The Ethereum Paradox

[TPTB_need_war]

I am not claiming resistance against a 99% proof-of-work adversary.

"Impossible" was more about impossibility of you claiming such the nonsense than about impossiblity of such a protection.

Actually I did briefly some months ago state that I thought the honest miners could fork away from the 99% adversary if they could identify which transactions were censored on the dishonest chain. I hence explained in the Decentralization thread to monsterer why that is not possible because there is no objectivity other than the longest chain rule.

Amazing he forgot that discussion, since that was another thing I taught him that he thought was possible. If he denies that, I will dig up the link.

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[TPTB_need_war]

monsterer I revealed that my design is a stacked block chain:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/49a14r/how_the_heck_are_actual_bitcoin_users_who_want_a/d0rsi8u

[monsterer]

Actually I did briefly some months ago state that I thought the honest miners could fork away from the 99% adversary if they could identify which transactions were censored on the dishonest chain. I hence explained in the Decentralization thread to monsterer why that is not possible because there is no objectivity other than the longest chain rule.

You can add historical evidence of forks/transactions to the LCR to give you what you're calling objectivity, but it won't help and it should be obvious why: at 50% of the hash rate, the attacker can generate every single block, consistently winning the LCR contest such that no evidence of forks would ever make it into the chain.

edit: At under 50% it's fine, but then there is no need for historical evidence of censored transactions, because they wouldn't be censored in the first place.

[Come-from-Beyond]

at 50% of the hash rate, the attacker can generate every single block, consistently winning the LCR contest such that no evidence of forks would ever make it into the chain.

In some conditions even 34% is enough.

[Mastsetad]

at 50% of the hash rate, the attacker can generate every single block, consistently winning the LCR contest such that no evidence of forks would ever make it into the chain.

In some conditions even 34% is enough.

I read a paper a few years ago. In certain conditions, 25% is enough to launch attack. But for Ethereum, it is GPU mining, so it is difficult to have vast amount of hashing power.

[r0ach]

New Poll:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1394842.0

[hv_]

Shit. The cute blonde asks the right question here after 15 min...

http://youtu.be/6f0o0Xwad0w

[AlexGR]

Shit. The cute blonde asks the right question here after 15 min...

http://youtu.be/6f0o0Xwad0w

Hmm, I was wondering about that too... if the "fuel" gets too expensive, then how can you run apps? It's like an economic disincentive to go well (price-wise) because increased "fuel price" will hamper use and growth...

Despite being involved with altcoins, I haven't really looked into ethereum, primarily because I consider it a rule* that when a coin is too complex to be understood by most, it stands little chance in the marketplace. That principle has served me well over the years in that most cryptocurrencies that claimed to be 2.0 or something, tanked.

The second reason was that when I was trying to find monetary information (amount of coins, futureproofing, inflation model etc etc) these were buried or lacking - and I was like "wtf? how can I even touch this?". It was also heavily promoted and I found this "fishy".

Anyway, what I'd like to know, is, if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform, then what prevents someone from using Ethereum (as a distributed computing platform) to ...mine Ethereum or cpu-based altcoins? I'm reading about all nodes wastefully repeating the same computation to validate it but, as far as I understand, that could only be applied to something predetermined like 1+1=2. If I have a simple program that asks, say, a random number from 1 to 1000, then all nodes executing and verifying this program would give me a different value. The computation would be the same (in terms of cost) but it would allow me to perform work like random-brute force on a hash, or something.


* https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=637645.msg7114149#msg7114149 & https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=637645.msg7116563#msg7116563

[monsterer]

if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform

It isn't; it's a replicated/redundant computing platform.

[smooth]

if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform

It isn't; it's a replicated/redundant computing platform.

Fault-tolerant is a good term I think. Perhaps that helps define its (possible) utility too.

What if there are calculations that are so important and valuable that they can't be left to any one system or even a redundant cluster of system under any sort of common control? That might be worth something, but I don't think any of the currently-envisioned Ethereum use cases are that.

[AlexGR]

if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform

It isn't; it's a replicated/redundant computing platform.

If I make a simple program to get a random number from 1 to 100, or base my program on a randomizer, how can that be repeated in every single node? Shouldn't they give different outputs? How can that be validated?

Let's say I want to make a betting app, based on the random rolling of dice. How can that work?

[YarkoL]

if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform

It isn't; it's a replicated/redundant computing platform.

If I make a simple program to get a random number from 1 to 100, or base my program on a randomizer, how can that be repeated in every single node? Shouldn't they give different outputs? How can that be validated?

Let's say I want to make a betting app, based on the random rolling of dice. How can that work?

Can't you grab it out from latest block hash?

[AlexGR]

It's just an example, trying to understand how a random function would work.

[monsterer]

If I make a simple program to get a random number from 1 to 100, or base my program on a randomizer, how can that be repeated in every single node? Shouldn't they give different outputs? How can that be validated?

Let's say I want to make a betting app, based on the random rolling of dice. How can that work?

Pick a seed? No different to authoring a website, really in that regard.

[monsterer]

Fault-tolerant is a good term I think. Perhaps that helps define its (possible) utility too.

Agreed. That's more accurate.

[AlexGR]

Let's say I have a very simple program to run on the "distributed computing platform" of ethereum.

The program does one thing.

Provide an output of a random number (from 1 to 100)

How can that work on different nodes, and have them ....validating the same thing?

Unless it doesn't allow that type of functionality.

[smooth]

if Ethereum is a distributed computing platform

It isn't; it's a replicated/redundant computing platform.

If I make a simple program to get a random number from 1 to 100, or base my program on a randomizer, how can that be repeated in every single node? Shouldn't they give different outputs? How can that be validated?

Let's say I want to make a betting app, based on the random rolling of dice. How can that work?

Can't you grab it out from latest block hash?

You can, if you want the result to be able to be manipulated by miners.

@AlexGR, everything in Ethereum is deterministic. There are no operations that have different results on different nodes. At least if everything works properly. If not then it can fork the chain.

[AlexGR]

@AlexGR, everything in Ethereum is deterministic. There are no operations that have different results on different nodes. At least if everything works properly. If not then it can fork the chain.

Aha, that's closer to the answer I was hoping for. Thanks.

Ok, so is it censoring code that it doesn't like or something?

Let's say randomizing numbers is out of the question.

Now let's do something else. I'm adding a constant number (not random), let's say the number 42, for 1 entire second. Everything is given / predetermined: a) The number to add (42) and b) how long I want it to perform what I want (1000 msecs). The result though is different because one pc will have made 500 million additions, another will have made 10 billion additions, depending their cpu power.

Can I fork the network now?

[smooth]

@AlexGR, everything in Ethereum is deterministic. There are no operations that have different results on different nodes. At least if everything works properly. If not then it can fork the chain.

Aha, that's closer to the answer I was hoping for. Thanks.

Ok, so is it censoring code that it doesn't like or something?

I don't understand what you mean by censoring code. There is a virtual machine and the virtual machine instructions are all deterministic. There is no instruction that could produce a random value.

Now let's do something else. I'm adding a constant number (not random), let's say the number 42, for 1 entire second. Everything is given / predetermined: a) The number to add (42) and b) how long I want it to perform what I want (1000 msecs). The result though is different because one pc will have made 500 million additions, another will have made 10 billion additions, depending their cpu power.

Can I fork the network now?

No, because you can't check time either, so you can't write that program!

[AlexGR]

I don't understand what you mean by censoring code. There is a virtual machine and the virtual machine instructions are all deterministic. There is no instruction that could produce a random value.

+

No, because you can't check time either, so you can't write that program!

Hmmm...

a) That sounds extremely crippled
b) That sounds extremely broken if the result is ...forking (I'm not sure that it can keep things deterministic when there are tens if not hundreds of possible triggers for indirectly randomizing things).