility.
for your continuous and well thought contributions and work on bitcoin core.
the core team has earned my trust over a long term and clearly deserves it (this includes other too).
(well i might disagree about blocksize but hey, i doubt there is anything in this world where anybody agrees with me)
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