rich1.0npub17w8rw3wtcr03zdsdjhmcj37w0g6l79gsspleltsznexdktv0qw0qd3nc05https://nostr.ae/npub17w8rw3wtcr03zdsdjhmcj37w0g6l79gsspleltsznexdktv0qw0qd3nc05njumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2017-04-08 📝 Original message:Jorge, Suppose someone figures out an ASIC optimization that's completely unrelated that gives X% speed boost over your non-ASICBoosted implementation. If you ban ASICBoost, someone with this optimization can get 51% of the network by adding N machines with their new optimization. If you allow ASICBoost and assuming this gets a 20% speed boost over non-ASICBoosted hardware, someone with this optimization would need 1.2N machines to get 51%. The network in that sense is 20% stronger against this attack in terms of cost. Jimmy On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Jorge Timón <jtimon at jtimon.cc> wrote: > To be more specific, why "being higher will secure the Bitcoin network > better against newer optimizations"? > Or, to be more clear, let's forget about future "optimizations", let's > just think of an attacker. Does asicboost being used by all miners > make the system more secure against an attacker? No, for the attacker > can use asicboost too. > What about the case when not all the miners are using asicboost? Then > the attacker can actually get an advantage by suing asicboost. > > Sometimes people compare asicboost with the use of asics in general as > both providing more security for the network and users. But I don't > think this is accurate. The existence of sha256d asics makes an attack > with general purpose computing hardware (or even more specialized > architectures like gpgpu) much more expensive and unlikely. As an > alternative the attacker can spend additional resources investing in > asics himself (again, making many attacks more expensive and > unlikely). > > But as far as I know, asicboost can be implemented with software > running on general purpose hardware that integrates with regular > sha256d asics. There is probably an advantage on having the asicboost > implementation "in the same box" as the sha256d, yet again the > attacker can invest in hardware with the competitive advantage from > having asicboost more intergrated with the sha256d asics too. > > To reiterate, whether all miners use asicboost or only a subset of > them, I remain unconvinced that provides any additional security to > the network (to be more precise whether that makes "tx history harder > to rewrite"), even if it results on the hashrate charts looking "more > secure". > > > On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 6:27 PM, Jorge Timón <jtimon at jtimon.cc> wrote: > > > > > > On 8 Apr 2017 5:06 am, "Jimmy Song via bitcoin-dev" > > <bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > > > > Praxeology Guy, > > > >> Why would the actual end users of Bitcoin (the long term and short term > >> owners of bitcoins) who run fully verifying nodes want to change Bitcoin > >> policy in order to make their money more vulnerable to 51% attack? > > > > > > Certainly, if only one company made use of the extra nonce space, they > would > > have an advantage. But think of it this way, if some newer ASIC > optimization > > comes up, would you rather have a non-ASICBoosted hash rate to defend > with > > or an ASICBoosted hash rate? Certainly, the latter, being higher will > secure > > the Bitcoin network better against newer optimizations. > > > > > > Why? > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170408/9e9e1ff3/attachment.html>