Post
Topic
Board Announcements (Altcoins)
Re: [ANN] Maieuticoin [M] | OFFLINE STAKING | Maieuticoin Mobile | Android | Windows
by
notsoshifty
on 27/09/2014, 05:11:15 UTC
Well, the code is solid. That's for sure. The entire point is that over 60% of the network has put their coins into offline staking. I'm just looking for other opinions on where and how an attack could be successful since a vast majority of the network is on a legitimate staking schedule. This gives us a very high level of blockchain security

I guess what we are concerned with is either an attack we are vulnerable to or third party peer validation that our blockchain is entirely secure

"Offline Staking" is a centralised solution to the problem of people not wanting to run their clients 24x7, and it suffers from at least two clear issues:

1. The private keys of all accounts that are being offline staked are in the hands of one central body. The coins are therefore vulnerable to being stolen through external hacks, or the operator can simply run away with the funds. As such, this is similar to keeping them on an exchange. Exchanges have been hacked in the past (it's not possible to completely prevent this, no matter how secure people say their servers are), and exchange operators have run away with funds in the past.

2. Blockchain security in decentralised PoW/PoS systems is dependent upon no person (or group of people working together) having 50% of the hashing/staking power. If you have the private keys to 60% of the coins, you can execute a double spend attack whenever you like.

Of course, it can be argued that if you performed double spend attacks regularly, or ran away with all the coins, they would suddenly become worthless. And with the market cap as low as it is now it's probably not worthwhile to do so. But if it were to increase to, say, $1million, then an offline staking operator could probably get away with a decent amount in a one-off sell, and wouldn't care about the coin's subsequent value.

Virtual offline staking in its current form, requiring trust in a central body that operates the blockchain, is fundamentally against the point of crypto currencies. I think you'll have a hard time persuading people outside of the MMXIV world to take it seriously.