Transactions Withholding Attack

[MoonShadow]

...ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen

Seriously capable technical people don't view technical debates as public juries.

They view them as founded in facts and objective consensus, because rational people know when they are wrong (or at least rationality is recognition of lack of sufficient expertise).

Whereas, arrogant Dunning-Kruger technology neophytes who don't understand what they are talking about and motivated by what they naively perceive to be political "rewards", can filibuster forever and prefer a subjective political contest by obfuscating the information content with pages upon pages of 60 Hz noise. Political contests are won by whom every can make the most useless noise, because the other dolts in the public jury commit the erroneous conclusion the entire thread is noise.

That is precisely a form of Tragedy of the Commons failure.

This is one of the synergistic reasons why academics communicate using cryptic vocabulary and symbols, so the dolts are unable to participate.

P.S. It is intentional that the dolts will perceive this post as a victory for them, and the technologically capable will realize who won the debate.

The very fact that you regard this whole debacle as a form of a Tragedy of the Commons failure is evidence enough that only you regard yourself as a member of the "technologically capable".  In fact, most people have resorted to mocking you simply because trying to reason with you is futile, and none of us are here for your benefit.

[AnonyMint]

Just remember you blew your credibility to smithereens with your ignorance of proof-of-work math upthread.

And every time you try to reply with subjective political grandstanding, I am going to repeat the same statement until you shut up.

[MoonShadow]

Just remember you blew your credibility to smithereens with your ignorance of proof-of-work math upthread.

And every time you try to reply with subjective political grandstanding, I am going to repeat the same statement until you shut up.

I'm amused.

Can you envision any information that might force you to reconsider your position?  Or are you truely this certain that you understand this topic?

[MoonShadow]

Prior art?

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/11/the-best-way-to-take-control-of-bitcoin-rally-other-greedy-selfish-miners/

You claim that you've laid this attack out months ago.  Perhaps you have.  It's still not the first of this type of attack that I've seen claimed, but I have to admit that this is the first of it's type to earn it's own whitepaper.

Of course, the authors of this same whitepaper also offer a simple solution to this kind of attack as well, that simply involves a small protocol change in how mining clients decide upon the block version that they build upon.  I've yet to read this whitepaper myself, so I'm not yet ready to comment on their take on the attack.

[AnonyMint]

Selfish-mining as published by those from Cornell is based on withholding block solutions until another peer generates a block solution then using a high gamma of propagation advantage to cheat the network.

That is entirely different than the attack that this thread describes. And yes I described this attack in the bitcointalk discussion of my Bitcoin : The Digital Kill Switch article earlier this year, which was widely syndicated. Google can find it for you.

[MoonShadow]

No, it's similar in nature, but not quite the same, I think.

However, after reading the whitepaper for it, I can see how the 'selfish mining pool' can gain a profit advantage.  I don't agree that the end result is that all miners choose to join said cartel pool, because it would become rather obvious that one pool is doing this when they win block races too often for chance, and the rate of orphaned blocks increase.  Also, I can think of a number of counter-stragedies other pools could use to negate the selfish pool's outsized advantages, not the least of which is to simply do the same thing.  If all mining pools act in a similar manner, no pools can gain a profit advantage; but then orphaned blocks become much more common.  Much better would be to simply identify pools that don't play by the rules and take counter-measures until they quit acting badly.

More research is required....

[AnonyMint]

No, it's similar in nature, but not quite the same, I think.

Not similar, and I will not discuss it with you further. Please stop filibustering me with noise.

[mootinator]

Seriously capable technical people don't view technical debates as public juries.

I'm amused you assumed any of those words were my own.

Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense

Incidentally, there's a simple diagnostic test for Dunning-Kruger effect. If you understand it mainly as a reminder you don't know everything, you probably aren't affected. If, on the other hand you use it primarily to call other people out for having it, well, I have some bad news for you...

[murraypaul]

The reason is because the cartel needs to gradually consume the hashrate of the network, so it can delay the transactions of non-cartel customers who are on the blockchain. To force them to join the cartel or lose customers to the cartel.

Why?
You think they will create transactions that don't need to exist, just so that they can not send them out to the rest of the network?
From the network point of view that is the same as the transactions not existing in the first place.
Why bother with all the hassle, just to pay yourselves transactions fees that could be totally avoided by doing offchain transactions in the first place?

They need to gain hashrate in order to withhold transactions.
They need to withhold transactions in order to gain hashrate.
Phase 3: Profit?

[AnonyMint]

The reason is because the cartel needs to gradually consume the hashrate of the network, so it can delay the transactions of non-cartel customers who are on the blockchain. To force them to join the cartel or lose customers to the cartel.

Why?
You think they will create transactions that don't need to exist, just so that they can not send them out to the rest of the network?

You are confusing the cartel's transactions with the non-cartel transactions. The later are the ones that get delay. The cartel's miner excludes them when adding a block solution to the block chain.

[AnonyMint]

Fact:

The cartel can hide how much hashrate it has, by using many IP addresses and sharing transactions until it has 50+% or more and is ready to move to the next stage.

Fact: moving to the next stage, i.e. announcing to the world that they do have 51% power, will be tantamount to them shooting themselves in the foot. Bitcoin will crash, as will their investments, OR they will be seen as hostile, and punished.

In a cartel attack, the 50+% derives from having a majority of the customers, so they retain 50+% of the value, even if the 50-% decides to make a fork. Then they can attack that fork too.

So, if you are using an Amazon wallet app, and I am using some other wallet app, and you try to send me coins, how will I know whether you sent them if you only send them to Amazon's servers? It would essentially cut everyone using Amazon clients off from the rest of the bitcoin network. Why would anyone want to use such an app? Bitcoin transactions primarily work because they are propagated P2P through the network from person to person. Miners just sit on the perifere catching these transactions as they pass by and adding them to blocks.

Fact:

You are conflating the publication of block solutions with the propagation of transactions before the fact.

You are assuming that bitcoin wallets must wait for a solved block (~10 minutes) to see whether someone sent them money. That's not how it works. If your case was ever encountered, where you tried to use your Amazon wallet app to send me coins, and your app only send the transaction to Amazon's miners, I would claim that you have not sent me any money, since it hasn't shown up on the network (not within the first 10 minutes), and walk away, OR notice that your software is hiding transactions, and consider you suspect. Besides, with version 0.9 that's coming out, you would be sending me money from your Amazon app in the form of a signed transaction, and I would be the one to broadcast it. As a recepient of the coins, I have incentive to broadcast it to everyone I can, not just to your Amazon. So...

This was already refuted by me upthread. Amazon would only need to delay transactions which are paying to their vendors. And sends to destinations outside the cartel, could be shared normally.

You don't understand well the way Bitcoin works.

Fact:

You are full of shit. And have quite the gall to come in here as some newbie who only recently heard about bitcoin, doesn't even own any, and spends time trying to shit on it without even understanding the basic underlying technology, telling me that I'm the one who doesn't understand.

You can fill up the butt hurt report form to air your grievances.

Fact:

If the cartel waits until they have 80 or 90% of the hashrate and transactions before attacking, then you will not get most of the commerce on your new fork. You lose.

The cartel's customers are not going to change which websites they send their transactions on. They will be happy with the service they are getting.

Fact: the cartel's customers will be VERY unhappy when their currency crashes 90% in value,

Still much higher than the value of the minority fork. They will likely blame the minority fork for it and avoid it like the plague.

[snip]

The rest of the technologically ignorant blabber was not worth responding to.

[MoonShadow]

The reason is because the cartel needs to gradually consume the hashrate of the network, so it can delay the transactions of non-cartel customers who are on the blockchain. To force them to join the cartel or lose customers to the cartel.

Why?
You think they will create transactions that don't need to exist, just so that they can not send them out to the rest of the network?

You are confusing the cartel's transactions with the non-cartel transactions. The later are the ones that get delay. The cartel's miner excludes them when adding a block solution to the block chain.

I should have left this in this thread days ago....

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

[AnonyMint]

I should have left this in this thread days ago....

True.

[Bitlend]

The OP started with "Once Bitcoin's coin rewards decline to less than can pay for the miner's costs"

As this needs to be fact before a "TWA" could be considered, could you please explain to me the background as to why bitcoin's miner rewards get to a point of reward less than miner costs?

Thanks in advance.   

[AnonyMint]

The OP started with "Once Bitcoin's coin rewards decline to less than can pay for the miner's costs"

As this needs to be fact before a "TWA" could be considered, could you please explain to me the background as to why bitcoin's miner rewards get to a point of reward less than miner costs?

Thanks in advance.

This is an open question being discussed at my other thread.

I am still trying to formulate a coherent theory of how the variables of voluntary transactions fees, mandatory diminishing coin rewards, asymmetry of motivations, and difficulty scaling will behave.

Does anyone know of any research modeling this?

[Bitlend]

The OP started with "Once Bitcoin's coin rewards decline to less than can pay for the miner's costs"

As this needs to be fact before a "TWA" could be considered, could you please explain to me the background as to why bitcoin's miner rewards get to a point of reward less than miner costs?

Thanks in advance.

This is an open question being discussed at my other thread.

I am still trying to formulate a coherent theory of how the variables of voluntary transactions fees, mandatory diminishing coin rewards, asymmetry of motivations, and difficulty scaling will behave.

Does anyone know of any research modeling this?

Using say 2030...Here is a calc that could be used http://www.coinish.com/calc/ to model (BTC reward is ?) add in the proposed difficulty and assume hardware is $X cost in X year and determine a hashrate. 

[Compton]

Taking a a break from reading MoonShadow's substantive domination and rebuttal to go eat lunch at one of the 150 restaurants nearby, ruthlessly competing on price for my business, and all of whom have apparently ignored the OP's conclusion that monopoly is the natural order of things.

[murraypaul]

The reason is because the cartel needs to gradually consume the hashrate of the network, so it can delay the transactions of non-cartel customers who are on the blockchain. To force them to join the cartel or lose customers to the cartel.

Why?
You think they will create transactions that don't need to exist, just so that they can not send them out to the rest of the network?

You are confusing the cartel's transactions with the non-cartel transactions. The later are the ones that get delay. The cartel's miner excludes them when adding a block solution to the block chain.

I agree that one of us is confused, but I'm not sure it is me.

In your original post, you said:

But a cartel (e.g. Amazon.com) could for example harvest transactions from its vast network and keep them without forwarding them to other miners. Then put them on the blocks found by its own mining servers.

ie. The cartel would withhold their transactions from other miners' blocks.
Now you are saying that they would withhold other peoples' transactions from their blocks.
That is a completely different issue.

[AnonyMint]

The reason is because the cartel needs to gradually consume the hashrate of the network, so it can delay the transactions of non-cartel customers who are on the blockchain. To force them to join the cartel or lose customers to the cartel.

Why?
You think they will create transactions that don't need to exist, just so that they can not send them out to the rest of the network?

You are confusing the cartel's transactions with the non-cartel transactions. The later are the ones that get delay. The cartel's miner excludes them when adding a block solution to the block chain.

I agree that one of us is confused, but I'm not sure it is me.

In your original post, you said:

But a cartel (e.g. Amazon.com) could for example harvest transactions from its vast network and keep them without forwarding them to other miners. Then put them on the blocks found by its own mining servers.

ie. The cartel would withhold their transactions from other miners' blocks.
Now you are saying that they would withhold other peoples' transactions from their blocks.
That is a completely different issue.

Yup. I had mentioned both of these upthread. What took so long. Well thanks for joining the party.

[murraypaul]

Yup. I had mentioned both of these upthread. What took so long. Well thanks for joining the party.

You've mentioned lots of things.
Noone seems to have found a coherent, logical threat in what you have said though.

And you still haven't answered my question from above, why would the cartel go through all the hassle of creating on-chain transactions simply to withhold them from the rest of the network, when they could accomplish the same things with off-chain transactions?