deleted

[iddo]

So is this possible? And if so what will happen to the ltc block chain?

Nothing much will happen to the LTC blockchain: if it's an attack with really huge hashpower then he can try to fork from an earlier block, but still it has to be a block after a checkpoint and not e.g. the genesis block. However, an attack from an earlier block is probably infeasible, because he'd have to compete with the hashpower that already did that work and then race with the current hashpower, so I suppose that instead he means forking from the current block. So while the attack takes place and he starts building the forked chain, he can deposit LTC to btc-e, trade them for BTC, withdraw the BTC, then broadcast his forked chain so the person he traded with who got the LTC will actually get nothing. Therefore, if everyone just doesn't trade on btc-e while the attack takes place, then there would be no victims of a double-spending attack, and the only thing that the attacker will gain is the 50 LTC block rewards in his forked chain (meaning that he'd earn the same amount of LTC by mining regularly instead of forking).

[flower1024]

So is this possible? And if so what will happen to the ltc block chain?

Sure it's possible, it's only between 400-600 gpus required. And thats not impossible to get ahold of. What will happen? People won't trust it anymore so they will sell and abandon it. Thats what will happen.

Yes, it's possible. Not even bitcoin is immune from 51% attacks. Though with bitcoin it's much harder, but then someone with an ASIC can attack it if they wanted to. Satoshi did say that people would not try to 51% bitcoin, because if they had that much hash power, they would earn more money by mining it normally than by attacking it. This is true with Litecoin right now. If BCX used his hashpower to mine Litecoin, he would make more money than to try to do a double spend with a 51% attack.

If BCX is just going to fork the chain for 24 hours. Then what would happen is that all transactions within that 24 hours period would be reverted. And those transactions will then be replayed on the new forked chain if they are still applicable. If they cannot be replayed, then a double spend will happen. (Reminds me when I did a "git rebase" on the litecoin code just a few days ago and ran into a ton of merge conflicts.) Normally, only the attacker would be able to double spend his coins. Since no one else is aware of the attack and would be able to muck with his transactions to double spend them. But the double spend by the attacker will have ripple effects that would potentially invalidate a lot of other transactions.

I think Litecoin needs some centralization right now. Oh wait...

corrected for you

[smoothie]

So is this possible? And if so what will happen to the ltc block chain?

Sure it's possible, it's only between 400-600 gpus required. And thats not impossible to get ahold of. What will happen? People won't trust it anymore so they will sell and abandon it. Thats what will happen.

Yes, it's possible. Not even bitcoin is immune from 51% attacks. Though with bitcoin it's much harder, but then someone with an ASIC can attack it if they wanted to. Satoshi did say that people would not try to 51% bitcoin, because if they had that much hash power, they would earn more money by mining it normally than by attacking it. This is true with Litecoin right now. If BCX used his hashpower to mine Litecoin, he would make more money than to try to do a double spend with a 51% attack.

If BCX is just going to fork the chain for 24 hours. Then what would happen is that all transactions within that 24 hours period would be reverted. And those transactions will then be replayed on the new forked chain if they are still applicable. If they cannot be replayed, then a double spend will happen. (Reminds me when I did a "git rebase" on the litecoin code just a few days ago and ran into a ton of merge conflicts.) Normally, only the attacker would be able to double spend his coins. Since no one else is aware of the attack and would be able to muck with his transactions to double spend them. But the double spend by the attacker will have ripple effects that would potentially invalidate a lot of other transactions.

I think Litecoin needs some centralization right now. Oh wait...

corrected for you

LAWL!!!! And the sock puppets still get owned even during an LTC event hahaha

[smoothie]

August 2010 is not early enough to finance this endeavor. Even I found out about BTC at the time, to bad I didn't think much of it back then....

The point is: difficulty was already significant.

Difficulty in 2010 wasnt anything. I started in Early may of 2011 and I made bank with bitcoin mining.

BCX is right you dont have a clue what you are talking about.

[coblee]

So is this possible? And if so what will happen to the ltc block chain?

Nothing much will happen to the LTC blockchain: if it's an attack with really huge hashpower then he can try to fork from an earlier block, but still it has to be a block after a checkpoint and not e.g. the genesis block. However, an attack from an earlier block is probably infeasible, because he'd have to compete with the hashpower that already did that work and then race with the current hashpower, so I suppose that instead he means forking from the current block. So while the attack takes place and he starts building the forked chain, he can deposit LTC to btc-e, trade them for BTC, withdraw the BTC, then broadcast his forked chain so the person he traded with who got the LTC will actually get nothing. Therefore, if everyone just doesn't trade on btc-e while the attack takes place, then there would be no victims of a double-spending attack, and the only thing that the attacker will gain is the 50 LTC block rewards in his forked chain (meaning that he'd earn the same amount of LTC by mining regularly instead of forking).

Exactly. But there's no way you can expect people to not trade on the exchanges. And if the exchange uses BCX's litecoins to pay out any withdrawals, those payments will be reverted when BCX's fork is announced. So in the end, some people will lose some coins. The loss of coins would be nothing compared to the Bitcoinica hack/theft/incompetence fiasco. But, it would be interesting to see what kind of effect this has on Litecoin. Would people rally behind it and put more hashpower into it to prevent further attacks? Or would people lose trust in the coin because another attack can happen any time in the future? I don't think it will kill Litecoin, but it will likely put a hurting on the price for some time, which may not be a bad thing in the long run.

[ElectricMucus]

August 2010 is not early enough to finance this endeavor. Even I found out about BTC at the time, to bad I didn't think much of it back then....

The point is: difficulty was already significant.

I started mining when the diff was 352, I made a killing buying early on and selling at the peak.

Stick to things you know about from experience. Mining isn't the only way to make profit in Bitcoin.

And lemme guess you wrote your own gpu miner? IIRC those were only for sale.. not free.
With CPU a block a day or something.

But right I didn't mine at the time, were looking at the dollar value and thought it wasn't worth the hassle  

[smoothie]

August 2010 is not early enough to finance this endeavor. Even I found out about BTC at the time, to bad I didn't think much of it back then....

The point is: difficulty was already significant.

I started mining when the diff was 352, I made a killing buying early on and selling at the peak.

Stick to things you know about from experience. Mining isn't the only way to make profit in Bitcoin.

And lemme guess you wrote your own gpu miner? IIRC those were only for sale.. not free.
With CPU a block a day or something.

But right I didn't mine at the time, were looking at the dollar value and thought it wasn't worth the hassle  

Ever hear of a cluster or a botnet or a supercomputer?....all viable mining options back then

[Etlase2]

Sadly I actually protected LTC in the early days with a huge amount of hash power to fend off 51% attacks by the Solidcoin crew. Over the course of the last year I've bought a couple thousand BTC of LTC to bump it up ahead of SC and keep prices stable.

But hey, looks like the LTC community needs an attitude adjustment.

~BCX~

So infantile, yet so apt.

[ElectricMucus]

right if BTCX is what he/she/it/not sure speaks it would make sense to have had to own a botnet.

But I doubt even that. My guess is rented ddos+ec2==btcx's power

[Tittiez]

Well, somebody with a big ltc investment might want to also buy a fuckton of EC2's and defend the blockchain. Just a thought

[smoothie]

Well, somebody with a big ltc investment might want to also buy a fuckton of EC2's and defend the blockchain. Just a thought

Or sell...

[i_rape_bitcoins]

Well, somebody with a big ltc investment might want to also buy a fuckton of EC2's and defend the blockchain. Just a thought

As stated in the AWS acceptable use policy of disallowed activities on their network:
Intentional Interference. Interfering with the proper functioning of any System, including any deliberate attempt to overload a system by mail bombing, news bombing, broadcast attacks, or flooding techniques.

Have fun tracking down one of BCX's instances. Also, this would be master debatable, clients following the longest block chain is by design, so I would argue his 51% attack would "[interfere] with the proper functioning of any System."

[coblee]

And lemme guess you wrote your own gpu miner? IIRC those were only for sale.. not free.
With CPU a block a day or something.

Hey the dummy is finally getting a clue. I didn't write it, an engineer I work with did. It wasn't as good as ArtForz who had one first, but it did the trick!


@Coblee


Just curious, do you think I have the ability and have any chance at success of 51% LTC...


~BCX~

Of course. It's a lot harder than it was when Litecoin first came out. But you just have to DDoS all the pools, which we know you are capable of. Then while people are down, you throw a few hundred EC2 instances and a few hundred GPUs at it to fork a chain.

The best defense we have is to solo mine or use p2pool. That way a DDoS won't take all the miners down and it would require more resources to try to outpace the main network.

[ElectricMucus]

Hey the dummy is finally getting a clue. I didn't write it, an engineer I work with did. It wasn't as good as ArtForz who had one first, but it did the trick!

Alright lets say you are speaking the truth: You would have to create significant selling pressure in the bitcoin market in order to pay for the ec2 rent. Added to that the BTC you sold are gone.

Even assuming that you can buy back some if you play the market right lower than you brought it down it would be nearly impossble to come out of it in the green.

[Tittiez]

https://btc-e.com/exchange/ltc_btc

Crash

[bitlane]

*YAWN*

Is this attack gonna start soon or not ?

I am getting really tired of generating all of these VALID Solo Mined Blocks......

Current Network Hash Rate - 267,721 KH/s ...AND GROWING.

Let's see a Bitcoin Miner 51% that...LMAO

( I will make it simply - Your 300 MH/s BTC Mining HD5830 will struggle to do 290 KH/s while LTC mining.....DO THE MATH )

700 EC2s that hash like DOG SHIT, add another 5000 GPUs (perhaps 2500x 5970s, since you are OLD school) and you MIGHT have a chance.

[disclaimer201]

https://btc-e.com/exchange/ltc_btc

Crash

Thank you for the buying opportunity.

[VelvetLeaf]

Very interesting. One of these things will happen :

1. Attack is not successful but people will continue to sell many litecoins at cheap price now due to panic selling.
People that have BTC stock will buy loads of them because it's very cheap

2. Attack is successful.
A brand new alt coin will be created somewhere around October - December with promise to deal with this 10% attack.

3. People will switch to solo mining to protect the network
This will cause uncertainity, because you'll see Unknown suddenly has big hash power.
You don't know whether it's btc's buddy or people that protect litecoin network.

4. Trade will be stopped momentarily.
People will choose to wait and see, some will switch back to mine bitcoin, litecoin network will lose a lot of hash power.

5. People that invest and have bought many litecoin or people that still mine bitcoin with GPU and plan to switch in October will choose to protect the network.
Hash power will be bigger than before, and will strengthen the network even more.

[bitlane]

THREAT OF ATTACK WAS TO CAUSE PANIC AND PRICE CRASH, LEAVING CHEAP BUY ORDERS TO BE FILLED.

...and NOTHING more. He simply CAN NOT pull it off.

[smoothie]

Very interesting. One of these things will happen :

1. Attack is not successful but people will continue to sell many litecoins at cheap price now due to panic selling.
People that have BTC stock will buy loads of them because it's very cheap

2. Attack is successful.
A brand new alt coin will be created somewhere around October - December with promise to deal with this 10% attack.

3. People will switch to solo mining to protect the network
This will cause uncertainity, because you'll see Unknown suddenly has big hash power.
You don't know whether it's btc's buddy or people that protect litecoin network.

4. Trade will be stopped momentarily.
People will choose to wait and see, some will switch back to mine bitcoin, litecoin network will lose a lot of hash power.

5. People that invest and have bought many litecoin or people that still mine bitcoin with GPU and plan to switch in October will choose to protect the network.
Hash power will be bigger than before, and will strengthen the network even more.

6. Profit