Topic: blockchain flaw - can't function when sovereign firewalls break the internet (Read 228 times)

getting closer to catching up. in the mean time the "double spend" issue is real.

https://mit-online.getsmarter.com/presentations/lp/mit-blockchain-technologies-online-short-course/?ef_id=c:347183029811_d:c_n:g_ti:kwd-384655939375_p:_k:%2Bmit%20%2Bblockchain_m:b_a:62211724254&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIueWWi7Cz8AIVAbbtCh0gbQDjEAAYASAAEgK3svD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Thanks to all who responded. I hope to be back soon after more reading and respond to y'alls input.

Been away and hope to catch up soon on these posts. I did find this:

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/12207/countrywide-internet-isolation-inevitable-fork

I'll try and catch up asap and rejoin this thread.

I think this fork would be easier said than done. How would blocks be prohibited by location? If partitions are leaky, one side could send blocks from a server located in their enemy's territory. The mining algorithm could be changed, however, this would create demand for chips used in ASICs that would likely be already in short supply due to the war. Changing the mining algorithm would also cause that side's miners to become worthless unless said equipment is used to mine on their enemy's blockchain. One partition could force blocks to be signed with a private key provided by the government, however, a successful hack would render this useless.

This is slightly off-topic, but the bolded sentence provoked a thought. Bitcoin is censorship resistant, and in modest amounts can be anonymous* (*in fact bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous, however, someone can use techniques that can make it nearly impossible to link a transaction to the identity of the person, and there are layer 2 protocols such as LN that will allow someone to transfer money anonymously with limitations and assumptions), so encouraging one side to abandon bitcoin would make it more difficult for the other side to pay for things such as spies or dissidents.

To address your point, I did mention one side potentially whitelisting addresses (UTXO), and that side's miners would only confirm transactions from that side's UTXO set. Or that side could allow fees to be much lower to be included in found blocks from that UTXO set (to hide the fact they are using a whitelist).


42% cannot reliably pull off a long-term 51% attack, however, the 42% I mentioned is only in one part of China where there are/were power issues. I am not familiar with electricity prices in China, however, I would expect there to be miners in other parts of China to be sufficient to pull off a 51% attack. The actual percentage of miners may have been greater than 42% as miners are (presumably) being delivered to customers every day.

I have doubts the drop in mining capacity was due to pool outages. I am not aware of any pools outright going offline. Pools make their money from fees associated with finding blocks, so I believe it is safe to assume that all pools have failover servers located in diverse locations. It is also expensive to send data to China, so I would think miners would tend to avoid having their miners connecting to a pool server located in China from outside of China.


I don't think a nuclear war would last very long. A WW3 involving nuclear weapons being successfully deployed would probably be over within hours if that long. It is possible that missile defense systems would render nuclear missiles useless, and that submarine dragnets would make launching from a submarine or warship unfeasible. As in WW2, I think once one side is able to successfully launch a nuclear weapon against the other side, the war will end shortly thereafter; idk if this means going back to the stone age, or if one side is able to survive with fairly nominal damage.

In addition to this ^, we could somehow find ways to communicate with other communities around the world without using the regular internet. We could use Decentralized Satellites (and other mean I wouldn't want to mention now) to establish safe communications with the rest of the global network. Those who remain then will certainly need it. You can't solely rely on centralized satellites due to the possibility of censorship.

A well Decentralized and global multi-Blockchain Network that exists as a Unit would allow communities to seperate/split from the entire Decentralized Network to become local Networks within their countries/communities.  This is why it's very important to build the right kind of Decentralized Network that allows that kind of splitting when a serious global crisis develops... An Ethiopia community on the Network for example could split to continue using their Network locally, probably on some sort of Intranet in an isolated location or the community's village.   The community could rejoin the global network if they find a safe global internet.
And it should be possible to print out the Blockchain ledger on papers and use it entirely offline or physically without phones or computer. Or you could print part of the ledger occasionally and buy and sell with the printout. This should survive any kind of crisis better than any system.

NOTE: I'll delete my post wheen the offending post is deleted.

This comment is a waste of time and space. It has nothing to do with the question at hand. It is just clutter making it more difficult to follow this thread and adding nothing useful to the conversation. This is WHY I block EVERYONE participating in a signature advertisement campaign.  I'll be reporting this to the campaign manager. I hope everyone else will too:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=1052091

I've already covered this above.

There are 3 possibilities.

1. Complete and effective partitioning of the internet for an extended period of time. Absolutely 0 communication from one partition to another.
In this case, there is no concern.  There will naturally form a separate blockchain for each partition. There will be plenty of time for intelligent people in each partition to realize that they need to protect their blockchain from the possibility of not being the partition with the MOST hashpower.  Checkpoints or forking changes will be implemented. After the war there will be one of 3 possibilities:

• The world is blown into the stone age. Money (Bitcoin, Fiat, Gold, Silver, etc) no longer matters. The only things of value are food, water, and ammunition/weapons. If it doesn't keep you alive, it really doesn't have any value to you.
• There is a clear "winner". They force their blockchain on everyone. Any other fiat is worthless. Any precious metal is likely to be demanded/confiscated by the winner to be used to rebuild their empire.
• There is no clear winner. There are multiple blockchains, one for each partition, for a while. It may be easy to reconcile, or one may grow to be the dominant one over time.

2. The partitions are VERY leaky.  Blocks and transactions leak easily between the partitions and Bitcoin continues exactly as it is today. Perhaps governments start getting involved in mining.  They may do so to protect the interests of their own citizens, or they may do so to attempt to interfere with the transactions of their enemies.  Regardless, the mining arms race means that security of the blockchain is increased, and no single entity gains sole control over the blockchain.  Some partitions may choose to create forks that they have more control over. See #1 above.

3. The partitions are slightly leaky.  Initially, some large reorgs a few hours or days deep occur in some partitions. Those partitions that suffered a reorg quickly rush to roll out a forking change so that blocks from outside their partition will be rejected. See # 1 above.

The partition with the largest amount of hashpower MIGHT try to follow the forking changes of their biggest enemy in an attempt to interfere with their commerce, however doing so will force all their own citizens to follow the forking change, and will put themselves at risk if they fail to maintain that hashpower superiority. Continuing to try to follow forking changes is likely to just convince the attacked partition to abandon Bitcoin, which means a lot of money and resources will have been wasted by the attacker without doing any significant or lasting damage. Or, perhaps the attacked partition implements a forking change that the attacker CAN'T follow.  Off the top of my head, they could implement a blacklist and whitelist of UTXO, but I suspect that better ideas would be presented.


42% isn't enough to perform a 51% attack.  Additionally, depending on the form that the war takes, it may be difficult to operate that much hashpower continuously.  Additionally, I'm not convinced that 42% of the hashpower exists within the boarders of China.  I suspect that a significant portion of the drop seen during blackouts was due to POOL outages (where some of that actual hashpower was running outside of China).


This was all a silly "thought experiment" involving the fear of 4 (or more) fully operational but partitioned communication systems.

I agree. In any real, globe-spanning, military war with modern armed forces there would be incredible loss of life, infrastructure, resources, power, communications, banking, food, clean water, shelter, medical care, and more.  Governments would work VERY hard to maintain the usability of their fiat currency, but unless one partition was OVERWHELMINGLY more powerful (resulting in maintaining a reasonable lifestyle for its citizens) all forms of money would likely be abandoned pretty quickly.  What good does your gold do me if I can't eat it, drink it, or kill my enemies with it? Same for Fiat, Bitcoin, or anything else.

Lets hope you're right.  I don't think I'd want to live in a post-WW3 world.  I'd prefer that one of the earliest nukes hit as close to my home as possible and I simply cease to exist before I ever know the war started.

Posting as a thought experiment...

I think it would be more likely there would be internment "blackouts" of communications between the "partitions" rather than communication being permanently disrupted. I would also argue that information would flow between China and Russia, and between the US and the EU, although both sides may try to interrupt communication between the other side. In the event of "blackouts" that last several hours at a time, there will be reorgs dozens of blocks deep, and whichever side has the greater total of (hashrate * "luck" during the blackout) will have their version of the blockchain be built upon by the entire network. if the "blackout" is longer, the reorg will be deeper. If some information can be smuggled across the partitions (but not sufficient information that can be transmitted quickly enough for nodes to sync), one side could spend coin on both blockchains, causing economic harm to the other side.

Being that, based on the hashrate drop immediately after rolling electric blackouts in one region of China, there is likely at least ~42% of the total network hashrate located in China. This means in the event of WW3, the Chinese government could potentially seize the miners located in their country and use them to harm the other side via something resembling a 51% attack. This may not involve double spending on a mass scale, but it may involve preventing transactions to/from companies based on the other side from being confirmed. Or they could have companies based in their country (and their citizens) provide a list of deposit addresses belonging to their company, and transactions not involving these addresses could have difficulty confirming.

If there was a long-term near-blackout in which communication was cutoff for the duration of the war, I think some coin would probably get spent multiple times via information smuggling on a small scale. If there is a clear winner in a WW3, I think whichever side wins the war would have their version of the blockchain be the "valid" blockchain for the rest of the world. This is not a technical argument, this is just how wars work -- whoever wins the war, gets to write the history books.

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I think in the event of a WW3, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will probably not fare very well. Electricity could become scarce, which may cause average block times to fluctuate widely, and both sides of a WW3 would probably try to pull off something similar to a 51% discussed above. Both sides may try to take out internet (communications) and/or power infrastructure in areas known to have concentrations of mining farms, harming the other side's economy. Using cryptocurrency could be frowned upon out of fear that transactions are helping the other side economically.

I also believe globalization has reduced the risk of another World War involving militaries fighting each other "in person". There are too many countries that rely very heavily on a large network of other countries to keep their economies running, and this network of countries includes countries that are likely to be on opposing sides in any WW3.

Absolutely.  Initially, the average time per block will increase as there will be less mining hash power within the partition than the total hashpower of the world prior to the partition.  Once the next difficulty adjustment block is reached, the difficulty target will be auto-adjusted so that mining is less difficult and the average time between blocks will drop closer to 10 minutes.  If no additional hashpower is added to or removed from the partition over the next 2 weeks, the next difficulty adjustment will bring things back to the usual 10 minute average.

The risk in this situation is that some partitions may have more hash power than others.  Therefore, their blockchains will have more total proof of work.  If one of those blockchains were to leak into a partition with less hashpower, it could trigger a reorganization of the blockchain in that lower hashpower partition which would replace ALL the blocks with those in the chain from the partition with more total hashpower.

This is why I suggested that each partition would likely implement code that prevents any other partition's blockchain from usurping the local blockchain using something like a checkpoint or a forking change.

That way, if the blockchain from another partition leaked through, it would be seen as a forked chain much like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Gold, etc.

Once the world reached relative peace again, the survivors would need to decide if and/or how they want to reconcile the 4 partitions.

It's easy to make mistaken assumptions while you're still learning how the bitcoin protocol actually works.  Fortunately, these mistaken assumptions can become learning opportunities.  Whenevere you think you've figured out some major weakness in Bitcoin, it's a good idea to remember:

• 1. This Bitccoin thing isn't new.  It has been around for well over a decade now.
• 2. A lot of VERY smart people have spent a lot of time testing, thinking, analyzing, and discussing this protocol. There's a pretty good chance that you aren't the first in the world to ever have had the thought that you've come up with.
• 3. If it turns out that your thought actually IS a weakness in bitcoin, it's pretty likely that it's not new.  It's a weakness that is already known amongst the technical experts. As such, it's been determined by most of the world to be either very unlikely to actually happen with the specific details necessary for the problem, or an issue that can be easily dealt with causing minimal damage in the long term.
• 4. If you've actually come up with something that nobody else has ever thought of before, and it is a real problem, then it's probably going to take weeks or months of discussion, testing, and analysis among technical experts to determine just how likely and serious the issue is. The initial responses you get here are going to end up being from people that have opinions without facts.  No actual expert is going to weigh in on something brand new until they've had time to investigate and analyze it.

You're also likely to get better (less confrontational) answers if you pose your question as:
"Here's something I've been thinking about that I don't fully understand yet.  Can someone explain to me how this thought I've had is handled within the Bitcoin protocol"

instead of:
"...Blockchain will be useless...!...pure fantasy...This is a real issue...Blockchain is not a reliable store of value...That is the bottom line"

(also note, I've heard this particular concern or something similar dozens of times over the past 9 years. It's been thought about. Alot. By a lot of people.)

As long as there is enough hashpower available to the partition, yes.

That depends on the specific details of the individual situation.  As I pointed out above, without the creation a checkpoint or forking change, there is a reorganization risk for partitions with less hashpower than others. If there are enough communication leaks, this may not be a significant problem.  Transactions can be leaked to the partitions with the most hashpower and blocks can be leaked back.  If there are NO communication leaks, then this is not a problem. You'll have 4 isolated blockchains and no risk of reorganization.  If the leaks are small and infrequent, then the partitions will almost CERTAINLY implement a checkpoint or forking change.

Surprisingly robust. There were a few small hiccups early on, but those were quickly resolved and with a decade of thought and real-world use what has resulted is quite durable.

Take a look at the Bitcoin forks.  Bitcoin Cash.  Bitcoin SV. Bitcoin Gold. Etc.

These all share the same initial blockchain.  Then, at a point in time, they split off (partitioned).  They implemented a forking change, and continued on in their partitioned rule-set with their partitioned miners and their partitioned users.  Sure, they are on the same internet as Bitcoin, but there is NOTHING about their operation that requires any communication with any (original) Bitcoin software at all. Meanwhile, the original Bitcoin continued along without any issue even though a portion of its users, nodes, miners, etc were no longer communicating with it.

Fire up a few testnet miners and nodes on an isolated local network.  Then yank a connection that separates your setup into two separate isolated networks each with a portion of the nodes and miners.  See what happens.  With an understanding of how the system works, it's pretty obvious what will happen, but you're welcome to test it yourself. Isn't open source and decentralization great?


I wouldn't argue that partitions are unlikely.  I would argue that leakproof partitions are all but impossible, but in this case it really doesn't matter for the discussion at hand.

I'll do what I can.  Perhaps we can all learn a bit more together.

I'm curious.  What part of the system does your experience tell you won't work?  Perhaps there's a weakness in the system that I'm overlooking, or perhaps there's a part of the system that you don't understand well enough.  We'll need to dig into the details of what you think wont' work to figure it out, but experience tells me I'm on the right track.

 

This is the type of answer I was fishing for. OK, is it proven that an isolated (partitioned) block chain can still reconcile transactions? In my ignorance of this topic, I assumed no. This proposal seems to indicate  that the blockchain will fork independently  for each and keep on trucking. Or, perhaps an isolated blockchain can self heal? I have no idea how robust such technology was designed. As an retired engineer and coder, I will believe it when I see it tested. Has high availability been robustly tested on blockchain? Got a link?

This is NOT a theory and partitions are likely. We have had many countries put up firewalls briefly because of internal conflict or coups. In fact the first act of business was shut down all information systems. It has been done at least one dozen times all ready. So, never say never, when this is well documented to have happened many times.

I used to ship tons of Cisco routers to foreign nations as part of the video training systems I was building to teach urban warfare. http://kasotc.com/ is just one example I know as a matter of fact that firmwares are tightly controlled for export. That is because exported firmwares have built in back doors, encryption bypass, and kill switches! Shutting down the internet is all ready a contingency plan as part of continuity of government worldwide.  ALL phone systems all intersect at something called SS7 when calls are routed from say AT&T to Verizon. SS7 is another kill point for communications. I  can speak as a subject matter expert on this. The kill switches exist today and fingers are in place to use them.

It is my hope that someone with actual blockchain technical chops can educate us all as to how such things will play out when the time comes. I hope to be proven wrong. My experience tells me I'm on the right track.

As much as I dislike this WW3 BS I'm going to make a point about the price.

There probably won't be any exchange services anyway which'll take us back to 2009 days when people bartered bitcoin for whatever without a fixed exchange rate.

TRADING and ENLISTING on exchanges is what gave Bitcoin its value in the first place, prior to that bitcoin was worth almost nothing.

Almost certainly the price of BTC as well as all other currencies (gold is not a currency) will collapse in the event of a war which will render is issue of sovereign firewalls a footnote since everybody's 2021-denominated savings will be wiped out when we go back to 2009 prices.


Oh I can tell you all about that...  

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Remember the time google had an oopsie and it caused Search to go down for a few hours? You can imagine the panic there would leak to the bitcoin price.

What if your neighbour has a gun, and you have food or gold? In a post apocalyptic world, guns beat anything else.

I expect a large internet outage to be much more likely, even if it's just a few hours. If a large portion of mining capacity is disconnected from the rest of the network, the smallest "part" will have a chain reorganization orphaning their latest blocks when the internet gets restored.

If communication by private citizens of any kind is in any way possible between the 4 major partitions, then the blockchain can get through. Keep in mind that as hard as each partition fights to keep foreign information from getting INTO their own partition, they'll each be fighting equally hard to get their own propaganda OUT to the other partitions.  Still, I'll play your unrealistic imaginary game for now.

Let's instead assume that nothing is traded or communicated from one partition to another.  Smuggling has ALWAYS existed as long as political entities have tried to control the movement of information and goods, but let's pretend that inept politicians have FINALLY figured out a way to put a halt to all smuggling.

In that case, I no longer CARE at all about what is happening in the blockchains in the other partitions.  I can't buy anything from them. I can't sell anything to them.  I can't trade my bitcoin (or gold, or silver or whatever) for ANYTHING that exists in any of those other partitions.  Therefore, the ONLY blockchain that matters to me, is my local blockchain within my partition.  Bitcoin continues along just fine here in my partition.  Meanwhile, each other partition has the same situation as me.  Bitcoin continues along just fine in their partition FOR THEM, since they don't care what's happening in my partition.

It's difficult to predict exactly what people will do when survival is more important than money, but if there are enough people that care about money, then  code will probably be implemented within each partition that prevents any other partition's blockchain from usurping the local blockchain (perhaps a checkpoint or a forking change?).  Then once the war is over, either the transaction history will be reconciled into a single Bitcoin blockchain, OR the world will have 4 major cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin-China, Bitocin-USA, Bitcoin-Russia, and Bitcoin-EU. Over the next century or so, one of them will likely grow to be the dominant world Bitcoin.

When I say sovereign firewalls, it includes all communications. Controlling propaganda will be the justification for such actions. They can't shut down Ham radios. I suppose morse code could be used to submit blockchain transactions over radio. Good luck making a mistake free transmission of such impossibly long data transfers. I hope this illustrates the impossible nature of communicating blockchain without a free and open internet.

Silver will be the medium of trade choice for food and water. Gold will mostly be used to buy land and such because it will be so valuable. Price discovery will be impossible as well.

I doubt the phone systems will shut down but modems will not be tolerated by the politicians. The flow of information will be the most important battle the folks will face. Free speech and free trade will be no more. Such things will go underground and bartering will rule the day. I doubt anyone will accept your frozen wallet, that you will still own but unable to utilize.

A non portable store of value is about worthless. The trick will be to sell just before the firewalls come up. Don't get caught holding any assets that will be rendered useless when war finally breaks out. Cash out directly to gold or silver before it falls apart. Enjoy your profits during the run up now. The end will depend on your timing.

I'm not saying don't exploit the potential profits. I'm saying open your eyes to the real facts and then judge your actions accordingly. Pay attention and have an emergency exit plan. This is a matter of WHEN not IF.

And not just a war, a 3rd world war!
Probably there are no people around here who have seen the last one, as they will tell you bitcoin is going to be one of your last concerns as the times have changed so much war would be something people would be shocked to grasp at first the reality of it.
First trade will die, and when I mean trade it won't be trading shitcoins on binance but trading goods, basic stuff, who the fuck would still care what's the value of Theta when you have problems with supplies of food, medicine, and even the tons of things you take for granted that can be bought from each chain store. When people will lose their jobs when people are going to die a lot will get a wake up call on what's really important.


Do you think Blockstream is a magical solution?
Those are one-way satellites, they must get the data they rebroadcast from somewhere, just like Starlink does with their ground station.
In case of a ww3 scenario, every state would shut those down not for censoring but to shield them from an attack as those are basically standing ducks for every long-range weapon developed in the last half-century.


Yeah, a lot of people in Eastern Europe through the same. Both the Nazi and the Red Army showed they have some pretty effective tools to find it, and they did find most of it, what they failed to find in most cases was because the owner died before being able to talk.

The air you breathe may also be no longer reliable when the politicians press the wrong switch. Just my 2 satoshi.

Sovereign firewalls will be ALL INCLUSIVE, including satellites. Killer satellites have been prepositioned for this purpose.

I will cut a tiny slice from the gold I hid to trade for food. They can't take what they can't find.

They can confiscate your gold whenever they want and make it illegal like it has been done before, and I am sure fake gold market would thrive in this situation.
I am not against owning gold but I am interested to hear how exactly do you imagine trading gold bars or gold rings for bread and food.

Blockchain and bitcoin would be the least of your concerns if world war 3 breaks out, and nothing will work including electricity, banks, internet and everything that is now considered as normal.
I know there are are ways for sending Bitcoin over air by high frequency radio waves, and it has been done before so I am sure people will find some way for sending BTC.
Here is one example of Bitcoin sent with js8call and 7Mhz (40m) antenna in 2019:
https://twitter.com/nvk/status/1095340008293130242

This user sent Bitcoin with gotenna and SamouraiWallet in 2018 without cell network or internet connection:
https://twitter.com/Coinsurenz/status/1052022462790033408

Not really sure why people would actually care about Bitcoin when there is a war happening. Mining would probably not be possible, if the electrical supply is unstable. I'd imagine that the censorship issue is probably as easy as bypassing the GFW.

There are ways to communicate without the internet, all you need is some medium for the information transfer to occur. Blockstream Satellite is a good example of how it can work.

What happens to blockchain WHEN world war 3 breaks out? Blocks of allies will install sovereign firewalls to control propaganda. I expect at least 4 major partitions: USA, China, Russia, EU. No blockchain will be allowed from one partition to another. If I trade my tokens in the USA, the other partitions will have no knowledge that I no longer own those tokens!!!

Blockchain will be useless without a free, open, and intact world wide internet!

How am I wrong? Saying the partitions will not be created is pure fantasy and is not allowed in this discussion. Cyberwar will also force these sovereign partitions. These are the facts, now what is the solution? This is a real issue not an imagined or theoretical issue. No internet = no blockchain!

Blockchain is not a reliable store of value when politicians own the world wide kill switch. That is the bottom line.

The only answer I see is physical gold. I will trade gold for food because my currency is devalued by hyper inflation and my wallet is frozen due to a broken internet. How will you solve the broken internet issue?