Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] BIP proposal - patch to raise selfish mining threshold.

From: Ittay <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 2013 12:43:15 -0500

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 12:14 PM, Peter Todd <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 12:05:41PM -0500, Peter Todd wrote:
> > On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 11:56:53AM -0500, Ittay wrote:
>
> Oh, and I don't want to give the wrong impression: there's no need to
> rush to get this problem fixed. Even if someone wanted to launch an
> attack right now, with a fair amount of resources, there's a lot of
> counter-measures based on human intervention that can definitely stop
> the attack in the short-term

The attack can be easily hidden. And be sure that before today, today,
and after today, very smart people are at their computer planning attacks
on Bitcoin. Exploits must be published and fixed FAST.

Nevertheless, I agree  that, as you say, we must not rush it. Look at the
BIP, find if we missed anything, and let's discuss it.

> In addition, keep in mind
> that this attack is very easy to detect, so if one is actually launched
> we will know immediately and can start taking direct counter-measures at
> that time.
>

Not really. Please see the discussion section in our paper.

> That Gregory Maxwell so quickly identified a flaw in this proposed
> solution suggests we should proceed carefully.
>

There is no flaw. You were just reiterating that the solution does not give
us the 51% percent security you thought you had before. We showed that
we're not getting this back, I'm afraid.

Best,
Ittay