Double spend with zero confirmations has been solved.

[TPTB_need_war]

He's solving Bitcoin problems thought impossible to solve while you are a troll on a forum.....hmmm who to trust.

I respect your right to believe what ever you want to believe, no matter how far removed from reality it may be.

I don't need to brag about who I am, my knowledge, etc.. Have fun.

[TPTB_need_war]

Why does nobody use something like proof of burn to defend against sybil attacks?  Because then they would have to create an actual economic system instead of just a consensus mechanism?  We are getting to the point where it's not possible to make any progress in the cryptocurrency space if you don't address consensus & economics at the same time.  People are so desperate to avoid arbitrary variables they end up not creating anything.

Astute. Agreed.

Well yes but then the problem is I stated in my post on the first page, how do you set the globally consistent level of "burn" (which afaics is just a transaction fee) without centralizing? What motivation would a peer have for participating if the peer must burn his coins to participate in the P2P network?

[patmast3r]

Okay I've digested the white paper. I appreciate john-conner providing more details. That was the honorable and helpful action.

Unfortunately afaics, there are elementary attack vectors that he has not addressed in this white paper:

• No cost to being a peer, thus a Sybil attack on nodes in general. The adversary could insert a unlimited nodes if he wants to in order to dominate voting.
• How to squelch DoS attacks on the vote? A node which always votes against consensus can't be distinguished from one voting honestly since lock conflicts result in an indeterminate vote.
• He employs a Bellagio Algorithm to avoid gaming the selection of which nodes to poll for votes, so this removes the reputation weights of Skycoin's consensus, but it doesn't address the spamming of total node count nor the spamming of the lock conflict.
• Nodes are not paid for voting. If they receive bribes from the double-spender, the algorithm has no defense other than it hopes that 50% of the nodes in the network are not on-the-dole.
• Lock request spamming or DoS attacks. Are transaction fees hardcoded for the entire network?? Preset constants are anti-decentralization.

Also this algorithm requires the entire network to see all the transactions which of course won't scale without centralization, so if he is trying to enable real-time microtransactions (1 second confirmations) which could explode transaction volumes up to the 100,000s or more per second then he has a problem. Refer to the GavinCoin fork debate.

He's solving Bitcoin problems thought impossible to solve while you are a troll on a forum.....hmmm who to trust.

Even if he is a troll his questions make sense and should be answered.

Also I could just always broadcast 2 Locks (Race Attack) and sometimes I'll get lucky (and the merchant unlucky) and other times the merchant will get lucky. It doesn't cost me anything so why not try ? So in the end the merchant should be waiting for the next block either way or am I missing something ? (Serious question not trying to hate)

Is the only thing that seperates peers form super peers that peers aren't reachable and super peers are ? If so I find the naming very odd.

[TPTB_need_war]

(Serious question not trying to hate)

Apologies if I expressed animosity in my postings about VanillaCoin. Such would be counter productive.

I guess I was aggravated that I would investigate and then find not even documentation of the main claimed innovation and vaporware for the claimed anonymity Dark-PP. To his credit, he promptly corrected the deficiency on documentation of the zerotime (but not yet on the Dark-PP) and provided a more detailed white paper.

Perhaps his zerotime algorithm can be rescued somehow, but I don't see how to do it.

For example, even the transaction fee can't be forfeited when there is a lock conflict stalemate, because innocent victims could be attacked by attacking the P2P network with a Sybil attack.

Sybil attacks and game theory have to be considered in great detail when designing any consensus network or even an anonymity network.

john-conner should be aware that I've been working on these short of designs for a long time too.

He is obviously knowledgeable about some research I wasn't. So maybe he has something else up his sleeve, but we don't see it in what he has published thus far.

[monsterer]

Why does nobody use something like proof of burn to defend against sybil attacks?  Because then they would have to create an actual economic system instead of just a consensus mechanism?  We are getting to the point where it's not possible to make any progress in the cryptocurrency space if you don't address consensus & economics at the same time.  People are so desperate to avoid arbitrary variables they end up not creating anything.

I really love the idea of proof of burn to be the only consensus mechanism, but the trouble is, to burn you need to send a transaction, which is itself subject to consensus.

[rnicoll]

Why does nobody use something like proof of burn to defend against sybil attacks?  Because then they would have to create an actual economic system instead of just a consensus mechanism?  We are getting to the point where it's not possible to make any progress in the cryptocurrency space if you don't address consensus & economics at the same time.  People are so desperate to avoid arbitrary variables they end up not creating anything.

So... my node burns coins to give itself credibility, is that the idea? However, what's in it for me, that I'd want to burn currency, a more functional network?

I presume this then gives me "credibility" up to the amount burnt, but if I try a double-spend, I could then still make more than I lose destroying my reputation. Actually, for that matter, how does the network assert I've compromised my credibility?

Potentially feasible, just a lot of questions, and honestly I think we need to stop trying to jam more transactions/faster transactions through a single huge relay network, and focus on side-chains/off-chain transactions for scalability.

[cryptodevil]

Okay I've digested the white paper. I appreciate john-conner providing more details. That was the honorable and helpful action.

Unfortunately afaics, there are elementary attack vectors that he has not addressed in this white paper:

• No cost to being a peer, thus a Sybil attack on nodes in general. The adversary could insert a unlimited nodes if he wants to in order to dominate voting.
• How to squelch DoS attacks on the vote? A node which always votes against consensus can't be distinguished from one voting honestly since lock conflicts result in an indeterminate vote.
• He employs a Bellagio Algorithm to avoid gaming the selection of which nodes to poll for votes, so this removes the reputation weights of Skycoin's consensus, but it doesn't address the spamming of total node count nor the spamming of the lock conflict.
• Nodes are not paid for voting. If they receive bribes from the double-spender, the algorithm has no defense other than it hopes that 50% of the nodes in the network are not on-the-dole.
• Lock request spamming or DoS attacks. Are transaction fees hardcoded for the entire network?? Preset constants are anti-decentralization.

Also this algorithm requires the entire network to see all the transactions which of course won't scale without centralization, so if he is trying to enable real-time microtransactions (1 second confirmations) which could explode transaction volumes up to the 100,000s or more per second then he has a problem. Refer to the GavinCoin fork debate.

He's solving Bitcoin problems thought impossible to solve while you are a troll on a forum.....hmmm who to trust.

Are you claiming the points raised are invalid?

[Nxtblg]

Okay I've digested the white paper. I appreciate john-conner providing more details. That was the honorable and helpful action.

Unfortunately afaics, there are elementary attack vectors that he has not addressed in this white paper:

• No cost to being a peer, thus a Sybil attack on nodes in general. The adversary could insert a unlimited nodes if he wants to in order to dominate voting.
• How to squelch DoS attacks on the vote? A node which always votes against consensus can't be distinguished from one voting honestly since lock conflicts result in an indeterminate vote.
• He employs a Bellagio Algorithm to avoid gaming the selection of which nodes to poll for votes, so this removes the reputation weights of Skycoin's consensus, but it doesn't address the spamming of total node count nor the spamming of the lock conflict.
• Nodes are not paid for voting. If they receive bribes from the double-spender, the algorithm has no defense other than it hopes that 50% of the nodes in the network are not on-the-dole.
• Lock request spamming or DoS attacks. Are transaction fees hardcoded for the entire network?? Preset constants are anti-decentralization.

Also this algorithm requires the entire network to see all the transactions which of course won't scale without centralization, so if he is trying to enable real-time microtransactions (1 second confirmations) which could explode transaction volumes up to the 100,000s or more per second then he has a problem. Refer to the GavinCoin fork debate.

He's solving Bitcoin problems thought impossible to solve while you are a troll on a forum.....hmmm who to trust.

I suggest not scoffing at what he wrote. I'm not a good programmer, so I had to "learn as I go" about the framework of cryptocurrency design by soaking up the posts here. I don't know much, but I do know that failing to take account of Sybil attacks and DDOS attacks means "back to the drawing board." Unlike li'l ol' me, TPTB_need_war really does know what he's doing.

At a very minimum, the flaws he saw demand a detailed rebuttal from john_connor: the more technical, the better. I'm only at the amateur-dabbler level programming-wise, but I've been around the echo-chambers block enough times to no longer believe in the "Galileo trope" - namely:

- Galileo was an innovative genius who was attacked and persecuted by the Establishment.
- X is being attacked and persecuted by the Establishment for his "innovations."
- Therefore, X is a world-changing innovative genius like Galileo!

Formally, this bit-o'-flattery is an instantiation of the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Myself, I'm taking TPTB_need_war's criticism quite seriously.

[nextgencoin]

Okay I've digested the white paper. I appreciate john-conner providing more details. That was the honorable and helpful action.

Unfortunately afaics, there are elementary attack vectors that he has not addressed in this white paper:

• No cost to being a peer, thus a Sybil attack on nodes in general. The adversary could insert a unlimited nodes if he wants to in order to dominate voting.
• How to squelch DoS attacks on the vote? A node which always votes against consensus can't be distinguished from one voting honestly since lock conflicts result in an indeterminate vote.
• He employs a Bellagio Algorithm to avoid gaming the selection of which nodes to poll for votes, so this removes the reputation weights of Skycoin's consensus, but it doesn't address the spamming of total node count nor the spamming of the lock conflict.
• Nodes are not paid for voting. If they receive bribes from the double-spender, the algorithm has no defense other than it hopes that 50% of the nodes in the network are not on-the-dole.
• Lock request spamming or DoS attacks. Are transaction fees hardcoded for the entire network?? Preset constants are anti-decentralization.

Also this algorithm requires the entire network to see all the transactions which of course won't scale without centralization, so if he is trying to enable real-time microtransactions (1 second confirmations) which could explode transaction volumes up to the 100,000s or more per second then he has a problem. Refer to the GavinCoin fork debate.

He's solving Bitcoin problems thought impossible to solve while you are a troll on a forum.....hmmm who to trust.

I suggest not scoffing at what he wrote. I'm not a good programmer, so I had to "learn as I go" about the framework of cryptocurrency design by soaking up the posts here. I don't know much, but I do know that failing to take account of Sybil attacks and DDOS attacks means "back to the drawing board." Unlike li'l ol' me, TPTB_need_war really does know what he's doing.

At a very minimum, the flaws he saw demand a detailed rebuttal from john_connor: the more technical, the better. I'm only at the amateur-dabbler level programming-wise, but I've been around the echo-chambers block enough times to no longer believe in the "Galileo trope" - namely:

- Galileo was an innovative genius who was attacked and persecuted by the Establishment.
- X is being attacked and persecuted by the Establishment for his "innovations."
- Therefore, X is a world-changing innovative genius like Galileo!

Formally, this bit-o'-flattery is an instantiation of the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Myself, I'm taking TPTB_need_war's criticism quite seriously.

John Conner already gave a rebuttal to his last erroneous conclusions. Why should he keep having to deal with this troll?

The fact is he has created something, produced a detailed white paper, he has set up a test net and offer a bounty to someone who can break it. Plus he is publishing the code next week. Seriously these guys are trolls, they don't want to know what's true.

[TPTB_need_war]

John Conner already gave a rebuttal to his last erroneous conclusions. Why should he keep having to deal with this troll?

Now nextgencoin will try to take advantage of your ignorance of tech.

john won't respond. period. Forget the rest of the obfuscation he appended to that.

[cryptodevil]

John Conner already gave a rebuttal to his last erroneous conclusions. Why should he keep having to deal with this troll?

Perhaps because JC's 'white paper' is severely lacking in any content which would suitably rebut the points being raised?

Your post history concerning this developer and his coin is becoming shillier by the day and your tactic of repeatedly calling people 'Troll' or their assertions 'FUD', are tiresome. We get it, you want people to idolise JC the way you do, but it isn't going to happen unless and until he can actually satisfy the technical issues related to his claims towards having solved 'zero confirmation' transaction vulnerabilities.

[nextgencoin]

John Conner already gave a rebuttal to his last erroneous conclusions. Why should he keep having to deal with this troll?

Perhaps because JC's 'white paper' is severely lacking in any content which would suitably rebut the points being raised?

Your post history concerning this developer and his coin is becoming shillier by the day and your tactic of repeatedly calling people 'Troll' or their assertions 'FUD', are tiresome. We get it, you want people to idolise JC the way you do, but it isn't going to happen unless and until he can actually satisfy the technical issues related to his claims towards having solved 'zero confirmation' transaction vulnerabilities.

It a brave new world in crypto when a developer can post a white paper, and open source code, a attest net that no one can attack and still they apparently need to defend themselves......guess what they don't...don't like the coin don't buy it.

[cryptodevil]

don't like the coin don't buy it.

Can't explain how it solves the zero-confirmation vulnerabilities? Don't promote it as having solved the zero confirmation vulnerabilities.

[TPTB_need_war]

It a brave new world in crypto when a developer can post a white paper, and open source code, a attest net that no one can attack and still they apparently need to defend themselves......guess what they don't...don't like the coin don't buy it.

Sucks doesn't it when you can't peddle shitcoins any more.

I better not continue posting in the altcoin forums, because then n00bs might actually start investing in the few innovative coins that actually prove their claims beyond any reasonable doubt.

You still don't seem to understand that perhaps the people capable of attacking it won't do it until there is enough value to extract out of attacking it. I already explained several times that $2100 in VNL is not a bounty because after one successfully attacks it, the VNL will very likely decline in value before the person gets paid the bounty and can convert it to BTC. And it is not high enough any way. It will require some resources, time, and skills to work out and launch such an attack. Personally I am not interested.

Also I read today that John has been caught turning the mining off and on, thus the test net is not a unprotected P2P network where the adversary can apply all his potential powers.

All we asked was for him to explain how he would handle Sybil and DoS attacks and then you call us trolls for wanting to have a complete white paper and not Swiss cheese. Perhaps he can solve those issues or he can explain why he believes they are non-issues. Or perhaps he doesn't want to at this time to hide them from his competitors. But again, I don't see solutions to those issues. So I remain unconvinced.

It wasn't personal until you called me a troll.

Real scholars and devs appreciaterequire peer review.

[traumschiff]

Also I read today that John has been caught turning the mining off and on, thus the test net is not a unprotected P2P network where the adversary can apply all his potential powers.

That was the live network, people agreed on it, it was needed for testing purposes. TestNet is untouched since deployed. Either read over stuff properly or don't comment on them at all.

All we asked was for him to explain how he would handle Sybil and DoS attacks

You would probably know by now that John isn't here to answer the question. Jump on IRC (#vanillacoin) or send him a message through BM.

[solid12345]

You still don't seem to understand that the people capable of attacking it won't do it until there is enough value to extract out of attacking it. I already explained several times that $2100 in VNL is not a bounty because after one successfully attacks it, the VNL will very likely decline in value before the person gets paid the bounty and can convert it to BTC. And it is not high enough any way. It will require some resources, time, and skills to work out and launch such an attack. Personally I am not interested.

Sorry but I still don't get this argument. There are several companies that offer $1,000-$5,000 bug and exploit bounties for Bitcoin. However you are under the assumption any bug found in vanillacoin means the coin is permanently dead, which is like saying BTC is dead if I find an exploit. Which btw if someone DOES find a Bitcoin exploit, what incentive is there for them to come forward either when they can profit more of it then reporting it?

[TPTB_need_war]

You still don't seem to understand that the people capable of attacking it won't do it until there is enough value to extract out of attacking it. I already explained several times that $2100 in VNL is not a bounty because after one successfully attacks it, the VNL will very likely decline in value before the person gets paid the bounty and can convert it to BTC. And it is not high enough any way. It will require some resources, time, and skills to work out and launch such an attack. Personally I am not interested.

Sorry but I still don't get this argument. There are several companies that offer $1,000-$5,000 bug and exploit bounties for Bitcoin. However you are under the assumption any bug found in vanillacoin means the coin is permanently dead, which is like saying BTC is dead if I find an exploit. Which btw if someone DOES find a Bitcoin exploit, what incentive is there for them to come forward either when they can profit more of it then reporting it?

Because zerotime is the only feature of the VNL. The Dark-PP stuff isn't even documented so if the dev fails on the zerotime, the market won't trust him on what is not even documented.

And I am just saying that they can't claim that offering a bounty is an evidence of anything.

The only evidence that zerotime is robust and correct, is to submit to peer review and address all reasonable threat models raised. John has written nothing about Sybil and DoS attacks in the context of consensus (which is entirely different than in the context of virtual synchrony for attributes that are mappable to invariant UDP tags such as IP address such as DHT slots). Every P2P dev knows these have to be dealt with.

[Este Nuno]

You still don't seem to understand that the people capable of attacking it won't do it until there is enough value to extract out of attacking it. I already explained several times that $2100 in VNL is not a bounty because after one successfully attacks it, the VNL will very likely decline in value before the person gets paid the bounty and can convert it to BTC. And it is not high enough any way. It will require some resources, time, and skills to work out and launch such an attack. Personally I am not interested.

Sorry but I still don't get this argument. There are several companies that offer $1,000-$5,000 bug and exploit bounties for Bitcoin. However you are under the assumption any bug found in vanillacoin means the coin is permanently dead, which is like saying BTC is dead if I find an exploit. Which btw if someone DOES find a Bitcoin exploit, what incentive is there for them to come forward either when they can profit more of it then reporting it?

Bitcoin doesn't make any exceptional claims that can't be proven by plain old math, networking, and computer science. And for example, say someone did find an exploit in Bitcoin where they could monopolize mining or something, then yeah Bitcoin probably would have a chance of dying.

Also, there are lots of white hats who gladly report bugs that they could profit more from than what they'd get from the reward alone.

[TPTB_need_war]

Also I read today that John has been caught turning the mining off and on, thus the test net is not a unprotected P2P network where the adversary can apply all his potential powers.

That was the live network, people agreed on it, it was needed for testing purposes. TestNet is untouched since deployed. Either read over stuff properly or don't comment on them at all.

All we asked was for him to explain how he would handle Sybil and DoS attacks

You would probably know by now that John isn't here to answer the question. Jump on IRC (#vanillacoin) or send him a message through BM.

I have no obligation. He can come here where I talk to clear the matter or not. Ball is in his court.

John has been caught doing several questionable actions, thus I don't know what he is doing with the testnet. What ever is written is irrelevant, since he has already been caught lying (or exaggerating) about not copying Bitcoin source code.

[TPTB_need_war]

Apologies to harp on this thread, but it would be sneaky if I added this as an edit to a prior post.

Zerotime is a very significant claim. When you make bold claims that have the potential to seriously challenge Bitcoin, you will be held to a higher standard of scholarly proof.

Indeed the necessary proofs can be explained with math, computer science, and networking research.

Einstein said you don't really know something until you can explain it to a n00b.

The only ways I know of to squelch DoS and Sybil attacks are:

• Participant expends resources.
• Participant must have a reputation.
• Participant performance can be measured.

I already stated that I don't know how to do #3 for his proposed lock protocol, because there is no verified correct vote on a lock. Disagreement isn't a verified crime in this protocol.

I already stated that I don't know how to do #1 for his protocol, because transaction fees can't be taken in the lock stalemate case where Sybil attack applies. Others suggested burning resources (I assume the voting nodes) and I responded saying which nodes would participate in voting if they must burn resources? If instead you require every transaction to burn or include a proof-of-work hash or fee, then the innocent spender is penalized by any lock stalemate.

So that leaves us with reputation. But again how do we measure performance in order to assign reputation? And then there are other problems with reputation.

There is a reason that solving the Byzantine Generals Problem remained unsolved until Satoshi invented proof-of-work. The problem is essentially that there is no reference point, because either value is correct and incorrect at the same time (e.g. lock or not lock) because we can't prove the network is reliable.

It is as if John isn't aware of how significant Satoshi's accomplishment was. Or somehow John thinks he has a clever improvement, but hasn't yet proven it to us.

Btw, I think I have a solution of how to achieve zerotime. But I do it an entirely different way and my solution doesn't require all peers to see all transactions, so even if John fixes his, I've still got him beat (assuming my white paper comes together which is not finished yet).