rich1.0npub1e46n428mcyfwznl7nlsf6d3s7rhlwm9x3cmkuqzt3emmdpadmkaqqjxmcuhttps://nostr.ae/npub1e46n428mcyfwznl7nlsf6d3s7rhlwm9x3cmkuqzt3emmdpadmkaqqjxmcunjumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2015-12-20 📝 Original message:Peter was referring to pool-block-withholding, not selfish mining. On December 19, 2015 7:34:26 PM PST, Chris Priest via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >Block witholding attacks are only possible if you have a majority of >hashpower. If you only have 20% hashpower, you can't do this attack. >Currently, this attack is only a theoretical attack, as the ones with >all the hashpower today are not engaging in this behavior. Even if >someone who had a lot of hashpower decided to pull off this attack, >they wouldn't be able to disrupt much. Once that time comes, then I >think this problem should be solved, until then it should be a low >priority. There are more important things to work on in the meantime. > >On 12/19/15, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev ><bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >> At the recent Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong we had a >chatham >> house rules workshop session attending by representitives of a super >> majority of the Bitcoin hashing power. >> >> One of the issues raised by the pools present was block withholding >> attacks, which they said are a real issue for them. In particular, >pools >> are receiving legitimate threats by bad actors threatening to use >block >> withholding attacks against them. Pools offering their services to >the >> general public without anti-privacy Know-Your-Customer have little >> defense against such attacks, which in turn is a threat to the >> decentralization of hashing power: without pools only fairly large >> hashing power installations are profitable as variance is a very real >> business expense. P2Pool is often brought up as a replacement for >pools, >> but it itself is still relatively vulnerable to block withholding, >and >> in any case has many other vulnerabilities and technical issues that >has >> prevented widespread adoption of P2Pool. >> >> Fixing block withholding is relatively simple, but (so far) requires >a >> SPV-visible hardfork. (Luke-Jr's two-stage target mechanism) We >should >> do this hard-fork in conjunction with any blocksize increase, which >will >> have the desirable side effect of clearly show consent by the entire >> ecosystem, SPV clients included. >> >> >> Note that Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer have argued(1) that block >> witholding attacks are a good thing, as in their model they can be >used >> by small pools against larger pools, disincentivising large pools. >> However this argument is academic and not applicable to the real >world, >> as a much simpler defense against block withholding attacks is to use >> anti-privacy KYC and the legal system combined with the variety of >> withholding detection mechanisms only practical for large pools. >> Equally, large hashing power installations - a dangerous thing for >> decentralization - have no block withholding attack vulnerabilities. >> >> 1) http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/03/the-miners-dilemma/ >> >> -- >> 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org >> 00000000000000000188b6321da7feae60d74c7b0becbdab3b1a0bd57f10947d >> >_______________________________________________ >bitcoin-dev mailing list >bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org >https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev