While I've seen 51% and Bad-actor/rational-actor type scenarios being discussed ad nauseam, and in-depth, my searches for any sort of unpacking of the following scenarios have been fruitless:
1) "Stealth" code changes, that could get slipped in via an update, to modify network operation in some unforeseen, but yet-to-conceive exploitable way.
How huge a social-engineering effort would this take?
Do the huge-pool-guys vet every line of code themselves?
Does anyone log- and track stats on how quickly updates propagate throughout the network?
2) Someone like the World Bank establishing their own, incompatible network. ...coupled with an international media- and marketing campaign, backed by much more finance than the Bitcoin network, perhaps even offering lucrative-by-comparison shares in their new venture, to current Bitcoin players.
Once the mainstream is persuaded by the resilience and power of crypto-currency technology, it seems natural that they would adopt it... on their terms... doesn't it? What would the first ripples of this look like? Which banks are the key stakeholders? Is Bitcoin leading the pack to bank-adoption?
3) Computer intelligence optimizing ("cracking") the protocol...potentially silently taking control of the network (without anyone noticing) only to wield its power at some opportune watershed moment. Yes, I know, Sci-fi...The moment we have all been waiting for... with it's plausibility-spectrum all the way from "impossible" and "maybe in 100 years", to "an AI (or CI as I like to call it) will be algorithmically cheap enough to run on a smartphone", all the way to, "the *insert multinational organization* is already run by an AI." (eg.
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/how_the_robots_will_take_over/)
Sure, on the surface, the latter two scenarios are very hypothetical and unlikely... yet, if Bitcoin *is* the biggest hedge against global economic stability, doesn't that in fact highlight their relevance?...
But here are the stats that are within arms length, and I'd like to see... (shouldn't be hard to compile, even collect as part of the protocol...)
4) Isn't it perhaps most relevant how each GH is powered, and how easily that power can be removed by tactical means...to diminish the network hashrate as part of a global co-ordinated multi-faceted strike, the GH taken out only to come back up to a network (and world?) beyond its recognition? Eg. How stable is the US national grid? Compared to those of other countries? What proportions of what countries' power grids run the internet? What is the minimum number of power stations that needs to get taken out? What is the minimum fire power required and the cost thereof? Or actually, how many steel poles (of neglible cost) of what length would be needed to short out said power supplies?
5) Add to that security. Who holds this metric: How secure is each GH?ie. How many layers of security? How agile is its management? How rapidly can the system be secured and restored to a previous point in time?
Any links welcome... particularly to a Wiki or new
https://blockchain.info/pools pages monitoring metrics relevant to any- or all of the above. I'm fairly certain the intelligence agencies of the world keep tabs on the above, but shouldn't it be out in the open? How better to guard against it than having it in the public domain?
I suppose, in the spirit of Bitcoin, I have to post a wallet address here. If it reaches 10BTC (my living expenses are cheap), I will dedicate one month to compiling the best sources of the above information, as professionally as I can, and post it here. 1EfnAXe2dyuKiVXfGyoSBMSKqvzzQcfr3L
I'll go ahead and answer most of these without too much hassle....
1) "Stealth" code changes, that could get slipped in via an update, to modify network operation in some unforeseen, but yet-to-conceive exploitable way.
How huge a social-engineering effort would this take?
Do the huge-pool-guys vet every line of code themselves?
Does anyone log- and track stats on how quickly updates propagate throughout the network?
Every merge, or pull request on Github get's looked at by Core bitcoin developers, so unless you get them all in on the scheme it simply won't happen. There are also a lot of separate developers that work on the code in their free time, you can see all this on the bitcoin Github which can be found here:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin2) Someone like the World Bank establishing their own, incompatible network.
Anyone is free to start their own big "bitcoin" competitor, just look at all the alt-coins that are out there, or for example governments like Ecuador that have "banned" Bitcoin and say they want to start their own crypto currency. But judging from the popularity and the short lifespan of most alt-coins it seems that not too many people are as interested in them at all as much as they are in Bitcoin.
3) Computer intelligence optimizing ("cracking") the protocol
The unlikeliness of cracking the Bitcoin private keys can be found here:
https://i.imgur.com/CzyO1yv.jpg --- On a side-note, the protocol is as secure as it's code and the miners that secure the blockchain. As long as the code is secure it's very unlikely of a flaw massive enough that could damage the protocol as a whole.
4) Isn't it perhaps most relevant how each GH is powered, and how easily that power can be removed by tactical means
In the unlikely event that all mayor pools would be hit in a coordinated effort to kill the networks hashrate, I'm sure that a lot of miners within a few hours would step over to decentralized solutions like P2Pool, etc. In which case the entire internet would have to be taken down.
5) Add to that security. Who holds this metric: How secure is each GH?
The main security is the protocol which is secured by cryptography and is extremely unlikely to be cracked (refer to the image I posted before, even by quantum computing), then the blockchain is secured by the miners that perform work to secure it. Judging by the exponential growth in hashrate that we've been experiencing for the last 2 years it's also unlikely that anyone will secure a big enough share (51%) to threaten the network.
In the case of a split of the blockchain the network can be restored to previous states relatively simple (has been done twice before in 2013), where we forked away from the longest chain and continued on a different one.
There you go, all questions answered and it didn't cost anyone a single bitcoin.
