Topic: How safe is your UTXO? (Read 699 times)

No, those 49% will not continue to waste their hash power on orphaned blocks.  They will join the 51% or loose all their blocks.  They have no choice.  The situation you indicate only happens as long as the 49% don't know that the 51% blacklisted X.  Once they find out, they'll blacklist X too, to avoid their blocks being orphaned.

A softfork or hardfork change to the protocol to "blacklist" coins will not be very
easy to do with the current system and how Consensus works. It would be extremely
hard if not impossible, which is why I stated what I stated specifically.

One way of blacklisting would be by the miners not allowing certain inputs to make
their way into a valid block. The miners could by collusion or governmental regulation,
be incentivized to not, or penalized by, including a TX with the "blacklisted" inputs.

The only miner who would then be able to help you, would be random, anon, miner,
who is likely not to pick up your "blacklisted" TX unless you pay a very sizable fee.
It would not need perfect collusion based on todays centralized mining, and it could be
implemented with governmental penalization as the node network becomes more centralized.

My point was that miners could do such now, without need for a code mechanism to prevent
inclusions. TX inclusions within a block, by nature, is a voluntary thing. So, if miners are afraid
of going to jail or whatever, then they will likely not even take your TX with a 1,000 BTC fee.

Edit: In addition, I would like to add that if there happened to be an actual "blacklist" list of
UTXOs that was maintained by Interpol or other such agency, and was public on their website
for example, do you think the receiver of those "blacklisted inputs" would be willing to accept
those coins as a proper compensation? I would say no, since now their new coins will be the
next "banned UTXO" in the chain. Those "banned coins" will forever need to be used only for
"illegal use" and can never go to exchanges or regulated businesses.

This is why I support some form of protocol enforced mix-mining system.
So that all inputs will be more resistant and fungible.

(1) Won't happen as long as Bitcoin isn't completely centralized. Some miners already give priority to certain transactions, it would be possible to do the opposite too.
(2) Say this would happen exactly like this: 51% orphans blocks with transactions from X. And X makes sure he tries to be in every block, while the 49% mine that block. That would mean 49% build on those blocks many times a day, and orphans up to 6 blocks deep are a daily occurring problem. 6 Confirmations wouldn't mean anything anymore!

Well, what does that mean, blacklisting ?  Does it mean: (1)"not including your transaction" or does it mean (2) "not building on a previous block including your transaction" ?

Because (1) is not effective.  It would need perfect collusion of ALL miners.  If your transaction is waiting in the mem pool, sooner or later, a miner that didn't blacklist your transaction will include it in a successful block.  And as long as it isn't included in a block, it stays on the mem pool.  So the only thing that blacklisting by a FRACTION of the miners implies, is a very long delay for your transaction.
However, (2) is an effective soft fork.  If a majority of miners applies it, your transaction will never be included, because those miners that include it, will get orphaned blocks because of it.  So it is sufficient that 51% of the miners applies this effective soft fork, and you're censored.  When the minority of miners not censoring you learn about this, they have no choice: they have to censor you now too, or they will regularly lose blocks that get orphaned.  The majority always imposes a soft fork on the minority.

Note that this doesn't need to be officially in the node software to be effective.  It is sufficient that a majority of miners applies it in one way or another, when picking their mining strategy.  The non-mining nodes don't care.  They can run "non-soft-forked" code.  They won't even notice that your transaction doesn't get included.  It will live forever in the mem pool.  This IS a soft fork.

In theory, miners can blacklist your individual UTXOs now, without any fork.

It is easier for them to blacklist your UTXOs now, than to get a mechanism of such in the protocol later.
(As long as the network is still decentralized at this later point.)

In short: in principle, yes.  In practice, not for the moment.  But it is not "unthinkable" and it is exactly what was done with ethereum.  Only on ETC, this was not done (and the ETC/ETH split came exactly about because of this).  ETC was possible, because the change required a hard fork.  But if it is done with a soft fork, and a majority of miners adopts it, there's nothing that can be done about it. 

In other words, if tomorrow, there's a soft fork in bitcoin that doesn't allow blocks to accept transactions with *your* UTXO, and a majority of miners accepts that, your UTXO are dead, and there cannot even be a fork of bitcoin where this is not true. 

You should read the first para of that page, for context.


It would never be possible in Bitcoin.

at this moment your UTXO is safe. (unless someone hacks your computer or someone you know gets to it to steal ur privkey to spend ur coin)

however what i say next does not affect current native style UTXO. but if you moved funds in the future (if mimblewimble was added to bitcoin) and moved them into a mimble confidential commitment. your then not safe

some numbskulls are envisioning a feature be added where by a mimble wimble manager for instance can take your UTXO (without asking)
mix it with other funds. and then put the funds you 'deserve' (if you think mimblewimble manager would be honest) into a new block. so that your funds are then spent to then prune old blocks which have no UTXO's left in them.

basically giving third parties access to move funds on your behalf but 'selling the idea' as a fix to pruning old blocks and being a mixer service.(but understating and hiding the ability to move funds without request in the small print)

personally id say let mimble wimble be something only available on a voluntary sidechain(altcoin) that people can volunteer to move funds into to then be messed with.
not something that all bitcoin tx's should be a possible victim to (should mimble wimble be less than honourable).

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other people are also thinking about(as ur OP hints) adding dead man switchs where after X years/blocks UTXO's are then able to be killed off and then treated as a miner fee.. but that is like one of the big no no things i do not think any of the community will ever come to consensus to ever change.

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though pretty much anything can be changed if given enough consensus support. by having diverse nodes (EG not everything programmed by blockstream) thus keeping the network diverse and decentralised prevents any of the big no no rules from changing without consent.

its not just about just node counts. or pool counts. its also about diversity of who is in control of the node updates. we need MORE 'teams' of differing nodes not less.

consensus would still be reached on the utility fixes such as blocksize. by actually getting the 'teams' to not want to centralise as kings but to workon the same level playing field and come to a compromise of what all can agree on consensually. (preferably done by the nodes rather than dev 'kings')

but its best to not have one dev team making all future decisions alone and bypassing node consensus

Perhaps I should have re-phrased that to:

Does the UTXO you have belong to you, or could the protocol be changed so an algorithm could decide your UTXO should be burned?

Bitcoin is decentralized. There is no central authority anywhere.
So worry not, many people will try to centralize/destroy bitcoin, but there are really smart people working on it, so it will survive

Does the UTXO you have belong to you, or could the protocol be changed so that a central controlling authority could decide your UTXO should be burned?

I really hope some of the following attitudes are either false or do not come to fruition, or they are old thoughts that people have ceded is a bad idea.

- Abandoned UTXO should be forgotten and become unspendable.

http://archive.is/crd1R#selection-149.1-149.59

Who has the authority to determine if my UTXO is abandoned?

Or maybe your UTXO should be burned before a quantum computer can steal it:

http://archive.is/DVbk7

Maybe you would be lucky enough to have your UTXO white listed (who determines this?).

Imagine the unconfirmed tx's / tx fees when people rush to move there UTXO to a quantum computing resistant one with the current blocksize.