Coinhunter. Easily.
While BEX has quite an attitude from time to time, he appears to have the competence to back it up (took me a while to figure out why his improvement of my attack would work so damn well against NMC).
And IMO while CEXes move is a pretty dickish one, it's the only good way to simulate a attack on bitcoin (whole system, not only network).
Any other forkcoin would be pretty much SOL as they lack the size, devs and infrastructure to make for a good guinea pig. (e.g. saying "well, we'll just add a chain lockin" is easy, but so far no one actually tested how hard it'll be to get all major players on a large *coin to update).
Competance is not only limited to being able to understand conceptual and pragmatic aspects of a block chain and the surrounding issues.
Competence also applies to morals as well. Simply saying that this attack on namecoin is for "research and information" to better bitcoin but then also him claiming its purpose is to see how much of a defense namecoin can amass is contradictory. Testing and attacking and destroying are all difference concepts.
So tell me this:
1. Why can't this test be used on i0coin or ixcoin instead?
2. Once you folks have rewritten history in the namecoin block chain who do you think will want to be a part of a block chain that has been dismantled and will likely be controlled by those who attacked it? (My answer is: No one.)
Those who mine namecoins or bought into namecoins who are going to have their holdings vanish due to this attack (if successful) will likely not participate in that network anymore thus rendering the network useless and leaving a bad taste in users' mouths.
Also why stop at rewriting the blockchain to block 10,000 and just rewrite it to block #2 instead? That way you can mine all of the namecoins and control every aspect of the namecoin network.
Why not just screw everyone and not just the later adopters?
I did also see that recently BitcoinEXpress posted a reply to Gavin's sticky note on this forum about how he thinks that Gavin warning people about alt-chains is in his (Gavin's) best interest and not others. Also if you follow BitcoinEXpress' postings he has advocated that he does not believe bitcoin or any other chain will succeed ultimately and thus could care less about the outcome of all cryptocurrencies currently.
This is also a contradiction because recently, as stated above, he has claimed this attack is for the benefit of bitcoin. That is bullshit.
This is the same guy who also claimed to have made 600BTC profit on ixcoins. This guy has claimed his intentions are purely for profit. He has never advocated that he wanted to better bitcoin or any alt-chain through testing, of which this "attack" is not a test but as he puts it "wanting to see how much of a defense namecoin supports can amass".
One thing I can appreciate is that he did make this public. Thank you for that BitcoinEXpress.
I'm sorry but rewriting over 9000 blocks as opposed to say 100 or 1000 or all 19000, is stupid.
He isn't doing this for the research part of it. Purely if you look at his recent postings this guy is arrogant.
What do any of us think he will likely do with the newly mined namecoins that are going to replace close to half of the currently existing namecoins? The answer is turn a profit.
What he is claiming will happen about centralizing the domain name registering process is the opposite of the whole purpose of the cryptocurrency movement which is DECENTRALIZATION which obviously he has no appreciation for given that he wants to control the network any which way he can.
EDIT: Also by your statement you are saying that it is okay to have an attitude if you have competence which is untrue. No one should have this type of attitude and be considered righteous in doing what he is about to do.