Post
Topic
Board Marketplace (Altcoins)
Re: [BOUNTY] VNL - Vanillacoin - ZeroTime double-spend reward
by
Rick Storm
on 13/08/2015, 16:01:57 UTC
"
In order for an attacker to rig the voting system they must control at least
50% of the K closest votes to the current block height of the recipient of a
transaction. We can calculate this as (((1 in N where N = Total Network
Nodes) / K) / 32767.5). Therefore the probability of an attacker owning 50%
of the transaction recipients K-closest votes is approximately (((1 in 350) /
64) / 32767.5) / (score > -1) ? inf : 1 = 1.36e-09 (1.36%)
"

This formula makes no sense.

Firstly, probabilities are numbers between 0 and 1, with 1 being 100%. How on earth does 0.00000000136 equate to 1.36%?

Secondly, the formula should have a variable for the number of nodes the attacker controls. This is central to how a consensus system works. From his formula one might deduce that the attacker has 1 node (1 / 350). So if we assume the attacker has all the nodes, 350, then the formula is 350/350/64/32767.5 = 4.76e-7. Is this 476% in this strange probability scale being used? One would expect the answer to approach 100%.