public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Eric Voskuil <eric@voskuil•org>
To: Luke Dashjr <luke@dashjr•org>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Michael Folkson <michaelfolkson@gmail•com>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] UASF (LOT=true) kick off meeting - Tuesday March 2nd 19:00 UTC on ##uasf IRC channel
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2021 12:19:41 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <D84DD0C3-60EC-43DF-B250-FF039814331B@voskuil.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202103021857.39275.luke@dashjr.org>

I personally don’t like the term 51% attack as applied to censorship. A miner is free to mine or not mine any transactions it wants (censor). The term attack is better reserved for stealing from someone (reclaiming spends using hash power), as it implies a moral distinction.

But 51% attack is the term in common use for a majority censor and using it helps people understand the mechanism of hash power soft fork enforcement. It’s not intended as a pejorative. 

However “without social support” is a political term. It confuses the actual behavior to imply the mechanism is somehow not the same because there is some ill-defined level of agreement.

e


> On Mar 2, 2021, at 10:58, Luke Dashjr via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 02 March 2021 18:22:35 Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>> I'm realizing that a clear advantage of LOT=false is that it can happen
>> without the need for a social movement. All that is really needed is the
>> convincing of 95% miners. Apathetic users will never notice any kind of
>> service disruption no matter the success or failure of the activation. This
>> is obviously why it naturally became the default activation method.
> 
> No. Miners enforcing rules without the social support is a 51% attack, not a 
> softfork.
> 
>> While LOT=true, on the other hand, must be able to 51% the blockchain to
>> win the apathetic users. But then the reorgs will not be pretty. Or if it
>> ever clearly gets over the 51% hurdle then all apathetic users now need to
>> scramble to use the rogue client to be safe from reorgs. Either way it's
>> disruptive.
> 
> No, LOT=True doesn't do this. It only happens if miners choose to create an 
> invalid chain, which they could do at any time with or without a softfork 
> involved.
> 
> Luke
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev


      parent reply	other threads:[~2021-03-02 20:19 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-03-01 17:47 Michael Folkson
2021-03-02 18:22 ` Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces
2021-03-02 18:57   ` Luke Dashjr
2021-03-02 19:36     ` Ariel Lorenzo-Luaces
2021-03-02 20:19     ` Eric Voskuil [this message]

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=D84DD0C3-60EC-43DF-B250-FF039814331B@voskuil.org \
    --to=eric@voskuil$(echo .)org \
    --cc=bitcoin-dev@lists$(echo .)linuxfoundation.org \
    --cc=luke@dashjr$(echo .)org \
    --cc=michaelfolkson@gmail$(echo .)com \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox