Fairbrix fiasco

[Red]

At some point, someone with significant power attacked the chain, forking it, and invalidating everyone else's coins.  And here we are.

I expect a better release, under a new name to come.  It will be properly tested and released to thwart potential attackers.  Stay tuned.

You declared the improper forking. You are coordinating a "better release" that everyone will be required to adopt. I'm not sure which fork your release blesses, but your team got to make that decision. As Larry Lessig is fond of saying, "Code is Law".

That is all I mean by center of the universe.

[Lolcust]

I am far from being a Real Programmer, but I have a sort of hunch that various "dynamic lockins" (be they timestamp-based or "magical transaction" based) could open a rather large can of net-scale DoS worms.

I don't see how an exchange sending out a signed transaction containing a checkpoint to nodes is any different from a coin creator regularly updating the client with a checkpoint and asking for clients to upgrade. The advantage with the former is it's automatic and nodes upgrade automatically.

From the top of my graphic-designery meatbrains (so likely a very measly attack), let's consider a situation with 2 exchanges (not implausible), one of which is under attacker's influence (knowingly or not).

Exchange 1 "blesses" block No X on "legit" chain

Exchange 2 transmits a blessing for same block number ("X"), but on a chain synthesized by the attacker.

Attacker then "reveals" his blockchain, and it is "longer" (in the "sum of work" sense, of course)

How does system respond ?

[doublec]

How does system respond ?

My idea doesn't cover multiple exchanges. It would only work with one. More thought would be needed to extend it to other exchanges if needed. This is what I meant by centralizing around the exchange. So for the 'one true exchange' idea I'd see one order book managing deposits, withdraws and orders. This is the entity doing the checkpointing. Perhaps other 'exchanges' use an API to access the order book and provide functionality on top.

[Lolcust]

How does system respond ?

My idea doesn't cover multiple exchanges. It would only work with one. More thought would be needed to extend it to other exchanges if needed. This is what I meant by centralizing around the exchange. So for the 'one true exchange' idea I'd see one order book managing deposits, withdraws and orders. This is the entity doing the checkpointing. Perhaps other 'exchanges' use an API to access the order book and provide functionality on top.

Well, I suspect that the community would treat actual deployment of God-Emperor Exchange even less warmly than it treats large "future development/exotic laundry" premines.

Though I think that Ixcoin could do that with relatively little public relations issues... Maybe we should propose that to the fakepanese guy ?

[coblee]

How does system respond ?

My idea doesn't cover multiple exchanges. It would only work with one. More thought would be needed to extend it to other exchanges if needed. This is what I meant by centralizing around the exchange. So for the 'one true exchange' idea I'd see one order book managing deposits, withdraws and orders. This is the entity doing the checkpointing. Perhaps other 'exchanges' use an API to access the order book and provide functionality on top.

Well, I suspect that the community would treat actual deployment of God-Emperor Exchange even less warmly than it treats large "future development/exotic laundry" premines.

Though I think that Ixcoin could do that with relatively little public relations issues... Maybe we should propose that to the fakepanese guy ?

Well, I'm interested in doing this for Fairbrix. I don't think the community would hate this. With a new currency, you only send coins to the exchanges anyways. So it's not unreasonable for the exchange's view of the chain to be the "right" one in order to prevent an attacker from screwing over the exchange. I'm sure we can come up with things to limit what the exchange can do.

Here are some possible bad things the exchange can do:
- Run its own miners and only accept blocks produce by its miners, thereby reaping all the mined coins
- Do a double spend against its own users. After a user withdraws FBX, the exchange can lock in an different block and reverse that pay out
- Totally kill the chain by locking in a bad block

Somethings we can do is to have the ability to undo a lock. Maybe a kill switch for this block locking functionality. And if the exchange really misbehaves, people will stop using it, and I can always release a new client without this code.

[ewibit]

is there somewhere a stats page for FBX?

[Adamlm]

I don't think so as this coin is considered dead or almost dead.. But it's still possible to connect to FBX network

[markm]

It is still running, serving like BBQcoin used to as a nice quiet low difficulty chain where people who do not have GPUs can pick up coins month after month using their CPUs.

Tenebrix is also still serving that same purpose.

BBQcoin no longer serves that purpose because after a good long run - a year or so maybe, maybe a little more or less - of CPU mining the GPU miners "re-discovered" it and drove its difficulty too high for CPU miners, it went to the exchanges (which alone would have brought it to the GPU miners' attention) and now the CPU miners who mined it all those months get to cash out on it while continuing to quietly CPU-mine Fairbrix and Tenebrix.

-MarkM-