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Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

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Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#31

Post by jksmith »

idiotsecant wrote: post #26
rawtxapp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most end-users won't be acting as payment gateways, they'll all have private channels, so they won't appear in the routing graphs. The number of routing nodes would be many magnitude smaller than total number of LN users. It's working fine for now with growing adoption (1ml.com) and I believe it'll only get better with time.

Sure, but in order to accommodate more users you need more routing nodes. Exponential scaling is a funny thing- systems work perfectly right up until they catastrophically fail. That's why it's important to understand these kinds of problems ahead of time, which LN is determined not to do.

>> which LN is determined not to do.

What's the source of your opinion?

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#35

Post by null0pointer »

idiotsecant wrote: post #21
rawtxapp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's L2, but you can have different types of L2s. With lightning network, you're opening and closing channels with a counterparty using on-chain transactions, so each channel can be tied back to an on-chain transaction. Before someone points out that it would require tons of on-chain transactions to onboard everyone onto it, you can batch thousands of channel open/closes into a single transaction with new protocol up…

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherent…

The main issue with LN is even more fundamental than that. Their argument against other scaling solutions was basically "if we scale on chain the hardware requirements will be hard for regular people to keep up and decentralization will suffer". So instead they went about and created a system where only the wealthy have the capital to commit to open enough channels and route payments. LN is almost totally antithetical to crypto in that it enables the creation of the very thing crypto sought to destroy; gatekeeping payment processors. Bitcoin was co-opted by Blockstream and co. who wanted to become Visa/Mastercard-like rent seeking middlemen.

Opinion part: Monero is technically superior to Bitcoin in basically every way.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#36

Post by runeks »

kristofferR wrote: post #33

This title is way underselling this. As far as I could gather from a quick googling, this is the largest single bug bounty payout in history.

Along with the bounty for this one: https://gerhard-wagner.medium.com/double-spending-bug-in-pol... (also $2M [1])

[1] https://portswigger.net/daily-swig/polygon-pays-out-record-2...

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#37

Post by rawtxapp »

idiotsecant wrote: post #26
rawtxapp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most end-users won't be acting as payment gateways, they'll all have private channels, so they won't appear in the routing graphs. The number of routing nodes would be many magnitude smaller than total number of LN users. It's working fine for now with growing adoption (1ml.com) and I believe it'll only get better with time.

Sure, but in order to accommodate more users you need more routing nodes. Exponential scaling is a funny thing- systems work perfectly right up until they catastrophically fail. That's why it's important to understand these kinds of problems ahead of time, which LN is determined not to do.

Look at it this way, if x = number of total users, routing nodes will grow O(log x), not O(c^x). The users can grow exponentially, the routing nodes won't because the marginal cost of processing an extra transaction from an end-user is very close to 0.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#38

Post by voldacar »

null0pointer wrote: post #35
idiotsecant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherent…

The main issue with LN is even more fundamental than that. Their argument against other scaling solutions was basically "if we scale on chain the hardware requirements will be hard for regular people to keep up and decentralization will suffer". So instead they went about and created a system where only the wealthy have the capital to commit to open enough channels and route payments. LN is almost totally antithetica…

>Monero is technically superior to Bitcoin in basically every way

I see how this is true from a privacy perspective, but how does monero solve the issue of the blockchain eventually becoming too large for an ordinary person to run a node on their pc? the bitcoin blockchain is already several hundred gigabytes

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#39

Post by jeffalbertson »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #19
serverholic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum didn't start that way, it had to build trust over time just like any other project. Eventually L2s will get there too.

Same with Polygon their Ethereum L2+Sidechaining scaling solutions. Polygon is quickly building a reputation for solid secure code, mostly because their team kicks ass and is proactive.

I mean they just disclosed a 1.6mil hack 40days ago.

I like polygon and unfortunately feel like hacks/stolen funds are part of the maturing process for blockchain projects but im not yet ready to say they are building a reputation for solid secure code.

Re: Attacking an Ethereum L2 with Unbridled Optimism

#40

Post by kingo55 »

null0pointer wrote: post #35
idiotsecant wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not even the most fundamental issue with LN though, it's not a fully thought out system. As LN node count increases the routing complexity increases exponentially, which is the classic problem of routing issues on large graphs that literally every networked system has. The internet solves this with some degree of human intervention to tip the scales to particular routes, which is something that the LN inherent…

The main issue with LN is even more fundamental than that. Their argument against other scaling solutions was basically "if we scale on chain the hardware requirements will be hard for regular people to keep up and decentralization will suffer". So instead they went about and created a system where only the wealthy have the capital to commit to open enough channels and route payments. LN is almost totally antithetica…

RE: Monero, I agree. One shortfall - how do we verify no one on the network has found and exploited an inflation bug?
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