[DEAD] Coiledcoin - yet another cryptocurrency, but with OP_EVAL!

[NASDAQEnema]

I think you need to read up on what a pyramid scheme is. You seem to have to serious misconceptions about it.

My personal understanding of "pyramid scheme" is something that demands you to pay something to enter, and what you pay go to those that were there before you. For the scheme to keep financially healthy, the number of people entering must never decrease. It's what Social Security would be if it was voluntary (as it's not, it's much worse, it crosses the line of "ethically ok" to "ethically wrong")

According to that logic, Worldcom and Enron were not criminal, they just exploited the stock market's ignorance about the true state of their finances. No ethical problem at all right?

I don't know what these companies did. Wasn't fraud involved? That's ethically wrong, similar to when Luke-Jr used people's computing power in a way that was not agreed upon.
If there was no fraud or violation of people's right than no ethical problem indeed.

You also manage to say something is ethically ok and disgusting at the same time.

Of course something may be disgusting and ethically ok at the same time. Being disgusting is a subjective opinion.

Anyways, we're getting off-topic. Let's try to remain on what happened here, please.

1. Social security is a scam only because  it decreases the number of people helping each other outside the system.
2. Amway got caught in an odd scam if I remember.
3. I can forgive not knowing about Worldcom, but Enron ended up in dead bodies. How do you not know of that one?
4. I think kitten stampedes are a disgusting way to manipulate people, but not unethical.

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[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

3. I can forgive not knowing about Worldcom, but Enron ended up in dead bodies. How do you not know of that one?

Of course I remember about the scandal, but I don't live in the USA, so I didn't get particularly interested in digging up the news to know the details. All I remember is that they went broke on a quite noisy scandal involving politicians.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

If he did the cooking and you did not restrict the use of the knife to only cooking, no fraud occurred and there is no broken contract. Lets say after he is done cooking, a home invasion occurs and he successfully defends his family with your knife. Again, as long as he did what he said he was going to do with the knife (say to cook some food for you) and delivered both food and knife to you as agreed, there is no violation of contract. If you want to make sure that the only thing he uses the knife for is the cooking, you had better spell that out (for instance, kosher rules governing what the knife touches).

Some restrictions are implicit. The typical example is that of the boat ride. If a friend of yours offers you a boat ride, and you agree, it is implicit that he must bring you back to land. He cannot demand you to leave his property on the middle of the ocean.

Miners on eligius have, for sure, agreed to mine BTC on the pool in return for the payments they receive. It is not clear at all that they have agreed on using their mining power to attack innocent projects. And even if they had, that would only make them accomplices of Luke-Jr unfair act.

The coin was released with merged mining and the largest pool doing merged mining was not acting to appreciate the currencies value. That is a structural flaw in the launch of the coin.

So allowing merged mining is the "deep flaw" to you? Really?

Such a feature would only be considered a flaw if you assume that

• There are rogue, ill-intended big pool operators out there.
• The miners of such rogue pool operator would support an attack on an infant technology that has done no harm.

Honestly, I wouldn't call that a "deep flaw" since, before this shameful event, I would not take such hypothesis as something to worry about, particular the second one. I guess I still had more faith in mankind than I should have, it seems.

Even worse than Luke-Jr promoting such attack is the fact that he's apparently, so far, "getting away with murderer". Depressive. It's as if lots of miners would collude with deepbit to reach >50% and start double-spending to their profit.

[Explodicle]

Even worse than Luke-Jr promoting such attack is the fact that he's apparently, so far, "getting away with murderer". Depressive. It's as if lots of miners would collude with deepbit to reach >50% and start double-spending to their profit.

It's not quite the same because miner incentives are different. Bitcoin miners have an incentive to kill rivals, but double-spending would damage the value of their investments.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Even worse than Luke-Jr promoting such attack is the fact that he's apparently, so far, "getting away with murderer". Depressive. It's as if lots of miners would collude with deepbit to reach >50% and start double-spending to their profit.

It's not quite the same because miner incentives are different. Bitcoin miners have an incentive to kill rivals, but double-spending would damage the value of their investments.

Ding ding ding. 

51% provides an economic disincentive to use hashing power for "bad".  That doesn't mean someone who doesn't mind destroying millions of dollars can't try but there is no ECONOMIC INCENTIVE to do so.

Starting a crypto-currency w/ merged mining WITHOUT large commitments from miners and pools (i.e. hundreds of GHs) is stupid.
Rushing a launch is stupid (from first post to genesis block was <24 hours).

Combined they created a situation where there was absolutely no economic disincentive.  It was "free" to attack the chain.  Essentially the blockchain's survivial was based on "everyone in the whole world being nice". 

[DeathAndTaxes]

But it's not too far off reality....  
There is also economic incentive to not forward on transactions until you find a block so that you can keep the transaction fees....  imagine how much crappier using the network would become if the big pools decided to do this to maximize their profits?  Would Bitcoin pool users support this?  After all it helps them get more profits and helps kill off competing pools over time, since they would be less profitable especially once the generates are gone...

If there was an economic incentive to do so pool already would have but no economic incentive exists.

There are roughly 50,000 nodes.  A pool represents one of those.  Thus pools ability to limit data to rest of the nodes is non-existent.  All "satoshi" clients forward transactions to all peers of which they will have at least 8 thus even if a pool could limit what they forward they are only receiving copies.

Potentially you could see pools in the future which offered discounted rates if transactions were sent only to them (i.e. hashing as a service).  

The reality is people do bad things in this world.  If there is an economic incentive you increase the likelihood something bad will happen.  An economic disincentive reduces the likelihood.  51% attack is an economic disincentive however merged mining changes that and developers should keep that in mind.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

Even worse than Luke-Jr promoting such attack is the fact that he's apparently, so far, "getting away with murderer". Depressive. It's as if lots of miners would collude with deepbit to reach >50% and start double-spending to their profit.

It's not quite the same because miner incentives are different. Bitcoin miners have an incentive to kill rivals, but double-spending would damage the value of their investments.

I was not thinking about economic incentives when I wrote that, it was just a comparison about people personal moral values. You have to be a great scumbag to do one thing or another. Before such event I used to think most people would not be such assholes, but apparently, if Eligius remains with that many miners, I was plain wrong on such assumption. We live indeed in a society of criminals.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

Combined they created a situation where there was absolutely no economic disincentive.  It was "free" to attack the chain.  Essentially the blockchain's survivial was based on "everyone in the whole world being nice". 

It was not based on "everyone being nice", it was based on "not most people being crooks". If a sensible percentage of Eligius miners did not agree in being accomplices of such attack on innocent people, then he would probably have dropped it already. And if at least one other pool operator decided to counter his attack, honest miners could migrate from Eligius to this other pool and even if Luke-Jr decided to attack "no matter what", he would be outnumbered.

Anyway... it was definitely not "everyone has to be nice for it to work".

[dayfall]

Since Eligius' miners will freely attack a new chain, I say someone should attempt to include some intelligence in the clients so that this sort of thing can be prevented.  There must be some sort of defense.

[makomk]

Ding ding ding. 

51% provides an economic disincentive to use hashing power for "bad".  That doesn't mean someone who doesn't mind destroying millions of dollars can't try but there is no ECONOMIC INCENTIVE to do so.

There is no economic incentive to do so so long as you're primarily invested in Bitcoins. For example, suppose someone really wealthy concluded that Bitcoins were potentially harmful to their wealth elsewhere; it might make economic sense for them to spend a few million dollars destroying Bitcoin.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There is no economic incentive to do so so long as you're primarily invested in Bitcoins. For example, suppose someone really wealthy concluded that Bitcoins were potentially harmful to their wealth elsewhere; it might make economic sense for them to spend a few million dollars destroying Bitcoin.

I guess I should say direct economic incentive.  It is unlikely a single entity would gain more economic value than they get from destroying Bitcoin.  For example if a single bank decided to kill Bitcoin then all banks would benefit but the bank spending the significant sum is unlikely to benefit by the amount it costs to launch the attack (plus any potential costs if caught).

This doesn't make Bitcoin "immune" but it does significantly raise the bar as an entity would need to be willing to destroy Bitcoin at significant cost and they may never personally reap the benefits of that cost.

For example a bank today likely could kill Bitcoin for $20M investment.  However if BofA spent $20M to kill bitcoin do you think that will produce a gain in revenue for BofA >$20M?  Unlikely.   In the future when Bitcoin is 100x more popular the benefit to BofA might be greater but so is the cost.

There was ABSOLUTELY NO COST to kill CoiledCoin.  If something has no cost to attack it will be attacked.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There was ABSOLUTELY NO COST to kill CoiledCoin.  If something has no cost to attack it will be attacked.

Wrong. The cost was luke's reputation (what little was left of it, arguably not a very large cost indeed)

Well that assumes it hurt his reputation much which based on his pool's hashing power it didn't.

It also assumes the attacker is going to make the attack public (which Luke didn't have to do).

In the case of botnet or private farm attack nobody would ever know who executed the attack.

[dayfall]

The (to date) only defenses against this kind of attack that are working are:

1) Bitcoin level difficulty ...
2) Solidcoin 2's arbiter node system ...
3) CPU hash algo's ...
4) Not enabling merged mining...

1) I am suggestion we try a defense other than just have more hashing power.
2) Can't we do something similar but not have it centralized.  Solidcoin chooses his own trusted nodes.  Why can't I choose?
3) Really bad idea, I say.
4) This is avoiding the problem that I suggest we fix.  (It does avoid the other problem, namely, having a pool operator getting coins that should go to the miners.)

Are these attacks detectable?  Are these attacks correctable if detected?  Can it be done semi-autonomously?

[makomk]

1) I am suggestion we try a defense other than just have more hashing power.

That's... non-trivial, and most of the proposed suggestions either require centralization, cause more problems, or both

2) Can't we do something similar but not have it centralized.  Solidcoin chooses his own trusted nodes.  Why can't I choose?

It's important that different nodes' view of the blockchain converges in a reasonable time, and this is hard - probably even impossible - to guarantee if every node is following different rules about which blockchain they prefer.

Are these attacks detectable?  Are these attacks correctable if detected?  Can it be done semi-autonomously?

They're detectable, even automatically detectable in theory, there's just not an easy way to prevent them.

[k9quaint]

The coin was released with merged mining and the largest pool doing merged mining was not acting to appreciate the currencies value. That is a structural flaw in the launch of the coin.

So allowing merged mining is the "deep flaw" to you? Really?

Such a feature would only be considered a flaw if you assume that

• There are rogue, ill-intended big pool operators out there.
• The miners of such rogue pool operator would support an attack on an infant technology that has done no harm.

Honestly, I wouldn't call that a "deep flaw" since, before this shameful event, I would not take such hypothesis as something to worry about, particular the second one. I guess I still had more faith in mankind than I should have, it seems.

Even worse than Luke-Jr promoting such attack is the fact that he's apparently, so far, "getting away with murderer". Depressive. It's as if lots of miners would collude with deepbit to reach >50% and start double-spending to their profit.

The fact that you don't consider merged mining on day zero a flaw, especially in light of recent events is baffling. You really think that you can assume there are no people in the world with large computing resources at their disposal for use in a nefarious manner? Welcome to the internet, I hope you enjoy your stay.

Then again, lots of people have trouble with the concept of what merged mining is. They conflate hashing power with the resultant hashes. They don't understand contract law. They have no idea what is, and what is not valid cryptography. They have no idea what the criminal side of the internet engages in, or what sort of resources are at their disposal. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people get the ethics wrong.

Somehow, an act that caused no economic harm to anyone has everyone in a tremendous uproar. We need a picture of a cat and a car analogy to go with it.

[NASDAQEnema]

Somehow, an act that caused no economic harm to anyone has everyone in a tremendous uproar. We need a picture of a cat and a car analogy to go with it.

Economic, capital, material harm. If the only harm you can valuate is monetary or physical then we've lost the game already.

:/

You gave me a sad.

[k9quaint]

Somehow, an act that caused no economic harm to anyone has everyone in a tremendous uproar. We need a picture of a cat and a car analogy to go with it.

Economic, capital, material harm. If the only harm you can valuate is monetary or physical then we've lost the game already.

:/

You gave me a sad.

The psychological and emotional harm that occurred was the following:
The creater of an altcoin is sad that his altcoin as initially defined was not viable.
Some people who misunderstand what took place and/or are not in possession of the facts are angry.

The first is a fact of life for the altcoin community, I expect it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
The second is unavoidable on the internet.

Either add to the list of emotional/psychological harm, or explain why I should be upset by either of it's current entries.

[HolodeckJizzmopper]

I don't particularly have any incentive to respond to the scammers that I foiled

 Funny, given your over-zealous religious beliefs, I find it hysterically ironic that you decided to play god with your pool's users and stick your fist up their asses to do your illicit bidding.
 
 You are pathetic. Glad I pulled my hashing power off your pool months ago.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

So allowing merged mining is the "deep flaw" to you? Really?

Such a feature would only be considered a flaw if you assume that

• There are rogue, ill-intended big pool operators out there.
• The miners of such rogue pool operator would support an attack on an infant technology that has done no harm.

Honestly, I wouldn't call that a "deep flaw" since, before this shameful event, I would not take such hypothesis as something to worry about

The fact that you don't consider merged mining on day zero a flaw, especially in light of recent events is baffling.

You seem to keep ignoring what I write. I highlighted it again. Before this recent event, I wouldn't imagine that a large portion of miners would be OK with their computing power being used to commit crimes. Now I'm "baffled", indeed.

You really think that you can assume there are no people in the world with large computing resources at their disposal for use in a nefarious manner?

For the Nth time, this is not one or a few individuals commiting crimes alone. This is one individual commiting crimes with the support of many others. Many random people, since there's no reason to believe pooled mining attracts more criminals than honest people. And lots of this random people simply don't care to be accomplices in crime. That's the true baffling part.

Somehow, an act that caused no economic harm to anyone has everyone in a tremendous uproar. We need a picture of a cat and a car analogy to go with it.

You're shortsighted there. Learn with Fréderic Bastiat, and pay attention to "what we don't see".
What's the direct economic harm of a big armed group declaring "from now on, everybody wanting to provide banking services will have to acquire license X". (which just happens to be an almost impossible to obtain license, unless you're very dear to politicians). Nobody immediately loses anything, just like what happened here. But the lost in opportunity is there, as many new business that could eventually innovate and improve people's life just won't ever be born.
The same situation happens here. A criminal and powerful individual declares: "cryptocurrecies with merged mining simply cannot happen (unless of course you're dear to some pool operator)." A whole branch of possibly innovative solutions will never born. And the saddest part is that such aggression only takes place because lots of random people prefer to do nothing about it.

[DannyM]

I'm sympathetic to your frustration, but let's please not equate this to violence.