Ah, darnit. I thought you meant the wine.
Sorry, I forgot this isn't really a forum full of hackers. Just news about hackers.
I'll remember not to comment without wearing my tie.
Ripple is officially open source
41–45 of 45 posts
Re: Ripple is officially open source
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I see it --correct me if I am wrong-- is that Ripple has zero defenses against an attacker controlling many public IPv4 or IPv6 addresses and broadcasting his transactions to effectively control what the consensus is. IOW, attacker-controlled Ripple nodes can outnumber legitimate Ripple nodes, therefore legit Ripple nodes are forced to accept transactions broadcasted by attacker-controlled nodes.
Transactions are accepted if they are signed by private keys, it doesn't matter who broadcasts them. But the reason for fees is to prevent DoS attackers overloading the consensus process with spam transactions. Also, just running a node on an IP address doesn't give you any amount of control. That IP address also has to be other validators' UNL (unique node list).
My point is that if an attacker controls consensus (by having many IP addresses), he can double spend by signing transactions to send coins to an address, then by spaming the network to change the consensus and re-send the same coins to another address.
Re: Ripple is officially open source
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Transactions are accepted if they are signed by private keys, it doesn't matter who broadcasts them. But the reason for fees is to prevent DoS attackers overloading the consensus process with spam transactions. Also, just running a node on an IP address doesn't give you any amount of control. That IP address also has to be other validators' UNL (unique node list).
My point is that if an attacker controls consensus (by having many IP addresses), he can double spend by signing transactions to send coins to an address, then by spaming the network to change the consensus and re-send the same coins to another address.
Not so for two reasons. First, the number of IP addresses you have is irrelevant. Trust is weighted by the number of signatures made with keys that a server has chosen to trust. Second, you can't "change the consensus". Once a consensus is reached on a given ledger, it's irrevocable. Every validator that witnesses the consensus signs the resulting ledger providing cryptographic proof that they agreed to that particular consensus. A transaction is not considered confirmed until the server possesses that cryptographic proof.
Re: Ripple is officially open source
#44When will the creators of Ripple explain why they've premined all the Ripples and kept most of them for themselves?
The concept of "premined" doesn't really apply to a scheme that has no mining. For currencies that use proof of work to solve the double spend problem, mining is a good way to reward miners for providing the useful service of ensuring sufficient proof of work to secure the currency and make it useful before it's possible to do so with transaction fees.
Because Ripple has no need for mining, implementing mining to distribute the currency would basically just be paying people to waste electricity. It would make no sense, and an actual valuable asset (electricity) would be destroyed in the process.
Bitcoin has demonstrated that mining at a significant profit quickly becomes impossible. So long as mining is particularly profitable, more people will do it. More and more resources compete for ever smaller shares of the pie.
Where it secures the currency and the transactions, as it does in Bitcoin, it's an essential service that is worth paying for. Where it is not needed for that purpose, it's a colossal waste of a significant fraction of the value that Bitcoin creates.
Re: Ripple is officially open source
#45When will the creators of Ripple explain why they've premined all the Ripples and kept most of them for themselves?
I have been following the progression of Ripple for some time. But I also get the feeling that Ripple is a huge pyramid scheme. To quote the 2 main criticisms from Wikipedia: 1. Ripple Labs will hold half of all the XRP in existence, in the hope that they will gain value 2. Ripple Labs have repeatedly made claims that they would give away 50 billion Ripples (XRP), but have not done so. So rather than reward early ado…
Either the value of the currency will increase or it won't. If it won't increase, then Ripple Labs will have no reward. If it will increase, then early adopters who buy and hold XRP will be rewarded.
Say Ripple Labs currently holds a chunk of XRP worth $X. Say by January, it goes up to $Y. Then Ripple Labs will turn $X into $Y between now and January. Except an early adopter who bought $X worth of XRP today would also turn $5X into $Y over that same time frame.
The cost to buy Bitcoins is usually pretty close to the cost to mine them, so Bitcoin early adopters didn't get their Bitcoins for free either. Using mining to reward early adopters has proven to be economically infeasible. The cost and reward of mining will adjust, as mining becomes profitable or unprofitable, such that mining will not generally be more rewarding than anything else people might do.
Bitcoin took a lot of criticism for rewarding early adopters. So this is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" kind of thing.