Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: Security analysis of PoW/PoS hybrids with low PoW reward
by
stormia
on 01/04/2014, 03:01:27 UTC
That is YOUR reply I quoted.

You must have read the answer at one point, because YOU commented that your question was answered, but I will summarize it again here just to be perfectly clear.

  • Blackcoin use POS 0.3.0 protocol which has no known vulnerabilities at this time
  • The "attack" suggested is impossible because coins do not stake on age alone, therefore making deposits at small intervals in no way guarantees you will generate POS blocks at those intervals.  In fact splitting coins to generate these intervals will make the chance of staking at each interval even less

Right, it uses "POS 0.3.0 protocol which has no known vulnerabilities at this time" in the context of a PoS/PoW hybrid, right? It has never been tested in the context of pure PoS, right?

I will restate: If i said said anything further about it on the blackcoin thread, I would have been ran out of there and labeled as a FUDer.
Similar to how what I am saying now, not on the blackcoin thread, is drawing so much heat.

I'm not giving you heat, i'm only answering your question.. again.

Saying Sunny King's fix only applies to POS/POW hybrids is incorrect, it fixed the POS protocol. Period.  

The timebomb attack is not feasible because coins do not stake on age alone, there are other factors.   Even if you could guarantee that all your coins ages were spaced at a minimum interval there is no guarantee they will all stake at their intervals. Also POS blocks have a target time interval, so coins that were eligible to stake too soon would not generate blocks any faster than the target interval, there is no way that one person could force their coins to be the ones to generate stake for many consecutive intervals.  This attack is pure nonsense.  

But Sunny King fixed PoS in the context of PoS/PoW hybrid, not pure PoS. Right?

Since there have not been any other pure POS coins yes the fix was originally applied to a POS/POW hybrid.  Nevertheless the fix is for the POS protocol and did nothing to POW. The fix ensured that POS was a secure way to generate blocks to secure a blockchain.  If you know of any vulnerabilities in POS please make them known so they can be addressed.

I don't know the specific vulnerabilities, I'm not saying that there necessarily are any. My argument is purely from a logic standpoint. If the security of PoS was in any way dependent upon PoW in the PoS/PoW hybrid system, then just because the PoS security flaws were fixed in that context doesn't mean they will be fixed when PoS is standing alone, or that new security flaws wouldn't be introduced when PoS stands alone. So the question is, did Sunny build/fix PoS to be completely secure standing alone or was it in anyway dependent on PoW? I guess this is ultimately what I am trying to figure out.