51% Attack

[PrimeNumber7]

I don’t see BSV getting stressed via a spam attack as it has a large max block size so any spam will be quickly mopped up by the miners.

Miner/pool usually will be fine because they have good hardware, but previous BSV stress test shows many node have lots of problem. Besides, if the goal is to spam the network, the spammer could abouse the chain limit of unconfirmed transaction. AFAIK the limit on Bitcoin is 25 or 31, but it's 1000 on BSV according to https://www.zdnet.com/article/bitcoin-sv-node-software-update-lifts-limits-and-uplifts-covid-vaccination-throughput/.

I am already vaccinated, however, if I had to get the covid vaccine through BSV, I would likely become an anti-vaxxer, flat earther.

According to the article you cited, the 1000 limit of chained unconfirmed transactions is to allow things such as games to be played on the BSV blockchain. While interesting, I don't think there is a benefit to having every move every player makes in a game permanently recorded on a blockchain. As I noted, the miners should be able to quickly confirm many chains of 1000 unconfirmed transactions or any other spam attack on the BSV network.

Difficulty dealing with spam attacks is not limited to BSV or even altcoins. Bitcoin nodes run by 'normal' users had difficulty dealing with previous spam attacks against bitcoin. Even some of the major businesses had difficulty dealing with previous spam attacks.

[DaveF]

I am already vaccinated, however, if I had to get the covid vaccine through BSV, I would likely become an anti-vaxxer, flat earther.

No THAT is possibly the best sentiment ever about BSV. Will you be believing the stuff on Ancient Aliens too?

According to the article you cited, the 1000 limit of chained unconfirmed transactions is to allow things such as games to be played on the BSV blockchain. While interesting, I don't think there is a benefit to having every move every player makes in a game permanently recorded on a blockchain. As I noted, the miners should be able to quickly confirm many chains of 1000 unconfirmed transactions or any other spam attack on the BSV network.

Difficulty dealing with spam attacks is not limited to BSV or even altcoins. Bitcoin nodes run by 'normal' users had difficulty dealing with previous spam attacks against bitcoin. Even some of the major businesses had difficulty dealing with previous spam attacks.

Eliminating the cult of personality surrounding Faketoshi, and it's lack of hashrate, and the lack of refinements in it's code. The lack of a blocksize cap on BSV and it's vulnerability to spam attacks makes it more vulnerable to spam. Once again from people who want to screw with it. I play with a few alts. All of which can be forked and blown out of existence for probably less then $500 at nicehash. Their marketcap would plummet from $10 all the way to $0.50 oh no, not that.

Now the mining attacks on BSV probably cost a fair amount of money. BUT there was no corresponding spam attack. Picture the damage that would be done if really did the following.

1) Mine (legit) a few hundred coins
2) Move coins to 1 address.
3) Start building your fork chain
4) Move coins to largest BSV exchange
5) Begin spamming the BSV chain and keep it up
6) Sell your coins
7) Release your fork chain without your move to the exchange or any TXs for that matter
Now above EXCEPT for #5 this is a classic double spend attack
Keep spamming the BSV chain

Now in addition to having to roll back the chain you can in essence make the nodes have to deal with 100s of massive blocks filled with crap.

I can see 2 things happening.

1) The largest BSV exchange takes a hit, will they stick around or drop the coin. Might be worth it to do to #s 2 & 3 instead of #1 since they might not be as friendly about it.

2) Watch all the BSV nodes scream in pain as 100's of GB of data has to be dealt with. With many of them dropping off since the time they took to deal with the non spam filled re-org was very long. Which was what caused a few of the other issues they had.

Now, once again, this is a massive waste of resources and since you are essentially stealing from the exchange it's probably illegal too. BUT it would probably get BSV out of our collective hair.

At this point I think we should be discussing this on a different thread since it's just about BSV and not BTC.

-Dave

[gmaxwell]

FWIW my friend running a BSV node to try to get some real facts about these reorgs had several gaps in his monitoring coverage when the BSV node software attempted to use more than 40 GB of ram as part of a reorg...  Probably some of the issues they had with these reorgs were due to miners crashing due to running out of memory while attempting to reorg.

And this was without any spamming beyond the baseline spam performed by Ayre and his companies to try to fake there being interest and usage of BSV.

[Stakefast]

Following scenario: A government would like to destroy Bitcoin. It buys a significant number of ASICs to build up a huge mining farm and carries out a 51% attack.
From my point of view it will not be so easy to buy so many ASICs as once - what do you think?
Another question: Will it be noticed (how?) that somebody buys a big stack of ASICs and/or are we able to identify such a behavior monitoring the network's hashrate?

Obivously it would be noticed if the network grows over 20%+ within a short timeframe

[ranochigo]

Obivously it would be noticed if the network grows over 20%+ within a short timeframe

The network hashrate won't grow because the rogue chain is mining alongside the honest chain but the chain isn't revealed until the attack has started and even then, it would be good for a single attack because precautions would be taken by the merchants or the stakeholders on the network.

It will only grow if the rogue entity mines on the honest chain aswell, before taking it offline but even then the growth will probably be gradual.

[pooya87]

I wonder if anyone has tried spamming this shitcoin's network with transactions that take too long to verify. Although I haven't checked BSV's code to see how much standard rules they enforce to prevent it, I know it inherits a lot from bitcoin (since it is a copy); for example the SHA256 exploit can't be used since by default BSV uses BIP143 (Transaction Signature Verification for Version 0 Witness Program) sighash algorithm for all signatures.

[ABCbits]

Miner/pool usually will be fine because they have good hardware, but previous BSV stress test shows many node have lots of problem. Besides, if the goal is to spam the network, the spammer could abouse the chain limit of unconfirmed transaction. AFAIK the limit on Bitcoin is 25 or 31, but it's 1000 on BSV according to https://www.zdnet.com/article/bitcoin-sv-node-software-update-lifts-limits-and-uplifts-covid-vaccination-throughput/.

--snip--
According to the article you cited, the 1000 limit of chained unconfirmed transactions is to allow things such as games to be played on the BSV blockchain. While interesting, I don't think there is a benefit to having every move every player makes in a game permanently recorded on a blockchain. As I noted, the miners should be able to quickly confirm many chains of 1000 unconfirmed transactions or any other spam attack on the BSV network.
--snip--

You're missing the point, i don't care about the usage. My point is with higher chain limit, an attacker could create more transaction within short time before hitting the limit or run out of coin.

I wonder if anyone has tried spamming this shitcoin's network with transactions that take too long to verify. Although I haven't checked BSV's code to see how much standard rules they enforce to prevent it, I know it inherits a lot from bitcoin (since it is a copy); for example the SHA256 exploit can't be used since by default BSV uses BIP143 (Transaction Signature Verification for Version 0 Witness Program) sighash algorithm for all signatures.

If someone plan to do it, i would suggest them to look for any operator, cryptography or feature which not exist on Bitcoin. I expect it's less tested or audited.

[pooya87]

If someone plan to do it, i would suggest them to look for any new operator, cryptography or feature which not exist on Bitcoin. I expect it's less tested or audited.

Good point, a bunch of old (disabled) OP codes were re-enabled and some useless OP codes such as OP_NUM2BIN were added, although they don't seem to be doing much but it could be interesting to look deeper and see how it could be abused.

[bitcub]

I dont think the government will waste time to buy ascii miner. The 51% attack thing is just a FUD. The government is secretly buying crypto why would they attack their investment? They will only cast fear to make people sell off.

[TangentC]

Following scenario: A government would like to destroy Bitcoin. It buys a significant number of ASICs to build up a huge mining farm and carries out a 51% attack.
From my point of view it will not be so easy to buy so many ASICs as once - what do you think?
Another question: Will it be noticed (how?) that somebody buys a big stack of ASICs and/or are we able to identify such a behavior monitoring the network's hashrate?

If the world governments wanted to destroy bitcoin, they would fire hellfire rockets into any dwellings that housed bitcoin miners.
Problem solved.  

You're thinking like a nerd instead of a soldier.


FYI:
No different than thinking your bitcoin is safe , because no computer can crack your secret password.
While the criminal thinks he will just keep hitting you with the $8 plumbers wrench until you talk. 
 

[dkbit98]

And this was without any spamming beyond the baseline spam performed by Ayre and his companies to try to fake there being interest and usage of BSV.

I heard that most of transactions on bsv network are coming from their weather app, so it's basically something like spamming to show more transactions.
Calvin Ayre in the same time didn't miss to brag on twitter how FluffyPony was arrested, and that is some kind of punishment because he was against Craig Faketoshi...  

I wonder if anyone has tried spamming this shitcoin's network with transactions that take too long to verify.

Nobody is crazy enough to waste time on this, and this is probably some miner war or some weird clan fighting to take full control of that shitcoin.
Meanwhile hashrate is still declining according to bitinfocharts.

[DaveF]

FWIW my friend running a BSV node to try to get some real facts about these reorgs had several gaps in his monitoring coverage when the BSV node software attempted to use more than 40 GB of ram as part of a reorg...  Probably some of the issues they had with these reorgs were due to miners crashing due to running out of memory while attempting to reorg.

And this was without any spamming beyond the baseline spam performed by Ayre and his companies to try to fake there being interest and usage of BSV.

Interesting makes you wonder if you do another long reorg with empty blocks and then a few mega sized ones at the end what would the chain do. Epically if then they have to go back and re-download all the 'legit blocks' how many times would that have to happen before people stop trading it.

OR

Bloat their mempool, release the fork with no transactions that starts a few blocks before you added the bloat, then release the bloat you created before on their chain. So the nodes start to stall due to your bloat, then they invalidate your block and they stall again trying to get back on their chain.

As I said before this has always been in the back of my head with the few crap alts I play with. There is no money in them so if someone really does something it's a shrug and walk away. No real money or time lost. But, lets face it, how many people really want to bother forking and destroying 'Dave's itchy left testicle coin'  ^{[ And the thought of my itchy left testicle is going to live in your brain now   ]}

I wonder if anyone has tried spamming this shitcoin's network with transactions that take too long to verify. Although I haven't checked BSV's code to see how much standard rules they enforce to prevent it, I know it inherits a lot from bitcoin (since it is a copy); for example the SHA256 exploit can't be used since by default BSV uses BIP143 (Transaction Signature Verification for Version 0 Witness Program) sighash algorithm for all signatures.

If someone plan to do it, i would suggest them to look for any operator, cryptography or feature which not exist on Bitcoin. I expect it's less tested or audited.

Or if they are using something that DOES exist on BTC, but they are using an older version, with bugs, that they have not updated.

-Dave

[gmaxwell]

I'm sure there are many ways to attack it-- but because it iss obscure, worthless, and you can't even deposit/withdraw it pretty much anywhere-- why would anyone bother?  The low hashrate alone makes it completely insecure.  The conmen promoters make it into a joke.

It's like asking if anyone has haxored Craig Wright's speak & spell, I'm sure people could but... why would anyone bother?

[Wind_FURY]

Following scenario: A government would like to destroy Bitcoin. It buys a significant number of ASICs to build up a huge mining farm and carries out a 51% attack.
From my point of view it will not be so easy to buy so many ASICs as once - what do you think?
Another question: Will it be noticed (how?) that somebody buys a big stack of ASICs and/or are we able to identify such a behavior monitoring the network's hashrate?

If the world governments wanted to destroy bitcoin, they would fire hellfire rockets into any dwellings that housed bitcoin miners.
Problem solved.  

They “can”, but no they won’t, and never will.

You're thinking like a nerd instead of a soldier.

No, he is thinking about the most practical and the most probable way to “kill Bitcoin”. It has obviously now become “too big”, that simply accepting Bitcoin as one of those “brands” we humans have to live with. Like Apple products, not all like them, but they live with people who own them.

FYI:
No different than thinking your bitcoin is safe , because no computer can crack your secret password.
While the criminal thinks he will just keep hitting you with the $8 plumbers wrench until you talk.  
 

Then give him the BSV, tell the criminal it’s the real Bitcoin. Haha.

[PrimeNumber7]

I am already vaccinated, however, if I had to get the covid vaccine through BSV, I would likely become an anti-vaxxer, flat earther.

No THAT is possibly the best sentiment ever about BSV. Will you be believing the stuff on Ancient Aliens too?

I would discuss Aliens in a different thread. The TLDR is that I think it is unlikely that Aliens (if they exist) and humans will never meet peacefully, even if CSW turns out to be satoshi.

According to the article you cited, the 1000 limit of chained unconfirmed transactions is to allow things such as games to be played on the BSV blockchain. While interesting, I don't think there is a benefit to having every move every player makes in a game permanently recorded on a blockchain. As I noted, the miners should be able to quickly confirm many chains of 1000 unconfirmed transactions or any other spam attack on the BSV network.

Difficulty dealing with spam attacks is not limited to BSV or even altcoins. Bitcoin nodes run by 'normal' users had difficulty dealing with previous spam attacks against bitcoin. Even some of the major businesses had difficulty dealing with previous spam attacks.

Now the mining attacks on BSV probably cost a fair amount of money. BUT there was no corresponding spam attack. Picture the damage that would be done if really did the following.

1) Mine (legit) a few hundred coins
2) Move coins to 1 address.
3) Start building your fork chain
4) Move coins to largest BSV exchange
5) Begin spamming the BSV chain and keep it up
6) Sell your coins
7) Release your fork chain without your move to the exchange or any TXs for that matter
Now above EXCEPT for #5 this is a classic double spend attack
Keep spamming the BSV chain

Now in addition to having to roll back the chain you can in essence make the nodes have to deal with 100s of massive blocks filled with crap.

It will cost close to zero if you spam BSV, regardless if you are mining or not. Any spam attack will not have any long-term effect on the network as blocks can be ridiculously large.

If you can 'starve' other BSV miners from their mining revenue, the majority of them will stop mining BSV, so it would be possible for you to utilize less hashrate to be guaranteed to mine all BSV blocks. This means that it could potentially be +EV to 51% BSV, sell the resulting coin from these blocks on an exchange, withdrawing from said exchange, and creating an alternative blockchain that double spends these deposit transactions (and selling the originally mined coin again, on another exchnage). Your cost estimate rounds up. If you remove the rounding up, it would cost about $235k per day to be guaranteed to mine all BSV blocks. I would not be suprised if some of the current BSV miners are renting on nicehash, and would stop doing so when they can no longer mine any blocks (any block they found would get orphaned), so the $235k figure may actually go down.

You can earn about $135k per day mining BSV is you are only selling your coin once, so if you sell your coin twice, you can earn $270k per day.

I can see 2 things happening.

1) The largest BSV exchange takes a hit, will they stick around or drop the coin. Might be worth it to do to #s 2 & 3 instead of #1 since they might not be as friendly about it.

According to coinmarketcap, the #1 exchange for BSV is huobi global, and it it unclear what they actually receive from traders in trading fees, but a lower bound rate of 0.05% is probably a safe assumption. Assuming volume is consistant throughout the year, they have made about $6 million in a year from BSV trades.

Even bitfinex, the #5 exchange for BSV, has made about $192k in trading fees over the past year, assuming they actually receive 0.1% of trading volumes, and their 24h volume (that is entirely made up of a weekend) is consistant over a year.

I am not sure if a $100k loss would even be sufficient to get the #5 exchange to drop the coin. It would probably not be sufficinet for the #1 exchange to drop it. This probably would be a different story several months after BSV was released.

2) Watch all the BSV nodes scream in pain as 100's of GB of data has to be dealt with. With many of them dropping off since the time they took to deal with the non spam filled re-org was very long. Which was what caused a few of the other issues they had.

This may actually be a good opportunity to review how bitcoin handles very long reorgs, and possibly improve how it handles them. BSV nodes were obviously able to handle the initial block download, so there shouldn't be any reason why they can't handle downloading a few hundred blocks at once. The current UTXO set is stored in RAM, but I am not sure if the UTXO set as of any prior block is stored anywhere -- my guess is it is not because doing so would duplicate data already in the database, for example, you can know the UTXO set as of block 1000 by querying all transactions where the block number is less than 1000.

It might not be a bad idea to store the UTXO set from the last 10 blocks in storage, in case there is a reorg up to 10 blocks deep that involves a double spend transaction, changing the UTXO set.

[pooya87]

If you can 'starve' other BSV miners from their mining revenue, the majority of them will stop mining BSV,

First you have to figure out how many "individual miners" are mining BSV and how much of it is centralized (owned by the creators of this shitcoin). The miners in second group are not going to leave no matter what you do. From what I gather majority of hashrate comes from the second group in which case your theory about revenue is not correct.

You can earn about $135k per day mining BSV is you are only selling your coin once, so if you sell your coin twice, you can earn $270k per day.

The double spend won't work, at least not for long. Exchanges catch these things moderately fast and will disable deposits and withdrawals right away, later on they require huge number of confirmations (eg. 1000+) to credit the account.

[PrimeNumber7]

If you can 'starve' other BSV miners from their mining revenue, the majority of them will stop mining BSV,

First you have to figure out how many "individual miners" are mining BSV and how much of it is centralized (owned by the creators of this shitcoin). The miners in second group are not going to leave no matter what you do. From what I gather majority of hashrate comes from the second group in which case your theory about revenue is not correct.

Do you have any sources, or informed speculation to support how much of BSV mining is being done by the creators of BSV?

Blockchair reports two major pools with 44% and 19%, and "unknown" at 34%. This is horribly centralized, as even if these were made up of 100% miners not associated with BSV creators, there would be few choices to go if one pool started acting in a nefarious way. Unless the other 3% is what makes up miners not associated with BSV, at a minimum, there would be a potential savings of 22%.

You can earn about $135k per day mining BSV is you are only selling your coin once, so if you sell your coin twice, you can earn $270k per day.

The double spend won't work, at least not for long. Exchanges catch these things moderately fast and will disable deposits and withdrawals right away, later on they require huge number of confirmations (eg. 1000+) to credit the account.

Right, at a minimum, exchanges will require additional security before accepting BSV deposits if they receive a deposit that gets double-spent.

[pooya87]

Blockchair reports two major pools with 44% and 19%, and "unknown" at 34%. This is horribly centralized, as even if these were made up of 100% miners not associated with BSV creators, there would be few choices to go if one pool started acting in a nefarious way. Unless the other 3% is what makes up miners not associated with BSV, at a minimum, there would be a potential savings of 22%.

The thing about pools is that the reports use the coinbase string to know which pool mined which block. If one pool simply changes the string to something else it looks like another pool mined that block. Eg. Pool-X mines block-1000 with string="Foo" and mines block-1001 with string="Bar". Now the reports says block-1000 is mined by pool X and block 1001 is mined by pool Y.
Also pools are just servers that can be owned by one company and these 3 appeared all at the same time and distributed their hashrate at a coordinated move and they are working with each other.

[PrimeNumber7]

Blockchair reports two major pools with 44% and 19%, and "unknown" at 34%. This is horribly centralized, as even if these were made up of 100% miners not associated with BSV creators, there would be few choices to go if one pool started acting in a nefarious way. Unless the other 3% is what makes up miners not associated with BSV, at a minimum, there would be a potential savings of 22%.

The thing about pools is that the reports use the coinbase string to know which pool mined which block. If one pool simply changes the string to something else it looks like another pool mined that block. Eg. Pool-X mines block-1000 with string="Foo" and mines block-1001 with string="Bar". Now the reports says block-1000 is mined by pool X and block 1001 is mined by pool Y.
Also pools are just servers that can be owned by one company and these 3 appeared all at the same time and distributed their hashrate at a coordinated move and they are working with each other.

Okay, sure, any pool mining on any coin could change block headers to appear to be mining on another pool, and a single entity could mine on multiple pools. This applies to all coins, including bitcoin.

Do you have any specific evidence or informed speculation that the creators of BSV are a substantial percentage of the hashrate? I have heard this before, and I don’t doubt it, but I haven’t seen specific evidence, nor specific amounts of hashrate that the creators are using to mine BSV.