From: Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan <robin@pathwayi•com>
To: Mark Friedenbach <mark@monetize•io>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>,
Ryan Carboni <ryan.jc.pc@gmail•com>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Bitcoin difficulty sanity check suggestion
Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2013 12:22:49 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAF3j42HJXY__6sGpohNFH5MuyRFG1GAJzAwtn1QhmQT2uM-FjA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <52B7AC86.9010808@monetize.io>
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Mark, thank you for a very clear explanation of why this proposal would be
dangerous.
What I have noted in many discussions regarding blockchain security and
proof-or-work schemes, is there is a wide gulf between those few people who
can clearly reason about it, and those who have a lot trouble with it (I
mostly fall into the later camp).
I wonder if anyone can point to resources who can help "the rest of us"
reason clearly about these types of proposals, prior to bringing them to
this list or a senior dev.
Ideally it would illustrate various past proposals, explain why they would
and wouldnt work, and build up some fundamental concepts, like a "Newtons
laws of blockchain security" that would help us evaluate such ideas on our
own.
Blockchain stuff is often counterintuitive.
On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Mark Friedenbach <mark@monetize•io> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Ryan, these sort of adjustments introduce security risks. If you were
> isolated from the main chain by a low-hashpower attacker, how would
> you know? They'd need just three days without you noticing that
> network block generation has stalled - maybe they wait for a long
> weekend - then after that the block rate is normal but completely
> controlled by the attacker (and isolated from mainnet).
>
> There are fast acting alternative difficulty adjustment algorithms
> being explored by some alts, such as the 9-block interval, 144-block
> window, Parks-McClellan FIR filter used by Freicoin to recover from
> just such a mining bubble. If it were to happen to bitcoin, there
> would be sophisticated alternative to turn to, and enough time to make
> the change.
>
> On 12/22/2013 07:10 PM, Ryan Carboni wrote:
> > I think Bitcoin should have a sanity check: after three days if
> > only four blocks have been mined, difficulty should be adjusted
> > downwards.
> >
> > This might become important in the near future. I project a
> > Bitcoin mining bubble.
> >
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Robin R Chauhan
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2013-12-23 20:53 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 9+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2013-12-23 3:10 Ryan Carboni
2013-12-23 3:22 ` Mark Friedenbach
2013-12-23 20:22 ` Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan [this message]
2013-12-24 1:51 ` Ryan Carboni
2013-12-24 4:05 ` Allen Piscitello
2013-12-24 7:41 ` Ryan Carboni
2013-12-24 7:53 ` Gavin Costin
[not found] ` <52B8EB37.2080006@monetize.io>
2013-12-24 7:37 ` Ryan Carboni
2013-12-24 8:34 ` Matt Corallo
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