Is Namecoin a possible threat to the Bitcoin blockchain?

[jtimon]

Question: what would happen if Tycho temporarily turned the entirety of Deepbit to the Namecoin blockchain (for 20 minutes, say)

There could be a problem.  The issue is that difficulty would go up, but once difficulty goes up too much, it never comes back down.  Because it's not worth it to mine, and difficulty only resets after ~2000 blocks.

It might be better if the difficulty were to adjust every N days or M blocks whichever comes first, but that's not the case now (with BTC or namecoin).

I haven't think about that problem before.
A supercomputer could slow the bitcoin chain by mining a lot one week and then stop doing it.
Your solution should work though.
Are developers aware of this?

[Raize]

I haven't think about that problem before.
A supercomputer could slow the bitcoin chain by mining a lot one week and then stop doing it.
Your solution should work though.
Are developers aware of this?

It's countered by people's greed and transaction fees.

Basically, imagine a pool got a large number of miners intent on doing something like this, so they say they are going to remove their pool from the network for a week so that less blocks are created.

There are three problems with this:
1) The incentive of remaining miners increases, meaning they will bring more hashing power to the network if they have any on reserve.
2) The incentive of those transferring Bitcoin to add transaction fees increases, because they will get confirmations quicker.
3) The incentive of those participating in the boycott to "cheat" by connecting to an existing pool still on the network increases because they will make coins both before and after the difficulty reassessment whereas the miners sitting out will only make coins afterwards.

[jtimon]

I haven't think about that problem before.
A supercomputer could slow the bitcoin chain by mining a lot one week and then stop doing it.
Your solution should work though.
Are developers aware of this?

It's countered by people's greed and transaction fees.

Basically, imagine a pool got a large number of miners intent on doing something like this, so they say they are going to remove their pool from the network for a week so that less blocks are created.

There are three problems with this:
1) The incentive of remaining miners increases, meaning they will bring more hashing power to the network if they have any on reserve.
2) The incentive of those transferring Bitcoin to add transaction fees increases, because they will get confirmations quicker.
3) The incentive of those participating in the boycott to "cheat" by connecting to an existing pool still on the network increases because they will make coins both before and after the difficulty reassessment whereas the miners sitting out will only make coins afterwards.

I didn't mean a pool. Just a non profit attacker. Maybe a bitcoin competitor? I don't know, paypal, facebook, the fed, the ecb...They would just set the difficulty too high.
The time limit for readjusting makes a lot of sense to me.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Question: what would happen if Tycho temporarily turned the entirety of Deepbit to the Namecoin blockchain (for 20 minutes, say)

There could be a problem.  The issue is that difficulty would go up, but once difficulty goes up too much, it never comes back down.  Because it's not worth it to mine, and difficulty only resets after ~2000 blocks.

It might be better if the difficulty were to adjust every N days or M blocks whichever comes first, but that's not the case now (with BTC or namecoin).

This is a very good idea and worth some more discussion. I don't see a downside icbw ... belt and braces approach.

[smoothie]

Question: what would happen if Tycho temporarily turned the entirety of Deepbit to the Namecoin blockchain (for 20 minutes, say)

There could be a problem.  The issue is that difficulty would go up, but once difficulty goes up too much, it never comes back down.  Because it's not worth it to mine, and difficulty only resets after ~2000 blocks.

It might be better if the difficulty were to adjust every N days or M blocks whichever comes first, but that's not the case now (with BTC or namecoin).

For namecoins there is as upper limit to the increase and a lower limit to the decrease of difficulty adjustments. The upper is 4x and the lower us divided by 4. So you can't increase difficulty any faster that 4 times per 2016 blocks and the difficulty can't decrease more than 4 times per 2016 blocks.

[imperi]

Question: what would happen if Tycho temporarily turned the entirety of Deepbit to the Namecoin blockchain (for 20 minutes, say)

There could be a problem.  The issue is that difficulty would go up, but once difficulty goes up too much, it never comes back down.  Because it's not worth it to mine, and difficulty only resets after ~2000 blocks.

It might be better if the difficulty were to adjust every N days or M blocks whichever comes first, but that's not the case now (with BTC or namecoin).

I haven't think about that problem before.
A supercomputer could slow the bitcoin chain by mining a lot one week and then stop doing it.
Your solution should work though.
Are developers aware of this?

Difficulty can increase 4x at most per 2016 blocks. This is in the code.

[imperi]

I know namecoins are only "meant" for registering domain names... but what if people start to use them like bitcoins? Or is that impossible since there is an unlimited supply of namecoins? iirc

Who says they're meant only for registering domain names? There's even a poker site to gamble them. Namecoin is everything Bitcoin is, but with additional features. Even if those features never take off it's still at least equal to Bitcoin.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Just to stop all the FUD spreading. Namecoins are not unlimited supply, in fact they are in MORE limited supply than bitcoins.

They have the same 21 million coin issuance algorithm AND some coins are spent out of existence (63,000) in the early days to prevent domain name squatting and hoarding by early adopters.



tl;dr  Namecoins are more scarce than bitcoins.

[imperi]

Just to stop all the FUD spreading. Namecoins are not unlimited supply, in fact they are in MORE limited supply than bitcoins.

They have the same 21 million coin issuance algorithm AND some coins are spent out of existence (63,000) in the early days to prevent name squatting and hoarding by early adopters.



tl;dr  Namecoins are more scarce than bitcoins.

Indeed.

Code:

pblock->vtx[0].vout[0].nValue = GetBlockValue(pindexPrev->nHeight+1, nFees);

line 1092 :

Code:

int64 GetBlockValue(int nHeight, int64 nFees)
{
    int64 nSubsidy = 50 * COIN;

    // Subsidy is cut in half every 4 years
    nSubsidy >>= (nHeight / 210000);

    return nSubsidy + nFees;
}

[jtimon]

It would be great if there were a pledge/bounty just for the sharing work between chains only and not for the whole namecoin project. That feature will be useful not only for namecoin but for any alternative chain.

Also, is there a market to trade namecoins for bitcoins?
Is there a GUI client that allows you to manage your bitcoins and your namecoins altogether?

[Kartoff]

Yes there is a market, bit still not GUI interface in final stage...

[JohnDoe]

It would be great if there were a pledge/bounty just for the sharing work between chains only and not for the whole namecoin project. That feature will be useful not only for namecoin but for any alternative chain.

Also, is there a market to trade namecoins for bitcoins?
Is there a GUI client that allows you to manage your bitcoins and your namecoins altogether?

Actually merged mining is already available on the testnets, no bounty needed.

See here and here.

NMC/BTC exchange: https://exchange.bitparking.com/main

You can also trade NMC for BTC and USD on BTCex but I'd be very careful cause they don't have a good reputation.

[Leon]

I know namecoins are only "meant" for registering domain names... but what if people start to use them like bitcoins? Or is that impossible since there is an unlimited supply of namecoins? iirc

Whats wrong with that..