Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BTC Endgame

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 278 posts

Re: BTC Endgame

#211

Post by keskadale »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

> You don't need proof-of-work to secure a blockchain. You only need game theory

Some people just want to watch the world burn. - Alfred from The Dark Knight

Re: BTC Endgame

#212

Post by keskadale »

hertzrat wrote: post #105
nostrademons wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has, in new cryptocurrencies. Virtually all cryptocurrencies launched since 2017 are proof-of-stake: Cardano, EOS, Stellar, Polkadot, Tezos, TRON. Ethereum is in the process of a very expensive and painful transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The reason you haven't seen this in the global cryptocurrency industry is because of network effects and adoption curves. Most programmers would probably agree th…

> if you're founding a tech company now, you're pretty dumb to use C++ All us unreal engine using indie developers must be pretty dumb then. It’s true that programming in c# in unity is easier, but the end result of the c++ is a prettier game with more things happening at once at a higher frame rate. More grass, more characters, more animations, more AI nuance, more physics interactions, lower system requirements dur…

try rust.

Re: BTC Endgame

#214

Post by Laforet »

wruza wrote: post #193
Laforet wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is best understood as a timestamping service that signs up to 1MB of information every 10 minutes. Recording monetary transactions is only one of its applications. The 10 minute interval is an important part of the consensus mechanism as it has been proven secure both theoretically and practically. With shorter block interval and odds of orphan blocks and small chain reorgs would become more likely and this c…

By the way larger blocks don't take longer to hash - only the fixed size header is used for PoW. Yeah, I forgot about merkle trees or something like that. So, do I get it right, there is no problem in increasing a block size? Just start to sign up to 50MB every 10 minutes in 2022 and that’s it? However larger or more blocks do require more bandwidth and storage to process. But isn’t amount of data depend on tx count?…

The original security model of bitcoins also assumes that:

1. Every network node participates in mining. So everybody is incentivized to keep, validate and forward the blocks they receive as quickly as possible.

2. Anybody should be able to bootstrap a network node and verify the entire blockchain from the genesis block without explicitly trusting any other node. Thus when a new block arrives one can independently verify it.

#1 has not been the case for a few years since the advent of mining pools, whereas #2 might as well be a lost cause. The entire bitcoin blockchain sits at 330GB and counting, and the live UTXO database is rarely below 3GB.

Hence people have argued against making the blocks larger as it could bloat the blockchain to the point that only people with very powerful computers could afford to validate the chain on their own. However with the status quo we are already seeing the number of network nodes stagnate around 10k since 2017 as running one is largely an altruistic effort.

>But isn’t amount of data depend on tx count? No matter how big chunks you split them into, it’s the same bytes per minute in the end. Why hard limit at all?

That is correct. You could also see the limit as putting a minimum cost for putting information on the chain and this could benefit the miners too.

Re: BTC Endgame

#215

Post by jiocrag »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

How do you account for “let the world burn”-type actors in this scenario though? It seems this pulls at the key misunderstanding around crypto and blockchain in general — it can’t sanitize the endpoints.

If any human party has the power to defraud, manipulate, or commit any other nefarious act (as you imply China does), the system is vulnerable.

This is why proof of work provides some level of resilience—you have to be nefarious AND have access to massive compute resources to do harm. China has the compute resources, but not the incentive. A proof of stake power broker may have the incentive and not need the compute.

Re: BTC Endgame

#216

Post by darig »

shivekkhurana wrote: post #208
darig wrote: post #98

I never understood why empty blocks is allowed... you can start immediately and get a head start over other mining pools. Granted it is just the time to load in transactions from the mempool and hash the result of appending them to the blockchain, but still... if you're in a race, why not take any advantage you can get? I've monitored the chain for years, and empty blocks are very very common. I know there is a civil…

The network needs a blocks every 10 minutes or so in order to mint a coinbase transaction (the tx that generates new Bitcoins). This is important to ensure that the network reaches 21million cap on time. If new blocks are not minted every 10 minutes, the calculation to reach 21million will be distorted.

The network adjusts the difficulty (number of prefixed 0's in the hash) based on estimated mining capacity based on a running average time to complete previous blocks. There is no "on time" to reach the 21 million cap. All those "calculations" that would be "distorted" are those of the hedge fund managers who are holding strictly out of speculation.

There is no way to prove an entity hasn't been mining on the side, capable of mining blocks faster than the main chain, even keeping up with increased difficulty, and any day they could publish their chain to the network, and it would be accepted as it was the longest chain. This would obviously destroy bitcoin, so the only reason to do that would be pure terrorism. Exploiting a 51% attack to double spend would also destroy the trust, so any attacker in it for the money is currently just mining empty blocks and getting rewarded for it, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop them.

Once the 21 millions coins are all in the wild, transaction fees will need to be enough to entice them to keep running... otherwise, they cash out and burn it all down. If they aren't capable of burning it all down, perhaps the number of people validating transactions on the network goes way down... and the difficulty goes way down... until eventually all those old people from the mining days could turn their machines back on one day for a much easier 51% that they are now capable of.

The whole thing is a mess.

Re: BTC Endgame

#217

Post by IgorPartola »

3np wrote: post #152
generalizations wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a wild guess that when parent is talking about 'control', they mean that if a miner is located within China, the Chinese government has the ability to put a gun to that miners head and tell them what to do.

"The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away". Neither mining pools (who practically have the actual power over transaction inclusion an ordering) nor the miners are cooperating. I'm also certain the CCP wouldn't be practically able to locate and control all of them that easily.

Hypothetically how long would it take the country that produces most of the computing hardware in the world to simply direct all their factories to build mining ASICs as quickly as possible while not exporting any more GPUs? Of course everyone would know what comes next but I am just curious.

Re: BTC Endgame

#218

Post by zapdrive »

nostrademons wrote: post #17

You don't need a DoS attack under the assumptions of this project. It's already assumed that you control ~80% of hash rate, so you execute a 51% attack that mass double-spends coins and destroy all confidence in the integrity of the currency. Poof, nobody uses it. Note that China already controls ~65% of Bitcoin hash rate, so if they wanted to execute this right now, they probably could. That they haven't is one reas…

>> Stellar.

Lol.

Re: BTC Endgame

#219

Post by retrac »

3np wrote: post #152
generalizations wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd make a wild guess that when parent is talking about 'control', they mean that if a miner is located within China, the Chinese government has the ability to put a gun to that miners head and tell them what to do.

"The mountains are high and the Emperor is far away". Neither mining pools (who practically have the actual power over transaction inclusion an ordering) nor the miners are cooperating. I'm also certain the CCP wouldn't be practically able to locate and control all of them that easily.

Even in Western countries, if draconian anti-cryptocurrency laws were passed and even slightly enforced, it would kill, or at least force into regulation, large-scale mining operations.

Re: BTC Endgame

#220

Post by x1000 »

An interesting aspect of these cryptocurrencies is the aspect of consensus, not through the intended mechanisms like PoW, but through societal acceptance. Look at BTC and BTG (bitcoin and bitcoin gold). One has the suffix of "gold" while the other maintains the (arguably?) superior lack of any such embellishments/augmentations. Was it the miner's decision to call it that? Was it the users?

Look at Ethereum v Ethereum classic. Same deal. We have two chains that share a common history, yet at some point the users of both decided to split and then society had to come to a consensus on what each chain would be called. Again, did the miners sit around and conspire to which chain would be called "Ethereum?" I don't think so. I think the decision was decentralized and emergent.

My point is, even if there was a nefarious actor who attempted a 51% attack, it seems like there would be enough of a societal pressure to ignore their empty blocks. There would exist a chain that would still be valued by the perpetrators, but not so much by the individuals being harmed by such an attack. The attacked chain would be maintained and acquire a new name "Bitcoin Hacked" or something similar, and the chain where society ignores the empty blocks would go on its merry way still being called "bitcoin."

Post reply on HN