Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Roadmap 2015, or "If We Do Nothing" Analysis

From: Eric Lombrozo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2015 13:31:46 -0700

Peter, it’s a work in evolution, it’s not complete yet. It’s still missing a bunch of stuff - please feel free to contribute.

> On Jul 24, 2015, at 1:28 PM, Eric Lombrozo <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Jul 24, 2015, at 10:40 AM, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
>> On Fri, Jul 24, 2015 at 07:09:13AM -0700, Adam Back via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>>> (Claim of large bitcoin ecosystem companies without full nodes) this
>>> says to me rather we have a need for education: I run a full node
>>> myself (intermittently), just for my puny collection of bitcoins.  If
>>> I ran a business with custody of client funds I'd wake up in a cold
>>> sweat at night about the security and integrity of the companies full
>>> nodes, and reconciliation of client funds against them.
>>> 
>>> However I'm not sure the claim is accurate ($30m funding and no full
>>> node) but to take the hypothetical that this pattern exists, security
>>> people and architects at such companies must insist on the company
>>> running their own full node to depend on and cross check from
>>> otherwise they would be needlessly putting their client's funds at
>>> risk.
>> 
>> FWIW, blockchain.info is obviously *not* running a full node as their
>> wallet was accepting invalid confirmations on transactions caused by the
>> recent BIP66 related fork; blockchain.info has $30m in funding.
>> 
>> Coinbase also was not running a full node not all that long ago, instead
>> running a custom Ruby implementation that caused their service to go
>> down whenever it forked. (and would have also accepted invalid
>> confirmations) I believe right now they're running that implementation
>> behind a full node however.
>> 
>>> The crypto currency security standards document probably covers
>>> requirement for fullnode somewhere
>>> https://cryptoconsortium.github.io/CCSS/ - we need some kind of basic
>>> minimum bar standard for companies to aim for and this seems like a
>>> reasonable start!
>> 
>> Actually I've been trying to get the CCSS standard to cover full nodes,
>> and have been getting push-back:
>> 
>> https://github.com/CryptoConsortium/CCSS/issues/15
>> 
>> tl;dr: Running a full node is *not* required by the standard right now
>> at any certification level.
>> 
>> This is of course completely ridiculous... But I haven't had much much
>> time to put into getting that changed so maybe we just need some better
>> explanations to the others maintaining the standard. That said, if the
>> standard stays that way, obviously I'm going to have to ask to have my
>> name taken off it.
> 
> For the record, there’s pretty much unanimous agreement that running a full node should be a requirement at the higher levels of certification (if not the lower ones as well). I’m not sure exactly what pushback you’re referring to.
> 
> 
>>> In terms of a constructive discussion, I think it's interesting to
>>> talk about the root cause and solutions: decentralisation (more
>>> economically dependent full nodes, lower miner policy centralisation),
>>> more layer 2 work.  People interested in scaling, if they havent,
>>> should go read the lightning paper, look at the github and participate
>>> in protocol or code work.  I think realistically we can have this
>>> running inside of a year.  That significantly changes the dynamic.
>>> Similarly a significant part of mining centralisation is artificial
>>> and work is underway that will improve that.
>> 
>> I would point out that lack of understanding of how Bitcoin works, as
>> well as a lack of understanding of security engineering in general, is
>> probably a significant contributor to these problems. Furthermore
>> Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general are still small enough that many
>> forseeable low probability but high impact events haven't happened,
>> making it difficult to explain to non-technical stakeholders why they
>> should be listening to experts rather than charlatans and fools.
>> 
>> After a few major centralization related failures have occured, we'll
>> have an easier job here. Unfortunately there's also a good chance we
>> only get one shot at this due to how easy it is to kill PoW systems at
>> birth...
>> 
>> --
>> 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
>> 000000000000000014438a428adfcf4d113a09b87e4a552a1608269ff137ef2d
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