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Topic: Satoshi didn't solve the Byzantine generals problem - page 7. (Read 13680 times)

legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1007
On the topic of the thread, I consider Bitcoin and BGP as distinct, but related, problems. The setup is quite different, and I haven't seen anything close to a method (including Satoshi's email) to reduce one to the other.

The main difference is that PoW chains use an amortized byzantine consensus. Nodes vote individually (rather than all at once) with their hashing power on the branch of the chain which they consider to be truth. A 'no' vote results in the branch getting orphaned, a 'yes' vote has that branch become (or stay) the canonical branch.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1007
Bitcoin didn't solve BGP either. Nothing does because the problem is open to Sybil attacks.

For the third time: byzantine faulty nodes can be colluding in the BGP; this means that sybil nodes are permitted as faulty nodes and come under the bounds of the model.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
Quote
Again I think this another evidence that Bitcoin was created by the DEEP STATE with evil intentions

Another? As far as I know such an argument is the only evidence.

Well r0ach is correct. You are slippery like Bill Clinton and will argue disingenuously on a point due to stubbornness and vested interests rather than applying balanced reason.

One guy in his basement created Bitcoin.  Roll Eyes

And used clever psychology to cause geeky Libertarian hard money folks to lose their reason and wet their pants by claiming Bitcoin is a better gold because it has 0%  debasement (when in fact anyone with a functioning brain stem can see the debasement has been in the double-digits for the duration which Bitcoin can obscure its coming failure). I wrote these observations when I first joined this forum in March 2013.

Inserted edit: He disappeared without a trace, yet the entire world is hunting for him. No mere mortals can do that.

Your other post is a lie (or a persistent will to misconstrue facts). I will explain when I get back from running errands outside.

I did not sleep last night and it was 9am when I was debating you guys. When I get back, you can deal with me with a fresh mind where I am not trying to write delirious due to a lack of sleep.
hero member
Activity: 709
Merit: 503
All systems are ultimately vulnerable, period; comet strikes, bloating sun, heat death.  That anything operates even a little well for even just a little while is the miracle we call this universe.  We are spoiled by the illusion of stability.  Still, Bitcoin appears to be going along sort of ok for now; I will not withdraw my investment yet.

If there is a malevolent entity behind Bitcoin then please be advised that you aren't getting more than you've already got from me so please end the charade now.  Hmm, perhaps it hopes to ensnare more unwitting fools.  Bummer.

Then again if there isn't then maybe Bitcoin's shortcomings can be patched up before they are exploited.  Hmm, I think I will know when there's a problem because I won't be able to extract value.

ASIC-resistant PoW seems like a delightful idea to me.  Is memory latency the barrier to stand upon for the ages?  Hmm, that sounds familiar.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1072
Crypto is the separation of Power and State.
As Smooth said, such a system can still have value.  You don't have to be a perfect system, just better or competitive with the others.  Not hard to do when your competition is a Federal Reserve enslavement scheme.  It's like asking a prisoner would you rather be tortured with a chainsaw or be given a cell phone with bad reception.

If we are talking Sprint-bad reception, I'll take the chainsaw plx.   Tongue
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
Quote
Again I think this another evidence that Bitcoin was created by the DEEP STATE with evil intentions

Another? As far as I know such an argument is the only evidence.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
Bitcoin didn't solve BGP either. Nothing does because the problem is open to Sybil attacks.

What you keep denying is that there are solutions (all solutions, and provably so in the case of BGP) that solve the problem within a specified range. Generally up to 33%-of-generals in the case of BGP and maybe 50%-of-hash rate for Bitcoin.

There is no solution that solves the problem up to <100% of participants. If you introduce identities then you have made it worse in a sense because now a failure of just one component -- the certificate authority -- breaks the entire system, instead of many (33%/50%/etc.) failures.

On the topic of the thread, I consider Bitcoin and BGP as distinct, but related, problems. The setup is quite different, and I haven't seen anything close to a method (including Satoshi's email) to reduce one to the other.

It is possible you can define another related problem that is in turn more useful than both Bitcoin or BGP solutions for some practical application. You still have to overcome Bitcoin's network effect even if your approach is somewhat more useful.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1000
I will repeat, Bitcoin provides a Power Law distribution (winner takes all) consensus. That is all it does.

Again I think this another evidence that Bitcoin was created by the DEEP STATE with evil intentions. It is a fools gold.

I don't really define it in such harsh terms as being completely invalid or fool's gold, just that because Sybil protection doesn't exist, it's security through obscurity, where the only way anyone actually knows the security of the system at any given time is for you to know the total hash rate and acquire 51% of it yourself.  I think there's a distinction to be made between provably secure, provably bad or invalid security, or in the case of Bitcoin, an unknown level of security to most or all parties at all times.

As Smooth said, such a system can still have value.  You don't have to be a perfect system, just better or competitive with the others.  Not hard to do when your competition is a Federal Reserve enslavement scheme.  It's like asking a prisoner would you rather be tortured with a chainsaw or be given a cell phone with bad reception.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
It is a seemingly very intractable problem it is to solve the BGP in a decentralized context open to Sybil attacks.

One can create Power Law winner takes all as Satoshi did, but that isn't a solution. That is the equivalent to saying who ever can kill all the generals wins.

Making mining unprofitable as I propose to do, removes the incentive to kill all the generals except where externalities can generate gains, e.g. shorting the coin, advantages to the State of censoring transactions, but the security must be considered in the context of the costs to do so as well as any objectivity about faults that can be added to the system. I will need to think this through all again to compose a white paper and maybe then I will find a flaw in my proposed solution.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
Since Bitcoin can not detect faultiness (consistently provable to all observers), then that means you are claiming it is Byzantine fault tolerant with up to 100% of the hashrate faulty. Which obviously violates the fundamental research about what is theoretically plausible. Which thus proves to you that your claim is incorrect.

Bitcoin is the Power Law of Economics, not Byzantine fault tolerance.

Apply that logic to any of the attempts to solve the BGP, you will find that none of them solve it, which suggests that your definition is incorrect. Each and every attempt at solving the BGP defines bounds on the failure tolerance; beyond these bounds, all bets are off.

Simple logic will tell you that you are making a false statement. Given a centralized solution to the Byzantine fault tolerance where messages can't be forged because there is no Sybil attack because all participants' signing key is known, then if a less than or equal to 50% of the replicas agree, then there is a fault of consensus divergence which is provable to all observers.

One might argue that if some of the replicas don't respond, it is impossible to prove they did not respond or will not. But all observers will see the same symptoms which is the definition of Byzantine fault tolerance, because they can all relay the messages (and it is assumed a P2P network can have a fully connected network if necessary).

Arguing that nothing solves BGP is irrelevant. Yeah you made a typo (you meant Byzantine fault tolerance not BGP). That is the point of this thread. Bitcoin didn't solve BGP either. Nothing does because the problem is open to Sybil attacks.

I will repeat, Bitcoin provides a Power Law distribution (winner takes all) consensus. That is all it does.

Again I think this another evidence that Bitcoin was created by the DEEP STATE with evil intentions. It is a fools gold.

As smooth said, since the system has failed once it passes the tolerance, how can it possibly detect anything? That defies logic.

Oh really. Whose illogic is that.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1007
Since Bitcoin can not detect faultiness (consistently provable to all observers), then that means you are claiming it is Byzantine fault tolerant with up to 100% of the hashrate faulty. Which obviously violates the fundamental research about what is theoretically plausible. Which thus proves to you that your claim is incorrect.

Bitcoin is the Power Law of Economics, not Byzantine fault tolerance.

Apply that logic to any of the attempts to solve the BGP, you will find that none of them solve it, which suggests that your definition is incorrect. Each and every attempt at solving the BGP defines bounds on the failure tolerance; beyond these bounds, all bets are off.

As smooth said, since the system has failed once it passes the tolerance, how can it possibly detect anything? That defies logic.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
When you see a corrected design, you will understand why not being able to Sybil attack a frame of reference is what enables establishing blame and making the system Byzantine tolerant.

It won't work - you cannot combine the majority-is-truth rule with something which gives power to the minority, because if you do, any faulty minority will be able to overthrow the majority, which leads to divergent chaos.

It may work, up to its specified limits, but then it will fail a different way.

I find it amusing how monsterer often declares that something is impossible and then I show him it is possible, yet then he is so sure of himself again.

Making mining unprofitable combined with some different responsibilities for organizing the block chain produces a very different system in terms of the issues we are discussing.

Note some centralization is always required. Bitcoin gives us centralization but without any frame of reference thus observers have no way to be objective in order to use decentralized power to prove blame to all observers.

LCR has to do with converging consensus. It doesn't have to do with blame for example of which transactions get censored. Those can be orthogonal if structured in a way that allows unambiguously proving blame (independent of the LCR). In Bitcoin, when you submit a transaction to the network, you can't blame a particular pool for refusing to include it. No one can verify the claim by submitting it to network and identifying a particular pool that is the culprit. If you don't know which pool to blame and the pools are Sybil attacked any way, then you don't even know where to move your mining shares to (besides the fact that payers are not mining in Bitcoin because mining is profitable).
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
We can't count the components because identities can be Sybil attacked.

I'm not really sure why you are having such a problem with this; it is obvious that hashing power is the only substitute for the abstract concept of a node, or a component.

Because hash rate doesn't prove faultiness. Bitcoin has no frame of reference.

Majority is truth. That is the ethos of bitcoin.

For the 3rd or 4th time, according to definitions the rule of majority presenting different symptoms to different observers is not Byzantine fault tolerance:

A system which doesn't objectively (from the perspective of all observers) know when it is failing is not Byzantine fault tolerant.

Refer again to the Wikipedia definitions:

The following practical, concise definitions are helpful in understanding Byzantine fault tolerance:[3][4]

Byzantine fault
    Any fault presenting different symptoms to different observers
Byzantine failure
    The loss of a system service due to a Byzantine fault in systems that require consensus

This circular logic of yours is getting redundant. I have made my point and you have not refuted it.

I hope I don't have to repeat that again.

Since Bitcoin can not detect faultiness (consistently provable to all observers), then that means you are claiming it is Byzantine fault tolerant with up to 100% of the hashrate faulty. Which obviously violates the fundamental research about what is theoretically plausible. Which thus proves to you that your claim is incorrect.

Bitcoin is the Power Law of Economics, not Byzantine fault tolerance.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
When you see a corrected design, you will understand why not being able to Sybil attack a frame of reference is what enables establishing blame and making the system Byzantine tolerant.

It won't work - you cannot combine the majority-is-truth rule with something which gives power to the minority, because if you do, any faulty minority will be able to overthrow the majority, which leads to divergent chaos.

It may work, up to its specified limits, but then it will fail a different way.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 1198
The system will have failed, but it will have failed because it exceeded stated limits.

The system didn't fail. Who can prove it failed?

Someone who attempts to use the service and is unable to do so.

You can't require everyone to recognize such a failure because that would be a consensus outcome and now you are relying on a failed consensus system to produce consensus.

Consensus only exists within the specified limits.


legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1007
When you see a corrected design, you will understand why not being able to Sybil attack a frame of reference is what enables establishing blame and making the system Byzantine tolerant.

It won't work - you cannot combine the majority-is-truth rule with something which gives power to the minority, because if you do, any faulty minority will be able to overthrow the majority, which leads to divergent chaos.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1007
We can't count the components because identities can be Sybil attacked.

I'm not really sure why you are having such a problem with this; it is obvious that hashing power is the only substitute for the abstract concept of a node, or a component.

Because hash rate doesn't prove faultiness. Bitcoin has no frame of reference.

Majority is truth. That is the ethos of bitcoin.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
We can't count the components because identities can be Sybil attacked.

I'm not really sure why you are having such a problem with this; it is obvious that hashing power is the only substitute for the abstract concept of a node, or a component.

Because hash rate doesn't prove faultiness. Bitcoin has no frame of reference.

When you see a corrected design, you will understand why not being able to Sybil attack a frame of reference is what enables establishing blame and making the system Byzantine tolerant.
sr. member
Activity: 420
Merit: 262
The system will have failed, but it will have failed because it exceeded stated limits.

The system didn't fail. Who can prove it failed?

You guys keep forgetting the point I made which is that Satoshi's design provides no mechanism to objectively distinguish failure. There is no such thing as faulty nodes in Satoshi's PoW. Even a double-spend attack can not be distinguished from a latency driven orphan w.r.t. to the miners' hashrate. The fact that the payer sent two signed txns is orthogonal to hashrate.

Come on guys turn on your brains now.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1007
We can't count the components because identities can be Sybil attacked.

I'm not really sure why you are having such a problem with this; it is obvious that hashing power is the only substitute for the abstract concept of a node, or a component.
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