Blockchain Conspiracy Theory

[ron7684]

So this is a totally unfounded idea but I still believe it has a nonzero probability of happening.

What if someone (government agency, private enterprise, Dr. Evil, etc.) is building a private blockchain alongside the current one. They would only need to slightly exceed the current publicly advertised hashrate of what we believe to be the bitcoin network; this is technically and financially possible.

A similar situation is that a research agency makes some miraculous breakthrough in computing (quantum computing, high density power, etc.) and is able to "mine" a new blockchain at a significantly faster rate than what the public is using. Assuming the technology is a large enough leap, even prototype models could dwarf entire mining farms of today.

Is it possible for someone to publish an alternate blockchain and orphan upwards of 100k blocks (694 days)?

Are there measures in place so that such a long alternate chain cannot be accepted or is a chain allowed to dominate after splitting at any point?

[TragicMonopoly]

If you had a few hundred million dollars you felt like burning this might be possible. And by burning i mean investing it all in mining hardware which would be worthless by the time you were done. Since you would likely kill POW for bitcoin and another security model would be considered making your miners paperweights

If you invalidated a years worth of transactions there would really be no choice but to invalidate that chain and reset to the block before the attack

So it seems someone with a few hundred million dollars they want to throw at bitcoin has a few options

1. Waste it and attempt to kill bitcoin which would likely affect the price. But the chain would recover.

2. Mine non maliciously with their mining hardware possibly making a profit

3. Buy bitcoin and day trade

A few hundred million dollars is a lowball estimate I made. I would guess the real number is closer to 1 billion than 1 million

[mnb1985]

Shame is i could see this happening

[okae]

Way too risky and as most Governments are trying to get out of debt I doubt seeing this happen any time soon.

who know? maybe they are exactly doing it to let you thinking exactly that, while thay are "preparing the ground" for the next step

Shame is i could see this happening

i do not doubt it, maybe will not be like @ron7684, but be 100% that they are thinking on something...

[franky1]

if there was a government copy of the bitcoin blockchain. that makes the last 100k tx's never to have happened.. then even when they take over the blockheight , miners can simply ignore that IP/forked chain and carry on with the true block history

miners do have the ability to ignore hashes from anyone. so if a block hash solution appears to be linked to a nefarious source. it can just be ip banned.


in short trying to re-write the past will fail. all that can happen is altering the future. such as solving future blocks with zero tx's inside. which as i said. miners / users can block that ip.

[keats3]

If government agency, private enterprise, Dr. Evil, etc had new technology with more hashing power than the entire Bitcoin network they could find a better use for it than forking or double spending attacks on Bitcoin. A government agency possessing new technology with that much power would want to keep it secret. If anyone else openly advertised the fact they had such technology by attacking Bitcoin they would find themselves rapidly targeted by a number of government agencies attempting to get it off them. The NSA/CIA would love to get their hands on new technology with that much power.

[qwk]

I'm not sure if this is still a thing, but AFAIK new versions of Bitcoin still have built-in hardcoded checkpoints of some block(s) in the past, which makes the attack mentioned above impossible for any date before the blocks in question:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Checkpoint_Lockin

[gogxmagog]

sounds like the old 51% attack theory. too expensive.

as qwk says above, the fact that there is hard code protecting against this tells me that any sort of attack like this could be defused by some coding. like certain malware attacks and vulnerabilities found in security systems. devs go in and fix the code on their side to kill it.

sorry, I'm no tech guy, but that's the "for dummies" version as i understand it. am i completely wrong here?

[qwk]

sounds like the old 51% attack theory. too expensive.

as qwk says above, the fact that there is hard code protecting against this tells me that any sort of attack like this could be defused by some coding. like certain malware attacks and vulnerabilities found in security systems. devs go in and fix the code on their side to kill it.

sorry, I'm no tech guy, but that's the "for dummies" version as i understand it. am i completely wrong here?

Basically, you're absolutely right.
To sum it up: there's zero potential for a meaningful successful attack on the Bitcoin network based on the scenario of the OP.

[thejaytiesto]

The first concern has low possibilities of happening. Sure, the goverment or some evil entity could try to market their coin as the next big thing, but have fun trying to outdo the current Bitcoin network which is the strongest on the planet. The second concern is definitely a non issue, we are nowhere close to quantum computers doing anything useful.

[ron7684]

sounds like the old 51% attack theory. too expensive.

as qwk says above, the fact that there is hard code protecting against this tells me that any sort of attack like this could be defused by some coding. like certain malware attacks and vulnerabilities found in security systems. devs go in and fix the code on their side to kill it.

sorry, I'm no tech guy, but that's the "for dummies" version as i understand it. am i completely wrong here?

Basically, you're absolutely right.
To sum it up: there's zero potential for a meaningful successful attack on the Bitcoin network based on the scenario of the OP.

1) It's not too expensive if you are a large agency. If the goal is to destroy bitcoin because of its potential future value, then this may be an efficient attack. The meaning of the attack is to prove that the blockchain is malleable and reduce its standing as a stable useful currency.

2) Once devs have to modify code in the core client to make a decision (no matter how clear it is that one party is "good" and the other is "evil"), we have centralized and given the power to choose which chain dominates to the devs.


qwk thank you for the link, checkpoint blocks are an interesting concept

[maokoto]

Interesting question. It is not very likely that someone would risk so much money, though. I think that there still might be better investments.

[achow101_alt]

1) It's not too expensive if you are a large agency. If the goal is to destroy bitcoin because of its potential future value, then this may be an efficient attack. The meaning of the attack is to prove that the blockchain is malleable and reduce its standing as a stable useful currency.

If you are a large government agency, no sane person in the government would allow you to do such a thing. It would be a massive waste of money and after the whole thing is done, what would they do with the leftover equipment? It can't be used for anything else.

2) Once devs have to modify code in the core client to make a decision (no matter how clear it is that one party is "good" and the other is "evil"), we have centralized and given the power to choose which chain dominates to the devs.

And of course that has already been done with checkpoints. We are letting the devs choose which chain we use because of the checkpoints already in place.

qwk thank you for the link, checkpoint blocks are an interesting concept

It is not just a concept, the checkpoints already exist.
The code is at https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/chainparams.cpp#L119
Here are the current checkpoints:

Code:

checkpointData = (CCheckpointData) {
            boost::assign::map_list_of
            ( 11111, uint256S("0x0000000069e244f73d78e8fd29ba2fd2ed618bd6fa2ee92559f542fdb26e7c1d"))
            ( 33333, uint256S("0x000000002dd5588a74784eaa7ab0507a18ad16a236e7b1ce69f00d7ddfb5d0a6"))
            ( 74000, uint256S("0x0000000000573993a3c9e41ce34471c079dcf5f52a0e824a81e7f953b8661a20"))
            (105000, uint256S("0x00000000000291ce28027faea320c8d2b054b2e0fe44a773f3eefb151d6bdc97"))
            (134444, uint256S("0x00000000000005b12ffd4cd315cd34ffd4a594f430ac814c91184a0d42d2b0fe"))
            (168000, uint256S("0x000000000000099e61ea72015e79632f216fe6cb33d7899acb35b75c8303b763"))
            (193000, uint256S("0x000000000000059f452a5f7340de6682a977387c17010ff6e6c3bd83ca8b1317"))
            (210000, uint256S("0x000000000000048b95347e83192f69cf0366076336c639f9b7228e9ba171342e"))
            (216116, uint256S("0x00000000000001b4f4b433e81ee46494af945cf96014816a4e2370f11b23df4e"))
            (225430, uint256S("0x00000000000001c108384350f74090433e7fcf79a606b8e797f065b130575932"))
            (250000, uint256S("0x000000000000003887df1f29024b06fc2200b55f8af8f35453d7be294df2d214"))
            (279000, uint256S("0x0000000000000001ae8c72a0b0c301f67e3afca10e819efa9041e458e9bd7e40"))
            (295000, uint256S("0x00000000000000004d9b4ef50f0f9d686fd69db2e03af35a100370c64632a983")),
            1397080064, // * UNIX timestamp of last checkpoint block
            36544669,   // * total number of transactions between genesis and last checkpoint
                        //   (the tx=... number in the SetBestChain debug.log lines)
            60000.0     // * estimated number of transactions per day after checkpoint
        };

[Q7]

I think if somebody or an organization has the motive to bring down bitcoin, there is far better alternative, may cheaper or even more feasible, which is to damage the reputation of bitcoin. Something like exchangers collapsing, scam accusation targeting newbies, though might no happen immediately is enough to cause the ripple effect as time goes by.

[tokeweed]

So this is a totally unfounded idea but I still believe it has a nonzero probability of happening.

What if someone (government agency, private enterprise, Dr. Evil, etc.) is building a private blockchain alongside the current one. They would only need to slightly exceed the current publicly advertised hashrate of what we believe to be the bitcoin network; this is technically and financially possible.

A similar situation is that a research agency makes some miraculous breakthrough in computing (quantum computing, high density power, etc.) and is able to "mine" a new blockchain at a significantly faster rate than what the public is using. Assuming the technology is a large enough leap, even prototype models could dwarf entire mining farms of today.

Is it possible for someone to publish an alternate blockchain and orphan upwards of 100k blocks (694 days)?

Are there measures in place so that such a long alternate chain cannot be accepted or is a chain allowed to dominate after splitting at any point?

[Bit_Happy]

So this is a totally unfounded idea but I still believe it has a nonzero probability of happening.

What if someone (government agency, private enterprise, Dr. Evil, etc.) is building a private blockchain alongside the current one. They would only need to slightly exceed the current publicly advertised hashrate of what we believe to be the bitcoin network; this is technically and financially possible.

A similar situation is that a research agency makes some miraculous breakthrough in computing (quantum computing, high density power, etc.) and is able to "mine" a new blockchain at a significantly faster rate than what the public is using. Assuming the technology is a large enough leap, even prototype models could dwarf entire mining farms of today.

Is it possible for someone to publish an alternate blockchain and orphan upwards of 100k blocks (694 days)?

Are there measures in place so that such a long alternate chain cannot be accepted or is a chain allowed to dominate after splitting at any point?

What: Time travel?
"Was ist das?"

[tokeweed]

So this is a totally unfounded idea but I still believe it has a nonzero probability of happening.

What if someone (government agency, private enterprise, Dr. Evil, etc.) is building a private blockchain alongside the current one. They would only need to slightly exceed the current publicly advertised hashrate of what we believe to be the bitcoin network; this is technically and financially possible.

A similar situation is that a research agency makes some miraculous breakthrough in computing (quantum computing, high density power, etc.) and is able to "mine" a new blockchain at a significantly faster rate than what the public is using. Assuming the technology is a large enough leap, even prototype models could dwarf entire mining farms of today.

Is it possible for someone to publish an alternate blockchain and orphan upwards of 100k blocks (694 days)?

Are there measures in place so that such a long alternate chain cannot be accepted or is a chain allowed to dominate after splitting at any point?

What: Time travel?
"Was ist das?"

No.  It's an alternate universe where Gavin and XT won.

[Amph]

sounds like the old 51% attack theory. too expensive.

as qwk says above, the fact that there is hard code protecting against this tells me that any sort of attack like this could be defused by some coding. like certain malware attacks and vulnerabilities found in security systems. devs go in and fix the code on their side to kill it.

sorry, I'm no tech guy, but that's the "for dummies" version as i understand it. am i completely wrong here?

Basically, you're absolutely right.
To sum it up: there's zero potential for a meaningful successful attack on the Bitcoin network based on the scenario of the OP.

1) It's not too expensive if you are a large agency. If the goal is to destroy bitcoin because of its potential future value, then this may be an efficient attack. The meaning of the attack is to prove that the blockchain is malleable and reduce its standing as a stable useful currency.

2) Once devs have to modify code in the core client to make a decision (no matter how clear it is that one party is "good" and the other is "evil"), we have centralized and given the power to choose which chain dominates to the devs.


qwk thank you for the link, checkpoint blocks are an interesting concept

why destroying something by wasting tons of money, instead of just taxing it and gain something big on top of it? it does not make sense

and anyway every gov is different, some are promoting it, some don't care and a very few of them are against it

and anyway with a 515% you cna only destroy its value

[TastyChillySauce00]

why government need to mine bitcoin while they can mine ton of gold?

[tokeweed]

That's actually a page in a real Marvel comic that was posted on /r/bitcoin.