Topic: New transaction malleability attack wave? Another stresstest? - page 6. (Read 41229 times)

Decentralized systems like PoS are either very expensive to hodlers (compared to their stack) or unsecure to them in long term.
In fact, current fiat system is PoS - the big holders can change the consensus rules, because they have 51% of funds.

Crap !
What have I missed ?

Sorry, man. I have bad news for you.

I declare all software that doesn't transfer all your coins to me out of bounds! I declare all software that doesn't assign me a trillion bitcoins out of bounds! Hurrah! This is fun.

... Come on.  Going and dictating to people what software they could run would not be well aligned with the principals that make Bitcoin (or the internet) interesting in the first place..., particular because taking that approach to it's logical conclusion we'd rapidly reach a state where Bitcoin Core was the only or nearly only software people could use with the network (as it has an order of magnitude more development effort going into it).

I have considerable experience in the IETF, and I have to say your comment drew a bit of a chuckle from me... The IETF has no authority to control what software or behavior other parties have. You're drawing exactly the wrong comparison there.

In Bitcoin Core we discovered, designed solutions, implemented them, adjusted the behavior of our own software, specified the needed behavior, and recommended these changes to others. We've even gone out and reviewed, audited, advised, and contributed patches to other implementations. I'd say we'd done everything short of written invitations, but if you count emails-- I've sent many an invitation (many of which have been warmly received and resulted in improvements in wallet implementations).

And basically all of this was done by people who weren't being paid a cent for it, by you or anyone else-- I might add. And when there was a simple, not very technical, part of the effort that I thought wider help would be important for, I plead for it here-- to seemingly no effect. Apparently its not as big a deal as some are making it out to be.

... so in the meantime, while all of that was going on ... precisely what have you done except insult the few people who've done anything productive at all about this subject?

Kind of you to confirm that you're responding in this thread without having read it (or my response to you in the other thread on the same subject.)

Specific forms of malleability are useful and intentional design features of the protocol. Additional forms allowing unintended malleability arose primarily out of undocumented behavior in underlying cryptographic libraries which have also resulted in CVEed vulnerabilities in unrelated applications-- indeed those later kind were a design error-- but most of them (save the one whos fix was inhibited by wallet behavior were largely closed off ages ago). Meanwhile, in spite of these issues having been well understood for years virtually every altcoin is also vulnerable to them including many 'from scratch ones' and ones created years after the issues were known in Bitcoin and fixed in Bitcoin Core (and even, in at least one case-- one that specifically promotes itself as being 'immune').  While it is unfortunate the the system was created with merely superhuman foresight and not perfect foresight, if you're looking to complain about _incompetent_ you need to go look to those other places, not Bitcoin Core which immediately implemented solutions for every known unintended malleability vector once they were first highlighted as an issue and discovered several new ones along the way.

The network itself is working fine and is completely uninterrupted by this stuff, whats impacted are some wallets in some applications. See also http://fc15.ifca.ai/preproceedings/bitcoin/paper_9.pdf

That's why POS coins like Peercoin have a bright future.

Sure the extra validation/processing cost pales into insignificance compared to the cost of finding the POW?

If this were FUD, the network wouldn't be having problems.  The solution to this problem isn't writing software, the problem is not fundamentally a software problem.  It is a distributed systems problem and a human problem.  It requires leadership. The code is the easy part.

If there were a clear protocol specification there would be a simple way to declare the other wallet developers out of bounds.  Even without a protocol specification, bitcoin core could be changed so that bitcoin core nodes would not relay ill formed transactions, nor accept and propagate blocks that contain ill formed transactions.

There has been ample time to phase in a solution to the problem.  Some old clients would cease to work.  That would be good, not bad.  People with funds in an obsolete wallet could always export their private keys and sweep them into proper new software.  (This part of the argument is the "leadership" problem.)

One consequence of some of these software implementations being obsoleted would be a demand for a firm protocol specification that could be discussed and debated independently from any code base. With a specification there could be the beginning of work on protocol verification and proofs of correctness.  Accomplishing this would require creating some kind of governance structure, such as is used to manage the IETF.  Adults would step into positions of leadership to replace children...

Of course Bitcoin has higher costs, they are a trade-off for its decentralized redundancy.
On the other hand, Bitcoin provides (or strives to) some features unavailable in traditional systems: permissionless and trustlessness of payments, anonymity. The question is whether anyone is willing to pay for these costs to get these features.

Attack is back

The problem is not the protocol developers (core devs) but the rather with the other wallet developers who support and use High S values. If they are so incompetent, why don't you help and write code and implementations? Please read the thread before posting FUD like this.

Yes it is.

Bitcoin core.  Protocol incompetently designed so it has malleability bug. Protocol and software incompetently maintained because bug has yet to be fixed after several years.  Protocol developers incompetent in foreseeing and avoiding problems their incompetent code and designs have created.  Leaders unable to lead, paralyzed by fear.

You want your name on www.bitcoinobituaries.com. Admit it!

Yes but bigger blocks could mean that it's more expensive for miners to process the blocks.
Cost vs Fees again.

I wouldn't call this an attack, it's completely benign on its own. However external software that doesn't properly account for this could result in money being lost, but can't blame Bitcoin itself for that.

Very easy to write a little code and cause blockchain-wide impacts, the dust giveaway is a good example. Hopefully Amaclin doesn't find a real exploit, so far Bitcoin has been impervious, but there must be a true weakness somewhere. If he or anyone else figures out a real weakness then that weakness can be exploited worldwide instantly.

So you are saying Bitcoin has a P/E ratio of ~10,000:1  or so?

Quite high even for tech but not outside the limits of imagination for an asset that could be, in the eyes of it's supporters, the foundation for a new universal value regime.   

Of course those who use language like that are quite often using it to refer to religious beliefs.  Zealotry has frequently paid much, much higher prices for its idealism.

Suppose the price per Tx rises by a factor of 10, and the price of BTC drops by 75% to come into line with the approximate cost of overpowering or capturing the network's security.  P/E of ~250 would not raise many eyebrows on Wall St. 

I have the same problem.

Transaction: Kraken -> Localbitcoins

Those are the 2 transactions generated:
CONFIRMED: https://blockchain.info/tx/7bfc03459c267dee5ad4a407642bf819b09bb0e6f290537bee1ffb99758d9187
UNCONFIRMED (double spend): https://blockchain.info/tx/2de9e19a9b6945912c763eb18294447d24201f30e2b0ca57231b851d2389c1eb

As soon as Blockchain is concerned the unconfirmed transaction should disappear from the network in the long run and the confirmed one is valid.

Can anybody confirm that?

I've also opened a ticket with Kraken and Localbitcoins for being sure of that: I won't spend those bitcoins unless the unconfirmed transaction will disappear.


Best Regards.

At 1000 / block, yes. More transactions per block mean lower fees for users.

Not yet. But I promise to tell you if I do it in future.
PS. I've removed forum signature. It was only a joke.

This is not enough. Users should pay $6 per every tx. Only to remain current price 

Clearly, the number of transactions per block must rise higher than 1000 in order for this to be viable with bitcoin at its current price.

I don't know the answer to your question, and I'm too dumb to be able to quote post signatures, but I think your post signature indicates you have found a way to profit from your stress test.

Like a true capitalist, you make money on both sides of the trade.