Topic: BTC endgame = Mega Miner controlling everything, BTC is not "trustless" (Read 5404 times)

Hah, professors and postdocs at Cornell! How would they know anything about how Bitcoin works? It's all FUD! Don't they know that Bitcoin is built on maths by the great Satoshi?

That's a good point. It just means that Bitcoin is not 100% fraud proof. It just costs millions of dollars worth of equipment and energy to perpetrate something that can still be traced by shipping records, electric bills, and invoices. It's a good thing that Bitcoin is Proof of Work, because there are real world ways to keep it honest.

IIUC, the "51% attack" is a double-spend attack. That is, if the attack is successful, it allows the attacker to replace the last few blocks with his own new blocks, which re-spend the coins that already appeared as inputs in a transaction in a block that will now be orphaned.

In order to profit from such an attack, the coins spent in the orphaned block must be exchanged for something (such as fiat, or a balance in an exchange that is later withdrawn). This would clearly be fraud, and there are already laws against that.

The "51% attack" cannot "screw everything up", only those transactions that are double-spent.

Of course there is the secondary effect of public relations for Bitcoin, which admittedly could be "screwed up."

It would be an interesting exercise. What really is there to protect a Miner from malicious Miners? If Visa or whoever waged a war on BTC and legit took it down and screwed everything up, there isn't really any law that they violated is there? I am not sure if there is or not but it doesn't sound like there is yet anyway.

Actually that would be good if they all started mining. They would bring the 51% down to 10% each.

If people consider me a troll for being mean/annoying to them, it is only because they were mean/annoying/whatever to me first. You are ok honestly. This other guy on the other hand gets back what he dishes out. They might think they are smart, but all I see the other guy spewing is CONJECTURE. I have when people conject, makes me sad.

I suppose I respond to my post too much idk. I don't usually like to comment on other posts very much, I usually just read them.

50 petahash added per month?!?!  Are you freaking kidding me?

While his analogy might make sense, his logic on why people go there is flawed. They go there for the benefits, the benefit IS that they get more blocks solved on average.

There are plenty of ways something can be quantified.

In logic and things related to it, quantification is essentially the binding of a variable that can range over a domain of discourse. The variable would then become bound by an operator  which is the quantifier. So to sit here and claim Hashrate cannot be quantified, is to admit you don't know the definition of the word.

Please stop trolling this thread, MODs who read this please delete all of his posts as they serve no purpose.

I don't usually quote a post without adding something, but I think what you said (above) may have gotten lost in your large post.

Until you said it, I didn't know why one pool had so much power, but the Wal-Mart analogy make perfect sense. We should be working on getting this message out to miners that it's easy and no less profitable to switch to a smaller pool, and will help Bitcoin.

The answer is simple:  the protocol assumes that people are generally "good" (trustworthy). As long as bad actors control less than about 25% of the hash-power, everything is working as intended. Obviously, one large pool can invalidate that assumption.

On the troll question, I don't think you are deliberately trolling. I have been accused of trolling myself in the past: I looked it up, and believe I came accross this page:

In other words, your post/response ratio is way too high

When I deliberately try to troll (as I have in the past week), I am usually too subtle. If anybody noticed, they did not comment yet.

Wow!  Name calling!  Aren't you advanced...Nice to see that you read my post before responding...Why is it impossible for you to see that you can only see the results of mining power and luck?

How can you not understand that when you refer to hashrate, what you are really referring to is already solved blocks on the chain.

How can you not understand that this "hashrate" has already been used?

How can you not understand that you wouldn't see any "hashrate" being used for a 51% attack until after the attack was mounted?

Why do you think there is a "highest hashing power" model?  The system was designed for individual mining, and pools were invented later.  Human greed is what drives people to give hashpower to someone even when that power could turn that someone into their attacker, and you can't fix that with code.  If people understood what their hashpower was for and how variance works, they could switch to any number of other pools and make the same amount of money.  Unfortunately, people don't understand, so they flock to the biggest pool, just like they flock to Wal-Mart or NewEgg thinking they are getting the best prices.  Changing the protocol "because humans" is like changing umbrellas "because drought".

The whole point of every single person detracting your suggestions regarding "hashrate" is that you can't fix/prevent a 51% attack based on hashrate.  If you want to fix/prevent a 51% attack, you need to start from a different angle.  In my post that you so clearly read, I not only stated that you should try to come up with other solutions, but even linked to asother suggested solution with discussion about why it won't work.

Moreover, even if you could set up "rules" to prevent entities from having too much "hashrate," you couldn't tell what submitters were what entities if they wanted to randomly move about, and you couldn't prevent entities from teaming up to form an attack.  As such, you couldn't prevent a single entity with 50%+ power from acting as if it were several different entities in order to do the same.

As if all that weren't enough, even if you could solve all of the above, it wouldn't be fair to a legitimate entity that had a majority of the power, and fairness in mining is just as important as fungibility in coins.  Arguing that doing anything based on the hashrate of a block submitter is acceptable is no different than arguing that blocking the FBI coins would be acceptable.  Neither of those arguments reflect the premise / core values of bitcoin, and if implemented, either could easily spell doom for the project.

Alternatively, as you mention the protocol could be changed, but also acknowledge that it may have taken a lot of effort to create and implement the original protocol, search the forums with these words:
hard fork alt coin
You will see all manner of "I want bitcoin to do this/that" threads with arguments about why the protocol can 't be changed.  All of those arguments basically say the same thing, which is something to this effect:
"You can't get consensus and the old protocol will live on, so the new protocol won't be bitcoin, it will be an altcoin."
Given that, yes - BTC could fail because of the 51% attack, yes - something else could take its place, yes - it could start from the existing bitcoin blockchain right at the block where the detrimental 51% attack occurred (or anytime before or after that point), but no - bitcoin would not be "fixed" by that action.

However, as I still think you're trolling, and also find that I'm out of troll food, I won't be posting in this thread again until/unless I feel that you have done something besides what I have witnessed thus far:
*attempt to spread fud
*argue that we should try to do something based on "hashrate" (which isn't logical since we're apparently still talking about logic)
*name-call
*suggest we should "change the protocol"
*continue to suggest we should "change the code" without any constructive suggestion as to how

Basically all you are typing is that YOU ARE RIGHT and that I AM WRONG. So why are you even posting in "Bitcoin Discussion" section of this forum? All you are trying to do is NOT DISCUSS anything, which isn't helpful. I can point out all the flaws in everything you say, but that doesn't HELP BITCOIN GET BETTER. Sorry I am doing that, and apparently that bothers you, I could care less about your feelings though baby boy.

It might not be easy to write code so complex to account for so many variables and what the future holds, but Bitcoins dev/devs certainly put forth a very good effort did just that(but according to your "logic" it is impossible). By the logic of everything you are typing here you are saying there will never be something better than Bitcoin or an update to the code that can make it more fair and more trustworthy. That is your fallacy and YOUR problem.

Now whether or not the update to the code fixes more problems than it causes is the subject of debate. A portion of code could be written to judge Mining Pools by their trustworthiness(surprised this hasn't happened yet), then algorithms and other formulas can easily derive how much percent of trust it should have. Just because you have hashing power doesn't mean you are trustworthy. It does mean that you have a vested interest in BTC, or maybe it means you want to destroy it, or maybe it means X number of things, but you cannot "trust" the intentions of miners because Hashing Power != Trustworthiness

Therefore we can logically conclude the "highest hashing power" current model is going to be outdated at some point, E.G. when the next "GOX" happens but in the mining world. Do we really have to all sit around with our thumbs parked up our asses and wait for a Miner to do something really bad? Satoshi was very forward thinking and couldn't account for everything(who can it is really hard to do that), so how about we think forward? I am, why do you refuse to?

Yeah...  Let's pretend I believe that you really believe this needs fixed by changing the protocol...

Nevermind that the protocol adjusts difficulty based on the amount of time it took to submit a specific number of blocks to the active chain.

Nevermind the fact that each block was generated by one device and accepted by all the others with no consideration for what the human-conceived hashrate is (a calculation based on the time it took to generate already gathered results with no way to factor out luck).

Nevermind the fact that all valid blocks are valid because their hashes say so.

Nevermind the fact that a malicious pool could mostly hide the 50+% human-conceived hashrate by submitting blocks from multiple IPs and showing different users different pool data based on which IP their miner submits through.

Nevermind the fact that the potentially malicious pool in question is technically buying computing power from users and doesn't need to show them any information regarding it's mining even though that would mean it could actually submit blocks from multiple IPs that appear to be slow solo miners while still pulling off the exact same attack.

Nevermind the fact that a malicious third party with enough resources could generate enough hashing power to effectively double the hashrate and never submit anything to the network until they wanted to double spend.

Let's set up a central authority that can decree that a given pool has too much power and uses specific IP addresses.  Let's then set up all of the nodes to reject any block from those addresses that would make the blocks submitted from them equal to more than half of the blocks accepted in the last 6 blocks.  That way 6 confirmations is secure because the central authority says it is.  That's way better than having 6 blocks be secure because the math says it is.

Also, as an added benefit, the central authority can take bribes to not call out specific pools and specific IP addresses, and that bribe money can be used to advertise how much better the central authority is than the rules of mathematics.  Then we'll be more secure because the central authority says so, right?

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OR, you could come up with a workable solution, search the forums to see how many times it has already been posted and shot down for all the flaws it contains, and post it if your search doesn't turn up such results so it can treated as what it is (and based on the number of smart people who have already wrestled with this in the past several years, that would most likely not be a decentralized workable solution).

Then you could rinse and repeat.

This forum is covered with junk, but since you like reading and learning so much: here's a conversation about why a suggested solution wouldn't work.  Oh, and look at that, it was being discussed 10 months before you even had a forum account, and it was started by someone who had then had a forum account for about as long as you have.  Maybe that's because showing up and wanting to fix something simply because "code can fix anything" doesn't magically fix it.

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Quite frankly, your first post had a valid point that a better algorithm could theoretically exist.  Beyond that, even though you don't care what I think, I think everyone who has tried to explain the problems with "requiring more hashrate to perform the attack" already knows that you're trolling based on your responses.  Sorry about trolling a troll, I should have known I'd be bested since I normally contribute instead of trolling.

Here is a response to each of your sentences in order.

I am not interested in your "feelings".
I love Dilbert and have actually read a very high percentage of the comics(I also buy the Dilbert Books that have a full year in each book and have 6 or 7 + of these).
I don't care you "feel" that I am a troll, you're the one trolling with your reply.
I wouldn't know about hard work trolling, maybe you can tell your tales of that.
I do not think my username "iluvpie60" has logic, however I do posses logic myself.
No idea why you wish me to fix the world, when you went ahead and just said I have no "logic"... Nice fallacy bro.
You don't want me to read the Bitcoin White Paper(which I have), so you don't want me to become more educated, yet you are saying I have no "logic" and I am stupid. So your recommendation is for me to remain stupid? lol... nice
I already know smaller parties can do an attack, I kinda you know... POSTED A LINK IN MY OP... ROFL...
Your last sentence is fractured and doesn't make any sense.

eh, D- for the effort, I have seen way better trolling tbh tho. TBH

I feel like I'm reading a Dilbert comic strip and iluvpie60 is Dilbert's boss.  Since I like Dilbert comic strips, this seems like a good way to subscribe to this one...  Actually, I like being trolled and I feel that iluvpie60 is an awesome troll.  I mean, it must be a lot of work to troll this hard.  I almost believe iluvpie60 actually thinks iluvpie60 has logic.  Quite frankly, since iluvpie60 knows that code can do anything, I wish iluvpie60 wanted to fix the world instead of bitcoin.  I, for one, hope that iluvpie60 does not ever read the bitcoin whitepaper.  It would be a pity if iluvpie60 could actually understand the mechanics of a "51% attack" and how an entity with 25% of the networks hash power could actually pull off a "51% attack" if it attempted to do so and got extremely lucky.  Then I would have no thread to watch...   

At this point the common person doesn't have enough money to get into buying Asics, especially right now I wouldn't wish anyone to waste their money on Asics, it is pure money loss. I dunno if you are keeping up to date with the difficulty level, but you will certainly lose a lot of money buying any mining hardware(unless bitcoins shoot up to like 5,000 dollars each).

Right, it might have been put into the minds of everyone that it is trustless, but in reality it is not. We have to trust an exchange or a BTC ATM to get BTC, we have to trust Miners will "do the right thing because they should".

I am glad to see another realist on these boards, welcome lol.


Sometimes I feel like so many people on here are just wishing so hard BTC will make them wealthy(they don't care for what BTC really is) and they convince themselves BTC is THE BEST THING EVER(its not, something else will come along or is already here).

Bitcoin was never trustless. People who tell you otherwise are ignorant and delusional.

If you have a significant amount of wealth in BTC you better hope that the majority of the network have your best interest in mind or that your interests align.

I call that blind faith. Bitcoin has no defense against human nature.

Right, there is an inherent flaw in the BTC protocol that as time goes on needs to be "patched/fixed" I would say.

I mean, there is already a kind of "voting system" in BTC, like nodes and where people point their miners and all the other stuff.

People used to think it was impossible to get into space, the earth was flat, that certain races are dumber, that the everything revolves around the earth, even BTC people say is impossible until someone thought of it... etc...

I wouldn't give up hope on an updated protocol that solves more issues, it isn't impossible to make BTC better, it isn't impossible to change the protocol and add new features/voting system based on "X" where x is a section of code that now also validates "BLAH" and confirms "YADDA YADDA".

But as more time goes on something else will be created that is better than the BTC protocol, which is why it is imperative it be updated/upgraded/whatever to have it stay competitive.