Obyte: Totally new consensus algorithm + private untraceable payments

[tortellino]

how can i link a new BTC address?

[vlom]

how can i link a new BTC address?

just ask the bot... open the app and talk to the bot. thats all.

[SatoNatomato]

I'm not really a fan of byteball consensus model, but I think there is a problem with your mining pool argument in favor of BTC consensus model: Bitmain produces almost all of the mining hardware used to mine, and there is speculation that not only antpool is a Bitmain in house mining pool, but that f2pool, viabtc, gbminers, and BTC.top are all basically just Bitmain mining with their own hardware under the guise of decentralization. This is only speculation, except for the bit about Bitmain producing almost all the hardware which is fact, but if true there is really a single entity dominating the Bitcoin network.

Both bitcoin and byteball have their strengths. Different consensus, yet advantage for both.

With bitcoin, it is technically true that if you really want to you can run your own miner, buy it develop it, however you like, mine. Disadvantage is of course, only rich people can afford it. So you as normal user are left to trust the miners and rely on their service, for which they take a fee, which they set.

With byteball, if you want to run a witness, you can, but you have to convince politically other people to use it, otherwise its gonna cost you money for nothing in return. As a normal user, you can use byteball however you like and you/we choose who will be witness and receive the network-decided amount of fees.

What I have learned from following bitcoin since 2010, is that no matter how decentralized and distributed a software is, (bitcoin wins in this regard its software/protocol/consensus is more decentralized, more distributed), there is still a politically self-imposed leadership of highly authoritarian style who try to rule it and possibly harm it for their own gain. The guardinas of the software, the custodians of the forums.

With byteball this human nature is set in the consensus of the software - witnesses. We users choose them, we pick them, and if they misbehave, we remove them.

So, the "more centralized", yes, only 12 instead of 10000x miners (not mining pools), the strength is, they are easier to change and adapt to users. Despite being a weakness as well in case of hostile governements around the world - global adversary.

But, I think the global adversary would also find more use of Byteball than try to forbid it, like money is useful.

[tortellino]

@vlom: i tried, he said me every time my linked address...what do i have to type in?

[SatoNatomato]

Witnesses are the single point of failure of the system. They essentially control the network and there are only 12 of them. You can imagine that if the rogue government (bankers or whoever) wants to take down the byteball system all they have to do is to take controll over 12 computers running witnesses nodes. This seems to be rather easy to do, especially at gunpoint. Moreover - this can be done without the rest of the network to even notice - if witnesses after being taken over by the rogue party are operated without interruption. Anybody who controls the 12 witnesses can do whatever he wants with the network - for example censor certain type of transactions. All of this is a contradiction to censor resistant trustless network that bitcoin is.

I can follow your arguments and respect your opinion. Bitcoin was created as a decentralized platform and that was a great invention - in the old days when everybody could easily take part in the consenus with their CPU or GPU miners, this system was still intact. But nowadays bitcoin has become a total different thing. Expensive asic miners drive bitcoin to centralization and the need for low energy costs favor some countries.

I will ask you a question: how many mining pools do you need to cross the 50% consensus barrier in bitcoin? I guess it's a lot less than 12.

It's not so simple as you imply. Mining pools does not necessarily decide about the state of the network (that power lies in miners hands). Let's assume that a rogue party took control over mining pools controlling +51% of the hashrate. If these mining pools would try to impose their will over miners (e.g. implementing changes to the protocol not supported by miners) miners would quickly drop those pools and switch to other ones which would lead to the rogue party loosing control over 51% of the hashrate. The bottom line is - to take over bitcoin the rogue party would have to take control over 51% of miners calculated as hashrate. It's not the same as 51% of mining pools as mining pools are not the same as miners. For example F2pool one of the biggest mining pools does not have its own mining hardware - it only facilitates mining for hardware operators (miners). Consequently it's much more difficult to control bitcoin because miners are more dispersed than mining pools. There are many more miners than mining pools. Definitely more than 12.

Indeed.

It is easier to take over Byteball - if you are a global adversary, global power.

That is also its strength, that we the users can replace witnesses, and  that there are few of them. Because we cannot replace the miners. We cannot even compete with them at all. But in this network, a few clicks away for any users aaaaand you're gone.

[SatoNatomato]

@vlom: i tried, he said me every time my linked address...what do i have to type in?

Type in your bb or btc address.

[CryptKeeper]

an other connection. this one if funny a tiny picture.

i.ytimg.com

wants to connect to i.ytimg.com on TCP port 443 (https)

   IP Address   172.217.22.174
   Reverse DNS Name   arn09s11-in-f14.1e100.net
   Established by   /Applications/Byteball.app/Contents/MacOS/nwjs
   Process ID   3668

something googelish according the IP

i will no stop reporting. because i think it is clear that nwjs thing is the reason. dev will know what to do.

Thanks for reporting.  As other people said here and in a few github issues, it is some (supposedly dead) code in nwjs making connections to google properties.  These connections will be blocked in the next release.  If you want to block them now, edit your package.json by adding this proxy setting:

https://github.com/byteball/byteball/commit/dfdd00808e3ac8f3268e7e346c2009bb403260f5

The location of package.json on Mac is /Applications/Byteball.app/Contents/Resources/app.nw/package.json.

Vlom, great finding! 

We need more people like you to test the software. Even with careful developing, such privacy leaks can creep in. Better to eliminate leaks and bugs right from the start!

You have earned a bounty of 1 GB for finding this leak, thank you!

Please post your address here or PM me if you don't want to make it public, thanks.

[SatoNatomato]

an other connection. this one if funny a tiny picture.

i.ytimg.com

wants to connect to i.ytimg.com on TCP port 443 (https)

   IP Address   172.217.22.174
   Reverse DNS Name   arn09s11-in-f14.1e100.net
   Established by   /Applications/Byteball.app/Contents/MacOS/nwjs
   Process ID   3668

something googelish according the IP

i will no stop reporting. because i think it is clear that nwjs thing is the reason. dev will know what to do.

Thanks for reporting.  As other people said here and in a few github issues, it is some (supposedly dead) code in nwjs making connections to google properties.  These connections will be blocked in the next release.  If you want to block them now, edit your package.json by adding this proxy setting:

https://github.com/byteball/byteball/commit/dfdd00808e3ac8f3268e7e346c2009bb403260f5

The location of package.json on Mac is /Applications/Byteball.app/Contents/Resources/app.nw/package.json.

Vlom, great finding! 

We need more people like you to test the software. Even with careful developing, such privacy leaks can creep in. Better to eliminate leaks and bugs right from the start!

You have earned a bounty of 1 GB for finding this leak, thank you!

Please post your address here or PM me if you don't want to make it public, thanks.

Can a brother get a kilo for suggesting the fix? 

Think he posted his address up there, I tipped him a few mb.

[davidoski]

Witnesses are the single point of failure of the system. They essentially control the network and there are only 12 of them. You can imagine that if the rogue government (bankers or whoever) wants to take down the byteball system all they have to do is to take controll over 12 computers running witnesses nodes. This seems to be rather easy to do, especially at gunpoint. Moreover - this can be done without the rest of the network to even notice - if witnesses after being taken over by the rogue party are operated without interruption. Anybody who controls the 12 witnesses can do whatever he wants with the network - for example censor certain type of transactions. All of this is a contradiction to censor resistant trustless network that bitcoin is.

I can follow your arguments and respect your opinion. Bitcoin was created as a decentralized platform and that was a great invention - in the old days when everybody could easily take part in the consenus with their CPU or GPU miners, this system was still intact. But nowadays bitcoin has become a total different thing. Expensive asic miners drive bitcoin to centralization and the need for low energy costs favor some countries.

I will ask you a question: how many mining pools do you need to cross the 50% consensus barrier in bitcoin? I guess it's a lot less than 12.

It's not so simple as you imply. Mining pools does not necessarily decide about the state of the network (that power lies in miners hands). Let's assume that a rogue party took control over mining pools controlling +51% of the hashrate. If these mining pools would try to impose their will over miners (e.g. implementing changes to the protocol not supported by miners) miners would quickly drop those pools and switch to other ones which would lead to the rogue party loosing control over 51% of the hashrate. The bottom line is - to take over bitcoin the rogue party would have to take control over 51% of miners calculated as hashrate. It's not the same as 51% of mining pools as mining pools are not the same as miners. For example F2pool one of the biggest mining pools does not have its own mining hardware - it only facilitates mining for hardware operators (miners). Consequently it's much more difficult to control bitcoin because miners are more dispersed than mining pools. There are many more miners than mining pools. Definitely more than 12.

Indeed.

It is easier to take over Byteball - if you are a global adversary, global power.

That is also its strength, that we the users can replace witnesses, and  that there are few of them. Because we cannot replace the miners. We cannot even compete with them at all. But in this network, a few clicks away for any users aaaaand you're gone.

As far as I understand it if a rogue party takes over all 12 witnesses it can prevent anybody from changing witnesses by more than 1. If you can't change more than 1 witness you can't change the rogue party from controlling the 11 remaining. That's called a cartel in the byteball white paper. The only way to get out of this situation is to make a "schism" - which essentially is the same as hard fork in bitcoin. We actually have this kind of cartel run by tonych at the moment... Seemingly out of necessity and presumably in good faith but you need to coerce only one person to overtake byteball at the moment. And tonych can keep this situation as long as he please until users realize it and form a schism (hard fork).

[SatoNatomato]

Witnesses are the single point of failure of the system. They essentially control the network and there are only 12 of them. You can imagine that if the rogue government (bankers or whoever) wants to take down the byteball system all they have to do is to take controll over 12 computers running witnesses nodes. This seems to be rather easy to do, especially at gunpoint. Moreover - this can be done without the rest of the network to even notice - if witnesses after being taken over by the rogue party are operated without interruption. Anybody who controls the 12 witnesses can do whatever he wants with the network - for example censor certain type of transactions. All of this is a contradiction to censor resistant trustless network that bitcoin is.

I can follow your arguments and respect your opinion. Bitcoin was created as a decentralized platform and that was a great invention - in the old days when everybody could easily take part in the consenus with their CPU or GPU miners, this system was still intact. But nowadays bitcoin has become a total different thing. Expensive asic miners drive bitcoin to centralization and the need for low energy costs favor some countries.

I will ask you a question: how many mining pools do you need to cross the 50% consensus barrier in bitcoin? I guess it's a lot less than 12.

It's not so simple as you imply. Mining pools does not necessarily decide about the state of the network (that power lies in miners hands). Let's assume that a rogue party took control over mining pools controlling +51% of the hashrate. If these mining pools would try to impose their will over miners (e.g. implementing changes to the protocol not supported by miners) miners would quickly drop those pools and switch to other ones which would lead to the rogue party loosing control over 51% of the hashrate. The bottom line is - to take over bitcoin the rogue party would have to take control over 51% of miners calculated as hashrate. It's not the same as 51% of mining pools as mining pools are not the same as miners. For example F2pool one of the biggest mining pools does not have its own mining hardware - it only facilitates mining for hardware operators (miners). Consequently it's much more difficult to control bitcoin because miners are more dispersed than mining pools. There are many more miners than mining pools. Definitely more than 12.

Indeed.

It is easier to take over Byteball - if you are a global adversary, global power.

That is also its strength, that we the users can replace witnesses, and  that there are few of them. Because we cannot replace the miners. We cannot even compete with them at all. But in this network, a few clicks away for any users aaaaand you're gone.

As far as I understand it if a rogue party takes over all 12 witnesses it can prevent anybody from changing witnesses by more than 1. If you can't change more than 1 witness you can't change the rogue party from controlling the 11 remaining. That's called cartel in the byteball white paper. The only way to get out of this situation is to make a "schism" - which essentially is the same as hard fork in bitcoin. We actually have this kind of cartel run by tonych at the moment... Seemingly out of necessity and presumably in good faith but you need to coerce only one person to overtake byteball at the moment.  

If you take over all 12, everybody can still make the 1 witness change. And when that is stabilized, the MainChain is moved some amount of set points (think this is a constant in the code), the next witness can be replaced.

The wallet/user is always able to change 1 witness.

Yes the schisms, mentioning it in the whitepaper shows honesty, that is a fork indeed, when enough is enough - users can fire up a new byteball network and transfer/link their funds to the new network - as we are doing today.  

EDIT: Why I like this despite the schisms mentioned, because we are humans we will fuck up. Totally fuck up, and the best way forward is to move away sometimes. No software and no organization and trust-exchange mechanism will ever be perfect, since human needs will also change. The best ones allow grade change, and are open for schisms.

[davidoski]

If you take over all 12, everybody can still make the 1 witness change. And when that is stabilized, the MainChain is moved some amount of set points (think this is a constant in the code), the next witness can be replaced.

I think it can't because it would make the witness list differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witnesses. Otherwise there would be no way to form a cartel and no reason for schism. You would just change all witnesses one by one. But this can't be done as I mentioned and that's why schism is necessary.

[SatoNatomato]

If you take over all 12, everybody can still make the 1 witness change. And when that is stabilized, the MainChain is moved some amount of set points (think this is a constant in the code), the next witness can be replaced.

I think it can't because it would make the witness list differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witnesses. Otherwise there would be no way to form a cartel and no reason for schism. You would just change all witnesses one by one. But this can't be done as I mentioned and that's why schism is necessary.

A cartel / collusion, I think is if some of the 12 witnesses would cooperate behind the scenes. That is ground for schism. Because then it would take too long time to change them. If 6 witnesses are in collusion and are actually acting as 1, they can deny any forward movement at all on the network - breaking it.

edit: THIS BELOW IS INCORRECT.
All 12 can be replaced, it just takes longer time, exactly to prevent changing all 12 at once to "Great Enterprise Censored Network". This is the point schisms addresses in the whitepaper.

Just a moment Ill find whitepaper reference to how more than 1 witness can be changed - there is a rule, when 1 witness changed becomes stable enough for the others to be allowed to change. EDIT: 1 at a time can be changed when no majority of witnesses are evil.

[davidoski]

A cartel / collusion, I think is if some of the 12 witnesses would cooperate behind the scenes. That is ground for schism. Because then it would take too long time to change them. If 6 witnesses are in collusion and are actually acting as 1.

All 12 can be replaced, it just takes longer time, exactly to prevent changing all 12 at once to "Great Enterprise Censored Network". This is the point schisms addresses in the whitepaper.

Just a moment Ill find whitepaper reference to how more than 1 witness can be changed - there is a rule, when 1 witness changed becomes stable enough for the others to be allowed to change.

This is indeed an interesting aspect of the system. How a new witness can be introduced - does the whole network (all full nodes) need to accept it (include in its witness list) or 51% (?) and whether remaining 11 witnesses have the veto power to prevent it from happening? This is not clearly explained in the whitepaper. I think tonych would be helpful in clarifying this issue as it is of paramount importance to the security of the system.

Let's imagine that 12 witnesses formed a cartel. They will not change their own witness list. The rest of the network decided to change 1 witness (they are only allowed to change just 1). Now how there can be a second witness changed? If any user tries to change the second witness in its list it will cause its list to differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witness own witness list. Remember that there's a cartel - remaining 11 witnesses won't allow the second witness to be changed (they will not allow their own witness list to be changed). I think this prevents the second witness from being introduced.

[SatoNatomato]

A cartel / collusion, I think is if some of the 12 witnesses would cooperate behind the scenes. That is ground for schism. Because then it would take too long time to change them. If 6 witnesses are in collusion and are actually acting as 1.

All 12 can be replaced, it just takes longer time, exactly to prevent changing all 12 at once to "Great Enterprise Censored Network". This is the point schisms addresses in the whitepaper.

Just a moment Ill find whitepaper reference to how more than 1 witness can be changed - there is a rule, when 1 witness changed becomes stable enough for the others to be allowed to change.

This is indeed an interesting aspect of the system. How a new witness can be introduced - does the whole network (all full nodes) need to accept it (include in its witness list) or 51% (?) and whether remaining 11 witnesses have the veto power to prevent it from happening? This is not clearly explained in the whitepaper. I think tonych would be helpful in clarifying this issue as it is of paramount importance to the security of the system.

Let's imagine that 12 witnesses formed a cartel. They will not change their own witness list. The rest of the network decided to change 1 witness (they are only allowed to change just 1). Now how there can be a second witness changed? If any user tries to change the second witness in its list it will cause its list to differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witness own witness list. Remember that there's a cartel - remaining 11 witnesses won't allow the second witness to be changed (they will not allow their own witness list to be changed). I think this prevents the second witness from being introduced.

Reading whitepaper again.

That seems to be correct, if 6 of the witnesses collude/cartel they can prevent others from changing their witness list, and they can censor transactions. Then schism.

Page 20-21 explains Choosing witnesses.

[realbigs21024]

i need more of these in a bad way i only have 1,500 bytes lol

[davidoski]

A cartel / collusion, I think is if some of the 12 witnesses would cooperate behind the scenes. That is ground for schism. Because then it would take too long time to change them. If 6 witnesses are in collusion and are actually acting as 1.

All 12 can be replaced, it just takes longer time, exactly to prevent changing all 12 at once to "Great Enterprise Censored Network". This is the point schisms addresses in the whitepaper.

Just a moment Ill find whitepaper reference to how more than 1 witness can be changed - there is a rule, when 1 witness changed becomes stable enough for the others to be allowed to change.

This is indeed an interesting aspect of the system. How a new witness can be introduced - does the whole network (all full nodes) need to accept it (include in its witness list) or 51% (?) and whether remaining 11 witnesses have the veto power to prevent it from happening? This is not clearly explained in the whitepaper. I think tonych would be helpful in clarifying this issue as it is of paramount importance to the security of the system.

Let's imagine that 12 witnesses formed a cartel. They will not change their own witness list. The rest of the network decided to change 1 witness (they are only allowed to change just 1). Now how there can be a second witness changed? If any user tries to change the second witness in its list it will cause its list to differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witness own witness list. Remember that there's a cartel - remaining 11 witnesses won't allow the second witness to be changed (they will not allow their own witness list to be changed). I think this prevents the second witness from being introduced.

Reading whitepaper again.

That seems to be correct, if 6 of the witnesses collude/cartel they can prevent others from changing their witness list, and they can censor transactions. Then schism.

Page 20-21 explains Choosing witnesses.

I expect this kind of schism happening pretty frequently. Even simply as a way to disrupt the system by whoever dislikes byteball. Whitepaper says its possible:

If someone just wants to start a new coin to experiment with another set of protocol rules, he can also use the ‘alt’ field to inherit everything from the   old coin, make the switch comfortable for users, and   have   a large set   of users with balances from day one.

[SatoNatomato]

A cartel / collusion, I think is if some of the 12 witnesses would cooperate behind the scenes. That is ground for schism. Because then it would take too long time to change them. If 6 witnesses are in collusion and are actually acting as 1.

All 12 can be replaced, it just takes longer time, exactly to prevent changing all 12 at once to "Great Enterprise Censored Network". This is the point schisms addresses in the whitepaper.

Just a moment Ill find whitepaper reference to how more than 1 witness can be changed - there is a rule, when 1 witness changed becomes stable enough for the others to be allowed to change.

This is indeed an interesting aspect of the system. How a new witness can be introduced - does the whole network (all full nodes) need to accept it (include in its witness list) or 51% (?) and whether remaining 11 witnesses have the veto power to prevent it from happening? This is not clearly explained in the whitepaper. I think tonych would be helpful in clarifying this issue as it is of paramount importance to the security of the system.

Let's imagine that 12 witnesses formed a cartel. They will not change their own witness list. The rest of the network decided to change 1 witness (they are only allowed to change just 1). Now how there can be a second witness changed? If any user tries to change the second witness in its list it will cause its list to differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witness own witness list. Remember that there's a cartel - remaining 11 witnesses won't allow the second witness to be changed (they will not allow their own witness list to be changed). I think this prevents the second witness from being introduced.

Reading whitepaper again.

That seems to be correct, if 6 of the witnesses collude/cartel they can prevent others from changing their witness list, and they can censor transactions. Then schism.

Page 20-21 explains Choosing witnesses.

I expect this kind of schism happening pretty frequently. Even simply as a way to disrupt the system by whoever dislikes byteball. Whitepaper says its possible:

If someone just wants to start a new coin to experiment with another set of protocol rules, he can also use the ‘alt’ field to inherit everything from the   old coin, make the switch comfortable for users, and   have   a large set   of users with balances from day one.

Choosing witnesses should be done carefully.

I expect schisms as frequently as collusion happens between 6 of the witnesses. Not often, but every 10-20 years, depending on how Byteball is used, and maybe it would survive even that if its used very widely. It will be hard to pick the good initial ones, but seeing as people here are crying over their exchanges not having Byteball - trusting a third party with their bitcoins a coin whose whole purpose was that no third party should hold your coins - I am convinced we will find the trustful witnesses, because people are willing to trust. Its the slow collusion thats bad, the "power corrupts" effect.

New altballs as often as someone is willing to experiment.

[tonych]

A cartel / collusion, I think is if some of the 12 witnesses would cooperate behind the scenes. That is ground for schism. Because then it would take too long time to change them. If 6 witnesses are in collusion and are actually acting as 1.

All 12 can be replaced, it just takes longer time, exactly to prevent changing all 12 at once to "Great Enterprise Censored Network". This is the point schisms addresses in the whitepaper.

Just a moment Ill find whitepaper reference to how more than 1 witness can be changed - there is a rule, when 1 witness changed becomes stable enough for the others to be allowed to change.

This is indeed an interesting aspect of the system. How a new witness can be introduced - does the whole network (all full nodes) need to accept it (include in its witness list) or 51% (?) and whether remaining 11 witnesses have the veto power to prevent it from happening? This is not clearly explained in the whitepaper. I think tonych would be helpful in clarifying this issue as it is of paramount importance to the security of the system.

Let's imagine that 12 witnesses formed a cartel. They will not change their own witness list. The rest of the network decided to change 1 witness (they are only allowed to change just 1). Now how there can be a second witness changed? If any user tries to change the second witness in its list it will cause its list to differ by 2 with regard to the remaining 11 witness own witness list. Remember that there's a cartel - remaining 11 witnesses won't allow the second witness to be changed (they will not allow their own witness list to be changed). I think this prevents the second witness from being introduced.

You are correct, if 12 witnesses so decide, they can block all attempts to replace them.  But this is exactly what they were expected not to do when they were added themselves.  If a minority of witnesses appears untrustworthy, they can be promptly replaced before they reach majority.

I discuss in the whitepaper a mechanism which helps make the behavior of witnesses more predictable and earlier detect any breaches of trust:  a would-be witness pledges to follow the witness lists of a few (possibly larger than 12) prominent industry leaders.  The pledge is not enforceable in the protocol but publicly auditable, any breach of the pledge would immediately make the witness a candidate for removal.

[forzendiablo]

why this coin is only on some strange exchange?

[davidoski]

You are correct, if 12 witnesses so decide, they can block all attempts to replace them.  But this is exactly what they were expected not to do when they were added themselves.  If a minority of witnesses appears untrustworthy, they can be promptly replaced before they reach majority.

I discuss in the whitepaper a mechanism which helps make the behavior of witnesses more predictable and earlier detect any breaches of trust:  a would-be witness pledges to follow the witness lists of a few (possibly larger than 12) prominent industry leaders.  The pledge is not enforceable in the protocol but publicly auditable, any breach of the pledge would immediately make the witness a candidate for removal.

"Prominent industry leaders" sounds a bit to me like "to big to fail banks". This inherent trust that users have to have in third parties makes me uneasy about the system design and its resilience to abuse. It additionally requires constant attention to the witness list issue and the danger of cartel forming behind the scenes. But I might be wrong and it will work well. Let's hope it will.