Can't the distributed pool P2Pool easily be updated to account for that? - Sent from my phone Den 4 nov 2013 16:33 skrev "Peter Todd" <p...@petertodd.org>:
> On Mon, Nov 04, 2013 at 09:31:04AM -0430, Karn Kallio wrote: > > > > The paper "Majority is not Enough Bitcoin Mining is Vulnerable" may be of > > interest. > > > > > > http://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243 > > > > Abstract. The Bitcoin cryptocurrency records its transactions in a pub- > > lic log called the blockchain. Its security rests critically on the > > distributed > > protocol that maintains the blockchain, run by participants called > miners. > > Conventional wisdom asserts that the protocol is incentive-compatible > > and secure against colluding minority groups, i.e., it incentivizes > miners > > to follow the protocol as prescribed. > > We show that the Bitcoin protocol is not incentive-compatible. We > > present an attack with which colluding miners obtain a revenue larger > > than their fair share. This attack can have significant consequences for > > Bitcoin: Rational miners will prefer to join the selfish miners, and the > > colluding group will increase in size until it becomes a majority. At > this > > point, the Bitcoin system ceases to be a decentralized currency. > > Selfish mining is feasible for any group size of colluding miners. We > pro- > > pose a practical modification to the Bitcoin protocol that protects > against > > selfish mining pools that command less than 1/4 of the resources. This > > threshold is lower than the wrongly assumed 1/2 bound, but better than > > the current reality where a group of any size can compromise the system. > > I replied on the bitcoin-development email list with what I believe is a > better solution than presented in the paper. In particular my solution > returns the attack threshold to 51%, rather than the 25% they achieve: > > > Remember that the selfish miner strategy outlined in the paper is > essentially a way to use knowledge of what blocks miners will be mining > on, from the "first seen" rule, and the ability to broadcast blocks you > have mined more widely than other miners. That knowledge and ability is > then used in conjunction with a small lead (obtainable by chance) to > outpace the rest of the network. > > By making all miners easily identifiable you make gaining that > informational and broadcast capability easier to obtain rather than > harder. The attacker now only needs to connect to every identified miner > with especially fast nodes. With judicious use of DoS attacks and low > latency they can still gain the informational and broadcast "upper hand" > over other miners and carry out the attack. > > Where the paper goes wrong is they don't recognize the fundemental > nature of the strategy being based on an informational advantage. Their > "pick a random side of the fork" strategy may work to some extent, but > it's incomplete and isn't necessarily rational for the miners > individually. > > The correct, and rational, approach for a miner is to always mine to > extend the block that the majority of hashing power is trying to extend. > The current relay rules don't give you that information at all, but they > can if we do two things: > > 1) Relay all blocks that meet the PoW target. (as suggested in the > paper) > > 2) Relay block headers that nearly meet the PoW target. > > Mining strategy is now to mine to extend the first block you see, on the > assumption that the earlier one probably propagated to a large portion > of the total hashing power. But as you receive "near-blocks" that are > under the PoW target, use them to estimate the hashing power on each > fork, and if it looks like you are not on the majority side, switch. > > This very effectively defeats the paper's selfish-miner strategy, as all > miners will very quickly be mining on the block that truly has the > majority of hashing power trying to extend it. This is also a better > overall outcome, because it puts the 51% attack threshhold back at 51% > > > http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg03137.html > > -- > 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org > 0000000000000002229a07d0a264dd3f687d3d93d6eb14f26205d5dab8db5afa > > _______________________________________________ > cryptography mailing list > cryptography@randombit.net > http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography > >
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