[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[parker928]

Monero currently appears to be undergoing a spamming attack.

Every 5 seconds or so, someone is submitting tx with mixins of 101 to the network:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/mro/transpool

See also recent blocks:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/mro/blocks

Currently I have limited connectivity to IRC. Please alert FluffyPony, Smooth, etc to this if they are not aware it is going on. We may issue temporary mining-level code that rejects tx with mixin >= 20 or some other reasonable number.

why does this matter? don't they have to pay higher tx fee for higher mixing count? Isn' this equivalent to if a whole bunch of people were using xmr as a currency

[tacotime]

why does this matter? don't they have to pay higher tx fee for higher mixing count? Isn' this equivalent to if a whole bunch of people were using xmr as a currency

Current tx fees are very low to keep XMR accessible to all users (about 1 cent per 24.4 KB), but would allow a user with bad intentions to spam about 300 MB into the blockchain each day. Someone has decided to abuse our blockchain in an act of malevolence.

We will be deploying immediate patches to pools to cope with this update. Expect a mandatory update today.

[argentinx]

simple problem more mixing more fee
0 mixing
0.005
10 mixing
0.05
100 mixing
0.5

[fluffypony]

simple problem more mixing more fee
0 mixing
0.005
10 mixing
0.05
100 mixing
0.5

Then you can still spam by creating a tx with a low mixin and tons of outputs. The solution is per-kb fees, which is on our "important" radar and obviously just moved to our "urgent" radar:-P

[David Latapie]

Ah okay. If we decide on a clear charter to be enforced I will be happy to open a moderated one.

As a general rule, any new sister thread shall be moderated. Reason 1 is all our thread (even the FAQ) are filled with shills. Reason 2 is we have for long a reputation of not abusing of the self-moderation feature, so we shall not fear rejection anymore on this ground. Reason 3 of course is that it will be saner to read for anyone.

Surprisingly, this might not be true. Monero already has approximately 3% as many transactions as BTC and this number is likely to grow as improvements to XMR (especially GUI) are rolled out and more avenues for usage appear. So far aside from speculation (exchanges) we have exactly one medical practice and one gambling site.

As well as two contractants: a chef and a servant (although it was only partially paid in XMR).

[rpietila]

Current tx fees are very low to keep XMR accessible to all users (about 1 cent per 24.4 KB)

There is no known legitimate uses that require low transaction fees to be profitable. I am happy to raise them 5-10 times higher and when someone comes to me giving a factual example how his monero use actually suffers due to the fees, I will support him from my own pocket, considering this as a donation to monero ecosystem.

ADD: It should be blatantly obvious that we don't want to sell 100 GB of blockchain space for $41k. Do the math dudes, for the sake of Monero!

[eizh]

simple problem more mixing more fee
0 mixing
0.005
10 mixing
0.05
100 mixing
0.5

It should be fee-per-kb since the amount of data is more fundamental and adaptive than what the data is. Dust attack have been used on the blockchains of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and many others in the past. It's easy to put a stop to with a fee that's fine for a normal user but quickly adds up for a malicious attacker. Monero's is currently unusually low -- I don't think going even an order of magnitude higher would have much effect on regular users.

[nioc]

Wouldn't an order of magnitude increase in fees effect all the 0.1 XMR payments from the mining pools?

[smooth]

Wouldn't an order of magnitude increase in fees effect all the 0.1 XMR payments from the mining pools?

Not directly. They pay out multiple users at one time, which means one fee, not one fee for each 0.1 XMR payment. When users spend the 0.1 payments, they generally combine several of them into one payment, so again one fee. So the higher fee is still possible workable without other changes. Pools may wish to increase their minimum payouts or let users set higher minimum payouts to reduce fees though.

[smooth]

ADD: It should be blatantly obvious that we don't want to sell 100 GB of blockchain space for $41k. Do the math dudes, for the sake of Monero!

It is being increased immediately to stop the attack. We will later introduce per-kb fees to address the issue in a more nuanced manner (many ordinary transactions are fairly small so they don't need to pay as much as needed to mitigate attacks using 24 KB transactions). However, ultimately the fees seem to need to be quite a bit higher than $0.01 based on experience with spam attacks on other coins such as LTC.

[fluffypony]

ADD: It should be blatantly obvious that we don't want to sell 100 GB of blockchain space for $41k. Do the math dudes, for the sake of Monero!

For those that lurk in #monero-dev -


[23:12:40] monero (~monero@192.30.252.43) joined the channel.
[23:12:40] monero: [bitmonero] fluffypony opened pull request #104: Fees temporarily bumped to 0.1 XMR per tx to prevent spam attack (master...master) http://git.io/9_lUdA
[23:12:40] monero (~monero@192.30.252.43) left the channel.
[23:12:55] monero (~monero@192.30.252.32) joined the channel.
[23:12:56] monero: [bitmonero] fluffypony closed pull request #104: Fees temporarily bumped to 0.1 XMR per tx to prevent spam attack (master...master) http://git.io/9_lUdA
[23:12:56] monero (~monero@192.30.252.32) left the channel.
[23:13:01] @fluffypony: oh well, at least they tried

[smooth]

ADD: It should be blatantly obvious that we don't want to sell 100 GB of blockchain space for $41k. Do the math dudes, for the sake of Monero!

For those that lurk in #monero-dev -


[23:12:40] monero (~monero@192.30.252.43) joined the channel.
[23:12:40] monero: [bitmonero] fluffypony opened pull request #104: Fees temporarily bumped to 0.1 XMR per tx to prevent spam attack (master...master) http://git.io/9_lUdA
[23:12:40] monero (~monero@192.30.252.43) left the channel.
[23:12:55] monero (~monero@192.30.252.32) joined the channel.
[23:12:56] monero: [bitmonero] fluffypony closed pull request #104: Fees temporarily bumped to 0.1 XMR per tx to prevent spam attack (master...master) http://git.io/9_lUdA
[23:12:56] monero (~monero@192.30.252.32) left the channel.
[23:13:01] @fluffypony: oh well, at least they tried

In other words, if you run a pool, pull master from github ASAP. If you know someone who runs a pool, please make sure the message is passed along ASAP. It is important to get as many pools updated as quickly as possible.

New wallet release binaries, etc. are on the way.

[parker928]

why does this matter? don't they have to pay higher tx fee for higher mixing count? Isn' this equivalent to if a whole bunch of people were using xmr as a currency

Current tx fees are very low to keep XMR accessible to all users (about 1 cent per 24.4 KB), but would allow a user with bad intentions to spam about 300 MB into the blockchain each day. Someone has decided to abuse our blockchain in an act of malevolence.

We will be deploying immediate patches to pools to cope with this update. Expect a mandatory update today.

aye aye capn'

[sammy007]

I hope pools will follow and apply this update as soon as possible. We all responsible for this coin.

[parker928]

Monero devs kick ass noone can even deny it anymore. Attack the block chain and they are on it within minutes, a whole team of them. Fuck yes

[parker928]

I hope pools will follow and apply this update as soon as possible. We all responsible for this coin.

it is rare that I can do anything for xmr other than buying and holding but in this case I am practically spamming pool devs to help make sure they switch over ASAP you can help too

[fluffypony]

Over and above updating, either from my repo (http://github.com/fluffypony/bitmonero) which I won't rebase for the next couple of weeks or from the main repo, if pool operators and solo miners could also delete their poolstate.bin before restarting the daemon. This will ensure that the several hundred silly spammy tx's already in the mempool are kicked out by virtue of being silly.

To wit: update and compile; stop the daemon and simplewallet; delete poolstate.bin from ~/.bitmonero or the Windows equivalent; replace the daemon and simplewallet; restart the daemon and simplewallet.

[smooth]

Over and above updating, either from my repo (http://github.com/fluffypony/bitmonero) which I won't rebase for the next couple of weeks or from the main repo, if pool operators and solo miners could also delete their poolstate.bin before restarting the daemon. This will ensure that the several hundred silly spammy tx's already in the mempool are kicked out by virtue of being silly.

To wit: update and compile; stop the daemon and simplewallet; delete poolstate.bin from ~/.bitmonero or the Windows equivalent; replace the daemon and simplewallet; restart the daemon and simplewallet.

Important note:

Make sure to do it in this order:

1. Stop bitmonerod

2. Delete file poolstate.bin

3. Start (updated) bitmonerod

If you delete the file while bitmonerod is running, it will be recreated with the old spam transactions still in it.

[sammy007]

Current tx fees are very low to keep XMR accessible to all users (about 1 cent per 24.4 KB)

There is no known legitimate uses that require low transaction fees to be profitable. I am happy to raise them 5-10 times higher and when someone comes to me giving a factual example how his monero use actually suffers due to the fees, I will support him from my own pocket, considering this as a donation to monero ecosystem.

ADD: It should be blatantly obvious that we don't want to sell 100 GB of blockchain space for $41k. Do the math dudes, for the sake of Monero!

Ok, dude, we are pool ops and we are paying tx fees from our profits. Now, when fee raised 20 times, it's significant impact. We just not ready.
BTW, you can donate to https://github.com/zone117x/node-cryptonote-pool so he will collaborate with devs in order to provide smooth migration for both miners and pool ops when major update to tx fees come.

[superplus]

is there a tx delay due to spam?