Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

I think the idea that you can rent enough hash power to attack the network is absurd. also any offline hash can be either hostile or friendly.

I also don't think you can claim there is enough hostile btc hash out there to do anything to BCH otherwise they would have attacked by now. BCH is way too valuable and useful now for there to be any incentive to destroy it rather than keep it as a hedge. it's fundamentally aligned with miner long term interest.

 

[freetrader]

I think the idea that you can rent enough hash power to attack the network is absurd.

I think that applies to BTC. Not so much to BCH when its hashrate is only a paltry fraction.
You think opponents of BCH couldn't muster 10% of total BTC hashrate especially if someone with deep pockets were to reimburse them for profits lost?

I also don't think you can claim there is enough hostile btc hash out there to do anything to BCH

I didn't think there was a lot until someone pointed out a ~20 exa spike on BTC in recent weeks. It came, it went. Didn't go into BCH afaics.

BCH is way too valuable and useful now for there to be any incentive to destroy it rather than keep it as a hedge.

Well, I hope so too. On the 'useful' part I agree. But it's way undervalued compared to BTC, consequently less hash in place to defend.

 

[cypherdoc]

>You think opponents of BCH couldn't muster 10% of total BTC hashrate especially if someone with deep pockets were to reimburse them for profits lost?

I honestly don't

that possibility exists today. why haven't they jumped on it?

 

[freetrader]

that possibility exists today. why haven't they jumped on it?

Because it leaves at least a smoking "whodunit" crater.
A 51% attack is not an unsubtle event even if the perps achieve an initial unidentified getaway.
With BCH a #4 coin, it would get investigated by affected parties.

Playing divide and conquer games or proxy wars is much more deniable and malleable -- just consider how long BS/Core stringpullers got away with division, stalling and media manipulation before we collectively managed to take action.

I see it happening to the BCH community again right now. It has been distracted by fabrications and machinations which seem designed to hinder progress. At least it looks like that to me, when the ecosystem is strained by an incredible pseudo authority figure and his overt threats of future IP enforcement against projects and protocol implementations.

In short, I think there's an attack well underway already, it's working adequately and they saw little need for cruder measures up to now.

But BCH doesn't stand still - the ecosystem fortunately is vibrant and evolves faster than many of us would have imagined a year ago.
Clearly, some of these interests are threatened at least by aspect of this. They are threatened by improvements such as DSV (which for some reason is scary thought to online gambling enterprises), by working token systems outside their control, by client projects or individual developers thinking and acting outside their control, perhaps implementing features which collide with their patent schemes.

Many good proposals to improve the 'cash' attributes of BCH have come out and can be considered 'in the pipeline'. Some were older ideas like pre-consensus in the form of weak blocks / subchains that have been rejuvenated by implementation. Others new, like various proposals to mitigate double spend risk.

Commonly these have been put down in the media as fixing problems that don't exist or are otherwise contrary to the incentives of Bitcoin.

It looks to me these threatened interests feel a burning desire to gain control of BCH before it unfolds its fuller potential. Hence "lock down" + patent threats now, and an "invitation" to a "hashwar" - a newly coined term that seems designed to dispel the air of an attack, especially after some quite significant threats have already been made against exchanges.

 

[Zarathustra]

How can we prevent a bloat block attack with a configurable default limit?

 

[freetrader]

Solex answered that question here...

 

[Norway]

A big block attact would just be a one-off. It's not a sustainable attack. It would only cause a mild annoyance. That's why nobody will most likely not even try it.

Perfect is the enemy of good. The cost of trying to make it 100% impossible to make a single node run out of memory is that we hold competition, more rapid development of scaling and growth of the bitcoin network back.

 

[Norway]

 

[Norway]

News update:

 

[imaginary_username]

@freetrader glad you replied because I was just going to respond to @imaginary_username onon and same topic of renting hash.

from what I can tell of nicehash, anyone buying/renting hash is directing it to a BCH mining pool (which has a vested interest in BCH success) as opposed to acting as a solo miner. thus I still think my argument applies.

That is incorrect, someone who rents hashrate from Nicehash can direct it at any SHA256 source of work he likes (that the common ASICs will take), BCH or BTC or Clashic or testnet, anything. The whole point of Nicehash is that buyer can redirect at his will for a price.

 

[Norway]

@imaginary_username
It doesn't matter, because a monster block attack is a weak one-off attack.

 

[cypherdoc]

@freetrader

>In short, I think there's an attack well underway already, it's working adequately and they saw little need for cruder measures up to now.


couldn't agree more but how do you explain away early adopters who genuinely feel just as threatened by over reaching devs who refuse to get out of the way of removing the limit once and for all while insisting that they know best the existing limits of the system? the stress test was a wonderful example of the network achieving heights we'd never seen before and certainly were NOT predicted by devs. it revealed holes in the system the devs completely missed altogether, such as the atmp limit and Greg's bug. given such failures, how can anyone be confident they can reliably pick a default limit especially when they don't have the financial resources at risk at the level of miners nor the financial tools to adequately test maximum limit levels? and I disagree that you can explain the lack of an attack today by using the excuse that social manipulation is "working". it certainly is but would pale in comparison to a bloat block, continuous 32mb block attack, or 51% attack. I submit they aren't doing it today because they can't and won't because of the Satoshi incentives built into Bitcoin which includes the BCH hard fork that will cause a Nakamoto Concensus reorg given enough time.

sorry on phone and traveling so can't answer easily

 

[imaginary_username]

>You think opponents of BCH couldn't muster 10% of total BTC hashrate especially if someone with deep pockets were to reimburse them for profits lost?

that possibility exists today. why haven't they jumped on it?

Because >51% of BTC hashrate is assumed friendly to BCH. In the event of a sustained attack, the attacker will have to keep in mind the threat they can come to BCH's defense, and possibly conduct MAD on BTC.

Since day one BCH as a minority chain has always been in a peculiar situation where it has majority support. I certainly would be much more worried about its security if it does not enjoy that support.

A corollary is that a hypothetical SHA256 fork of BCH or BTC that does not enjoy this support on the majority chain would be in a much more dubious situation.

>given such failures, how can anyone be confident they can reliably pick a default limit especially when they don't have the financial resources at risk at the level of miners?

The default limit doesn't matter in terms of economics when it's way above usage, it makes zero difference whether the limit is at 8MB, 12MB or 32MB today.

 

[cypherdoc]

That is incorrect, someone who rents hashrate from Nicehash can direct it at any SHA256 source of work he likes (that the common ASICs will take), BCH or BTC or Clashic or testnet, anything. The whole point of Nicehash is that buyer can redirect at his will for a price.

I know that .

but we're talking specifically about an attacker going after BCH either with a solo bloat block, continuous 32 mb blocks, or a 51% attack. I don't see any evidence that a nicehash renter can do this, given the honest incentives of a pool and their limitations as a solo miner

 

[79b79aa8]

Because it leaves at least a smoking "whodunit" crater.
A 51% attack is not an unsubtle event even if the perps achieve an initial unidentified getaway.
With BCH a #4 coin, it would get investigated by affected parties.

missing from this discussion is the fact that it is not illegal or even morally questionable to perform certain attacks on a coin, just like it was not illegal for an individual to short the british pound, or for a government to play against another government's currency (e.g. for china to devalue the CNY vs. the USD to increase its trade balance, or whatever). if a big block attack is possible and some party really wants to hurt BCH to the tune of $60M USD/month, they can do it overtly and justify it to themselves too (NB i am not talking about double spending and stealing -- in the case at hand just about causing a reorg). the only question is if someone has enough motivation to do it; since in my estimation such a thing is not inconceivable, it is advisable not to leave the known attack vector open.

i actually think the crypto space will not evolve and become an important part of the financial system unless -- as cypherdoc once put it -- a bunch of coins are culled to oblivion. i think this because i believe that for the general public, the existence of a bewildering number of alts creates the sensible impression that they still do not understand crypto, that there has to be something fishy that they just don't comprehend, simply because money has never behaved in this way (a bunch of private parties putting out their own brand of money and it actually acquiring value). so they prudently stay away.

for this reason i think (properly adapted versions of) the stress test scripts ought to be used openly and deliberately on the BTC chain, to calculate how much it would cost to freeze it to a halt at sensitive moments, in order to reveal the deal-breaking limitations of that model sooner rather than later, and accelerate the maturation of the space.

PS. just got a message from trex that BTG has no market and will be delisted. i take this as a sign of rationality in the market. i hope a trend arises. it is also another blow to the reputation of adam back, who came out in support of that coin, obviously not because of its merits but in a transparent effort to derail BCH. to deliberately mislead investors to sink money in a doomed project in order to discredit yet another project is decidedly not how the CEO of a multi-million company shows leadership. it is disgraceful.

 

[freetrader]

how do you explain away early adopters who genuinely feel just as threatened by over reaching devs who refuse to get out of the way of removing the limit once and for all while insisting that they know best the existing limits of the system?

First of all, I'm not wanting to explain anything away.

I have a "simple" solution for those early investors who feel they want to get rid of the limit altogether in a different way than the "let the user configure it" that BU, ABC, SV have currently implemented:

1. specify your requirements, e.g. "remove the blocksize limit altogether from some client s/w". I would include something like "document when/how the software might actually break down"
2. find a blockchain developer of your own choice to implement what you want
3. make sure you properly validate / audit their submitted solution to ensure you get what you paid for

Bingo - your problem is solved (if you do those steps correctly).
There are great crowdfunding tools in case the funding is an issue.
I'm serious. Of course there are other ways that might lead to success, like making your case to projects like BU in another BUIP.
You could try to persuade some BU developers to start such a project in a long-lived development branch or fork of BU.

The considerations necessary for "remove the limit(s)" and for "make sure the software scales to X capacity" are completely different ones, and a project to just remove limits could yield interesting results in itself, while others like GTI focus on the technical scaling aspects.

the stress test was a wonderful example of the network achieving heights we'd never seen before and certainly were NOT predicted by devs.

I agree and I was one of those in favor of the public stress test.
But I'll say that the reasons devs didn't predict the bottlenecks found is that private stress testing conducted right now must be too unrealistic or simply lacking, otherwise they'd have found all those limits *in their software* ahead of any public testing.
The real benefit is to get a feel for how ready the rest of the system - which may be using entirely different software platforms - is, compared to what one would expect from often-mentioned parameters like EB32.

it revealed holes in the system the devs completely missed altogether, such as the atmp limit and Greg's bug

Specifically these things should've been known before the test. The conclusion is that private performance / stress testing is still very inadequate.

given such failures, how can anyone be confident they can reliably pick a default limit especially when they don't have the financial resources at risk at the level of miners nor the financial tools to adequately test maximum limit levels?

Those failures wouldn't have required exceedingly great financial resources to uncover, although some of the projects did say they're rather strapped for funding.
I'll gladly take occasional public stress testing, and as a user I'm happy to pitch in to generate load.

[social attack] certainly is but would pale in comparison to a bloat block, continuous 32mb block attack, or 51% attack.

Hmm, I think I would agree with that. Then perhaps @imaginary_username 's explanation that majority hashrate on BTC is perceived as BCH-friendly might be more accurate. I think that assumption is fading though - I personally wouldn't rely on it.

I submit they aren't doing it today because they can't and won't because of the Satoshi incentives built into Bitcoin

If the attack really doesn't work because it can be easily blocked on the network, then trying it would still be extremely cheap and I couldn't give a reason why it hasn't been tried other than that I presume no-one's is currently willing to burn a million dollars to split the BCH network once or twice.

My overly optimistic side would be hoping for > 51% support of BTC hashpower for Bitcoin Cash's continued survival. But like I said it's not an assumption I can really justify any longer.
I think these considerations are all incomplete without putting dollars to retaliatory measures on the BTC network. And the dynamics of the market could be very complex (would BCH pick up users and hashrate if if BTC starts repeatedly experiencing December-like conditions?)

Can you tell me why early investors aren't saturating the BTC chain to prove that BCH is the better scaling option? (imo this is the other side of the question as to why bloat attacks aren't being made to happen on BCH)

the BCH hard fork that will cause a Nakamoto Concensus reorg given enough time.

I see you must be using a very large definition of NC re-org - including across coins that have split. Just observing. There will be those that disagree with the scope of NC. I'm undecided, but I think the "any needed rules can be enforced" does mean that if you are a miner and have the hashrate, you can enforce your vision of Bitcoin's rules, subject to the free market.

 

[cypherdoc]

for this reason i think (properly adapted versions of) the stress test scripts ought to be used openly and deliberately on the BTC chain, to calculate how much it would cost to freeze it to a halt at sensitive moments

now there is an idea. I've advanced similar one for when LN gets big just to screw with the mempool closing tx's. might as well do it now.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Oh guys. In last month this whole thread is about "CTOR pro contra Big blocks pro contra Chinese cables" and so on. All of these are problems totally irrelevant for Bitcoin Cash in its current state. There is only one thing relevant - taking the monetary revolution Bitcoin is and getting a place for Bitcoin Cash. I miss this ...

Imho the bear market will not end until we end all this bullshit and go back to spreading hard, free, direct money to the world.

Currrently under the cloak of "financial inclusion" there is a fight against cash all over the world. Every weakness of national states is used against them to push an anti-cash politic driving payment flows into the mouth of MasterCard, PayPal and other US companies. In African countries people started to use MasterCard as ID, in India they build a biometric database of all citizen and link it to payment flows, in Greece our world-lords abused the financial crisis to establish Europe's most severe cash-limits, while banks everywhere increase identification pressure on all levels. Free space is becoming rapidly scarse.

Control is everywhere. I opened a company, a publishing house, and this is the incredible amount of verification I had to do:
- get a licence: ID card, only seen locally in our community center.
- get a phone for a second bank account: videochat, show ID card to activate credits
- get a bank account: passport, tax number, VAT number, a lot of signatures
- get an amazon account: the same

I did not start a bank or a pharmaceutic industry, I just started a stupid publishing house. But I had to disclosd a ton of private data multiple times, and a lot of it is stored on servers - which shoulnd't be legal according to German laws -- linked with another ton of my data and my monetary flows. The nightmare has become real, financial control has silently tightened to a terrible degree. For a week I couldn't access my bank account; they said it was a technical problem, but asked for my tax-ID. As I work for a German exchange, I know how these things go. If someone is suspected in money laundering or tax crime, you are not allowed to give him any hint; you have to keep him in dark, like in Kafka's books, finding stupid excuses, while investigations go on. I have nothing to hide, but I paniced a bit, because I realized how helpless you are if your bank decides that you should no longer have access to your money (everything became good after one week). They established a control over your money that goes beyond data protections laws, beyond fundamental democratic laws. It is happening.

The same powers that pushed that monetary control over us, will start to regulate cryptocurrencies in this month. That's not a conspiracy, that's simply the same organizations, FATF and G30. And what do we do? We have years of fighting blocksizes and so on. And now, after the fight ended, this whole thread just repeats it. Do you have no other idea what to do with Bitcoin instead of fighting about scalability problems which have right now not a tiny whiny mizy bit of relevance for Bitcoin Cash?

 

[majamalu]

Can you tell me why early investors aren't saturating the BTC chain to prove that BCH is the better scaling option

If you are convinced, as I am, that the Blockstream model is economically infeasible, the best course of action is to let BTC grow and eventually fail miserably on its own terms.

As BCH moves towards its manifest destiny, we should encourage Blockstream devotees to continue moving away from Satoshi's path. At this point, a successful attack against BTC would shake their beliefs. Let's keep them in the dark instead, until it's too late for them to change course.

(imo this is the other side of the question as to why bloat attacks aren't being made to happen on BCH)

The Core road map leads to the abyss. If SHA-256 miners are aware of that, they will never try to kill BCH. If they are not aware of that, or if they are but choose economic suicide anyway, we must conclude that the incentive system devised by Satoshi has failed -- and therefore that all PoW based crypto are doomed.

 

[freetrader]

If you are convinced, as I am, that the Blockstream model is economically infeasible, the best course of action is to let BTC grow and eventually fail miserably on its own terms.

I am convinced as you are, and I never really advocated anything else.
My question above was just a thought experiment to show that the question posed by cypherdoc has a twin in the realm of attacks on BTC.

As BCH moves towards its manifest destiny, we should encourage Blockstream devotees to continue moving away from Satoshi's path. At this point, a successful attack against BTC would shake their beliefs. Let's keep them in the dark instead, until it's too late for them to change course.

I differ with you a little on the need to encourage the devotees in their actions.

I rather think we should be consistently pointing out the destructive results on BTC, and contrast it with currency that works according to "Satoshi's path".

But this is a very religiously-fraught debate on both sides. And it's easy to label either side as dogmatic.
Maybe it's just better not to waste too much time on those debates at all.

The Core road map leads to the abyss. If SHA-256 miners are aware of that, they will never try to kill BCH. If they are not aware of that, or if they are but choose economic suicide anyway, we must conclude that the incentive system devised by Satoshi has failed -- and therefore that all PoW based crypto are doomed.

I believe some are aware, some are not.
As long as BCH continues to work better as money and can absorb the users while BTC fails, we ought to see it go up in value and miners convert in the direction of Bitcoin Cash.
As others have mentioned, there is the possibility that miners can be bribed, or that other incentives (investment in other coins, or some IP monopoly considerations, state coercion to do the bidding of existing fiat establishment) start to outweigh their mining incentives for Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash.