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Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

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Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#331

Post by marcosdumay »

zikduruqe wrote: post #255
mapt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I correct in assuming that beyond a certain point, this is basically an existence proof for somebody having a quantum-supreme solution to Shor's Algorithm? "Here's $400,000 sitting on the table, hope nobody takes it" which triggers an alarm telling us to replace all our old prequantum cryptography.

That, or it is a trap to catch time travelers. :)

Well, a time-traveling computer can solve problems of an entirely different (much larger and a strict superset) category than the ones a quantum computer can.

You don't even need to travel far. A second or so is enough to break all cryptography, even the post-quantum one.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#332

Post by gosub100 »

nkrisc wrote: post #164
hoerzu wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private mempool transaction

I’m a relatively smart person, probably above average, but glad bitcoin hasn’t taken over banking because I don’t understand any of this.

I've never used any coins in my life, but I think what is unique here is that the reward IS the entire wallet itself, not just a transaction from the "contest holder". They revealed many of the bits of the private key already. Somehow, you cannot use the wallet without briefly revealing the rest of the private bits.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#333

Post by marcosdumay »

dheera wrote: post #210
wkat4242 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this isn't a normal key. It's a key with extremely reduced entropy for the sake of the puzzle. Most of the private key is already known and is in fact all zero. So this would not be possible with a normal Bitcoin transaction with regular entropy.

But I guess this means that all Bitcoin transactions have half the entropy we think they do?

Well, no, because "we" think it has half the entropy their length implies. This is widely known, and the length was selected with that information in mind.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#335

Post by GTP »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #330
GTP wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, while the two problems share the same name, the one on elliptic curves is matematically different from the one over finite fields modulo a prime number.

I politely don’t understand this. It’s taught in cryptography 101 that breaking ecc is just solving the discrete logarithm problem and there’s a ton of online articles about how to break ecc if you’ve solved the discrete logarithm problem (not that anyone has).

It's indeed called the discrete logarithm problem both in the case of finite fields modulo some number and elliptic curves modulo a number. In the first case, you are reversing an exponentiation, so you're indeed computing a logarithm. But in the case of elliptic curves you're not dealing with exponentiation, you're instead reversing the multiplication of a curve element (i. e. a point) by a scalar. The two problems (and the way you solve them) look similar in the end, and I think this is why we ended up using the same name. But, if we nitpick, those are different operations and so the two problems are different, despite the similarities.

Note for cryptographers/matematicians: I know that "reversing" isn't the correct term here, so you could accuse me of the same sin I'm calling out in my previous comment. But it makes the explanation shorter while still conveying the correct meaning in the end.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#336

Post by bdamm »

orf wrote: post #302
keepamovin wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that thread is nuts. Scrolled up just a bit saw this. My new public key search system is almost ready. I had to reinvent my binary database system because, although the database was lightweight https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5475626 , I had efficiency issues with binary search. This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file, yes, what you r…

> This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file That’s 0.0064 bits per public key - so either there are lots of duplicates, or something is amiss here? Edit: they don’t actually store the keys, so the quote is misleading.

Presumably there is a generator function that maps key IDs into actual keys that can be re-computed at will.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#337

Post by orf »

bdamm wrote: post #336
orf wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is now a thing of the past. I have designed a system that stores 100 million public keys in an 80 KB file That’s 0.0064 bits per public key - so either there are lots of duplicates, or something is amiss here? Edit: they don’t actually store the keys, so the quote is misleading.

Presumably there is a generator function that maps key IDs into actual keys that can be re-computed at will.

How could this work with less than 1 bit of data per key?

Assuming there are no duplicates, which is a sensible assumption, you’d need a minimum of 100,000,000 bits to store 100,000,000 unique entries larger than 1 bit with even a perfect hash function.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#338

Post by motoxpro »

nadahalli wrote: post #240
motoxpro wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as this sucks, I absolutely love how the blockchain is real life version of a Dark Forest

You will like this 2020 classic piece by the folks at Paradigm: https://www.paradigm.xyz/2020/08/ethereum-is-a-dark-forest

I have read this and I LOVE it.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#339

Post by qingcharles »

aeturnum wrote: post #10
ForHackernews wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a "puzzle"? Throwing compute at brute-forcing a random number doesn't seem like solving a puzzle to me, it's basically how bitcoin works.

I think the puzzle idea is that, if you could figure out a weakness in the hash, you could claim it faster than the brute force approach. So each prize that's claimed "on schedule" supports the idea that there aren't any widely known shortcuts. Obviously if you found a shortcut in the hash you might do other things first, but I think that's the idea.

It'd be possible to guess it right first time, though, in theory, if you were really, really lucky.

Re: Bitcoin puzzle #66 was solved: 6.6 BTC (~$400k) withdrawn

#340

Post by Scramblejams »

alex_duf wrote: post #293
TrapLord_Rhodo wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all bitcoin is... If someone had a quantum-supreme solution they would go after the sitoshi wallets. Some addresses have like $1B+ and combined represent ~$200B.

But touch that $1B+ wallet and suddenly nothing is worth anything... so if I had the capability to silently steal money from the bitcoin blockchain, I would go slow, and in discrete places.

Coin ignorant here: Why would it not be worth anything?
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