Which Altcoin has the highest number of full nodes? Which is most decentralized?

[str4wm4n]

Is there anyway to know?

Would definitely inform my decision of where I want to put my money long term.

[MicroGuy]

Is there anyway to know?

Would definitely inform my decision of where I want to put my money long term.

That is our primary focus, to protect our blockchain from being co-opted or subverted and to remain decentralized.

In a nutshell, we intend to build GoldCoin into the ideal that Satoshi would have wanted. We're like Bitcoin Classic only with better devs and less drama.

[monsterer]

Is there anyway to know?

Would definitely inform my decision of where I want to put my money long term.

Avoid anything with any element of PoS; more to the point, anything which relies on checkpoints for security.

edit: btw, you're asking part of the wrong question in your thread title - you don't want to look for number of full nodes, you want to look for distribution of power.

[freshman777]

Avoid anything with any element of PoS; more to the point, anything which relies on checkpoints for security.

Bitcoin relies on checkpoints for security. Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=194078.0

[monsterer]

Avoid anything with any element of PoS; more to the point, anything which relies on checkpoints for security.

Bitcoin relies on checkpoints for security. Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=194078.0

No it doesn't. Keep reading that thread.

[freshman777]

Avoid anything with any element of PoS; more to the point, anything which relies on checkpoints for security.

Bitcoin relies on checkpoints for security. Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=194078.0

No it doesn't. Keep reading that thread.

It does. Is the reason gmaxwell wrote not related to security?

so that an attacker who has complete control of your network (and thus can prevent you from hearing the longest chain from the honest bitcoin network) from putting you on a fake (low difficulty) isolated chain unless they can also trick you into running replaced software. With the checkpoints such an attacker hast to have a ton of mining power in order to continue the chain.

Based on this information, will you change your post to "not all checkpoints are evil"?

[monsterer]

Avoid anything with any element of PoS; more to the point, anything which relies on checkpoints for security.

Bitcoin relies on checkpoints for security. Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=194078.0

No it doesn't. Keep reading that thread.

It does. Is the reason gmaxwell wrote not related to security?

Thats not really what they're for— though that have the effect too. Most of their usefulness is that they prevent a dos attacker from filling up bitcoin node's disk space with long runs of low difficulty blocks forked off low in the chain.

[freshman777]

Thats not really what they're for— though that have the effect too. Most of their usefulness is that they prevent a dos attacker from filling up bitcoin node's disk space with long runs of low difficulty blocks forked off low in the chain.

This is a special case of isolating a node from the main chain and feeding it the blocks of the attacker's chain. How is this not related to security?

[monsterer]

Thats not really what they're for— though that have the effect too. Most of their usefulness is that they prevent a dos attacker from filling up bitcoin node's disk space with long runs of low difficulty blocks forked off low in the chain.

This is a special case of isolating a node from the main chain and feeding it the blocks of the attacker's chain. How is this not related to security?

It's a DOS angle, nothing more. The key distinction is that bitcoin can continue to function with the same level of security with checkpoints removed. If you remove checkpoints from any PoS coin, it immediately becomes vulnerable to any number of attacks on the chain history, for example the keys from the past attack wherein I can produce invalid candidate histories by using historic private keys which are no long in use.

[freshman777]

Thats not really what they're for— though that have the effect too. Most of their usefulness is that they prevent a dos attacker from filling up bitcoin node's disk space with long runs of low difficulty blocks forked off low in the chain.

This is a special case of isolating a node from the main chain and feeding it the blocks of the attacker's chain. How is this not related to security?

It's a DOS angle, nothing more. The key distinction is that bitcoin can continue to function with the same level of security with checkpoints removed. If you remove checkpoints from any PoS coin, it immediately becomes vulnerable to any number of attacks on the chain history, for example the keys from the past attack wherein I can produce invalid candidate histories by using historic private keys which are no long in use.

In theory pigs can fly. I can name a number of theoretical attack vectors on PoW coins. They don't make me lose sleep owning PoW coins.

[stoat]

Ethereum

[monsterer]

In theory pigs can fly. I can name a number of theoretical attack vectors on PoW coins. They don't make me lose sleep owning PoW coins.

Let's hear them, then.

[freshman777]

In theory pigs can fly. I can name a number of theoretical attack vectors on PoW coins. They don't make me lose sleep owning PoW coins.

Let's hear them, then.

first I'd like to indicate what you need to successfully accomplish the PoS attack you pointed to.

a) disable checkpoints and have users download your release.
b) procure many PoS accounts keys with very large stakes.
c) have powerful / quantum hardware to build a myriad of chains to get one with the cumulative difficulty higher than the valid chain to be accepted by other nodes.

Each of these is not trivial, combined they are the pigs can fly at supersonic speed kind of fantasy.

Now for the theoretical attack vectors on PoW, these are well known but I can't refuse since you asked.

1) voluntary collusion of miners.
2) involuntary - high vulnerability of centralized mining physical infrastructure and known locations to state level attacks.
3) dependence on ever increasing hash rate and difficulty, security is weakened if price goes down, dependence on energy infrastructure.
4) quantum computing.

You can dismiss these attack angles because they haven't yet been used. TPTB_need_war disagrees with you.

[monsterer]

first I'd like to indicate what you need to successfully accomplish the PoS attack you pointed to.

a) disable checkpoints and have users download your release.

This is obvious. Checkpoints completely centralise control of the chain, though.

b) procure many PoS accounts keys with very large stakes.

Historical keys have no value, they should be easy to purchase.

c) have powerful / quantum hardware to build a myriad of chains to get one with the cumulative difficulty higher than the valid chain to be accepted by other nodes.

Since block production is so cheap in PoS, I don't need any such powerful hardware to do this.

Now for the theoretical attack vectors on PoW, these are well known but I can't refuse since you asked.

1) voluntary collusion of miners.

Yes, 51% attack is well known.

2) involuntary - high vulnerability of centralized mining physical infrastructure and known locations to state level attacks.

The chain is highly resilient to such takedowns - anyone with a CPU can mine. In PoS, if you confiscate the stake from the stakers, the chain is totally unrecoverable.

3) dependence on ever increasing hash rate and difficulty, security is weakened if price goes down, dependence on energy infrastructure.

Security is weakened if hash rate goes down, not price.

4) quantum computing.

Does not exist.

[freshman777]

first I'd like to indicate what you need to successfully accomplish the PoS attack you pointed to.

a) disable checkpoints and have users download your release.

Checkpoints completely centralise control of the chain, though.

They don't if they are hashes of hard fork blocks, coded into the software thousands blocks after the HF had happened by consensus.

b) procure many PoS accounts keys with very large stakes.

Historical keys have no value, they should be easy to purchase.

There is no proof to this statement.

c) have powerful / quantum hardware to build a myriad of chains to get one with the cumulative difficulty higher than the valid chain to be accepted by other nodes.

Since block production is so cheap in PoS, I don't need any such powerful hardware to do this.

Yes, you do. A well designed PoS has protections against this computing attack to notably slow you down.

Now for the theoretical attack vectors on PoW, these are well known but I can't refuse since you asked.

1) voluntary collusion of miners.

Yes, 51% attack is well known.

2) involuntary - high vulnerability of centralized mining physical infrastructure and known locations to state level attacks.

The chain is highly resilient to such takedowns - anyone with a CPU can mine. In PoS, if you confiscate the stake from the stakers, the chain is totally unrecoverable.

a) anyone with a CPU can mine after how many years of difficulty adjustment and dysfunctional network? b) the protection of Bitcoin is ASIC network. If it's degraded to anyone with a CPU can mine, many state level actors can attack the network that had protection by ASICs removed.

3) dependence on ever increasing hash rate and difficulty, security is weakened if price goes down, dependence on energy infrastructure.

Security is weakened if hash rate goes down, not price.

Hash rate follows price. PoW depends on the price going up. If the price goes down, the hash rate goes down, PoW is at risk.

4) quantum computing.

Does not exist.

You can't be sure.

Look, all I am saying is properly designed PoW and PoS have their advantages and flaws. Dismissing one or the other is ill-advised. Hedging your risks using both is wise.

[monsterer]

Look, all I am saying is properly designed PoW and PoS have their advantages and flaws. Dismissing one or the other is ill-advised. Hedging your risks using both is wise.

I haven't seen an instance of a PoS chain which didn't rely on rolling checkpoints to prevent against long and short range attacks. If you don't have rolling checkpoints, anyone with historical private keys can re-write history.

Why would an empty private key have any value to anybody?

[freshman777]

Look, all I am saying is properly designed PoW and PoS have their advantages and flaws. Dismissing one or the other is ill-advised. Hedging your risks using both is wise.

I haven't seen an instance of a PoS chain which didn't rely on rolling checkpoints to prevent against long and short range attacks. If you don't have rolling checkpoints, anyone with historical private keys can re-write history.

Why would an empty private key have any value to anybody?

Rolling checkpoints do not centralize control of the chain, they are a feature of decentralized consensus, what makes them evil in your eyes?

An empty private key may have no value to someone. The problem is you need to obtain a lot of them, the longer you wait the more spread and larger is the hashing stake protecting the network, making your task more arduous, and this is only one challenge you face. I illustrated the other challenges in the preceding posts.

[monsterer]

Rolling checkpoints do not centralize control of the chain, they are a feature of decentralized consensus, what makes them evil in your eyes?

An empty private key may have no value to someone. The problem is you need to obtain a lot of them, the longer you wait the more spread and larger is the hashing stake protecting the network, making your task more arduous, and this is only one challenge you face. I illustrated the other challenges in the preceding posts.

Here is a fun thought experiment: why not issue rolling checkpoints at every block?

Any attacker only needs to get 33% of the stake from historical private keys; imagine the temptation for someone offering to buy them all together for some thousand dollars? All they need do is transfer their existing stake to new accounts at roughly the same time, and bingo.

[freshman777]

In essence you can't explain why rolling decentralized checkpoints are evil. You know, money is a serious business, fun experiments belong to other fields of life. I think you do a disservice to the OP advising to go all in with one less than ideal technology. Since a perfectly ideal one has yet to be invented, PoW+PoS is a way to hedge bets if one of them goes belly up, from an investing point of view.

[monsterer]

In essence you can't explain why rolling decentralized checkpoints are evil. You know, money is a serious business, fun experiments belong to other fields of life. I think you do a disservice to the OP advising to go all in with one less than ideal technology. Since a perfectly ideal one has yet to be invented, PoW+PoS is a way to hedge bets if one of them goes belly up, from an investing point of view.

I was hoping you'd give me the obvious answer as to why you don't want rolling checkpoints on every block so we could explore the entire reason any kind of rolling checkpoint is bad.

The answer is simple: rolling checkpoints on every block is analogous to having 1 central server giving out the consensus results, which is the same as having no consensus at all. That is the total opposite of decentralisation.