Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: Double spend with zero confirmations has been solved.
by
patmast3r
on 14/08/2015, 06:46:30 UTC
Okay I've digested the white paper. I appreciate john-conner providing more details. That was the honorable and helpful action.

Unfortunately afaics, there are elementary attack vectors that he has not addressed in this white paper:

  • No cost to being a peer, thus a Sybil attack on nodes in general. The adversary could insert a unlimited nodes if he wants to in order to dominate voting.
  • How to squelch DoS attacks on the vote? A node which always votes against consensus can't be distinguished from one voting honestly since lock conflicts result in an indeterminate vote.
  • He employs a Bellagio Algorithm to avoid gaming the selection of which nodes to poll for votes, so this removes the reputation weights of Skycoin's consensus, but it doesn't address the spamming of total node count nor the spamming of the lock conflict.
  • Nodes are not paid for voting. If they receive bribes from the double-spender, the algorithm has no defense other than it hopes that 50% of the nodes in the network are not on-the-dole.
  • Lock request spamming or DoS attacks. Are transaction fees hardcoded for the entire network?? Preset constants are anti-decentralization.

Also this algorithm requires the entire network to see all the transactions which of course won't scale without centralization, so if he is trying to enable real-time microtransactions (1 second confirmations) which could explode transaction volumes up to the 100,000s or more per second then he has a problem. Refer to the GavinCoin fork debate.



He's solving Bitcoin problems thought impossible to solve while you are a troll on a forum.....hmmm who to trust.

Even if he is a troll his questions make sense and should be answered.

Also I could just always broadcast 2 Locks (Race Attack) and sometimes I'll get lucky (and the merchant unlucky) and other times the merchant will get lucky. It doesn't cost me anything so why not try ? So in the end the merchant should be waiting for the next block either way or am I missing something ? (Serious question not trying to hate)

Is the only thing that seperates peers form super peers that peers aren't reachable and super peers are ? If so I find the naming very odd.