Segwit opens the door for mining cartels

[jonald_fyookball]

https://coingeek.com/risks-segregated-witness-opening-door-mining-cartels-undermine-bitcoin-network/
 

[DGulari]

https://coingeek.com/risks-segregated-witness-opening-door-mining-cartels-undermine-bitcoin-network/
 

The author is Craig Wright.  Wait a minute?!  Isn't that the guy who invented bitcoin?  Isn't that Satoshi?

[vrathamon]

Maybe.  Afaik Satoshi was always in favor of scaling up the block size as the numbers of transactions increase.  Getting rid of the signature block via Segwit is just "proof by Authority" and doesn't really solve anything since you'll eventually need to scale up the block size anyway as Bitcoin becomes more and more popular.

https://coingeek.com/risks-segregated-witness-opening-door-mining-cartels-undermine-bitcoin-network/
 

The author is Craig Wright.  Wait a minute?!  Isn't that the guy who invented bitcoin?  Isn't that Satoshi?

[Wendigo]

Dr. Craig Wright is Chief Scientist at nChain, the global leader in research and development of innovations in blockchain technology.

Apparently Satoshi Nakamoto is working a mundane 9-to-5 job now. Times must be hard 


Dr. Craig Wright is a patent troll milking the inventor of Bitcoin image for personal gain.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitcoin-wright-fund-exclusive-idUSKBN17F26V

[Gab0]

https://coingeek.com/risks-segregated-witness-opening-door-mining-cartels-undermine-bitcoin-network/
 

SegWit introduces a fundamental change to bitcoin: the “AnyOneCanSpend address”, or essentially a blank signature for transactions. SegWit uses an “AnyOneCanSpend” address so that transactions will be validated and recorded into blocks, even though the sender/receiver signature data is separated. Normally, an “AnyOneCanSpend” output (as its name implies) would allow any miner to spend the funds associated with that transaction; therefore, SegWit would introduce new rules for interpreting “AnyOneCanSpend”. This means that miners could not take advantage of that output address to inappropriately spend the funds associated with all SegWit transactions.

By using “AnyOneCanSpend” addressing, SegWit therefore opens the door to a corrupt miner mining a block to subvert transactions, and instead redirect them to the miner’s own address. The value of such an illicit attack would grow every day SegWit is used. Over time, the more people use bitcoin, the more SegWit transactions are added to the blockchain, and the more funds are locked up with SegWit aspects of bitcoin, the more valuable this form of cartel attack becomes. A defecting miner could access historical funds that have not been redirected from SegWit to a traditional bitcoin address. Hence, the longer a SegWit system runs, the more likely it is that a cartel will form to steal funds.

One of the key flaws in the modelling of SegWit is the assumption that existing miners who may harbour good intentions towards the protocol will remain as the key players. This assumption ignores new entrants to the system. The mere possibility of the defection strategy described above is likely, under SegWit, to attract new pool miners with illicit motives. These could be groups opposed to SegWit or those who have never mined bitcoin and seek a relatively quick profit. Such quick profit would allow them to enter the market at a discount.

The introduction of SegWit would alter the maximum known risk associated with bitcoin from a 51% attack with the ability to censor transactions or to engage in elaborate double-spending attacks, to a catastrophic risk that could possibly and completely destroy the whole ledger and all contained value. The premise that miners will not steal funds at the genesis of SegWit does not address the introduction of new players who are now incentivised more and more each and every day to steal the funds that are locked into the ledger and which are growing daily. These new players and the increasing level of funds place all open areas of the ledger at risk to attack at a later date.

comments?

[malami]

Can't say I'm technically competent enough to know if this is true or just FUD, but as far as I know segwit has been extensively tested already and is activated without problems on many altcoins.

I'm very much in favour of segwit + blocksize increase with a look towards real scaleability because both are just temporary solutions as the number of transactions increase.

[minime]

nothing new... a 50%+ attack could have been done pre segwit

[Kakmakr]

Biased much? "Dr. Craig Wright is Chief Scientist at nChain, the global leader in research and development of innovations in blockchain technology. nChain opposes SegWit and instead supports removing the Bitcoin blockchain’s artificial block size limit (temporarily set at 1MB) to fuel increased scalability. nChain also supports on-chain scaling as the only viable method for the Bitcoin protocol to scale globally and remain decentralised. nChain also advocates for the formation of a neutral standards organisation to coordinate and manage the Bitcoin protocol and technical standards."

What did you expect from the local snake oil salesman? You will risk a ton of hashing power in the hope that you could pull of a 51% attacks with precision timing. Once you have done this, you effectively ruined Bitcoin and the whole technology would have failed because you bought a new Tesla or a 70" Smart screen TV. ^Woopla"

[Lauda]

And he just does not stop. Neither Jonald nor the scam artist "Dr. Craig Wright" can be trusted with anything they say.

SegWit introduces a fundamental change to bitcoin: the “AnyOneCanSpend address”, or essentially a blank signature for transactions. SegWit uses an “AnyOneCanSpend” address so that transactions will be validated and recorded into blocks, even though the sender/receiver signature data is separated. Normally, an “AnyOneCanSpend” output (as its name implies) would allow any miner to spend the funds associated with that transaction; therefore, SegWit would introduce new rules for interpreting “AnyOneCanSpend”. This means that miners could not take advantage of that output address to inappropriately spend the funds associated with all SegWit transactions.

No. AnyoneCanSpend is not a new concept and is certainly not a fundamental change. AnyoneCanSpend does not mean literally anyone can spend¹. It's a script without conditions attached to they way the related output can be spent. This whole article has been debunked months before it came into existence.
[1] - https://seebitcoin.com/2017/02/segwit-facts-not-anyone-can-spend-so-stop-saying-they-can/
[2] - Wiki Entry from ages ago: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Anyone-Can-Spend_Outputs
[3] - Litecoin $1MM Segwit bounty: https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/6azeu1/1mm_segwit_bounty/

[25hashcoin]

Biased much? "Dr. Craig Wright is Chief Scientist at nChain, the global leader in research and development of innovations in blockchain technology. nChain opposes SegWit and instead supports removing the Bitcoin blockchain’s artificial block size limit (temporarily set at 1MB) to fuel increased scalability. nChain also supports on-chain scaling as the only viable method for the Bitcoin protocol to scale globally and remain decentralised. nChain also advocates for the formation of a neutral standards organisation to coordinate and manage the Bitcoin protocol and technical standards."

What did you expect from the local snake oil salesman? You will risk a ton of hashing power in the hope that you could pull of a 51% attacks with precision timing. Once you have done this, you effectively ruined Bitcoin and the whole technology would have failed because you bought a new Tesla or a 70" Smart screen TV. ^Woopla"

That actually sounds exactly like something Satoshi would support.


Any comments on the article itself?

[Gab0]

And he just does not stop. Neither Jonald nor the scam artist "Dr. Craig Wright" can be trusted with anything they say.

SegWit introduces a fundamental change to bitcoin: the “AnyOneCanSpend address”, or essentially a blank signature for transactions. SegWit uses an “AnyOneCanSpend” address so that transactions will be validated and recorded into blocks, even though the sender/receiver signature data is separated. Normally, an “AnyOneCanSpend” output (as its name implies) would allow any miner to spend the funds associated with that transaction; therefore, SegWit would introduce new rules for interpreting “AnyOneCanSpend”. This means that miners could not take advantage of that output address to inappropriately spend the funds associated with all SegWit transactions.

No. AnyoneCanSpend is not a new concept and is certainly not a fundamental change. AnyoneCanSpend does not mean literally anyone can spend¹. It's a script without conditions attached to they way the related output can be spent. This whole article has been debunked months before it came into existence.
[1] - https://seebitcoin.com/2017/02/segwit-facts-not-anyone-can-spend-so-stop-saying-they-can/
[2] - Wiki Entry from ages ago: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Anyone-Can-Spend_Outputs

Thanks!

[minime]

Biased much? "Dr. Craig Wright is Chief Scientist at nChain, the global leader in research and development of innovations in blockchain technology. nChain opposes SegWit and instead supports removing the Bitcoin blockchain’s artificial block size limit (temporarily set at 1MB) to fuel increased scalability. nChain also supports on-chain scaling as the only viable method for the Bitcoin protocol to scale globally and remain decentralised. nChain also advocates for the formation of a neutral standards organisation to coordinate and manage the Bitcoin protocol and technical standards."

What did you expect from the local snake oil salesman? You will risk a ton of hashing power in the hope that you could pull of a 51% attacks with precision timing. Once you have done this, you effectively ruined Bitcoin and the whole technology would have failed because you bought a new Tesla or a 70" Smart screen TV. ^Woopla"

That actually sounds exactly like something Satoshi would support.


Any comments on the article itself?

he just wants a seat on that organisation
just my 2 btc

[Lauda]

That actually sounds exactly like something Satoshi would support.

CW is a scam artist. It's easy to make it sound like "something Satoshi would support" if you just base your statements on a few cherry picked posts.

Any comments on the article itself?

Debunked scam attempt.

Thanks!

Someone even put out a Litecoin $1MM bounty at the time to prove this wrong: https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/6azeu1/1mm_segwit_bounty/

[odolvlobo]

I believe a flaw in the argument is that once Segwit is the consensus, reverting it would cause a fork because not spending a segwit transaction properly would be considered invalid by the rest of the network.

Forking the network would not be a viable attack because the attacking miners would be on an unsupported fork.

[Lauda]

I believe a flaw in the argument is that once Segwit is the consensus, reverting it would cause a fork because not spending a segwit transaction properly would be considered invalid by the rest of the network.

Forking the network would not be a viable attack because the attacking miners would be on an unsupported fork.

Doing that is essentially a hard fork. The stuff written in the article is in no way inherently more dangerous that a classic 51% attack. Read my post(s); this has been debunked long ago.
It's actually quite cute that the scammer C.Wright thinks that he is smarter than the author of SegWit, i.e. Pieter Wuille, let alone everyone who participated in the peer review.

[The One]

This is one of several hundred attack scenarios which SegWit could open. Under a SegWit regime, such attacks against the bitcoin network could work because the economics of the system would be changed; rather than illicit activity being discouraged, it would be encouraged under SegWit. This seems to be the aspect of the system that is least understood by Bitcoin Core developers and other proponents of SegWit.

I do wonder what are the other attack scenarios are?

[Lauda]

This is one of several hundred attack scenarios which SegWit could open. Under a SegWit regime, such attacks against the bitcoin network could work because the economics of the system would be changed; rather than illicit activity being discouraged, it would be encouraged under SegWit. This seems to be the aspect of the system that is least understood by Bitcoin Core developers and other proponents of SegWit.

Segwit encourages UTXO consolidation and makes UTXO creation more expensive IIRC (thus makes this kind of spam more expensive). This is completely opposite from what the statement claims, unless of course you want to claim that a bloated UTXO set helps scaling.

I do wonder what are the other attack scenarios are?

The article is just pure bullshit. Craig Wright is a scammer.

[The One]

This is one of several hundred attack scenarios which SegWit could open. Under a SegWit regime, such attacks against the bitcoin network could work because the economics of the system would be changed; rather than illicit activity being discouraged, it would be encouraged under SegWit. This seems to be the aspect of the system that is least understood by Bitcoin Core developers and other proponents of SegWit.

Segwit encourages UTXO consolidation and makes UTXO creation more expensive IIRC (thus makes this kind of spam more expensive). This is completely opposite from what the statement claims, unless of course you want to claim that a bloated UTXO set helps scaling.

I do wonder what are the other attack scenarios are?

The article is just pure bullshit. Craig Wright is a scammer.

Yes i am aware of that. However it doesn't mean the article is wrong. People are entitled to reform themselves and do good.

The point of the article is to be debate and Craig isn't the first person to mention the "anyone can spend" attack.

[OROBTC]

...

Anything that makes SPAM more expensive is worth a look.

I would not trust Craig Wright with a bitnickle.  But, it is hard keeping track of who the REAL players are, and who the trolls are.

I hope the miners understand that no good agreement ruins them too.

[Lauda]

Yes i am aware of that. However it doesn't mean the article is wrong. People are entitled to reform themselves and do good.

Actually, in this case it does. Why do we have to waste everyone's time on a known scammer who has zero credibility?

The point of the article is to be debate and Craig isn't the first person to mention the "anyone can spend" attack.

There is nothing to debate. It has been debunked months prior to the existence of this article. Read my previous posts.