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Topic: Cleanup: I'll attack some coins - I owned APEXcoin for 90 blocks - page 8. (Read 17268 times)

hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
The point I was making was that attacking PoW has a running economical cost while attacking PoS does not.

Unfortunately, for Bitcoin , there are some scenarios where there is only a cost in effort to perform an attack.
2 compromised mining pools could perform the attack right now.

Realizing your pool attacks and switching miners to a different pool is not instant.

Instant in the sense that 2-3 double spends would occur before being caught.


Bitcoin has its on set of security problems. Still more secure than any other coin but insecure nonetheless.

When judging the security of a coin there are many other aspects to consider such as the amount of peer review, the amount of nodes,
the amount of implementations and stacks, the amount of researchers auditing, the amount of developers, the total market cap which
 incentivizes would be attackers from exploiting the currency, ect....
legendary
Activity: 1225
Merit: 1000
Sorry, I don't get what you mean.
1000 x 0.001% = 1 x 1%
In PoS your stake matters, not your amount of transactions.


Yes, I am no expert on NxT , but from what I understand a higher weight is given to large stakes in a single account vs many small ones as well.

yes, but Maestro1 was talking about:
Quote
I have 1% of all stake in my wallet, and I transferred it there in 1000 small transactions.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
Haven't read all the posts so it may be mentioned before. Current PoS implementations use some sort of wallet weight as a way to handle competitions for blocks. Wallet weight is basically the amount of coins in the wallet. So if I have a big wallet with very small coin blocks (i.e. I transfer the coins in thousands of small transactions), I have the chance of staking a lot of new blocks continuously with the full weight of my wallet each time. That's the problem.

I have 1% of all stake in 1 wallet. My chance to generate a block is 1%
I have 1% of all stake in 1000 wallets. My chance to generate a block is 1%

I see no problem here. (Nxt)

edit: I guess what you meant is:
I have 1% of all stake in my wallet, and I transferred it there in 1000 small transactions.
I still don't see a problem for PoS.

Yes.

Your chance of generating a block is 1%, next block again 1%, next again 1%. That's a problem. The high weight of your whole coins are used for each individual small stake, increasing your chance every single time which makes you a lot more likely to find consecutive blocks at zero cost.

Ideally your chance shouldn't be 1%, the secure way is 0.001% since you transferred the money in 1000 small transactions. You should either have a big block of coins (1 big transaction), so you have a 1% chance ONCE, or you have 1000 small blocks, so you will have 1000 chances of 0.001%. You should not have a 1% chance, 1000 times.

Sorry, I don't get what you mean.
1000 x 0.001% = 1 x 1%
In PoS your stake matters, not your amount of transactions.


Yes, either 1000 x 0.001% or 1 x 1%. It's not the number of transactions, it's the number of coin blocks. Each block stakes once until it matures again (8 hours or whatever), if you have 1000 small blocks in your wallet, you can stake 1000 times right after the other and current implementations give you the full weight of your wallet in the competition for staking, giving you a great chance of finding consecutive blocks.

So basically in simple terms, current implementations give you 1000 x 1%. That's the problem.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
The difference for PoW is that it is costly to even try to do such an attack. For PoS, there's only the initial cost of the coins. There's no running cost for tries, retries, etc.

...or the effort taken to steal the coins, or the effort taken to borrow the coins(bank, payment processor, exchange, ponzi, ect..), or the effort made to compromise the wallet of a whale, or the effort made to take many loans out....

Some of the above can be applied to PoW as well, but if you compromise a mining pool operator and you use their miners than there will be an instant reaction and correction to stop such an attack from re-occurring or happening in the first place because there is large amounts of investments and expenses to be paid in mining.

With an attack on a PoS , the transactional history is tainted and any rollbacks ruin the fungibility or anonymity of the currency.

The point I was making was that attacking PoW has a running economical cost while attacking PoS does not.
legendary
Activity: 1225
Merit: 1000
but if you compromise a mining pool operator and you use their miners than there will be an instant reaction and correction to stop such an attack from re-occurring or happening in the first place

Unless you have a time machine, you can't tell which mining pools will attack before it happened.

(only if you independently verify you have found a block, but the pool does not broadcast it. This is unlikely, because most miners check the stats of their miner on the pool website, which could be faked.)

Realizing your pool attacks and switching miners to a different pool is not instant.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1000
Sorry, I don't get what you mean.
1000 x 0.001% = 1 x 1%
In PoS your stake matters, not your amount of transactions.


Yes, I am no expert on NxT , but from what I understand a higher weight is given to large stakes in a single account vs many small ones as well.

Indeed. The gain of weight with one big account is small but exists.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
Sorry, I don't get what you mean.
1000 x 0.001% = 1 x 1%
In PoS your stake matters, not your amount of transactions.


Yes, I am no expert on NxT , but from what I understand a higher weight is given to large stakes in a single account vs many small ones as well.
legendary
Activity: 1225
Merit: 1000
Haven't read all the posts so it may be mentioned before. Current PoS implementations use some sort of wallet weight as a way to handle competitions for blocks. Wallet weight is basically the amount of coins in the wallet. So if I have a big wallet with very small coin blocks (i.e. I transfer the coins in thousands of small transactions), I have the chance of staking a lot of new blocks continuously with the full weight of my wallet each time. That's the problem.

I have 1% of all stake in 1 wallet. My chance to generate a block is 1%
I have 1% of all stake in 1000 wallets. My chance to generate a block is 1%

I see no problem here. (Nxt)

edit: I guess what you meant is:
I have 1% of all stake in my wallet, and I transferred it there in 1000 small transactions.
I still don't see a problem for PoS.

Yes.

Your chance of generating a block is 1%, next block again 1%, next again 1%. That's a problem. The high weight of your whole coins are used for each individual small stake, increasing your chance every single time which makes you a lot more likely to find consecutive blocks at zero cost.

Ideally your chance shouldn't be 1%, the secure way is 0.001% since you transferred the money in 1000 small transactions. You should either have a big block of coins (1 big transaction), so you have a 1% chance ONCE, or you have 1000 small blocks, so you will have 1000 chances of 0.001%. You should not have a 1% chance, 1000 times.

Sorry, I don't get what you mean.
1000 x 0.001% = 1 x 1%
In PoS your stake matters, not your amount of transactions.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
The difference for PoW is that it is costly to even try to do such an attack. For PoS, there's only the initial cost of the coins. There's no running cost for tries, retries, etc.

...or the effort taken to steal the coins, or the effort taken to borrow the coins(bank, payment processor, exchange, ponzi, ect..), or the effort made to compromise the wallet of a whale, or the effort made to take many loans out....

Some of the above can be applied to PoW as well, but if you compromise a mining pool operator and you use their miners than there will be an instant reaction and correction to stop such an attack from re-occurring or happening in the first place because there is large amounts of investments and expenses to be paid in mining.

With an attack on a PoS , the transactional history is tainted and any rollbacks ruin the fungibility or anonymity of the currency.
full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
And a warning: most POW coins are not safe! it's easy to cheaply rent enough hashrate to attack a lot of coins with low to medium hashrate. Only the biggest ones are good.

The difference for PoW is that it is costly to even try to do such an attack. For PoS, there's only the initial cost of the coins. There's no running cost for tries, retries, etc.
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1046
The solution is to raise the diff for POS Coins? (different algo?)
I am thinking about a rollback system with wallet voting.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501

Start with Litecoin Testnet Smiley
If you are right, many honest coins will pay you a tax for your work.

Cheers

Litecoin would be too expensive to attack. Not likely.

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/litecoin/difficulty

1,282 GH/s

full member
Activity: 210
Merit: 100
Haven't read all the posts so it may be mentioned before. Current PoS implementations use some sort of wallet weight as a way to handle competitions for blocks. Wallet weight is basically the amount of coins in the wallet. So if I have a big wallet with very small coin blocks (i.e. I transfer the coins in thousands of small transactions), I have the chance of staking a lot of new blocks continuously with the full weight of my wallet each time. That's the problem.

I have 1% of all stake in 1 wallet. My chance to generate a block is 1%
I have 1% of all stake in 1000 wallets. My chance to generate a block is 1%

I see no problem here. (Nxt)

edit: I guess what you meant is:
I have 1% of all stake in my wallet, and I transferred it there in 1000 small transactions.
I still don't see a problem for PoS.

Yes.

Your chance of generating a block is 1%, next block again 1%, next again 1%. That's a problem. The high weight of your whole coins are used for each individual small stake, increasing your chance every single time which makes you a lot more likely to find consecutive blocks at zero cost.

Ideally your chance shouldn't be 1%, the secure way is 0.001% since you transferred the money in 1000 small transactions. You should either have a big block of coins (1 big transaction), so you have a 1% chance ONCE, or you have 1000 small blocks, so you will have 1000 chances of 0.001%. You should not have a 1% chance, 1000 times.
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1046
And a warning: most POW coins are not safe! it's easy to cheaply rent enough hashrate to attack a lot of coins with low to medium hashrate. Only the biggest ones are good.
Start with Litecoin Testnet Smiley
If you are right, many honest coins will pay you a tax for your work.

Cheers
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 1046
Let's create a Hackcoin.

Everyone who is interested in POS security can download the wallet.
Everyone who is interested in hacking can play around with it.
The results could be useful for every honest coin.

We should never forget one thing: We are fighting against the system (banks and governments) - we are not fighting against decentralized digital currencies, am I right?

Some of us believe in what we are doing. The destruction of a random coin isn't the solution.

Cheers,
Ray

I disagree. Hackcoin is what you get on a testnet. Go after real coins. That's where you have the most to learn. There is more to learn here than whether the OP can achieve a double spend. There is also information in the responses from the devs and the code they produce to compensate. Also, what are the responses from the exchanges, etc. There are many questions that can only be addressed by attacking the live system. It's still early in crypto. It's better to do this now while it can be done. When regulators step in to protect the system, it will be too late to learn this much.

Agreed, Testnet is a solution - destroying active coins not.

Cheers,
Ray
legendary
Activity: 1540
Merit: 1000
I support the idea of giving the attacker like 10% of all Testnxts and if the attack was successful(+documentation!) the community should pay a nice bounty. Like 500.000 Nxt or so.
Somehow I like what he's doing. POS and crypto in general is very young, it's necessary that we're getting attacked so we can learn from it.
i agree
come here cynicSOB  https://nxtforum.org/index.php
Sorry english not good  Grin Grin
full member
Activity: 226
Merit: 100
I support the idea of giving the attacker like 10% of all Testnxts and if the attack was successful(+documentation!) the community should pay a nice bounty. Like 500.000 Nxt or so.
Somehow I like what he's doing. POS and crypto in general is very young, it's necessary that we're getting attacked so we can learn from it.
legendary
Activity: 1225
Merit: 1000
Haven't read all the posts so it may be mentioned before. Current PoS implementations use some sort of wallet weight as a way to handle competitions for blocks. Wallet weight is basically the amount of coins in the wallet. So if I have a big wallet with very small coin blocks (i.e. I transfer the coins in thousands of small transactions), I have the chance of staking a lot of new blocks continuously with the full weight of my wallet each time. That's the problem.

I have 1% of all stake in 1 wallet. My chance to generate a block is 1%
I have 1% of all stake in 1000 wallets. My chance to generate a block is 1%

I see no problem here. (Nxt)

edit: I guess what you meant is:
I have 1% of all stake in my wallet, and I transferred it there in 1000 small transactions.
I still don't see a problem for PoS.
hero member
Activity: 574
Merit: 500
Weigh the weight Wink
hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 500
Haven't read all the posts so it may be mentioned before. Current PoS implementations use some sort of wallet weight as a way to handle competitions for blocks. Wallet weight is basically the amount of coins in the wallet. So if I have a big wallet with very small coin blocks (i.e. I transfer the coins in thousands of small transactions), I have the chance of staking a lot of new blocks continuously with the full weight of my wallet each time. That's the problem.

I think the way to fix this is to change the wallet weight to the amount of the coins in the current block that's being split to stake, rather than the full weight of all coins in the wallet. That would mean that you need a lot of coins AND big coin blocks in the wallet to perform a potential blockchain rewrite attack.

Probably, the way to address this is to weight (verb) the weight (noun) based on the size of the stake as well as the total coins in the wallet. I'm not sure how this is handled in peercoin clones. But I'm going to look it up.
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