Author

Topic: A big milestone - 2^70 hash operations (Read 1499 times)

legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1077
May 12, 2013, 09:28:21 PM
#13
With this kind of hashing capability, we can already birthday attack MD5/SHA1 fairly easily. Roll Eyes

That's rather interesting, actually. Since MD5 is only 128-bit, a hypothetical Bitcoin network on MD5 would have likely found over 2000 collisions by now. Obviously, collisions are not a problem in this context. But it sheds light into just how powerful the Bitcoin network is.

That hypothetical Bitcoin network would probably die in the near future from lack of space to adjust difficulty into. Bitcoin is lucky to be using 128-bit cryptography.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1000
With this kind of hashing capability, we can already birthday attack MD5/SHA1 fairly easily. Roll Eyes
newbie
Activity: 30
Merit: 0
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
And what percent is that number, from all the possible 2^256 SHA256 hashes?
2^70 / 2^256 = 2^-186 = 1.02 x 10^-56 = 1.02 * 10^-54 %
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000102 %

Very small. Exponents are powerful.

Edit: fixed # of 0's

And just wondering, what happens when it reaches 100% or 2^256. And yes I agree, exponents are amazingly powerful:)

Precisely when we have done 2^255 hashes, when we have 50% left.   
full member
Activity: 182
Merit: 100
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
And what percent is that number, from all the possible 2^256 SHA256 hashes?
2^70 / 2^256 = 2^-186 = 1.02 x 10^-56 = 1.02 * 10^-54 %
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000102 %

Very small. Exponents are powerful.

Edit: fixed # of 0's

And just wondering, what happens when it reaches 100% or 2^256. And yes I agree, exponents are amazingly powerful:)
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1000
0xFB0D8D1534241423
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
And what percent is that number, from all the possible 2^256 SHA256 hashes?
2^70 / 2^256 = 2^-186 = 1.02 x 10^-56 = 1.02 * 10^-54 %
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000102 %

Very small. Exponents are powerful.

Edit: fixed # of 0's
legendary
Activity: 1246
Merit: 1077
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
And what percent is that number, from all the possible 2^256 SHA256 hashes?

That depends on whether or not double-SHA256 is reversible. For our purposes, we can assume it is. If it is, then the chances of a collision is near null and 270 is a very miniscule percentage of all possible double-SHA256 results.

To be exact, 2−186.

NB: If a function f (x → y) is reversible over a domain D, that means that ∀y∈D ∃x such that f(x) = y. Here we define D to be all numbers between 0 and 2256−1.
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1006
Bringing Legendary Har® to you since 1952
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
And what percent is that number, from all the possible 2^256 SHA256 hashes?

I join the question.
legendary
Activity: 1862
Merit: 1011
Reverse engineer from time to time
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
And what percent is that number, from all the possible 2^256 SHA256 hashes?
sr. member
Activity: 293
Merit: 250
But it's still probably just an estimate.

My understanding is that it may overshoot or undershoot between blocks (because it doesn't know the exact number, only the average) but the average over all these years should be very close to the real number.
legendary
Activity: 1862
Merit: 1011
Reverse engineer from time to time
Can you explain how this is being calculated?

You can get the hash count every time there's a SetBestChain in debug.log.

Then you log2 that number.
But it's still probably just an estimate.
sr. member
Activity: 293
Merit: 250
Can you explain how this is being calculated?

You can get the hash count every time there's a SetBestChain in debug.log.

Then you log2 that number.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Can you explain how this is being calculated?
sr. member
Activity: 293
Merit: 250
The Bitcoin network reached a big milestone yesterday: it has performed over 270 (double) hashes since its conception.

Current count is:
1,191,253,457,820,256,820,938 = 270.01297 hashes

making it by far the most powerful distributed network computing system ever to have existed.
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