Nothing at stake - debunked?

[spartacusrex]

Vitalik has moved the goal posts..

We know you cannot get the same level of 'independent verifiablilty' from POS chains as POW, but he's saying 'Does that matter ?'

Valid point.

POS systems need a 'number' to initialise. That's it.

If you're happy with that, POS away.

[1715073654]

1715073654

[1715073654]

1715073654

[1715073654]

1715073654

[kodtycoon]

Its far easyer to control PoW then PoS all they need to do is stop the destribution of the Mining Hardware just like China is doing at the moment.
Also they can force Internet Provider to Block all Ports related to mining Pools. DNS Main Clusters can just stop accepting Mining Pools.

You can't do this with PoS. If you use a VPN or Hidden Proxy you can be almost invisible.

Pools need always a good connection because of the Dataflow which needs to be very smooth or you will lose Hashrate.
No problem with PoS here again.


You can deny how many times you like, but PoW is more Centralized then people would like to acknowledge this.
The argument of Centralized checkpoints will not really matter if you still check the code for changes and if they matter. Because once the Infrastructure is there it will be really hard to stop it.

Not even the change of checkpoint will ever matter.

rolling checkpoints(decentralised) can be used in place of dev enforced check points(centralised) removing that issue.

[kodtycoon]

Just theorie. Have never been done, even with Scam PoS coins, they had to do some tricks means completely remove the coin check code section to make 51% attack available.

not true. nxt uses rolling check points and vitaliks discussion with the nxt devs is how this weak subjectivity started. they were discussing long/short range attacks and he admitted that nxt has solved the issues he raised and the issues brought up in the weak subjectivity paper he has just posted. so it is by no means theory. its fact.

[solid12345]

The only thing that matters is money talks and bullshit walks.

Guys like BCX like to brag about how BTC and LTC are so secure compared to every other "scam coin" out there but that is because the value of the coins are so high the incentive is there to keep the miners flocking to it like flies on rice.

what really matters is the intrinsic value of a coin, if the coin has any real value it will bring a wide enough net of investors and miners/stakers that security is not as much an issue. And if problems do arise like a pool approaching dangerously close to 51% hash or 1 guy claiming over 50% of a coin, there is no financial incentive to wreck their own investment.

I personally like POS because it rewards holders by paying interest and lets the little guy have his small piece of securing the network compared to the massive mining farms but that's just my opinion. You can make a case for both either way.

Next year true_asset of Urocoin will be launching SPOW which combines staking and POW and to me that will be the ultimate method of both securing the network and also rewarding investors and holders of the coin.

[kodtycoon]

http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=2656.25;wap2

Rolling checkpoints are generated by every node. Actually it's not checkpoints, a node just ignores blockchain reorgs deeper than 720 blocks from the top block. We need this trick to get rid of a possible attack that was described in the original Nxt thread by Cunicula. Later, when we completely implement Transparent Forging, we'll remove this code coz TF provides much better protection.

As far i see this not the problem. You can't dictate anything if every node uses the build in checkpoints.

hang on i think we are getting mixed up..

you said "Just theorie. Have never been done, even with Scam PoS coin"..

do you mean n@s has never been done? and that the attack is just theory?

they must remove the checkpoint code to make way for TF which would be better security against 51% attacks.. removing the code alone would allow for 51% attacks but if they replace it with TF then it wont be possible.. i think we are in agreement. i thought you meant that rolling checkpoints were just theory.

[othe]

Then why did Vericoin hardfork after Mintpal got hacked...

Fact is, people store their coins at exchanges and exchanges can easily get hacked or coins can get confiscated by 3 letter agencies and with that coins its easy to control the PoS networks, not much to discuss there.

[jonald_fyookball]

But why bother with alt coins and PoS when we have bitcoin and PoW, which
is a proven winner?

[jabo38]

But why bother with alt coins and PoS when we have bitcoin and PoW, which
is a proven winner?

Bitcoin is pretty awesome and is definitely a proven winner.  But it is by no means perfect.  Altcoins are addressing some of the more lacking points of Bitcoin. 

Altcoins look to be faster, stronger, safer, lighter, and prettier, with an additional wide range of added on functions. 

Few are actually doing this, I will give you that, but that doesn't mean that in the future it won't happen.  Instead altcoins are evolving faster and faster and are on track to be just what I mentioned. 

[Daedelus]

Vitalik's claim that POS can be attacked with "1% of the stake even" is been claimed by researchers to be "nearly impossible".


Find the research into the the 'Nothing at Stake' assertions here >>> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.0

Please comment in the thread >>> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.0. It would be good if we could get heads together from all aspects of cyrpto in the same place to discuss.

[unent]

But why bother with alt coins and PoS when we have bitcoin and PoW, which
is a proven winner?

Bitcoin is pretty awesome and is definitely a proven winner.  But it is by no means perfect.  Altcoins are addressing some of the more lacking points of Bitcoin. 

Altcoins look to be faster, stronger, safer, lighter, and prettier, with an additional wide range of added on functions. 

Few are actually doing this, I will give you that, but that doesn't mean that in the future it won't happen.  Instead altcoins are evolving faster and faster and are on track to be just what I mentioned. 

If Satoshi reappeared with a new alt coin that he developed to improve on bitcoin I doubt anyone would be asking what's the point of alt coins.

[The Chainmaker]

But why bother with alt coins and PoS when we have bitcoin and PoW, which
is a proven winner?

Bitcoin is pretty awesome and is definitely a proven winner.  But it is by no means perfect.  Altcoins are addressing some of the more lacking points of Bitcoin. 

Altcoins look to be faster, stronger, safer, lighter, and prettier, with an additional wide range of added on functions. 

Few are actually doing this, I will give you that, but that doesn't mean that in the future it won't happen.  Instead altcoins are evolving faster and faster and are on track to be just what I mentioned. 

If Satoshi reappeared with a new alt coin that he developed to improve on bitcoin I doubt anyone would be asking what's the point of alt coins.

If Satoshi even came out and mentioned an alt that he thought was cool it would cause huge distributions, and if he made one.......

[HCLivess]

This type of attack does not work with HBN due to checkpoints according to Tranz 

[Daedelus]

POS Consensus Research results summarised: No POS attack devised to date has shown to be plausible.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.msg10152632#msg10152632

[jonald_fyookball]

POS Consensus Research results summarised: No POS attack devised to date has shown to be plausible.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.msg10152632#msg10152632

summarized by who?  A bunch of forum yackers?

[Daedelus]

POS Consensus Research results summarised: No POS attack devised to date has shown to be plausible.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.msg10152632#msg10152632

summarized by who?  A bunch of forum yackers?

Summarised by one of the authors of the research..

[jonald_fyookball]

POS Consensus Research results summarised: No POS attack devised to date has shown to be plausible.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.msg10152632#msg10152632

summarized by who?  A bunch of forum yackers?

Summarised by one of the authors of the research..

which poster is that?

[Daedelus]

Kushti, the link above goes to his post

[Daedelus]

New research paper and investigation into "tails switching" relating to Nothing at Stake.

We have updated our github repository https://github.com/ConsensusResearch/ForgingSimulation with a new version of the PoS simulation haskell code.
It now included two branches, master - for the single branch classical Nxt based code and "multibranch-experimental" - for the multibranch forging simulation. Recently
new algorithm for regulating tails switching effect is proposed and implemented. With it, a possibility of the N@S attack becomes also regulated as we now can introduce deducible  parameter of confirmations needed to stabilize recent blocks tails. The idea of regulating is straightforward - from time to time the node "forgets" almost all the branches and prolong only those whose cumulativeDifficulty measure is above some retargeting threshold. This threshold changes discretely, starting from 0. Unlike the Bitcoin difficulty param, the threshold always grows as the best block cumulativeDifficulty exceeds the previous threshold+delta. So nodes work as multibranch almost all the time, but sometimes becomes "single-branch" for a short time (one tick). This approach allows to have all the multibranch benefits and also get the network with regulating convergence. With a certain confirmation number  calculated, we can propose the strong resistance to the N@S as the long tails switching become very-very unlikely after the confirmations. We'll present the N@S simulation results ASAP.

There are more possible regulation procedures, for sure. Basing on the idea that sometimes nodes switch to the single-branch behavior one can introduce any verifiable quasi-random algorithm to do this. The proposed is the simple but efficient one, however more complicated algos (e.g. based on some nice hashes) could  secure the system more likely.

New paper on tails switching effect had been publicly released (https://github.com/ConsensusResearch/articles-papers/tree/master/switching). However the results of the simulations presented in the paper have been already renewed by the simulation software at https://github.com/ConsensusResearch/ForgingSimulation/tree/multibranch-experimental with the proposed threshold algorithm. As expected the algorithm allows to have confirmation number parameter deducible from the system constants and prevents the prolongation of similar branches. With it the resistance to the N@S becomes feasible and measurable! The results of N@S simulation + switching tails length distribution are coming.