I haven't seen anybody post about what would be my biggest worry if I were trying out alternative block chains. I realize this may be perceived as "Gavin is FUD'ding anything that isn't bitcoin!" (FUD == Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) But I think some of you might be forgetting some basic computer security fundamentals in the excitement to be early adopters.
When I first heard about bitcoin, my questions were:
1) Can it possibly work (do the ideas for how it works make sense)?
2) Is it a scam?
3) If it is not a scam, could it open my computer up to viruses/trojans if I run it?
I answered those questions by:
1) Reading and understanding Satoshi's whitepaper. Then thinking about it for a day or two and reading it again.
2) Finding out everything I could about the project. I read every forum thread here (there were probably under a hundred threads back then) and read Satoshi's initial postings on the crypto mailing list.
3) Downloaded and skimmed the source code to see if it looked vulnerable to buffer overflow or other remotely exploitable attacks.
If I were going to experiment with an alternative block-chain, I'd go through the same process again. But I'm an old conservative fuddy-duddy.
If you want to take a risk on a brand-new alternative block-chain, I'd strongly suggest that you:
1) Run the software in a virtual machine or on a machine that doesn't contain anything valuable.
2) Don't invest more money or time than you can afford to lose.
3) Use a different passphrase at every exchange site.
I think this old post of Gavin Anderson is somewhat misleading. Regarding current situation with bitcoin, it is definitely necessary and absolutely possible to switch to a brand new chain without the risks Gavin is frightening us about them.
1- People can simply switch the chain using exactly the same code base that bitcoin uses now!
2- This switch can take place with some minor improvements in the code (not necessarily with small impacts) which can be verified by public and
maintained easily in a parallel thread with the mainstream development process.
And what would be the catch?
1- We can fix the ASIC nightmare by injecting some 1 GB or so memory footprint to SHA256. Actually I have an Idea for this.
2- We can reconsider block time, block size, ... in accordance with the state of the art.
3- More importantly, we can get rid of miner corporates' and core devs dominance at the same time.
We may fail, not because of security issues (bitcoin code base that we eagerly use is secure more than enough) but because of lack of enthusiasm and commitment. No worries, I'm here for a while, waiting for people who are sensitive enough to become bored with the current 'Game of Thrones' play in the btc space and wise enough to stick with the code rather than trying to imitate Vitalik like a fake cartoon.
