Spammed with namecoins, now its dead.

[drakahn]

http://explorer.dot-bit.org/a/N2v2aoaVSP4H6LGYGVs2rHNaeNqvN91Nq5

out of nowhere i started receiving floods of 0.00000001 nmc

it got up to 0.002 and now my namecoin client can't connect, i get

************************
EXCEPTION: NSt8ios_base7failureE
CAutoFile::read : end of file
C:\Users\Lounge\Downloads\NamecoinGUI-0.5.0.18\namecoind.exe in ProcessMessage()


anyone have any clue as to how to fix this?

[steelhouse]

I noticed the price of nmc dropped 50% at Vircurex.

[doublec]

The namecoin chain is currently being spammed with dust. If you look at the block explorer the blocks have all been maximum size recently. There was discussion on IRC and the dot-bit forums about it.

[steelhouse]

"drakahn: its being spammed to the address in my signature at bitcointalk"  at btc-e

Looks like a minimum transaction size and a sales tax might be needed.  1 minimum transaction size and 5% tax deleted.

[Schwede65]

The namecoin chain is currently being spammed with dust. If you look at the block explorer the blocks have all been maximum size recently. There was discussion on IRC and the dot-bit forums about it.

a similiar (so far i can see) dust has been done to the ltc-chain...

coblee has solved this prob...

some coder may have a look after the current ltc-code or ask coblee for help...

some updated checkpoints are essential...

or has this "automatic-generated-checkpoint-system" been tested?

Edit: maybe we can ask the btc-e-exchange, why nmc-deposits - officially - are closed till march

Edit2: i'd like to anounce 1,000 nmc for an - this problem-solving - update of namecoin, maybe given to a team-leader, who distributes this to the participating developers...
i think i will not be the only one with such interests

[Unthinkingbit]

Edit2: i'd like to anounce 1,000 nmc for an - this problem-solving - update of namecoin, maybe given to a team-leader, who distributes this to the participating developers...
i think i will not be the only one with such interests

That's great. Here's the spam prrofing code for devcoin:
http://devtome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Devcoin#Spam_Proofing

and pasted below. Namecoin has a different generation rate and value, but they changes roughly cancel out so you could use the same parameters as devcoin.


===Spam Proofing===
To make spam unprofitable, the following changes were made:

*1) Increase the MIN_TX_FEE
*2) Set MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE = MIN_TX_FEE
*3) Added an extra fee to sendMany for each tiny sub transaction
*4) Eliminated free transactions

The MIN_TX_FEE and MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE changes are listed in the Generation Rate section and pasted below:

<code>
//static const int64 MIN_TX_FEE = 50000;
static const int64 MIN_TX_FEE = 500000000;
//static const int64 MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE = 10000;
static const int64 MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE = MIN_TX_FEE;
<code>

To add the extra fee and eliminate free transactions, the following change was made in GetMinFee in main.h:
<code>
//        if (fAllowFree)
//        {
//            if (nBlockSize == 1)
//            {
//                // Transactions under 10K are free
//                // (about 4500bc if made of 50bc inputs)
//                if (nBytes &lt; 10000)
//                    nMinFee = 0;
//            }
//            else
//            {
//                // Free transaction area
//                if (nNewBlockSize &lt; 27000)
//                    nMinFee = 0;
//            }
//        }

//        // To limit dust spam, require MIN_TX_FEE/MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE if any output is less than 0.01
//        if (nMinFee &lt; nBaseFee)
//            BOOST_FOREACH(const CTxOut& txout, vout)
//                if (txout.nValue &lt; CENT)
//                    nMinFee = nBaseFee;

         // To limit dust spam, require an additional one tenth of MIN_TX_FEE/MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE for each output
         BOOST_FOREACH(const CTxOut& txout, vout)
              nMinFee += nBaseFee / 10;
</code>

[caveden]

Please, don't block spam with mandatory transaction fees, as it was done in bitcoin.

Nodes should not relay transactions from a peer that is sending spam. It shouldn't be too difficult to make some basic heuristics (anything above a certain rate gets tagged as spam).

Fee policies should be totally open for miners to implement them as they want.

[doublec]

Try the latest namecoin client at https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin. Linux binary on http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page. You want version 0.3.24.66. This contains patches to help with wallets full of the dust spam transactions that have been happening.

[Schwede65]

Try the latest namecoin client at https://github.com/namecoin/namecoin. Linux binary on http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page. You want version 0.3.24.66. This contains patches to help with wallets full of the dust spam transactions that have been happening.

fine to have a quick solution!

hopefully all the MM-pools are informed, so that the new anti-spam-linux-data could be used - version 0.3.24.66...

when are the win-binaries ready for the non-compiling-guys?

are you, doublec, the team-leader for this solution?
then send me - via PM - your nmc-address for the posted 1,000 nmc for solution, you may distribute it to the ones, who worked around this nmc-anti-spam...

[doublec]

when are the win-binaries ready for the non-compiling-guys?

are you, doublec, the team-leader for this solution?
then send me - via PM - your nmc-address for the posted 1,000 nmc for solution, you may distribute it to the ones, who worked around this nmc-anti-spam...

I put windows  binaries here: ...they're now available at dot-bit.org...

They should appear on the dot-bit.org site at some point. I helped contribute to the solution, along with khalahan from dot-bit.org. Send coins to to their donate address at the bottom of this page as they did a lot of the work to get the github repository updated and linux binaries, etc.

[drakahn]

my wallet still can't connect 

[Iyeman]

Try opening the task manager and setting the priority of your namecoin client to high or realtime, not sure if it will help but worth trying.
Or put your wallet on a better PC. (more ram and processing power)

[Ahimoth]

Please, don't block spam with mandatory transaction fees, as it was done in bitcoin.

Nodes should not relay transactions from a peer that is sending spam. It shouldn't be too difficult to make some basic heuristics (anything above a certain rate gets tagged as spam).

Fee policies should be totally open for miners to implement them as they want.

That won't solve the problem as witnessed in LTC. The spammer will either mine the blocks himself, or rely on unpatched or less stringent miners to include his spam for him. All it will do is slow it down, the cost to the spammer will remain negligible.

[brunoshady]

stop using namecoin already, if things like this can happen, it's not a good currency.

[wachtwoord]

It's a distributed DNS, not a currency!

[Schwede65]

Please, don't block spam with mandatory transaction fees, as it was done in bitcoin.

Nodes should not relay transactions from a peer that is sending spam. It shouldn't be too difficult to make some basic heuristics (anything above a certain rate gets tagged as spam).

Fee policies should be totally open for miners to implement them as they want.

That won't solve the problem as witnessed in LTC. The spammer will either mine the blocks himself, or rely on unpatched or less stringent miners to include his spam for him. All it will do is slow it down, the cost to the spammer will remain negligible.

thats a good idea that the spammer will mine his own nmc-blocks

when he wants to find one nmc-block a day atm, he has to mine with 25 GH/s - the whole day long...

this is not a very cheap spamming

Edit: who is solo-mining nmc at the moment --> nobody

[drakahn]

with the new binaries now it just crashes after a while

what would happen if i tried to use an old backup of my wallet with the new binaries? it has the spammed address in it but not the spam (or whatever made it big)

is there a way to get my other addresses out of my wallet and make a new wallet that would work?

[doublec]

is there a way to get my other addresses out of my wallet and make a new wallet that would work?

Ask in the dot-bit.org forums. Khalahan there just went through the process on their own wallet.

[caveden]

That won't solve the problem as witnessed in LTC. The spammer will either mine the blocks himself, or rely on unpatched or less stringent miners to include his spam for him. All it will do is slow it down, the cost to the spammer will remain negligible.

If he's mining his own "garbage blocks", adding mandatory transaction fees is pointless then, as he can always pay high fees to himself.

A miner producing garbage blocks is attempting to freeze the network. That's not a profitable attack, and difficult to perform (requires more processing power than the honest nodes). It's much more serious than spamming if done successfully though. Search for "unfreezable blockchain" if you want an interesting topic about this matter, with possible solutions on how to decrease the impact of such an attack.

[drakahn]

using my old pre spam backup wallet worked, i deleted the spammed address and its downloading blocks now.