Jouke Hofman [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: 📅 Original date posted:2013-11-06 📝 Original message:bounty++ On 06-11-13 ...

📅 Original date posted:2013-11-06
📝 Original message:bounty++

On 06-11-13 06:33, kjj wrote:
> One of the things that really gets me going is when someone devises a
> model, tests it against itself, and then pretends that they've learned
> something about the real world.
>
> Naturally, the Selfish Mining paper is exactly this sort of nonsense.
> Their model is one with no latency, and one where the attacker has total
> visibility across the network. An iterated FSM is not a suitable
> simulation of the bitcoin system. The bitcoin network does not have
> states, and to the extent that you can pretend that we do, you can't
> simulate transitions between them with static probabilities.
>
> The authors understand this deep down inside, even though they didn't
> work out the implications. They handwave the issue by assuming a total
> sybil attack, and in true academic spirit, they don't realize that the
> condition necessary for the attack is far, far worse than the attack itself.
>
> Greg said he'd like to run some simulations, and I'm thinking about it
> too. Unfortunately, he is busy all week, and I'm lazy (and also busy
> for most of tomorrow).
>
> If neither of us get to it first, I'm willing to pitch in 1 BTC as a
> bounty for building a general bitcoin network simulator framework. The
> simulator should be able to account for latency between nodes, and
> ideally within a node. It needs to be able to simulate an attacker that
> owns varying fractions of the network, and make decisions based only on
> what the attacker actually knows. It needs to be able to simulate this
> "attack" and should be generic enough to be easily modified for other
> crazy schemes.
>
> (Bounty offer is serious, but expires in one year [based on the earliest
> timestamp that my mail server puts on this email], and /may/ be subject
> to change if the price on any reputable exchange breaks 1000 USD per BTC
> in that period.)
>
> Basically, the lack of a decent network simulator is what allowed this
> paper to get press. If the author had been able to see the importance
> of the stuff he was ignoring, we wouldn't be wasting so much time
> correcting him (and sadly the reporters that have no way to check his
> claims).
>
> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324413.msg3495663#msg3495663
>
>
>
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