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revans (OP)
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November 26, 2013, 11:09:06 PM |
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I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.
You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that? There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid. It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork. So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse. It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins. Is it fair for me to have to correct cretins all the time? |
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MoonShadow
Legendary
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Activity: 1708
Merit: 1007
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November 26, 2013, 11:11:05 PM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell. |
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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revans (OP)
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November 26, 2013, 11:20:44 PM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell. The worst logical fallacy is the misuse of logical fallacies as a way of trying to win in argument. It was not an appeal to authority anyway, as it was not said that this guy is necessarily correct because he is a Cornell professor, rather it was stated that to summarily dismiss his work given his credentials and reputation would be stupid as it seems unlikely he would be making claims he could not defend with solid arguments. |
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MoonShadow
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1007
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November 26, 2013, 11:24:15 PM |
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I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.
You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that? There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid. It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork. So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse. It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins. Is it fair for me to have to correct cretins all the time? Congratulations. You have the honor of being one of the very few people on this forum that were able to tell me something about Bitcoin that I didn't already know. Don't assume that because you knew this little factoid, that you really grok bitcoin on the same level as myself. I'm not a programmer, but nor am I stupid. I was here for years in the company of brilliant people who were actualy building the bitcoin economy; and was able to converse with these same founders before all of this useless noise infested the forum and most of those same brilliant people left the forums. There are now more than 160K registered forum members. I remember having these kinds of arguments with detractors when one of the arguments was, "not even 10K people have even heard of a bitcoin, it'll never even reach parity with the dollar!" Seriously, this isn't even the same forum anymore. It's filled with programmers who don't undertand economics, economists who don't understand human psychology, psycologists who don't understand cryptology, and laymen who don't understand any of it; while they all think they are f*cking polymaths! |
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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MoonShadow
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1007
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November 26, 2013, 11:26:02 PM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell. The worst logical fallacy is the misuse of logical fallacies as a way of trying to win in argument. It was not an appeal to authority anyway, as it was not said that this guy is necessarily correct because he is a Cornell professor, rather it was stated that to summarily dismiss his work given his credentials and reputation would be stupid as it seems unlikely he would be making claims he could not defend with solid arguments. It was implied, and you damn well know it. |
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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Lauda
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 2674
Merit: 2965
Terminated.
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November 26, 2013, 11:32:44 PM |
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What color is mine?
The normal one. You aren't ignored. Luckily, mostly because you don't open threads like this one. |
"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" 😼 Bitcoin Core ( onion) |
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revans (OP)
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November 26, 2013, 11:58:22 PM |
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I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user.
You're going to have to prove those events happened, because as far as I know, that is still impossible. There was a bug that permitted someone to create a custom transaction to credit themselves a negative balance, but why would anyone do that? There was a Namecoin bug which allowed anyone to spend anyone else's namecoins. Basically, the code didn't check to see whether the signature was valid. It was exploited, and the fix was to allow those transactions in the blockchain but ignore them, and then after a certain block number there is a hard fork. So, something similar to that is possible, but it's also possible to effectively reverse. It is not fair to accuse Bitcoin of being insecure because of faults found in alt-coins. Is it fair for me to have to correct cretins all the time? Congratulations. You have the honor of being one of the very few people on this forum that were able to tell me something about Bitcoin that I didn't already know. Don't assume that because you knew this little factoid, that you really grok bitcoin on the same level as myself. I'm not a programmer, but nor am I stupid. I was here for years in the company of brilliant people who were actualy building the bitcoin economy; and was able to converse with these same founders before all of this useless noise infested the forum and most of those same brilliant people left the forums. There are now more than 160K registered forum members. I remember having these kinds of arguments with detractors when one of the arguments was, "not even 10K people have even heard of a bitcoin, it'll never even reach parity with the dollar!" Seriously, this isn't even the same forum anymore. It's filled with programmers who don't undertand economics, economists who don't understand human psychology, psycologists who don't understand cryptology, and laymen who don't understand any of it; while they all think they are f*cking polymaths! Wow, Heinleinisms, you must be like some sort of sooperhackerd00dsavantmuthafukka. Whilst you may be chagrined to learn this, I'm afraid I must inform you that brilliance is not communicable. You can hang from the coattails of luminaries, but your star shall shine no brighter as a result. Take heed little grasshopper: know thy limits, lest thy limits be known by all. |
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revans (OP)
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November 27, 2013, 12:01:48 AM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. It doesn't much matter who the author may be, only what the argument is. Speaking for myself, I very rarely see actual arguments presented on this forum anymore. And when that does happen, it's generally due to a misunderstanding of the protocol by the author. I'm not saying that this article doesn't have merit, but it doesn't have merit because it was presented by a professor from Cornell. The worst logical fallacy is the misuse of logical fallacies as a way of trying to win in argument. It was not an appeal to authority anyway, as it was not said that this guy is necessarily correct because he is a Cornell professor, rather it was stated that to summarily dismiss his work given his credentials and reputation would be stupid as it seems unlikely he would be making claims he could not defend with solid arguments. It was implied, and you damn well know it. You inferred it. |
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MoonShadow
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1007
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November 27, 2013, 12:02:01 AM |
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Wow, Heinleinisms, you must be like some sort of sooperhackerd00dsavantmuthafukka.
Whilst you may be chagrined to learn this, I'm afraid I must inform you that brilliance is not communicable. You can hang from the coattails of luminaries, but your star shall shine no brighter as a result. Take heed little grasshopper: know thy limits, lest thy limits be known by all.
I'm not threatened by others being aware that I have limits, and while brilliance may not be communicable, understanding most certainly is. You could be every bit as brilliant as you seem to believe, but you still lack understanding. |
"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."
- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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revans (OP)
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November 27, 2013, 12:09:33 AM |
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Wow, Heinleinisms, you must be like some sort of sooperhackerd00dsavantmuthafukka.
Whilst you may be chagrined to learn this, I'm afraid I must inform you that brilliance is not communicable. You can hang from the coattails of luminaries, but your star shall shine no brighter as a result. Take heed little grasshopper: know thy limits, lest thy limits be known by all.
I'm not threatened by others being aware that I have limits, and while brilliance may not be communicable, understanding most certainly is. You could be every bit as brilliant as you seem to believe, but you still lack understanding. Actually, no. You can communicate information, but understanding require qualia |
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Littleshop
Legendary
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Activity: 1386
Merit: 1004
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November 27, 2013, 12:42:28 AM |
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bitcoin is software.
bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.
No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now. That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril. I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user. Link or citation please? No such bug was ever exploited in the wild. |
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revans (OP)
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November 27, 2013, 12:58:11 AM |
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bitcoin is software.
bugs can be fixed. i think we are beyond the point where even a major flaw would make it disappear. since there is so much money in the game, it will get handled ith care and common interest.
No, Bitcoin isn't software. Bitcoin is belief in the integrity of the block chain. Bitcoin survived a breach of that integrity early on in its development, but I doubt it would survive one now. That wasn't much of a breach, it was more like a bug. There wasn't any way that anyone could still funds, fake a bitcoin balance, or some such. There was a bug that permitted a fairly effective DDOS attack on the network, thereby preventing transactions from processing. The integrity of the blockchain, nor it's security model, was ever in peril. I was referring to a client bug which allowed someone to credit themselves a few billion Bitcoins. There was another big which was discovered before it got exploited which would have allowed users to spend the balance of any other user. Link or citation please? No such bug was ever exploited in the wild. The latter was not exploited, I stated that clearly, but only because at the time the userbase was small. The former was exploited , and undoing the damage involved effectively rebooting Bitcoin; again, this was possible because it was nascent at this stage, if it happened now it would be the end of Bitcoin. |
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Littleshop
Legendary
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Activity: 1386
Merit: 1004
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November 27, 2013, 01:05:02 AM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. They have not been dismissed outright. They have been argued against and shown not to be a major issue. The attack in the article is a block withholding attack. It is well argued but ignores the COST of block withholding. When you factor in the cost the attack is much less profitable. When you further factor in the possible backlash against a pool operator it rules out pools doing it. Basically you would need a lone miner with more than 20% or so of the network. Now anyone with 20% of the network and therefore a substantial investment in Bitcoin would be ON CRACK to do this. They could potentially devalue Bitcoin more than the extra profit they make. In summary... The attack is not worth it for the people who could actually do it. The writer of the article ignores these points. |
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Kouye
Sr. Member
Offline
Activity: 336
Merit: 250
Cuddling, censored, unicorn-shaped troll.
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November 27, 2013, 01:11:57 AM |
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[OVER] RIDDLES 2nd edition --- this was claimed. Look out for 3rd edition! I won't ever ask for a loan nor offer any escrow service. If I do, please consider my account as hacked. |
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revans (OP)
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November 27, 2013, 01:18:33 AM |
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Billions of Bitcoins were credited to 2 wallets. That attack worked. ubdoing it involved breaking Bitcoin's own rules, and if it happened now it would destroy Bitcoin. |
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revans (OP)
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November 27, 2013, 01:21:46 AM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. They have not been dismissed outright. They have been argued against and shown not to be a major issue. The attack in the article is a block withholding attack. It is well argued but ignores the COST of block withholding. When you factor in the cost the attack is much less profitable. When you further factor in the possible backlash against a pool operator it rules out pools doing it. Basically you would need a lone miner with more than 20% or so of the network. Now anyone with 20% of the network and therefore a substantial investment in Bitcoin would be ON CRACK to do this. They could potentially devalue Bitcoin more than the extra profit they make. In summary... The attack is not worth it for the people who could actually do it. The writer of the article ignores these points. You rule out nefarious intent (state actors for example, established corporations with business interests hurt by Bitcoin) and you also ignore the fact that just like the forger creating dollars does not consider himself to be damaging the viability of the dollar, so the selfish miner would not necessarily deem their actions as harming Bitcoin. |
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Phinnaeus Gage
Legendary
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Activity: 1918
Merit: 1570
Bitcoin: An Idea Worth Spending
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November 27, 2013, 01:41:46 AM |
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"It takes 4.5 seconds for a block to reach 50% of the miners. That's approximately an eternity in computer terms. That's plenty of time for a selfish miner to push his own block and win some races, especially if he makes his block smaller than average."
But won't the 4.5 seconds apply equally to the selfish miner and honest miners?
This comes to mind: Low-latency strategies |
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Littleshop
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1386
Merit: 1004
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November 27, 2013, 01:51:15 AM |
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The cognitive dissonance here is astounding. I have the utmost faith in virtual currencies as a technology and Bitcoin as the best example of that technology, but why is it that any attack on Bitcoin is 'trolling'; technologies survive by mending their flaws. The fact that this level of theorization is going on around the protocol means it's getting somewhere.
It's an interesting article and brings up an important question to consider; whether it's implementable in practice is another question. I'll definitely respect a Cornell professor to know what he's talking about. The arrogant dismissiveness on these forums is stunning.
Agreed. It's rather shocking that such comments are dismissed outright. Have you all even looked at the credentials of the person who wrote the article linked to by revan? It's a professor who works at Cornell. Not quite some no name guy with no credentials just randomly making comments about Bitcoin. They have not been dismissed outright. They have been argued against and shown not to be a major issue. The attack in the article is a block withholding attack. It is well argued but ignores the COST of block withholding. When you factor in the cost the attack is much less profitable. When you further factor in the possible backlash against a pool operator it rules out pools doing it. Basically you would need a lone miner with more than 20% or so of the network. Now anyone with 20% of the network and therefore a substantial investment in Bitcoin would be ON CRACK to do this. They could potentially devalue Bitcoin more than the extra profit they make. In summary... The attack is not worth it for the people who could actually do it. The writer of the article ignores these points. You rule out nefarious intent (state actors for example, established corporations with business interests hurt by Bitcoin) and you also ignore the fact that just like the forger creating dollars does not consider himself to be damaging the viability of the dollar, so the selfish miner would not necessarily deem their actions as harming Bitcoin. I do not rule out nefarious intent. The attack is silly for nefarious intent. If you want to hurt Bitcoin, set up a similar amount of power AND DON'T INCLUDE ANY TRANSACTIONS. An attacker would not hurt Bitcoin all that much by taking other miners rewards, maybe just a slight hit in price. In many ways if it was know it was an attacker was doing selfish mining it would instill MORE confidence in Bitcoin as transactions would work as normal. The selfish miner IS BEING PAID IN BITCOINS so even a slight hit in price causes the attack to be not worth it. It is quite simple, and that paper works only if you ignore that reality. |
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Kouye
Sr. Member
Offline
Activity: 336
Merit: 250
Cuddling, censored, unicorn-shaped troll.
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November 27, 2013, 01:54:51 AM |
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Sadistic mining is a losing strategy
Sado-mining, on the other hand... http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/en/imgdata/topics/2010/tp101129.html |
[OVER] RIDDLES 2nd edition --- this was claimed. Look out for 3rd edition! I won't ever ask for a loan nor offer any escrow service. If I do, please consider my account as hacked. |
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