Topic: NAS :: Descendant of NXT 100% PoS|More Exchanges|WinNAS is ready! - page 8. (Read 143779 times)

I tried to sync a client on my main computer, different from my forging node, and ended up with the above mentioned result. I wanted to see what would happen.
I re-started my forging node yesterday and stopped forging on it, it's still there doing nothing, at block 280284   4/7/2015 22:19:56, connected to 4 nodes: funkyvps3, patapato, 99.227.*.* and 106.187.*.*
The blockchain was not reset but i was forging all the block and so maybe i'm on my own fork.


I'll blacklist lcharles node. Not sure if i ever saw his node connected. Should start taking screenshots of the connected nodes and such
I'll try connecting my other client to see what happen, enabling some logging.

I agree on only distributing/leasing a smaller amount of NAS.

Well, the problem, as I understand, is that lcharles123 has the power of forging with my balance for 1440 blocks, and his fork entered in a loop without end.

Maybe it is not correct to ask others for blacklisting anybody. In that case, the solution by myself will be based on the same thing than the problem, that is, the fact that my forging power is > 80%. So, here is what I can do:

• I setup another node, while keeping my original node intact
• I blacklist my original node patapato.ddns.net, and put nodes of lcharles123 and tiker as wellKnownPeers, in order to ensure that my new node sync with the other fork
• I wait to fully synchronize the forked blockchain
• I wait for the blockchain going back to the block 277935, the block in which lcharles123 forging power begins, as this fork is repeatedly going back to that block height
• In that client, in that moment, I transfer all my 22 M Nas stake to another account of myself, in order to take out all the forging power from lcharles123 in that fork
• I stop forging on my original client, in order to not conflict and let the block height grow in the forked chain
• I wait to the end of the leasing on that fork, at block height higher than 278461
• I restart forging on my original client (on this blockchain I didn't transfer my stake)

In that moment, the loop in that fork will be over, and I will not forge on it. So, it will be a fork with much less forging power and much lower block height. Anyway, the network should resync to one of both forks, and this time, if any forger try to go back with an old saved blockchain file he will not success.

Since Patapato has Pidgin installed to chat, we're going to discuss things in a chat room, (faster than message boards).

This is an open invitation to everyone who wants to join, the XMPP (Jabber) chat room (MUC) is:  [email protected]

Not sure when we'll be discussing yet.. but join and sit idle for now... hopefully everyone with a NAS stake will join.  We need to make a decision to fix this issue soon.

Your node disagrees with mine when your block height is over 277934. But it goes back to that height from time to time, and that block height is in agreement with my node. Your node disagrees just when there is a next 277935 block forged by lcharles123 node, or forged by you and confirmed by lcharles123 node.

My node is also stuck because there are no others confirming blocks higher than 279189, who was forged by User1397367406. So it will wait until some other forger reaches that height (that forger was User1397367406, but he reseted his blockchain confused by your case, sorry to say).

If User1397367406 also blacklist lcharles123 node, maybe your and his nodes agree on a different fork than me, but the network will synchronize by itself when you both reach my block height.

What is not healthy, and not logical (it is a weakness in NXT model of leasing) is that 2 nodes are forging at the same time with the same balance, as it is the present case. I mean, leasing period should be a time period, not a block height period, in order to avoid such a situation. Now we have to avoid that situation by ourselves, "by hand", and it should be by understanding all of you that, when somebody lease his balance for short time, it is for short TIME. If all of you agree with that, you should agree that the intended lease period should have already ended. The way to stop the unintended leasing period is to blacklist the unintended forger.

Well, he's on the forums now so I'll let him defend himself...

If we blacklist his IP, what do you expect will happen?  My nodes seem to disagree with the blocks your node has.  Chances are, your node will disagree with what my nodes have.  User1234567890 reset a node and ended up where my nodes sit today.  Does that make my nodes the correct chain even though they're stuck at a block lower than your nodes?

He recognizes explicitly that he restarts his node before the end-of-leasing block 278461, and he restarts it to a time after the beginning of leasing, with a copy made after he started to forge with leased balance. That is an intentional act, or better said, two intentional acts.

The non intentional act is to let the node evolve by itself without reseting. Or at least, to reset his node to scratch, deleting his blockchain file in order to reconstruct a clean blockchain from the network. But reseting to a state between the 1440 blocks of his leased forging power is an intentional act.

I don't know for sure, it's an assumption.  This node became available the same day bter fixed their NAS withdrawals for me to get a few NAS from the exchange.  This IP is also visible on the NFD network which bter also supports.

I could be completely wrong calling 106.187.... bter's node but that's what I call it.  

Blacklisting lcharles node might be a bit extreme.  If it was done by lcharles setting his node then it probably wasn't intentional.  I don't think it's lcharles' blockchain reset because the blocks between 277021 and 278461 would have been forged with his account.  The last 100 blocks or so that I can see on both clients were forged by NAS-5HZF-TPQ5-GSHF-7GV33 (User123456789?).  Even if lcharles forged one fork, reset and forged the new fork, the blocks would still have his account on them from either fork.  I'd almost think lcharles was on a fork before the lease was set, started forging on his own and the rest of us didn't agree and accepted forged blocks from the 2nd highest forger.  That doesn't explain how I got stuck before the rest of you though...

To speed things up in getting this fixed quicker, I'd suggest we find a chat room for everyone with a node, compare chains, find a solution (hopefully without resetting bter) and going with it.  My access to IRC networks is limited most of the time being at work but I can join XMPP chat rooms any time.  If everyone agrees, let's set a time and discuss...

Our network is under attack (by lcharles123)
(important Nxt and NEM community members, including main Nxt developer, don't like Nas)

The attack consist of the following facts and steps:

1.- initially, there is a PoS network properly working, but forgers are few and distribution of forging power is:
    · forger A: 22 M (me)
    · forger B:  5 M (User1397367406)
    · forger C:  5 k (tiker)
    · others:  < 1 k
2.- the attacker asks for more forging power to forger A, by PM
3.- forger A leases his 22 M balance to the attacker for the minimum time, 1440 blocks, until block height EoL (End of Lease); attacker is now the forger with > 80% of forging power
4.- attacker makes a copy of blockchain file at the beginning of his leased time
5.- attacker forge blocks below EoL, then restart his node with the previously downloaded copy at the beginning of his lease, and waits for spontaneous fork, which is easy as he has most of the forging power
6.- lease ends on original blockchain, but lease never ends on his fork, as new blocks are rejected and reseted to the beginning of fork before reaching EoL on that fork
7.- main fork also doesn't advance, as his new blocks are also rejected and reseted to the last block with a transaction
8.- the network reaches a never ending situation, with 22 M stake forging on one fork and the same 22 M stake forging on another fork; Nas is fooled and attacker laughs loudly on us:


Notice that EoL block is precisely 278461 !, and he is downloading old copy of blockchain before that height in order to not losing his forging power:

To worsen things, a trusted forger thought that he was on a bad fork, so he tried to reset his blockchain, stopping forging on his original blockchain and getting in sync with the attacker's fork:

Solutions?:

• I ask you, @User1397367406, to please recover your last original blockchain, as you forged in sync with me at least until height 279189 (06/04/2015 21:10:52, GMT+2), while you are currenly going back to 277934.
  
• I ask every forger to blacklist lcharles node: nxt.servebeer.com (46.105.44.4)
  
• I will distribute my account balance in smaller accounts, roughly the size of the next big forger, in order to have a more equilibrated distribution of forging power
  

Other suggestions, comments, ideas?

So your client is stuck where my nodes are.  That means that the blocks creating the longer chain contain something bad that those nodes accepted for some unknown reason.

If a new node is stuck at the same spot as my nodes then chances are we won't be fixing my nodes to reach patapato's block height.  We could try re-syncing again with my nodes shut down to see what happens but that might make things worse for the network.

Chances are, lcharles' node is stuck at a block near mine.  That's the only reason why lcharles' node would continue trying to forge blocks with your lease.  That node hasn't reached a  number where the lease ended.  That could be why my node is trying to accept blocks forged by lcharles' node and why signature errors are appearing for blocks you forge with your account - my nodes think that you should not be forging with your balance yet and thinks it's still with lcharles.

I still don't understand why leasing your balance to someone else with an unstable node could cause this issue.  In theory, it shouldn't.

I tried syncing a client on my computer from mid march and so far it seems to sync until block 277934 and 277940 :
Blocks after 277934 appearing and dissapearing ...
Very strange thing and it seems we have, again(sigh) a messed up network.

But my node is in the longer chain. Several blocks under 279190 were forged by User1397367406 node (NAS-5HZF-TPQ5-GSHF-7GV33), and validated by mine. So, two big forgers with a hallmark agree until block height 279190, while yours is at 277941 now. I also notice that, when I stop forging, your blockchain goes on, gaining height (forged almost all by lcharles123 account), but when I restart forging, your blockchain goes back to near 277935.

I notice another faulty thing, and I am beginning to understand (I'm afraid). lcharles123 has only 64 NAS, but he is forging with ~22 million NAS of effective balance. That is, lcharles123 is forging with my leased balance. But my leasing finished after 1440 blocks!! More properly, my leasing had to finish on block 278461, from block 277021. Here is the admin "Get Account" info of NAS-VBK9-5ZXA-CJQ8-GEWVU:


Soooo... , I suggest you, @tiker, to blacklist the node of lcharles, as he is "ilegally" forging with my balance and confusing the network. And I ask you, @lcharles, to stop forging with my balance, as my leasing already finished on the longer fork of the blockchain. Otherwise I have to think that you asked me by PM a balance to forge with in order to just attacking the NAS network.

I stopped forging after the re-start.
Right now i only have these nodes connected:
funkyvps3.funkymonkey.org and 99.227.*.*
patapato.ddns.net comes and goes ...

I was forging all the time, just re-started my node as i was forging on my own little fork ;(
The branch might have accured arround block height 279182 as from what i saw i started forging one block after another and still was till now (as far as i could tell from the block list).
The Log doesn't show anything too interesting ...
The log has some of the following:
As far as i can tell, during the last days there where several periodes where my node was forging block after block.
It's hard to tell with the log as there is only the timestamp of a block generated by my node.

How do you know bter's node is (106.187...)?

I think the bter.com node is stuck with my nodes.

The peer list from my public node:

If you look at the downloaded MB counts, 3 nodes which agree are all 50+ MB and are constantly trying to update my public node with their block chains.

My local node (99.227....) and bter's node (106.187...) are both under 10 MB which makes me think they're in agreement with my public node's chain and are trying to continue from there.  We need to find a way to get the nodes to resolve the issue on their own.  I won't be good for us if we ask bter to reset their node...

I'll start forging on both nodes again.  The account on my public node will be forging with about 8 NAS and my local node will be forging with a little over 5000 NAS.

Another thing to point out... The consoles for both nodes are reporting signature errors for the blocks.  I've also noticed that the hallmarked nodes are not showing as hallmarked nodes all the time.  (Weight = 0 in the list above.)  I have seen evidence of a signature generation problem from my public node when I attempted to send out a transaction in the past.  There might be more to this problem than just a forked chain.

Your block 277934 is the same as ours. It is block 17565891496255612524, its timestamp is 32493681, and its signature is a31e0ae7a1e94c3175271157a43b6cd64eaff47825278bad28fdad6699f46f0147c3b2eea29fb7a a8a0b90cdaf224ddf9e7afbf7d2de3a038b5ef25c87929fef

My node is stuck at height 279190, the one just after my transaction at 13:39:49 (GMT+2), similarly to your 277935. It advances some blocks, then it goes back, sometimes to the previous valid one 279189. I can not see other forgers when I am not forging. I restarted my node 2 hours ago, but it is the same (less peers now).

I told you to not forge, but with so few forgers I'm wrong. It is probably better now that all of us try to forge, and the NAS distributed system will decide. In fact, I created other accounts in order to distribute my forging power leasing smaller quantities to others. I can not do it until the network stabilize to one winner fork.

@User1397367406, I don't see you forging neither on my client nor on tiker's public client, are you not forging now?, or are you in yet another fork?

My nodes are stuck at 277935.  They are sticking with block 277934 and attempting to link 277935 to it.  At first when my node was forging, it was trying to stick it's own forged block there but other nodes didn't agree.  A block forged by NAS-3S5R-Q4ZL-QUEA-BWAP2 was there for a short time but it removed it because other nodes didn't agree.  My nodes keep destroying all blocks from 277935 and onwards and trying to rebuild them.  That is why you now see your transaction in that block but it'll be destroyed soon as it attempts to rebuild it again.

My nodes appear to be rejecting the block 277935 that other nodes are trying to pass to it.  It gives a bad signature message and bans that IP for 15 minutes or so.  That would make me think that my block 277934 is different than the same block number everyone else has.

I had shut down my local NAS client over night and just started it up again.  I'll see what it does.

I just hope bter's node isn't suck like mine.  It won't be good if it is.

I created a new account, and I sent it 1000 NAS (transaction 18419636354574564653). I was not forging in that instant. But I didn't get blocks, so I started forging again. In my blockchain it is at height 279190 forged by me, but in tiker's public node (http://funkyvps3.funkymonkey.org:7873/) it is at height 277935 forged by NAS-VBK9-5ZXA-CJQ8-GEWVU (with a balance of 64 NAS).

I am observing in real time how both forks are fighting, as I see the block height going back and forth in both nodes. Interesting.