rich1.0npub1fx98zxt3lzspjs5f4msr0fxysx5euucm29ghysryju7vpc9j0jzqtcl2d8https://nostr.ae/npub1fx98zxt3lzspjs5f4msr0fxysx5euucm29ghysryju7vpc9j0jzqtcl2d8njumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2017-04-09 📝 Original message:Why won't the attacker use asicboost too? (Please don't say because of patents) On 9 Apr 2017 12:26 am, "Jimmy Song" <jaejoon at gmail.com> wrote: > 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/20170409/96cbca19/attachment.html>