Live Blog - Security Panel Bitcoin 2013

[cypherdoc]

Thanks for doing this!

I don't really like all this talk of taint...  the ideal currency should be 100% neutral/perfectly fungible

i agree.  and so does Alan Reiner.

[cypherdoc]

Dan - He gives 0% change the proof of work will remain unchanged, prediction: will not survive the year.  Not sure what the coming proof of work fuctions will look like.  Shared mining (whats that called).  Life or death of BTC on mining being truly distributed.  Must changed.  He is being very emphatic on this.

Very interesting... Would like to know more about this!

I also.  It was a somewhat jaw-dropping statement and one of the most interesting things I saw at the conference.

I cannot imagine such a change of this magnitude in this timeframe on the basis of a theoretical weakness (i.e., non-exploited semi-monopolization of hashing hardware.)  I can think of a number of hypothesis, but won't outline them until I can find the most appropriate thread (stumbled here via a Google search.)

My best case scenario is that Kaminiski simply felt that nobody in core dev has put the appropriate effort into conceptualizing how such a shift might be engineered (were it necessary) and was hoping to light a fire under their asses.

no it wasn't.  Kaminsky's been wrong before and he'll be wrong again.

his argument was based on the same one when Deepbit got close to 50% (or perhaps even over).  somehow the pools are incentivized to attack Bitcoin is what he thinks.

this has been proven wrong.  pools are invested in Bitcoin.  if they attack the source of their own income they would destroy themselves.  plus the fact that a pool is composed of individual miners who collectively want Bitcoin to survive and would defect the moment they realize their pool is conducting such an attack.

Eleuthria is a good example of a self aware pool operator who voluntarily prevents his pool from getting too close to 50%.  he doesn't even want to go near there b/c he doesn't want all the hysterical skeptics to tout an attack he realizes is impractical.

[tvbcof]

Thanks for doing this!

I don't really like all this talk of taint...  the ideal currency should be 100% neutral/perfectly fungible

i agree.  and so does Alan Reiner.

All of the panelists were plenty bright enough to the various sides to the issue.

Taint/tarnish is a really compelling mechanism to address the theft issue.  I strongly feel that it is a siren's song though and was surprised at how strongly most of the panelists embraced the idea.

One of them mentioned the issue of centralization aspect of tarnishing authority (as a problem.)  With enough engineering and complexity, I suspect that that could be distributed, but that is only one small issue to me.

A bigger issue is determining what, exactly, constitutes a theft.  It's not so easy.  If I gave someone else coins and felt like being a dick, what's to stop me from claiming they were stolen?  Who's going to fund the investigative efforts to track down the legitimacy of the millions of 'thefts' both real and invented?

Secondly, many legitimate thefts go undetected for a fair period of time.  Are we really going to place the burden of constantly checking balances in order for thefts to be discovered within some window or whatever?

Then there is what I am sure will turn into a very real attack vector (state level) in using the taint system as a chock-point for other projects.  Does a coin become 'tainted' because a citizen of Iran person touched it?  I'll bet it will.

Very sticky issues, and I am pretty confident that this way lie dragons.  I'm sure it has been discussed ad-nausium, and the panelist's reaction to the question will spur another round.

(By way of being constructive, I'll pump my idea of Bitcoin migrating to a 'reserve' role where the holders are on balance well prepared to take care of their holdings and thus reduce theft to a tolerable level.)