Topic: [BOUNTY] VNL - Vanillacoin - ZeroTime double-spend reward (Read 6038 times)

Bounty no longer available, ZeroTime final code is up on github and will soon be deployed in a public release. Locking the thread.

Perhaps then you should leave it to people who do?


No, but then I'm not an expert musician so I wouldn't comment on such an instance.
 

Exactly.


Beyond any reasonable doubt, certainly yes.

There are instances where small portions of code can be reused or independently recreated without that rising to the level of rip off, as with small parts of songs (e.g., and if I'm making an error here please forgive my lack of expertise in music, small phrase of lyrics, small sequence of notes or chords, etc.). But that doesn't apply here. It is more like including one full minute from another song in a 4 minute song, played through a voice changer. Get it?

The thing is, there is nothing wrong with copying Bitcoin's code. The license permits it. The problem is claiming that he didn't so he can market his own coin as all brand new code. That's misrepresentation.

Interesting and well done if this is true!



I know nothing about coding, but "reformatted Bitcoin code with the attributions taken out" don't sound like a copyright issue to me, just as musicians don't own the chords their playing, they just reform chords in a different manner.
 
But then again, I can't understand codes so I cannot make a decent judge about it. Can you actually prove he stole the code?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxqreCG0htQ sweet child o mine by guns n roses?

Ok newbie, instead of blabbering use your wisdom to create a double spend, then come back? ktnx

"
In order for an attacker to rig the voting system they must control at least
50% of the K closest votes to the current block height of the recipient of a
transaction. We can calculate this as (((1 in N where N = Total Network
Nodes) / K) / 32767.5). Therefore the probability of an attacker owning 50%
of the transaction recipients K-closest votes is approximately (((1 in 350) /
64) / 32767.5) / (score > -1) ? inf : 1 = 1.36e-09 (1.36%)
"

This formula makes no sense.

Firstly, probabilities are numbers between 0 and 1, with 1 being 100%. How on earth does 0.00000000136 equate to 1.36%?

Secondly, the formula should have a variable for the number of nodes the attacker controls. This is central to how a consensus system works. From his formula one might deduce that the attacker has 1 node (1 / 350). So if we assume the attacker has all the nodes, 350, then the formula is 350/350/64/32767.5 = 4.76e-7. Is this 476% in this strange probability scale being used? One would expect the answer to approach 100%.

This says if someone attempts a double spend they will have to wait for a confirm , zerotime still works to those using it for its purpose, only those trying to purposely double spend transactions are excluded until it is confirmed. so nothing really wrong there, you try to cheat the system you get temporary restrictions to the network. I.E not being able to use ZT for those transactions

From the paper:

"
2. Lock Race Attack
In a lock race attack the sender forms two transactions and two locks and
submits one to the merchant and the other to the rest of the network. In this
case the locks will cancel each other out and the transaction MUST wait for
block inclusion before being considered confirmed.
"

So in the face of a simple double spend attempt, ZeroTime is no better than any other coin, it still needs to comfirm the transaction at least once with a Pow/Pos block.

Final Vanillacoin ZeroTime whitepaper:

http://vanillacoin.net/papers/zerotime.pdf

So you are implying that Poloniex, a trusted and high volume alt exchange, lowered Vanillacoin's needed deposit confirmation to 1 (only coin besides Bitcoin to have that) without doing a security audit and review?

Are you seriously this delusional? Peercoin needs 6 confirmations, Bitcoin needs 1. How much does XMR need? Not talking about your Bytecoin clone AEON here, because that will never get there.

Dude, you showed you have enough spare time, so why don't you try to take our bounty money, it should be easy for mastermind like you.

having 5 FUD posts and then saying this is kinda the same as bitchslapping someone and saying sorry... doesn't really make up for it. Or saying "no offence" then saying something offencive.

It's just misleading. As someone who skims posts I would conclude that you're trolling the coin. Then I happen to see that you have postive things to say as well which is surprising.

Nobody sent me here, and I hadn't seen that tweet. I don't follow cryptoclub on twitter (though I will probably add after seeing that tweet) and I have no idea who that is.

I would agree a lot of work has gone into VNL by the way.

But that doesn't change the fact that some of the code (how much I don't know) is ripped-off, reformatted Bitcoin code with the attributions taken out.

Poloniex is highly respected.  TF2 and Busoni are HIGHLY respected.

I believe Cryptoclub sent smooth here.

See this tweet: https://twitter.com/CryptoCc/status/629639009468203012

See these posts:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12125983

and

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12126177  <- This has the post in which cryptoclub said the following regarding a Bitcoin Dev he asked to review the VNL code: 'but what I know so far is it definitely isn't a scam based on sheer amount of work, and he agrees it "shines" compared to most alts.'

You would have to distrust both me and gmaxwell (and I think some other bitcoin devs who have said the same thing), and the more people who look at and reach the same conclusion, it the more the list will grow.

Or you could trust none of us and hire an independent expert.

Or you could bury your head in the sand and deny it.

Coming from someone who's biggest innovation is a bytecoin clone, not sure if you are trustworthy in terms of coding.

I do not believe that Poloniex had a qualified reviewer determine that the code was not improperly copied.

This part of the story is not over, because VNL is clearly guilty of misconduct when it comes to stealing code, violating copyrights, and misrepresenting it.

I have never paid for trust, nor have I ever used any other account, sock puppet, bought account, new account, etc. (other than the aeon account that was given to me by the previous developer and I use to update the OP).

Every single trust on my account was voluntarily placed there by people I have dealt with in some manner (including the negative ones).

Consider that when evaluating the credibility of people who claim I have a "bad reputation".

I'm saying that VNL is using ripped off code from Bitcoin that was reformatted and had its attributions removed and that your developer is lying about it.

That's what I'm saying.

If you think that means nothing, then ignore it and carry on. Other people might find that significant.

It seems that you as dev don't have better things to do than going into endless discussions, basicaly saying nothing.
So, with so much spare time why don't you try to take our bounty money, it should be easy for mastermind like you.
And please don’t crap about bounty amount while your last development achievement presented in your thread is 'New feature -- donation mining'
I'm not calling coin/project you are working on as scam nor do I quote someone who said that but man, take a look at your work first than think for few seconds and then talk about other people's projects.

rekt

Smooth,you have very bad known reputation in crypto world,how much you paid for this +40 in trust ?

Poloniex did and they didn't confirm.

Oh.... Thought your AEON is on Poloniex.... sorry. #rekt

That's a marketing slogan that factually is a load of shit.

The code is copied, from Bitcoin. Reformatted, with attributions removed in violation of the copyright and as misrepresentation. Just exactly as gmaxwell said six months ago, except looking at current code today it is the same thing.

Anyone with any programming knowledge can look at the above links and confirm.

It's a C++11 reinventing of crypto (if you want to point an existing crypto out, atleast point to Peercoin).

Also please match the way the mempool works and the whole communication protocol.

There is nothing a half a year old in those github links showing copied code. Those are current links. Which means the supposedly 'necroed' points made a half a year ago are still accurate and still valid, if not more so.

Not even close to all. But if you are investigating stalking me, and not this coin, then your posts on this thread are by your own admission 100% off topic. Please stop.

I saw the same in his post history, but don't crush his dreamworld please, not sure if he can cope with the thought of being a troll. Necroing something thats half a year old as his main argument for trolling...

I am not here to assess the validity of any particular coin.  I am investigating you, as a core dev who actively trolls all of his competitors, daily.

Hey blobafett2, did you actually look at VNL's copied code where they took Bitcoin's code, removed the attribution and copyright notices, slightly reformatted it, and claimed it was their own work?

Or is everything in altcoin land all about your personal vendetta against me, and you couldn't care less what scumbag behavior goes on, including blatantly ripping off Bitcoin?

Hi VNL community,

I did a tally of Smooth's attacks on his competitors today and notice him attacking VNL.

Attacking his competitors:

Dash thread: 26 posts (competing with the anon feature)
Vanilla threads: 20 posts (competing for Poloniex volume)
Bytecoin thread: 4 posts (competing "Anon coin")

Posting on his own threads:

AEON: 3 posts
Monero: 0 posts

Smooth's competitors attacking his coins on their threads:

Dash devs: 0 posts
Vanilla devs: 0 posts
Bytecoin devs: 0 posts

I made a thread to investigate Smooth after months of attacking his competitors and also attempting / succeeding to take over his competitors as developer,  please feel free to vote whether you think his actions are ethical / professional / not in conflict of interest.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/xmraeon-developer-smooth-investigation-1151565

On comment like this I can only say, carpe diem. Newbie

Anyone could have read about bitgold and been inspired to create Bitcoin. It doesn't have to be Szabo.

I've been told by someone who seems to know something that Szabo isn't Satoshi. Take that for what it's worth (not much, as presented).

Personally I rate Szabo as a likely candidate to have been involved in some manner. Some recent developments make that more likely IMO. No I won't elaborate. Do your own research. (It does not involve "john-connor".)

I believe the zero-time code is not yet open-source, right?

Then why does Newsweek chase an old Japanese guy, lol. My guess is that S.N. is a group of coders, Nick being one of them. Who knows, maybe John is one of them.

He's been widely suspected as being Satoshi for years, its nothing new. I mean the similarities of Bitgold and BTC are uncanny.

Is the Nick Szabo comment a joke, a guess, or for real?

A newbie account registered before yours. Newbie

in celebration of john-connors ownage on these peasants, i might buy some more vnl

I'm pretty sure John Conner just answered his critics...

Its not an audit its about finding an exploit, much ego words not many action.

~ When life is real, it's not going to be smooth.

You can still get real audits, reviews, and advice from experts. You just have to either pay them real money (which to qualified people a bounty of $2100 in would-be-worthless-upon-success coins is not) or get them sufficiently interested in the project itself to want to be involved, not be a hired gun for slave wages.

I see neither happening here, just a stunt to say, "We had a bounty and no one could break it! BUY! BUY! BUY!"

ah yes like the Shadowcash crew did, paid Isidor Zeuner a few grand for an audit whom we haven't heard high nor tail from for 6 months?

This is the problem with high level projects like VNL, anyone who is qualified to investigate its strengths or weaknesses usually has motives not to do so. This isn't exactly the University & Education sector around here, everyone has an agenda, even those on the Bitcoin mailing list.

Also for those whining the bounty is tiny, take a look at the going rate for Bitcoin bounties and tell me it's not fair.

https://bitcoinsecurityproject.org/BugBounties/

Okay, then let's not repost the exact same post multiple times to try to bury critical comments.

I'll grant that the unmoderated BCT thread is an open forum.

The rest are controlled by people with an interest in the coin itself, making them not open forums, even if they don't happen to be actively censored at the moment.

I actually think AnonyMint's point about the lack of any sound basis for this claimed consensus algorithm is more important, and relevant to whether anyone should bother trying to break it, although as I said a tiny $2100 bounty will likely attract interest from zero qualified people. Looks more like a promotional stunt.

The moderated BCT thread is a pure announcement thread, for official announcements and not a chat topic.

The private forum is currently community moderated (nothing gets deleted)/owned.

IRC is also community owned.

BCT discussion thread community owned.

So as you can see the main discussion hubs are not censored in any form. Who cares what gmaxwell stated half a year ago honestly?

The statement of gmaxwell has no weight currently.


I'm out of this discussion, you simply argue to get your first point through which is based on something you necrod back from half a year ago. Good job.

Okay that's a reasonable place to look for uncensored discussion, but not the official ANN thread.


No, he made a new ANN which is moderated, and not locked (and has recent posts): https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--1064326

The original ANN thread, which was unmoderated, was indeed locked.

In other words, just as gmaxwell said, the original unmoderated ANN thread was locked, and replaced with a private forum and a moderated ANN thread, where discussion can be censored and controlled.

That is a huge red flag


His points about transparency and red flags are valid on their face. It is a common (but fallacious) refrain in the altcoin area that criticism can be dismissed if someone has a "bias" or "agenda", while ignoring the substance of the statement (which as I demonstrated above, turns out to be correct). More precisely this is the logical fallacy of Ad hominem circumstantial and is a weak argument that reflects poorly on those who attempt it.


Discussion and critical comments is not censoring, nor is it off topic, but what you did by posting the exact same message again to bump it below other comments is a lot closer.

Please keep it civil and on topic and stop trying to censor my posts by trying to bury them.

Here is my last post before the off-topic-fud/trolling:

Based on their responses they have ZeroClue on how to even perform a basic double-spend, instead they talk about unrelated things such as PoS and Sybil Attacks and [insert BS here].
 
Anyone can double-spend Bitcoin at will as we've recently witnessed and I was the person that informed the developers that it would occur due to their faulty signature validation code. The Bitcoin devs demonized me but in the end they realize my findings were accurate and the network split losing people hundreds of thousands of USD and forced zero confirmation transactions to be disabled on a wide scale. When I told them a hard-fork was required to fix this bug safely they said "we have more than hard forks at our disposal". This is the typical crypto-currency ego and if it continues the double-spend attacks will increase due to easier but more sophisticated attack vectors.

It is impossible to have safe zero confirmation transactions on any crypto-currency without it being part of the core protocol. This is what I have done and it resolves the problem for all crypto-currencies using a backwards compatible approach without the need to hard-fork.

I asked Nick Szabo aka Satoshi Nakamoto what he thought of my invention but he has failed to respond after many attempts.

I will not waste my time responding to nonsense. You have be given an opportunity, take it or leave it. Cool

Thank you for your support.

Why do you even comment without doing your research? You are no better than the 0 activity trolls in most threads.

The project is open source, google: vanillacoin + github

Was it hard?


The popular discussion thread is unmoderated, take a look here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=977245.2780

Also john doesn't moderate the official forums at all (a few community members are also mods there, like myself - it's unmoderated), which you can find here: https://talk.vanillacoin.net/

The ANN was locked, because he made an official forum like many other projects.


As for gmaxwell, he started fuding, because John had an argument with them on the Bitcoin github, which you would have seen if you read the thread you just quoted. Gmaxwell isn't the hero of the altcoin section, he doesn't just go an investigate projects, he had an agenda because he was butthurt.


In theory you couldn't answer this post, because you literally made no research and now you should feel like a true ass jumping on the hate train, but this isn't how the world works so you will probably come up with a shitty excuse to fud.

Not with a single sentence.

The discussion was relevant to offer of a reward and the possibility of collecting it.

People considering trying to get the reward and also those observing the process of whether it is collected or not are entitled to relevant independent opinions, including expert opinions. Turning it into a shilling exercise devoid of scrutiny is just scamming. That's inappropriate regardless of the thread topic or forum location.

Your first post would nicely fit in

 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/unofficial-vnl-vanillacoin-041-instant-incentivized-innovative-977245

This thread is about ZeroTime double-spend reward

Well, this would be a right question for this thread when it wouldn't start with "I wouldn't trust..."
In this form from newbie account means nothing but just another FUD post.

 

I wouldn't trust in the possibility of a bounty unless it was held by a third party escrow.

No.


No.


I'm no more interested in even working on something for $2300 worth of would-be-worthless coins then AnonyMint is, and perhaps less.

In any case, the question was asked what he thought about it, and I posted a relevant, on-topic answer. Perhaps you should retreat to self-moderated threads where you can delete inconvenient on-topic posts that don't suit your agenda.


I'm not even sure what you are confused about.

I don't think that was called for...

I don't agree with an assessment based on a January post but I don't think he is confused.

Dear smooth I'm sure you wanted to post this on some other thread, right?
Or you are so confused so you don't know where you need to post and what you want to say so you must quote other guys?
Anyway, do you know how or are you capable to take our bounty money cause this thread is all about that.
No?
Then move on, go back to your thread and help your community with fork problems.
 

He had "something" to say about it


Another cryptocurrency expert, who certainly doesn't agree with Anonymint about everything (anything?) has this to say


(I believe it is no longer the case that the source is not available,  but I'm not positive.)

I note for the emphasis with regard to bolded quoted comment above, the new ANN thread is self-moderated, which means you can't trust it to contain an open unbiased debate about the merits of the coin.

There are a lot of red flags here. Be careful.

How about the more eccentric, poor man's Nakamoto, Anonymint.

Based on their responses they have ZeroClue on how to even perform a basic double-spend, instead they talk about unrelated things such as PoS and Sybil Attacks and [insert BS here].
 
Anyone can double-spend Bitcoin at will as we've recently witnessed and I was the person that informed the developers that it would occur due to their faulty signature validation code. The Bitcoin devs demonized me but in the end they realize my findings were accurate and the network split losing people hundreds of thousands of USD and forced zero confirmation transactions to be disabled on a wide scale. When I told them a hard-fork was required to fix this bug safely they said "we have more than hard forks at our disposal". This is the typical crypto-currency ego and if it continues the double-spend attacks will increase due to easier but more sophisticated attack vectors.

It is impossible to have safe zero confirmation transactions on any crypto-currency without it being part of the core protocol. This is what I have done and it resolves the problem for all crypto-currencies using a backwards compatible approach without the need to hard-fork.

I asked Nick Szabo aka Satoshi Nakamoto what he thought of my invention but he has failed to respond after many attempts.

I will not waste my time responding to nonsense. You have be given an opportunity, take it or leave it.

Thank you for your support.

from the article:


You are absolutly right it was related to PoS. Bravo sir.

!tip r0ach 1 beer

Damn, out of popcorn

Oh lord, another fundamentals of PoS argument.  People go off into all kinds of crazy side issues with these without just stating the core problem.  The problem is that you need an external finite resource for the blockchain to work.  There are so many different ways to implement reputation, you can't really make a blanket statement on it all.  All you can really do is try to define if reputation is actually a finite resource or not.  I would stay it's a pseudo finite resource, for lack of a better term.

Can it secure a blockchain?  The answer is obviously yes.  The issue is that PoS + reputation systems both have larger points of critical failure than "vanilla" PoW, and you're combining both of those in this system.  Then you end up with a system of...it works until it randomly doesn't.

I'm still undecided if proof of stake officially died on July 14, 2014 or not already:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-protected-vericoin-stolen-mintpal-wallet-breach/

Mission Impossible 6: VNL ZeroTime double spend - the only real MI  

Well said.

I like results, if someone has the skills and isn't working on something else, they should make a couple thousand bucks and prove they can do it.

I recall Monero was going to be hacked and all sorts of drama, but it was all cheap talk and nothing ever came of it, just endless BS and then XMR had a much higher marketcap. I have no reason to trust randoms on Bitcointalk that say they have skills, maybe they do and maybe they don't, but testing and proof, that I can believe in.

Kitty, I'm just a little mouse

Doubt you need 100 computers vs the TestNet of like what, 10-20 nodes currently? Surely 2.3k USD should be worth the try.

Your argument is invalid.

YADaminer - I like your enthusiasm.

Now - just because 1 twat with a computer can't hack your network, does not mean your network is secure.

What if the Hack costs more than $2000 to perform ?

I need a 100 computer network at my disposal, which I don't have.

If VNL was actually worth anything, I can assure you many MANY hackers with armies of zombie computers would tear into it. But knowing that this is the case, the network will never be worth enough for them to bother. Catch 22.

How about just answering the questions posed in this thread ? There are 15 points in my previous post but let's start with the BIG one..

How is a sybil attack prevented ?

Is John Connor from the future where he saves us from SkyNet ?

Are you his pet terminator ?

Come on, would you even try to take our money?
It's easy, like walk in the park.

haha.. kitty.. made me laugh. Cheers.

So it's easy then, right?
Why don't you just take our money kitty rex?

Some possible threats to a reputations based system.

( From : ENISA Position Paper No. 2 Reputation-based Systems: a security analysis by Elisabetta Carrara and Giles Hogben )

Let's begin..

Threat Rep. 1 – Whitewashing attack: the attacker resets a poor reputation by rejoining the system with a new identity. Systems that allow for easy change of identity and easy use of new pseudonyms are vulnerable to this attack.

Threat Rep. 2 – Sybil attack (i.e. pseudospoofing): the attacker creates multiple identities (sybils) and exploits them in order to manipulate a reputation score.

Threat Rep. 3 – Impersonation and reputation theft: one entity acquires the identity of another entity (masquerades) and consequently steals her reputation.

Threat Rep. 4 – Bootstrap issues and related threats: the initial reputation value given to a newcomer may lay it open to attacks such as sybils and whitewashing.

Threat Rep. 5 – Extortion: co-ordinated campaigns aimed at blackmail by damaging reputation for malicious motives.

Threat Rep. 6 – Denial-of-reputation: attack designed to damage an entity’s reputation (e.g. in combination with a sybil attack or impersonation) and create an opportunity for blackmail in order to have the reputation cleaned.

Threat Rep. 7 – Ballot stuffing and bad mouthing: reporting of a false reputation score; the attackers (distinct or sybils) collude to give positive/negative feedback, to increase or lower a reputation.

Threat Rep. 8 – Collusion: multiple users conspire (collude) to influence a given reputation.

Threat Rep. 9 – Repudiation of data and repudiation of transaction: an entity can deny that a transaction happened, or the existence of data for which he was responsible.

Threat Rep. 10 – Recommender dishonesty: the voter is not trustworthy in his scoring.

Threat Rep. 11 – Privacy threats for voters and reputation owners: for example, anonymity improves the accuracy of votes.

Threat Rep. 12 – Social threats: Discriminatory behaviour is possible when, for example, in a second-order reputation system, an entity can choose to co-operate only with peers who have a high reputation, so that their recommendations weigh more heavily. Other possible social threats include the risk of herd behaviour and the penalisation of innovative, controversial opinions, and vocal minority effect.

Threat Rep. 13 – Threats to the underlying networks: the reputation system can be attacked by targeting the underlying infrastructure; for example, the reputation information can be manipulated/replayed/disclosed both when stored and when transported, or may be made unavailable by a denial of service attack.

Threat Rep. 14 – Trust topology threats: an attack targets certain links to have maximum effect, for example those entities with the highest reputation.

Threat Rep. 15 – Threats to ratings: there is a whole range of threats to reputation ratings which exploit features of metrics used by the system to calculate the aggregate reputation rating from the single scores.

..

As TPTB_need_war has stated - if it was easy/even possible to create a distributed reputation based system for blockchain consensus, then why was Satoshi's POW break-through even needed at all !? This stuff's been around for decades..

I'll stop 'shitting around' now. getting boring.

'..tara, ya shitter.'

They are too busy to take a bounty of 2300 USD for something they could identify in 5 minutes

Also they are unable to understand that the testnet is real, whitepaper isn't.

The bounty is set, rules are known, just take our money if you can.
If you can't than please stop shitting around cause that basicaly speaks all about you.

Because there IS NO SOLUTION to it.. and ergo, he hasn't dealt with it.

This coin is running on the Zero proof of proof algorithm.

Instead of this lame bounty why not pay for a security audit of the code cheapskate.

Why not answer the question about slots?

I think as someone who has invested in vanilla coin then I think John Conner is obliged to answer his critics on this specific issue. I can't see why he wouldn't if he has dealt with it?

Thank you for saving me some time.


You are here at my desk?


Just answer the challenge to show some proof of your algorithm's capability for Byzantine fault tolerance, and stop playing "obfuscation by naming semantics" shell games.

The problem is that virtual synchrony, which is the mechanism used to synchronise the mempools is not designed for Byzantine failures:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_synchrony


So, if you can pretend to be multiple clients (of which the cost is zero), you can influence replication and therefore affect a double spend. This is essentially a sybil attack.

Well that escalated quickly!   

@TPTB_need_war

The final whitepaper isn't up on github. The bounty goes for double-spening on the ZT testnet.

If in theory it is so easy for you, feel free to just download it and do it. You don't seem that busy since you can do various comments and call coins names which had probably thousands of hours invested. The bounty is there to try and give some incentive to spend time on it, meanwhile you act as if this project would be pumped with the testnet + bounty.

Also you are basing most of your assumptions on a draft?

What is a "slot" in regards to ZT? It will be funny to see your answer.

Thank you for your support.

Zilchcoin

Zerotime to zero consensus. Zero for all and all for zilch. 

(sorry just needed to crack a joke... so much tension here when ever disagreeing with fanboiz)

Thanks AM.

I will PM you when he releases the updated ZT whitepaper. We'll see if that answers any of your questions. I have heard some of these problems like Byzantine general brought up with other coins, but perhaps in a different context.

Reread my posts (I added analysis). And weep fool.

I like talking to myself...

One could argue that if all "slots" in the zerotime algorithm report a lock, then there is consensus.

The description of the algorithm in the white paper doesn't appear to discuss what is done when there is discord (as I wrote above just a blackbox in a chart). It is in that area that the influence of a Sybil attack needs to be analyzed. I didn't have time to detail exactly how it breaks down, but the research has been done by others in terms of analyzing how consensus can propagate in the face of a Sybil attack.

Let me add that is essentially what he has done is to incentivize network propagation influence. Thus adversary floods the network with a Sybil attack.

Does the word "sybil" even appear in the white paper? I should check.

The zerotime paper does tersely mention Sybil attacks:

https://github.com/john-connor/papers/blob/708f488c8c17e08a12bc4bdb4fc5ac1e2aaf6e24/zerotime.pdf


There he is talking about his past experience in for example Bittorrent client systems where a DHT is employed. A DHT system is concerned with mapping hashes to resources where the reference point can be the IP address for example. That is a different issue than propagating a consensus wherein there is no reference point because the adversary is forming the transactions and the routing decisions at-will, which can be uncorrelated from the IP address.

There are no details provided whatsoever. All we see is a chart of a blackbox called "Lock Tx eviction mismatch". Great so the n00bs are just going to accept some technobabble as gospel. Nice circle jerk but it won't get by me.



P.S. What is up with the name? Blueberrycoin again. A name is very important. Ice cream has what to do with currency? Ice Ice baby, lol.  


Edit: why i am doing this? Because someone asked me in a PM for my opinion. And also because I don't want to see people throwing more good money down rat holes. Shitcoin shit needs to be called out.

paging John Conner.  


....or bat phone to Wayne Manor?

Apologies problem with eye sight earlier (no joke). Now I see the bounty rules link. So roughly $2100 at current exchange rate. Probably not worth my time right now, because I am working on something orders-of-magnitude more lucrative and under a deadline.

I changed the post in the other thread, so as to link to this thread and check for discussion here.

I am not referring to a 51% attack.

It appears there is some sort of "zerotime" algorithm wherein the P2P network attempts to form a consensus (a "global lock") on inputs to a 0-confirmation transaction sent to the network. I didn't study the details of the network propagation exhaustively. I see some diagram with "slots" and various nodes propagate a lock logic across the P2P network.

Well recently Skycoin has proven the game theory about Sybil attacks with reputation, propagation networks and the best case is that if 7% of the nodes lie, then the network fails to get the correct consensus:




Hopefully you can understand the "global lock" is not leveraging any compute power for Byzantine fault resistance, i.e. it is not proof-of-work. Rather it is relying on the structure of the propagation of the P2P network to converge on a consensus. This is basically analogous to Skycoin's consensus network at the conceptual level. So the analysis of vulnerability should be in the same ballpark.

There are no short-cuts around proof-of-work or proof-of-share for unambiguous, global consensus, i.e. Byzantine fault resistance. If the developer of VanillaCoin thinks otherwise, he needs to prove it with some math. I don't see any such proofs in the white paper.

It is almost as if he didn't learn Bitcoin 101, which is ludicrous to say, because obviously he is knowledgeable. So either I have a big blind spot or he just somehow deluded himself. It is actually bizarre.

The only thing you could do is poll the nodes and make sure 51% of the network hashrate is reporting the global lock. If you can tie the reputation to hashrate, then you might have a solution. But then the problem is they can lie and you can't prove they won't (if necessary via a Sybil identity).

You've got three ways to do consensus: proof-of-work, proof-of-stake/share, or long-term reputation.

If it was as simple as he apparently thinks it is, don't you think it would have already been done for Bitcoin?

Rules are clear on how it pays out. Sounds like you've implied 51% attack, which is the same for many coins. Not trying to fud you, just not following. also not sure why you are duplicating your post in multiple threads instead of linking to one.

do it.  i believe you will earn 20k vnl, and it will be a great challenge to the dev

How much is the bounty?

Will it pay out if I just tell you how it can be done?

It is pretty simple actually. Bribe some nodes by sharing some of the double-spend theft.

There is created an incentive to aggregate mining power in order to sell capacity to double-spend. It is an economics issue. Just because it can't be accomplished on the controlled testnet is irrelevant.

can i get some vanilla if i create article about it ?

VNL is so rad i fell in love with it instantly. Bad luck I did not discover it 5 weeks earlier

Over 16 members (including myself) + dev participated in this bounty pool.

Good luck.

This image shows an attempted, failed double spend attempt by dev on test network for Zero Time. Those showing Sending 0/1 are double-spend attemps.

They will always show -1 confirmations and will not make it to blockchain.




https://twitter.com/john_a_connor/status/630517006643494912