Topic: One Trillion dollars marketcap: How does it escalate technical challenges? - page 2. (Read 423 times)

The private key is becoming less and less private...

https://billatnapier.medium.com/ecdsa-revealing-the-private-key-from-four-signed-message-two-keys-and-shared-nonces-secp256k1-5758f1258b1d

Thank you for the listing, I'd classify the threats you already mentioned, in two categories:

Category 1: Structural shortcomings of the system being exposed to ever-increasing expectations. Bitcoin scaling problem is one important example here.

Category 2: Incentivized adversary behaviors being escalated because of stakes getting higher and higher. Regulatory intervention and censorship threats fit in this class.

In this thread, after a few more challenges have been reminded by users, I'm trying to show how not only the first but also the second class of threats are basically and essentially pure technical challenges to bitcoin and should be addressed asap by technical contribution.

Personally, I don't remember anything like that happening in the US a few years ago - but what recently appeared in the media is definitely on that trail - and these are crypto miners who should work according to some pre-determined rules - which would mean that they will mine only those transactions that will be clean.

As @NotATether mentioned, what exactly technical challenge you're talking about? Few example i could think,

1. Block size limit problem, which affect bitcoin transaction fee and hinder adaption.
2. Bitcoin full node client is dominated by Bitcoin Core, even when there are many alternative implementation out there.
3. Mining pool forced to comply with regulation where pool blacklist certain address/transaction
4. All kinds of attack performed by miner which doesn't violate Bitcoin protocol such as block withholding or mining empty block

while the higher valuation may make it normal to think that the value at risk is greater, the actual risk of a successful attack resulting in breaking of network is still the same as it has always been. If anything, the skyrocketing prices of mining hardware makes it costlier still to attack the network itself. I think this is one of the biggest advantages of being a PoW coin unlike PoS.

Yet, as @aliashraf said, this should be a topic of discussion. One of the risks i can think of has more to do with the aspect of manpower management than purely technical challenges. Bitcoin is a decentralized entity but we all know that it is equally dependent on individual brilliance like everything else of value in this world. There are several changes and updates planned for the network. There are individuals involved who do it out of dedication and belief. Yet, like all of us, those individuals have compulsions that can lead to weaknesses. The recent example of Core devs removing references to Bitcoin whitepaper in the face of litigation threat is one such example, albeit small one and something that was quickly addressed. (which also shows the importance of truly anonymous benefactors).

The risk is that Bitcoin is more dependent on individuals than we realize. As the market cap continues to grow and more value is added, it keeps putting these individuals under more pressure as BTC continues to become a juicier target for some. Bitcoin has always successfully dealt all these challenges, either as community or by anonymous benefactors (The 30 BTC anonymous donation to Antonopoulous come to mind as an example when someone anonymous decided that AA was important enough for the community to be taken care of). How long this will continue and does Bitcoin have a robust enough plan, in the sense that a plan can be made within a decentralized network like BTC?

I think I understand your fear. Someone may sploit a bug, or something may just go wrong and billions of dollars are lost forever, and it is a protocol fault?

I think this trillion market cap was slowly build over those 11, nearly 12 years. The network is already heavily tested.
Different from many altcoins, such as ethereum, which became extremely valuable very fast... then someone found a smartcontract bug in dao and you know the rest..

This why bitcoin must be extremely conservative. New technologies, new algorithms (like pos), and things like that should be tested in altcoins.  There is no room for error or miscalculation in bitcoin network

What kind of technological challenges are you referring to?

Those hundreds of millions with of value spread out in a block's transactions are unmodifiable by the miner who mines it, because they do not have the private keys to them. That's one risk mitigated.

Adverse mining group wants to take over more than half of the network? Well they have to risk having more than $310K in mining rewards for each fake block they mined voided after a chain reorg. No sane miner is going to risk throwing away one million dollars that can be otherwise obtained from mining three blocks honestly. Another risk mitigated.

The only real risk I see is since the global hashrate is now mostly centralized in a handful of companies' hands, one of them is going to use their hashpower to agree with some idiot regulation that censors part of the protocol for some people. I swear there was this one miner who already supported such a regulation, it was a US bill to audit bitcoin addresses made in the US and they controlled like 7% of the global hashrate, it was fairly recent too, like 1-3 years ago but I forgot their name (if anyone can find it, I will give one merit).

Everybody is happy, BTC is skyrocketing and many dreams are becoming true, it feels so good, looking in the skeptics eyes, telling the magical 3 words: I Told You, right?

But I'm getting a bit nervous as well:
Isn't it too much of a technical burden for Bitcoin, maintaining such a mission ever increasingly critical network?

I'm afraid it is, at the time of this writing, each Bitcoin block is switching hundreds of millions of dollars, being happy and proud does not change the fact that as much as bitcoin surges so does incentives for adversarial behavior, hence, RISKS.

How do you think? What are the risks involved? I think it is time to discuss it seriously and in a very responsible manner, actually I'm surprised not seeing such a dialogue here! It is not a PR forum, we don't need to be cautious about stupid investors who may reconsider their plans hearing the scary word "RISK", they don't come here, at least in this sub-forum, D&T Discussion, and the smart ones will become more enthusiastic realizing that it is not just about cheering and applauding and there are people who take care of the risks as well.