From: Chris Priest <cp368202@ohiou•edu>
To: Eric Voskuil <eric@voskuil•org>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] summarising security assumptions (re cost metrics)
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 00:05:23 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAAcC9yv6JwSY-LhWaFc5cF6CkTwTfLLtqFfemwjJ7hKnfzXuLQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <563BE746.5030406@voskuil.org>
On 11/5/15, Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On 11/05/2015 03:03 PM, Adam Back via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>> ...
>> Validators: Economically dependent full nodes are an important part of
>> Bitcoin's security model because they assure Bitcoin security by
>> enforcing consensus rules. While full nodes do not have orphan
>> risk, we also dont want maliciously crafted blocks with pathological
>> validation cost to erode security by knocking reasonable spec full
>> nodes off the network on CPU (or bandwidth grounds).
>> ...
>> Validators vs Miner decentralisation balance:
>>
>> There is a tradeoff where we can tolerate weak miner decentralisation
>> if we can rely on good validator decentralisation or vice versa. But
>> both being weak is risky. Currently given mining centralisation
>> itself is weak, that makes validator decentralisation a critical
>> remaining defence - ie security depends more on validator
>> decentralisation than it would if mining decentralisation was in a
>> better shape.
>
> This side of the security model seems underappreciated, if not poorly
> understood. Weakening is not just occurring because of the proliferation
> of non-validating wallet software and centralized (web) wallets, but
> also centralized Bitcoin APIs.
>
> Over time developers tend to settle on a couple of API providers for a
> given problem. Bing and Google for search and mapping, for example. All
> applications and users of them, depending on an API service, reduce to a
> single validator. Imagine most Bitcoin applications built on the
> equivalent of Bing and Google.
>
> e
>
>
I disagree. I think blockchain APIs are a good thing for
decentralization. There aren't just 3 or 4 blockexplorer APIs out
there, there are dozens. Each API returns essentially the same data,
so they are all interchangeable. Take a look at this python package:
https://github.com/priestc/moneywagon
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-11-06 8:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-11-05 23:03 Adam Back
2015-11-05 23:33 ` Eric Voskuil
2015-11-06 1:56 ` Jeremy
2015-11-06 8:05 ` Chris Priest [this message]
2015-11-06 14:08 ` Adam Back
2015-11-06 23:41 ` Chris Priest
2015-11-07 0:44 ` Eric Voskuil
2015-11-08 14:54 ` Gavin Andresen
2015-11-08 17:19 ` Bryan Bishop
2015-11-09 16:27 ` Gavin Andresen
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