From: David Vorick <david.vorick@gmail•com>
To: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd•org>,
Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP proposal: Inhibiting a covert attack on the Bitcoin POW function
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2017 23:23:22 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAFVRnyrqiNY_JOqhv2ysm2WsBMYsU3tTAASAtHzMbA68_9Yx8g@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20170406024910.GA1271@savin.petertodd.org>
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I have a practical concern related to the amount of activation energy
required to get something like this through. We are talking about
implementing something that would remove tens to hundreds of millions of
dollars of mining revenue for miners who have already gambled that this
income would be available to them.
That's not something they are going to let go of without a fight, and we've
already seen this with the segwit resistance. Further, my understanding is
that this makes a UASF a lot more difficult. Mining hardware that has
unique optimizations on one chain only can resist a UASF beyond a simple
economic majority, because they can do more hashes on the same amount of
revenue. Threshold for success is no longer 51%, especially if you are
expecting the miners to struggle (and this is a case where they have a very
good reason to struggle). Any resistance from the hashrate during the early
days of a UASF will inevitably cause large reorgs for older nodes, and is
not much better than a hardfork.
I don't know what the right answer is. But I know that we are not going to
get segwit without a fight. We are not going to invalidate covert asicboost
without a fight. And we are working with a system that actively (and is
demonstrably very effective at doing it) resists changes which are
contentious. This is definitely a contentious change, because an important
part of the community (the miners) is going to be actively resisting it.
I urge everybody to realize how difficult something like this is going to
be to pull off. We are literally talking about invalidating hardware (or at
least the optimized bits). It's only going to succeed if everybody is
conclusively on board. As you consider proposals, realize that anything
which is not the simplest and least contentious is already dead.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2017-04-06 3:23 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 49+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-04-05 21:37 Gregory Maxwell
2017-04-05 23:05 ` theymos
2017-04-06 0:17 ` Gregory Maxwell
2017-04-06 0:39 ` Joseph Poon
2017-04-06 0:40 ` Joseph Poon
2017-04-06 1:32 ` Gregory Maxwell
2017-04-06 2:09 ` Joseph Poon
2017-04-05 23:25 ` Anthony Towns
2017-04-05 23:42 ` Joseph Poon
2017-04-06 2:10 ` Jonathan Toomim
2017-04-06 20:21 ` Jared Lee Richardson
2017-04-06 2:31 ` Peter Todd
2017-04-06 2:39 ` Bram Cohen
2017-04-06 2:49 ` Peter Todd
2017-04-06 3:11 ` Erik Aronesty
2017-04-06 3:23 ` Peter Todd
2017-04-06 3:23 ` David Vorick [this message]
2017-04-06 3:42 ` Peter Todd
2017-04-06 5:46 ` Thomas Daede
2017-04-06 6:24 ` Jonathan Toomim
2017-04-06 12:04 ` David Vorick
[not found] ` <CAMZUoK=oDAD9nhFAHkgncWtYxjBNh3qXbUffOH57QMnqjhmN6g@mail.gmail.com>
[not found] ` <CAMZUoKn8tr3LGbks0TnaCx9NTP6MZUzQ8PE6jDq1xiqpYyYwow@mail.gmail.com>
2017-04-06 13:55 ` Russell O'Connor
2017-04-06 16:49 ` Marco
2017-04-06 17:04 ` Alex Mizrahi
2017-04-06 17:13 ` Alex Mizrahi
2017-04-07 12:59 ` Jannes Faber
2017-04-07 13:28 ` Erik Aronesty
2017-04-06 17:31 ` Jared Lee Richardson
2017-04-06 17:26 ` Jared Lee Richardson
2017-04-06 15:36 ` Alex Mizrahi
2017-04-06 17:51 ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-06 7:24 ` bfd
2017-04-06 9:17 ` Luke Dashjr
2017-04-06 12:02 ` Luv Khemani
2017-04-06 12:11 ` Bryan Bishop
2017-04-06 17:43 ` Timo Hanke
2017-04-06 12:30 ` Luv Khemani
2017-04-06 15:15 ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-06 15:41 ` Daniel Robinson
2017-04-06 16:13 ` Andreas Schildbach
2017-04-06 21:38 ` Gregory Maxwell
2017-04-06 4:47 Oliver Petruzel
2017-04-06 4:49 Raystonn .
2017-04-06 7:47 ` praxeology_guy
2017-04-06 12:13 ` David Vorick
2017-04-07 1:34 Daniele Pinna
2017-04-07 6:46 ` Emilian Ursu
2017-04-07 7:44 ` Alex Mizrahi
2017-04-07 8:08 ` praxeology_guy
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