Quote from: dogisland on May 21, 2014, 02:59:14 PM

Quote from: jabo38 on May 21, 2014, 10:30:44 AM

DaT,

The NXT genesis account's pass phrase is well known. (The first line of 1984.) I wonder if a person could use that account that held 100% of coins and create an alternate chain?

No because the genesis block is hard wired into the NXT server and all the coins from the genesis block were sent to the original investors.

Quote from: jabo38 on May 21, 2014, 10:30:44 AM

I am also a little curious about this 51% attack thing. It has been explained that because not everyone is supporting the network, a person might only really need 10% of coins to take over a chain.

I'm not an NXT developer but I have looked at the code.

Let's say I have 25% of NXT coins. And I want to mount an attack. I need to do the following.

1. Wait until I am selected as a forger.
2. Create 2 blocks, one for the network and one I hold back.
3. Continually add more blocks to the block I hold back. This is my chain I will introduce later as my attack.

The problem is step 3. To add another block to my held back block I need to be selected as the forger for that block too. However forger selection is based on the hash of the previous block and my account address.

Neither of these I can change quickly enough to be sure I generate the next block. So my probability of being selected to build the next block is 25% for each block.

I read carefully what DaT contributed, but I can't apply his attack to the code as I see it.

What DaT basically says is this:

1. whoever has 51% of the resources (poW , PoS, or another Po"X")...can attack whatever network it is.
2. PoS has the disadvantage of the nothing-at-stake problem.

I think he is generally correct. We were told there is a secret sauce to NXT,
but until it is revealed we don't know the validity of their claims or the security trade-offs.

So I guess we should just wait to see what will unfold.