rpietila Altcoin Observer

[e-coinomist]

Sure, here you have 2:

They also invented what i call the shadowcrap-dilemma:

1) To make a PoS Network "secure" you need to have nearly all wallets staking.
2) To make Ringsignatures "secure" you need all people to use them, always.
3) But you can't stake the tokens they use for anonymity, so being private and having a secured pos network can never be happen at the same time.

This is a typical example of getting fucked by your own greed.

1) Exchanger Wallets are sufficient.
2) Monero doesn't. Mixing factor dependant.

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[wpalczynski]

The rise in alt:btc exchange rates is nice, but it's negated by BTC's continued fall. The people who bought Monero at $2 or Darkcoin at $15 last year are still suffering. When do you guys think that bitcoin will start going up?

No one really knows when BTC will start rising.  Maybe when the ETFs come online?  Who really knows.  Don't overlook the possibility of Monero gaining enough adoption where it decouples from BTC and has its own organic rise in dollar terms.

[smooth]

Sure, here you have 2:

They also invented what i call the shadowcrap-dilemma:

1) To make a PoS Network "secure" you need to have nearly all wallets staking.
2) To make Ringsignatures "secure" you need all people to use them, always.
3) But you can't stake the tokens they use for anonymity, so being private and having a secured pos network can never be happen at the same time.

This is a typical example of getting fucked by your own greed.

1) Exchanger Wallets are sufficient.

The exchanger wallet model is extremely insecure because they can be hacked or abused by the exchange operator, or even just knocked offline with a DoS to create an attack window. It's the PoS version of centralized mining.

2) Monero doesn't. Mixing factor dependant.

Monero will have a minimum mix factor. Already there is a default mix of 3 in the wallet.

[dewdeded]

When do you guys think that bitcoin will start going up?

No one, can say for sure or with any accuracy.

[aminorex]

When do you guys think that bitcoin will start going up?

No one, can say for sure or with any accuracy.

Monkey thinks it has already started, at 236, with a 300 resistance to come.

[jehst]

When do you guys think that bitcoin will start going up?

No one, can say for sure or with any accuracy.

Monkey thinks it has already started, at 236, with a 300 resistance to come.

I wanted both GBTC and Gemini to launch during the same week when BTC was 288+ and for the momentum to just blast us right through 300. Attacking it on a rally starting from 245 or even the 260s just seems really lame.

[dewdeded]

The consensus algorithm topic interest me very much. I am of the opinion that PoW is a massive wastage of energy and leads to dangerous centralization of mining. Nevertheless, I see many posters, I respect (e.g. in this thread), who prefer PoW. So I made a thread in the Tech Discussion section, about the topic.

See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1011906, topic: "Why do most known experts and widly-respected posters prefer PoW over PoS & PoI?". Myself am very curious about your answers, because I think the most respected posters on this boards, post in this thread.

Thank you very much.

[jehst]

The consensus algorithm topic interest me very much. I am of the opinion that PoW is a massive wastage of energy and leads to dangerous centralization of mining. Nevertheless, I see many posters, I respect (e.g. in this thread), who prefer PoW. So I made a thread in the Tech Discussion section, about the topic.

See https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1011906, topic: "Why do most known experts and widly-respected posters prefer PoW over PoS & PoI?". Myself am very curious about your answers, because I think the most respected posters on this boards, post in this thread.

Thank you very much.

Lots of people have given up on PoS. I'm not technical enough to know if proof of stake is doomed, but I'm keeping my mind open. It's possible that BitShares or Ethereum or some of these other talented dev teams will keep improving upon proof-of-stake to the point where it's "secure-enough" and much more efficient than PoW. And that's a worthy endeavor.

[Cryddit]

PoS as an idea isn't inherently flawed.

But the PoS algorithms we've seen so far are IMO very flawed. 

I believe that Transactions-as-proof-of-Stake can work in the long term.  But I only see it as being successful if the people securing the chain (that is, the people making transactions and the people running nodes) are the ones who actually get paid for securing the chain.  And I think that while TaPoS is good for securing the chain in the long run, it's probably best deployed in combination with something else to secure the most recent few blocks.

And I really object to the "lock your coins up for a month to get a chance to form a block" algorithms, because P&D operators can take advantage to "squeeze the market" and then leave, while most others have their coins locked up and can't sell, leaving their stakers flat. Maybe I'm just inherently suspicious, but I expect that when somebody does something that gives another person an opportunity to profit at their expense, they will most likely lose.

Finally, any kind of proof-of-stake requires distribution among a lot of different actors to help stabilize the market.  If you create few whales, rather than many goldfish, then everything depends on individual circumstances rather than generalized and more predictable stable laws of economics.  And so far we haven't seen a PoS launch that really did  that very effectively. 

[Cryddit]

PoS as an idea isn't inherently flawed.

PoS is inherently flawed from a network security perspective, lets say a big hack happen in an exchange and large amount of POS coins are now in the hands of a single person, the hacker not only will control large part of the coins but subsequently of the network.

As I said right after the one sentence you quoted, the PoS algorithms we've seen so far are inherently flawed.  That's one of the flaws.  It can be fixed, but not in any of the ways people have done so far.

[Its About Sharing]

PoS as an idea isn't inherently flawed.

PoS is inherently flawed from a network security perspective, lets say a big hack happen in an exchange and large amount of POS coins are now in the hands of a single person, the hacker not only will control large part of the coins but subsequently of the network.

Interesting point. It is a bit like is you successfully stole BTC's they would come with the miners.

This puts undo burden on this one aspect of the token, the token itself...

[jwinterm]

PoS as an idea isn't inherently flawed.

PoS is inherently flawed from a network security perspective, lets say a big hack happen in an exchange and large amount of POS coins are now in the hands of a single person, the hacker not only will control large part of the coins but subsequently of the network.

Interesting point. It is a bit like is you successfully stole BTC's they would come with the miners.

This puts undo burden on this one aspect of the token, the token itself...

And it's already happened at least a couple of times: the Mintpal hack last summer that someone stole a bunch of Vericoin in, resulting in Vericoin rolling back their blockchain at the developer's discretion, and the Bter hack where the hacker stole 5-10% of the total available supply of NXT. 5-10% doesn't sound too terrible, but since apparently most PoS/NXT holders keep their coins offline or on other exchanges, I think that even 5% of total available coins could have been greater than 50% of the network staking supply. Bter was able to buy back most/all(?) of the NXT, so no 51% attack came from either one of these hacks, but they both illustrate this type of vulnerability.

[Daedelus]

PoS as an idea isn't inherently flawed.

PoS is inherently flawed from a network security perspective, lets say a big hack happen in an exchange and large amount of POS coins are now in the hands of a single person, the hacker not only will control large part of the coins but subsequently of the network.

Interesting point. It is a bit like is you successfully stole BTC's they would come with the miners.

This puts undo burden on this one aspect of the token, the token itself...

the Bter hack where the hacker stole 5-10% of the total available supply of NXT. 5-10% doesn't sound too terrible, but since apparently most PoS/NXT holders keep their coins offline or on other exchanges, I think that even 5% of total available coins could have been greater than 50% of the network staking supply. Bter was able to buy back most/all(?) of the NXT, so no 51% attack came from either one of these hacks, but they both illustrate this type of vulnerability.

Is this your true belief?  I can see 3 assumptions that are easy to check against reality.

[jwinterm]

PoS as an idea isn't inherently flawed.

PoS is inherently flawed from a network security perspective, lets say a big hack happen in an exchange and large amount of POS coins are now in the hands of a single person, the hacker not only will control large part of the coins but subsequently of the network.

Interesting point. It is a bit like is you successfully stole BTC's they would come with the miners.

This puts undo burden on this one aspect of the token, the token itself...

the Bter hack where the hacker stole 5-10% of the total available supply of NXT. 5-10% doesn't sound too terrible, but since apparently most PoS/NXT holders keep their coins offline or on other exchanges, I think that even 5% of total available coins could have been greater than 50% of the network staking supply. Bter was able to buy back most/all(?) of the NXT, so no 51% attack came from either one of these hacks, but they both illustrate this type of vulnerability.

Is this your true belief?  I can see 3 assumptions that are easy to check against reality.

I can't find the number of nxt coins staking versus time, but i remember some discussion about when the hack happened (before the coins were returned/bought back by bter), and clearly it was identified as potential issue by vericoin developers.

[Daedelus]

Long term forging has been constant for a long time at around 41%

http://nxtexplorer.com/nxt/nxt.cgi?action=160


Bter was the biggest exchange for nxt up until very recently. At the height of the hack, they held only ~5% (check the crypto press at the time.) Most nxters keep their nxt 'online' as it gives them access to asset exchange, digital goods store, encrypted messaging etc.Nxt is moving toward non centralised exchanges like multigateway.org and instantdex.

There was never a risk of 51% for the hack due to the high percentage forging (remember you will never get 100% as coins need to be in an account for 1440 blocks after being spent) and there is no depository, even at any centralised exchanges, that has enough to do any damage to the network. I guess an attacker could buy them..  

Veri I don't know anything about except it isn't the same POS as Nxt.

[pa]

Cryddit, this is off-topic but I can't resist. . . since you were actually working with Hal and Satoshi on early Bitcoin. . . what do you think they would have thought about the alt-coin scene and Monero?

[Cryddit]

I believe that Hal would have distrusted Monero's extended scripting language.  It opens a lot of attack surface, which a designer has to go over with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it doesn't present an avenue for DoS. 

I can't speak much to Satoshi's opinion since I only interacted with him briefly and via email, but I think he would probably have agreed, or at least taken Hal's opinion as valid. 

This is not to say that there's necessarily anything wrong with it.  But it could take a lot of time and effort to study it in detail and figure out all the combinations that could be used in attacks. 

For example, things most people don't consider like, do your arithmetic operators allocate?  If they do, can someone send dozens of transactions that do a lot of arithmetic in an attempt to exhaust memory? 

And so on.  You really have to get in depth on each and every opcode to know what attack surface you present.  Hal disabled about half the opcodes for the scripting language for Bitcoin, and had good reasons for each one why.  Although I think most of them could have been fixed with work on the implementation, he was right. 

[smooth]

I believe that Hal would have distrusted Monero's extended scripting language.  It opens a lot of attack surface, which a designer has to go over with a fine-toothed comb to make sure it doesn't present an avenue for DoS. 

I can't speak much to Satoshi's opinion since I only interacted with him briefly and via email, but I think he would probably have agreed, or at least taken Hal's opinion as valid. 

This is not to say that there's necessarily anything wrong with it.  But it could take a lot of time and effort to study it in detail and figure out all the combinations that could be used in attacks. 

For example, things most people don't consider like, do your arithmetic operators allocate?  If they do, can someone send dozens of transactions that do a lot of arithmetic in an attempt to exhaust memory? 

And so on.  You really have to get in depth on each and every opcode to know what attack surface you present.  Hal disabled about half the opcodes for the scripting language for Bitcoin, and had good reasons for each one why.  Although I think most of them could have been fixed with work on the implementation, he was right. 

The scripting language in the whitepaper isn't even implemented.

Only p2pk (where PK's are one-time via ECDH) is actually supported for now.

[jwinterm]

Long term forging has been constant for a long time at around 41%

http://nxtexplorer.com/nxt/nxt.cgi?action=160


Bter was the biggest exchange for nxt up until very recently. At the height of the hack, they held only ~5% (check the crypto press at the time.) Most nxters keep their nxt 'online' as it gives them access to asset exchange, digital goods store, encrypted messaging etc.Nxt is moving toward non centralised exchanges like multigateway.org and instantdex.

There was never a risk of 51% for the hack due to the high percentage forging (remember you will never get 100% as coins need to be in an account for 1440 blocks after being spent) and there is no depository, even at any centralised exchanges, that has enough to do any damage to the network. I guess an attacker could buy them..  

Veri I don't know anything about except it isn't the same POS as Nxt.

If I understand the numbers in your link correctly, there's currently around 6.3B NXT (total amounts) and about 416M currently staking (current average peer forging). That amounts to less than 10%, about 6.6%, about the amount stolen from Bter. Please let me know if I'm reading the stats wrong, but I don't see how you get 40%.

[Daedelus]

Long term forging has been constant for a long time at around 41%

http://nxtexplorer.com/nxt/nxt.cgi?action=160


Bter was the biggest exchange for nxt up until very recently. At the height of the hack, they held only ~5% (check the crypto press at the time.) Most nxters keep their nxt 'online' as it gives them access to asset exchange, digital goods store, encrypted messaging etc.Nxt is moving toward non centralised exchanges like multigateway.org and instantdex.

There was never a risk of 51% for the hack due to the high percentage forging (remember you will never get 100% as coins need to be in an account for 1440 blocks after being spent) and there is no depository, even at any centralised exchanges, that has enough to do any damage to the network. I guess an attacker could buy them..  

Veri I don't know anything about except it isn't the same POS as Nxt.

If I understand the numbers in your link correctly, there's currently around 6.3B NXT (total amounts) and about 416M currently staking (current average peer forging). That amounts to less than 10%, about 6.6%, about the amount stolen from Bter. Please let me know if I'm reading the stats wrong, but I don't see how you get 40%.

You just read the bolded 'curr[ent] ave[rage] peer forging' in the top left corner > 415,700,146 = ~41% of 1billion (total nxt that will ever be)

It is a live number so will vary with time to reflect those forging. Not sure where you got 6.3B tho