📅 Original date posted:2018-06-18
📝 Original message:Not sure what you're saying here. The block rate can't be particularly
increased or decreased in the long run due to the work difficulty
adjustment getting you roughly back where you started no matter what.
Someone could DOS the system by producing empty blocks, sure, that's a
central attack of what can happen when someone does a 51% attack with no
special countermeasures other than everything that Bitcoin does at its
core. An attacker or group of attackers could conspire to reduce block
sizes in order to increase transaction fees, in fact they could do that
with a miner activated soft fork. That appears both doable and given past
things which have happened with transaction fees in the past potentially
lucrative, particularly as block rewards fall in the future. Please don't
tell the big mining pools about it.
On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 11:39 AM Артём Литвинович via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Dilution is a potential attack i randomly came up with in a Twitter
> arguement and couldn't find any references to or convincing arguments of it
> being implausible.
>
> Suppose a malicious actor were to acquire a majority of hash power, and
> proceed to use that hash power to produce valid, but empty blocks.
>
> As far as i understand it, this would effectively reduce the block rate by
> half or more and since nodes can't differentiate block relay and block
> production there would be nothing they can do to adjust difficulty or black
> list the attacker.
>
> At a rough estimate of $52 per TH equipment cost (Antminer pricing) and
> 12.5 BTC per 10 minutes power cost we are looking at an order of $2 billion
> of equipment and $0.4 billion a month of power costs (ignoring block
> reward) to maintain an attack - easily within means of even a minor
> government-scale actor.
>
> Is that a plausible scenario, or am i chasing a mirage? If it is
> plausible, what could be done to mitigate it?
>
>
> -Artem
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20180618/98b4fa44/attachment.html>;
Bram Cohen [ARCHIVE] /
npub1ld…t8ur6
2023-06-07 18:13:21
in reply to nevent1q…tkfx
Author Public Key
npub1ldcq03p2qe58u0xnlwa35wchjuhz49y6ueu5ghmtjetez9xstnvsmt8ur6Published at
2023-06-07 18:13:21Event JSON
{
"id": "5286432d0a90daffa4e0a34aacda4612fbf0d9abd41dc1342172ccba681c716b",
"pubkey": "fb7007c42a06687e3cd3fbbb1a3b17972e2a949ae679445f6b96579114d05cd9",
"created_at": 1686161601,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"9a62b4adb4910f3aa613d1e3ca5a356428c887a2cac81bb00f324d88a49465fc",
"",
"root"
],
[
"e",
"8b629748e1ba73b2a4a5683a871b52386ca69f35988af0b7558229b2b8d5524b",
"",
"reply"
],
[
"p",
"7d4c0fdf67c13faadbbb115e3d95c353452d5032539947802912e33394f2a3b0"
]
],
"content": "📅 Original date posted:2018-06-18\n📝 Original message:Not sure what you're saying here. The block rate can't be particularly\nincreased or decreased in the long run due to the work difficulty\nadjustment getting you roughly back where you started no matter what.\nSomeone could DOS the system by producing empty blocks, sure, that's a\ncentral attack of what can happen when someone does a 51% attack with no\nspecial countermeasures other than everything that Bitcoin does at its\ncore. An attacker or group of attackers could conspire to reduce block\nsizes in order to increase transaction fees, in fact they could do that\nwith a miner activated soft fork. That appears both doable and given past\nthings which have happened with transaction fees in the past potentially\nlucrative, particularly as block rewards fall in the future. Please don't\ntell the big mining pools about it.\n\nOn Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 11:39 AM Артём Литвинович via bitcoin-dev \u003c\nbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e Dilution is a potential attack i randomly came up with in a Twitter\n\u003e arguement and couldn't find any references to or convincing arguments of it\n\u003e being implausible.\n\u003e\n\u003e Suppose a malicious actor were to acquire a majority of hash power, and\n\u003e proceed to use that hash power to produce valid, but empty blocks.\n\u003e\n\u003e As far as i understand it, this would effectively reduce the block rate by\n\u003e half or more and since nodes can't differentiate block relay and block\n\u003e production there would be nothing they can do to adjust difficulty or black\n\u003e list the attacker.\n\u003e\n\u003e At a rough estimate of $52 per TH equipment cost (Antminer pricing) and\n\u003e 12.5 BTC per 10 minutes power cost we are looking at an order of $2 billion\n\u003e of equipment and $0.4 billion a month of power costs (ignoring block\n\u003e reward) to maintain an attack - easily within means of even a minor\n\u003e government-scale actor.\n\u003e\n\u003e Is that a plausible scenario, or am i chasing a mirage? If it is\n\u003e plausible, what could be done to mitigate it?\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e -Artem\n\u003e _______________________________________________\n\u003e bitcoin-dev mailing list\n\u003e bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\n\u003e https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev\n\u003e\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20180618/98b4fa44/attachment.html\u003e",
"sig": "0fba310ad5389dcf78b46befca664beac4bb998735a74bd37a361492458700172adb8f90f246a9f6fff83be87423f3ebb191e3f0aa884951b3341f305d2e0507"
}