Transparent mining, or What makes Nxt a 2nd generation currency

[ManDrone]

So the perceived overall/network (not personal) advantage of transparent forging (as opposed to secret forging) is that the speeding up of the confirmations due to knowing where to send transaction details to trumps the headache for the common man of trying to disentangle the technical stuff required to "lease" their CPU power to a "hub" and the consequences of most naive users not bothering to lease (due to ignorance, laziness, don't-have-to-do-this-for-any-other-crypto-ness)? This seems like a serious barrier to entry for the (future) common user. How would grandma know to do any of this shit when she just wants to use the NXT crypto like she uses her Bitcoins (this is me imagining the future)? It seems by not being part of a leased pool she may be subject to a DDoS at worst (her turn to forge is up and some bad actor is blasting her IP) and at best will never get any "forging" interest (because she is not part of a hub).

If I am correct, don't the NXT devs see this as a (serious) barrier to adoption? I have a background in psychology/usability/user experience so these "common man's experience" scenarios I ask about are how I approach a lot of new technology. The fact that there is a technical solution to an issue does not mean the issue disappears (e.g. protecting accounts with passwords).

Not trying to be combative or annoying, just trying to understand.

Nxt doesn't care about someone not forging/leasing. It just sets their forging power to zero and bumps total forging power of the others to 100%. So no problem here.

Nextcoin Motto: "NextCoin... Forge it if you are savvy, just use it if you aren't."

I guess you could replace "forge" with "mine" for other coins, so not a big deal in the end.

[ZeroTheGreat]

It's actually a big deal: mining "blackholed", forging is not.

Common sense doesn't apply to cryptocurrencies so easy, cos its completely revolutionary technology. Decentralized consensus.

[Come-from-Beyond]

What protection exists in the Transparent Forging mechanism to prevent a large account holder with a clock set fast from forging before someone else (on a regular basis), and thus inflicting a 1440 block lockout on other accounts?

Blocks with timestamp too far in the future r ignored.

[Come-from-Beyond]

What protection exists in the Transparent Forging mechanism to prevent a large account holder with a clock set fast from forging before someone else (on a regular basis), and thus inflicting a 1440 block lockout on other accounts?

Blocks with timestamp too far in the future r ignored.

But what if it was just short enough to be accepted (say 2-5 seconds ahead?), and other account on synchronized UTC time?

Reason I ask is my forging of blocks lately has been nowhere near the expected rate (even if all 1B active), and some larger accounts seem to be getting a much larger ratio than expected.

Just trying to figure out why...

8 of last 17 blocks on explorer forged by 4747512364439223888 with 5% stake (50MIL).  As of block 66890

Nothing strange, he is the only guy who work hard forging.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Apologies for the skepticism.  Something weird looks to be going on with the target percentages where they are and the stake percentages.

What analysis has been done to craft against a early block injection?  And, specifically, would another forger be penalized for being 'late'?

edit: And, this is not a question about envy...  It's about a possibility for a malicious majority stake attack (could be much less than 51%) which is able to penalize other peers from forging and thus gaining defacto control of the blockchain.  The point about 'early clock timing' was just one scenario which I could envision.

Block sequence is pre-determined. U can't inject a block earlier than u r doomed to do so.

[Lohoris]

In Nxt this problem doesn't arise coz all participants (miners) r known.

I came to know about NXT and I found its entirely proof-of-stake design very attractive, so I'm reading documentation.

I would like to also spread the word about it, but I'm a bit concerned about linking a site which is supposed to have a technical explaination, when it's written with these cool-youngster abbreviations.

Could you please edit the post in proper English?

If you want, I can fix it myself and you just copy-paste it into your post (though it would be better if a native speaker did that).

Thanks for your consideration.

[Lohoris]

Of course, the 2nd branch will have 100% "hashing" power tied to it as well, coz the attacker will get his 90% bumped to 100% but this can be counteracted by some mechanisms of advanced consensus (still not revealed).

This is the weakest link of this whole document.
What does "not revealed" imply?
I mean, I can't convince people to trust this, if some vital details are not revealed...

[bitcoinpaul]

TF isn't fully implemented yet. The current TF can be reviewed in the source code, which is publicly available. Full TF will be implemented the next weeks.

[bytemaster]

I am trying to understand how transparent forging can get a secure random number to select the forger deterministically.

If the forger is selected and punished if they don't produce the block, then this means that they cannot be 'mining' and that their selection must be derived from data in the block chain.  If the forger can control the data they put in the block chain when they 'forge', then it seems like they would have control over who got picked next. 

[mczarnek]

I just figured out how to choose a random number deterministically within a decentralized network, where someone with 90% of the forging power as determined by proof of stake could only get lucky enough to manipulate this number 1 in a billion years at a rate of 1 block per minute.  It would only require 300 forgers online, we currently have more than this.  If we have get 500 forgers participating this number drops to someone with 90% of the forging power only getting lucky enough 1 in approximately 40 Octillion years.

And it scales nicely and it's fast, could easily be done. No proof of work required.  Could probably cut down how long you lock up funds and changes to forging power to 10 blocks, say 60 if you want to be safe. I'm telling you, it's big.  Already run it by one person, would like to run it by others.

If I were working for Nxt it'd be a different story but I don't want to just put the whole idea if I can get a bounty on it.  If I can proof this, is there a bounty on it?  Or you guys already have a work around in mind that could achieve this?

[ysbysb2000]

BTC   haha

[benjyz]

I am trying to understand how transparent forging can get a secure random number to select the forger deterministically.

If the forger is selected and punished if they don't produce the block, then this means that they cannot be 'mining' and that their selection must be derived from data in the block chain.  If the forger can control the data they put in the block chain when they 'forge', then it seems like they would have control over who got picked next. 

any answers to this?

[bytemaster]

I am trying to understand how transparent forging can get a secure random number to select the forger deterministically.

If the forger is selected and punished if they don't produce the block, then this means that they cannot be 'mining' and that their selection must be derived from data in the block chain.  If the forger can control the data they put in the block chain when they 'forge', then it seems like they would have control over who got picked next. 

any answers to this?

I believe the network requires forgers to submit a hash(secret) in advance and reveal their secret when they produce a block.  This creates a chain of secrets that cannot be cheated.

[delulo]

The rest 10% of the network detects this and penalizes the adversary by setting his mining power to 0 and distributing it among other miners.

How is this (...penalizing...) possible?

[bytemaster]

The rest 10% of the network detects this and penalizes the adversary by setting his mining power to 0 and distributing it among other miners.

How is this (...penalizing...) possible?

It would be like kicking out a delegate for 1 round every time he misses a block. 

[delulo]

The rest 10% of the network detects this and penalizes the adversary by setting his mining power to 0 and distributing it among other miners.

How is this (...penalizing...) possible?

It would be like kicking out a delegate for 1 round every time he misses a block.  

Where does the central authority come from who can kick him out? Or are we simpy talking about a fork here which should be possible no matter how much stake the attacker has bough?

If it is no fork how can the delegate / the bad stack be voted out if the bad stake has 90%?

My quote was form the 90% attack resistance part of the OP:

Imagine someone is going to do a "51%" attack against Nxt and he owns 90% of all coins. The adversary must stop generating blocks for legit branch coz he won't be able to compete against 100% mining power with his 90%. So he decides to "skip" his turn to generate a block. The rest 10% of the network detects this and penalizes the adversary by setting his mining power to 0 and distributing it among other miners. Now the network is back to 100% power coz everyone got 10-fold increase. The adversary can mine other branch in a secret place but it won't be able to replace the legit branch. Of course, the 2nd branch will have 100% "hashing" power tied to it as well, coz the attacker will get his 90% bumped to 100% but this can be counteracted by some mechanisms of advanced consensus (still not revealed).