Proof of Presence?

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

Could it be possible to thwart secret chains by forbidding consecutive block verifications by a single mining address or something more complex?

It seems that if bad actors were forced to find and incorporate others' verified blocks in a chain, it would be more costly for them to attempt this kind of double spend attack in a high verification speed environment.

I realize that pools can simply use multiple addresses, but with payout thresholds, the threshold effectively doubles because of the use of two addresses.

Could some more elaborate rule based upon this concept be employed to thwart this kind of attack?

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[gglon]

Could it be possible to thwart secret chains by forbidding consecutive block verifications by a single mining address or something more complex?

No, that is not possible. Every such a mean can be easily circumvented. Especially if you can make use of virtually every single participating miner's PC. Centralization of mining pools which gain a slight advantage in terms of latency is something we need to prevent. I think the best method right now is just to educate the miners how potentially dangerous such centralization is.

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

Could it be possible to thwart secret chains by forbidding consecutive block verifications by a single mining address or something more complex?

No, that is not possible. Every such a mean can be easily circumvented. Especially if you can make use of virtually every single participating miner's PC. Centralization of mining pools which gain a slight advantage in terms of latency is something we need to prevent. I think the best method right now is just to educate the miners how potentially dangerous such centralization is.

Thank you gglon for your reply!

Could it work to any degree if it was combined with Proof of Stake?

[gglon]

Could it work to any degree if it was combined with Proof of Stake?

It could. But it would undermine the basics of bitcoin economy. Also the capital tends to be very unequally distributed - big banks (now exchanges), satoshi and so on. It solves the problem of full nodes number though, as everyone has some incentive to maintain one.

[amincd]

Thank you gglon for your reply!

Could it work to any degree if it was combined with Proof of Stake?

Proof of Stake could be combined with Proof of Work to make a >50% attack more difficult:

http://gavintech.blogspot.ca/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html

Abandoning a pure Proof of Work consensus arrival process has some pretty big disadvantages however.

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

Thank you so much gglon for continuing to educate me!

Could it work to any degree if it was combined with Proof of Stake?

It could. But it would undermine the basics of bitcoin economy.

Would you mind elaborating on how it would undermine the economy please?  I am still quite uninformed on the intricacies of bitcoin.

Thank you so much in advance!

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

Thank you so much for contributing amincd!

Proof of Stake could be combined with Proof of Work to make a >50% attack more difficult:

http://gavintech.blogspot.ca/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html

Abandoning a pure Proof of Work consensus arrival process has some pretty big disadvantages however.

I apologize for giving the impression that I support abandoning Proof of Work.  I have seen the arguments for a hybrid PoW/PoS system, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Would you mind giving your opinion on the viability of "Proof of Presence" combined with PoW/PoS to thwart secret chain attacks for high transaction verification speeds?

If it is too weak in its rawest form, forbidding consecutive blocks verified by a single address, could you give a suggestion on a more complex version?

Thank you so much in advance for helping me to understand this problem!

[gglon]

Would you mind elaborating on how it would undermine the economy please?  I am still quite uninformed on the intricacies of bitcoin.

Well, proof-of-stake as it is implemented in other cryptocurrencies is based on the annual inflation. Which means that PoS miner will gain on average x% yearly for keeping coins on active full node. To circumvent the effect of inflation, the tx fees are no longer paid to the miner - they are destroyed.  

[amincd]

Thank you so much for contributing amincd!

Proof of Stake could be combined with Proof of Work to make a >50% attack more difficult:

http://gavintech.blogspot.ca/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html

Abandoning a pure Proof of Work consensus arrival process has some pretty big disadvantages however.

I apologize for giving the impression that I support abandoning Proof of Work.  I have seen the arguments for a hybrid PoW/PoS system, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Would you mind giving your opinion on the viability of "Proof of Presence" combined with PoW/PoS to thwart secret chain attacks for high transaction verification speeds?

If it is too weak in its rawest form, forbidding consecutive blocks verified by a single address, could you give a suggestion on a more complex version?

Thank you so much in advance for helping me to understand this problem!

I wasn't able to understand how your proposed "Proof of Presence" system would work. Given there's no way to identify the creator of a block, there would be no way to know when consecutive blocks are created by single party. If you can explain how other network participants would know who is creating the blocks, I would appreciate it.

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

Thank you so much for participating amincd!

I wasn't able to understand how your proposed "Proof of Presence" system would work. Given there's no way to identify the creator of a block, there would be no way to know when consecutive blocks are created by single party. If you can explain how other network participants would know who is creating the blocks, I would appreciate it.

Please bear with my limited understanding.

As I understand, it can be determined who mined a block by the address used for the fee & reward payments, and this is how Proof of Stake is enforced.  If this is not correct, please educate me on how Proof of Stake is enforced.

I realize that a miner/pool can use multiple addresses and would love advice on how to thwart that as well, but at least the cost to attack with secret chains is increased by some amount, I assume.

Thank you so much in advance for your knowledge!

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

I am also going to try to do an experiment to test the viability of this method.

I would very much appreciate any assistance anyone provides.

[amincd]

Thank you so much for participating amincd!

I wasn't able to understand how your proposed "Proof of Presence" system would work. Given there's no way to identify the creator of a block, there would be no way to know when consecutive blocks are created by single party. If you can explain how other network participants would know who is creating the blocks, I would appreciate it.

Please bear with my limited understanding.

As I understand, it can be determined who mined a block by the address used for the fee & reward payments,

The miner can use a different address for each reward payment so this won't allow others to link blocks created by a single party.

Edit: I will PM you subsequent responses

[MoMoneyMonetarism]

Thank you amincd for continuing to educate me!

As I understand, it can be determined who mined a block by the address used for the fee & reward payments,

The miner can use a different address for each reward payment so this won't allow others to link blocks created by a single party.

Please excuse me, as I am slow sometimes, but I don't think I understand.  Are you confirming that no two consecutive blocks can be mined by the same address?  If not, would you mind expanding on that statement so that I can better understand why not?

Are you also saying that multiple miner addresses can be used for 1 block?  Is it different for rewards vs fees?

I very much appreciate your patience and knowledge and thank you so very much in advance!

[GhostInTheBlockchain]

Thank you amincd for continuing to educate me!

As I understand, it can be determined who mined a block by the address used for the fee & reward payments,

The miner can use a different address for each reward payment so this won't allow others to link blocks created by a single party.

Please excuse me, as I am slow sometimes, but I don't think I understand.  Are you confirming that no two consecutive blocks can be mined by the same address?  If not, would you mind expanding on that statement so that I can better understand why not?

Are you also saying that multiple miner addresses can be used for 1 block?  Is it different for rewards vs fees?

I very much appreciate your patience and knowledge and thank you so very much in advance!

Since he hasn't replied yet I will jump in.  This is what I believe he was getting at...Just as a bitcoin user can have many addresses at which he can receive bitcoin transfers (speaking non-technically here), a miner could also have many addresses he can use to receive the block award (though I don't know how common this is).  Because addresses are relatively cheap to create, a miner could easily specify a different 'reward address' for each block they generate.  Because of that, there would be no way to know, simply from looking at the 'award address' value, that a particular block came from a particular miner (all the 'reward addresses' would be different).  Some other method needs to be designed to indicate that a block came from a specific miner.