vizeet srivastava [ARCHIVE] / is on Nostr

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🗓️ Active from 2018-09-06 to 2021-05-21
💬 Posted a total of 3 messages
📚 Participated in the following categories: bitcoin-dev
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2023-06-07 22:52:49

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2021-05-21
📝 Original message:It is difficult to understand how energy usage is a bad thing.
At one end we talk about energy usage as a bad thing and we also talk about
global warming.
If Earth is receiving extra energy which is causing global warming
shouldn't we use extra energy to do something useful.
On Fri, May 21, 2021 at 2:52 PM Billy Tetrud via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> I think there is a lot of misinformation and bias against Proof of Stake.
> Yes there have been lots of shady coins that use insecure PoS mechanisms.
> Yes there have been massive issues with distribution of PoS coins (of
> course there have also been massive issues with PoW coins as well).
> However, I want to remind everyone that there is a difference between
> "proved to be impossible" and "have not achieved recognized success yet".
> Most of the arguments levied against PoS are out of date or rely on
> unproven assumptions or extrapolation from the analysis of a particular PoS
> system. I certainly don't think we should experiment with bitcoin by
> switching to PoS, but from my research, it seems very likely that there is
> a proof of stake consensus protocol we could build that has substantially
> higher security (cost / capital required to execute an attack) while at the
> same time costing far less resources (which do translate to fees on the
> network) *without* compromising any of the critical security properties
> bitcoin relies on. I think the critical piece of this is the disagreements
> around hardcoded checkpoints, which is a critical piece solving attacks
> that could be levied on a PoS chain, and how that does (or doesn't) affect
> the security model.
>
> @Eric Your proof of stake fallacy seems to be saying that PoS is worse
> when a 51% attack happens. While I agree, I think that line of thinking
> omits important facts:
> * The capital required to 51% attack a PoS chain can be made substantially
> greater than on a PoS chain.
> * The capital the attacker stands to lose can be substantially greater as
> well if the attack is successful.
> * The effectiveness of paying miners to raise the honest fraction of
> miners above 50% may be quite bad.
> * Allowing a 51% attack is already unacceptable. It should be considered
> whether what happens in the case of a 51% may not be significantly
> different. The currency would likely be critically damaged in a 51% attack
> regardless of consensus mechanism.
>
> > Proof-of-stake tends towards oligopolistic control
>
> People repeat this often, but the facts support this. There is no
> centralization pressure in any proof of stake mechanism that I'm aware of.
> IE if you have 10 times as much coin that you use to mint blocks, you
> should expect to earn 10x as much minting revenue - not more than 10x. By
> contrast, proof of work does in fact have clear centralization pressure -
> this is not disputed. Our goal in relation to that is to ensure that the
> centralization pressure remains insignifiant. Proof of work also clearly
> has a lot more barriers to entry than any proof of stake system does. Both
> of these mean the tendency towards oligopolistic control is worse for PoW.
>
> > Energy usage, in-and-of-itself, is nothing to be ashamed of!!
>
> I certainly agree. Bitcoin's energy usage at the moment is I think quite
> warranted. However, the question is: can we do substantially better. I
> think if we can, we probably should... eventually.
>
> > Proof of Stake is only resilient to ⅓ of the network demonstrating a
> Byzantine Fault, whilst Proof of Work is resilient up to the ½ threshold
>
> I see no mention of this in the pos.pdf
> <https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf> you linked to. I'm not
> aware of any proof that *all *PoS systems have a failure threshold of
> 1/3. I know that staking systems like Casper do in fact have that 1/3
> requirement. However there are PoS designs that should exceed that up to
> nearly 50% as far as I'm aware. Proof of work is not in fact resilient up
> to the 1/2 threshold in the way you would think. IE, if 100% of miners are
> currently honest and have a collective 100 exahashes/s hashpower, an
> attacker does not need to obtain 100 exahashes/s, but actually only needs
> to accumulate 50 exahashes/s. This is because as the attacker accumulates
> hashpower, it drives honest miners out of the market as the difficulty
> increases to beyond what is economically sustainable. Also, its been shown
> that the best proof of work can do is require an attacker to obtain 33% of
> the hashpower because of the selfish mining attack
> <https://github.com/fresheneesz/quantificationOfConsensusProtocolSecurity#the-selfish-economic-attack> discussed
> in depth in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243. Together, both
> of these things reduce PoW's security by a factor of about 83% (1 -
> 50%*33%).
>
> > Proof of Stake requires other trade-offs which are incompatible with
> Bitcoin's objective (to be a trustless digital cash) — specifically the
> famous "security vs. liveness" guarantee
>
> Do you have a good source that talks about why you think proof of stake
> cannot be used for a trustless digital cash?
>
> > You cannot gain tokens without someone choosing to give up those coins -
> a form of permission.
>
> This is not a practical constraint. Just like in mining, some nodes may
> reject you, but there will likely be more that will accept you, some
> sellers may reject you, but most would accept your money as payment for
> bitcoins. I don't think requiring the "permission" of one of millions of
> people in the market can be reasonably considered a "permissioned
> currency".
>
> > 2. Proof of stake must have a trusted means of timestamping to regulate
> overproduction of blocks
>
> Both PoW and PoS could mine/mint blocks twice as fast if everyone agreed
> to double their clock speeds. Both systems rely on an honest majority
> sticking to standard time.
>
>
> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 5:32 AM Michael Dubrovsky via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> Ah sorry, I didn't realize this was, in fact, a different thread! :)
>>
>> On Wed, May 19, 2021 at 10:07 AM Michael Dubrovsky <mike at powx.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Folks, I suggest we keep the discussion to PoW, oPoW, and the BIP
>>> itself. PoS, VDFs, and so on are interesting but I guess there are other
>>> threads going on these topics already where they would be relevant.
>>>
>>> Also, it's important to distinguish between oPoW and these other
>>> "alternatives" to Hashcash. oPoW is a true Proof of Work that doesn't alter
>>> the core game theory or security assumptions of Hashcash and actually
>>> contains SHA (can be SHA3, SHA256, etc hash is interchangeable).
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Mike
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 4:55 PM Erik Aronesty via bitcoin-dev <
>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 1. i never suggested vdf's to replace pow.
>>>>
>>>> 2. my suggestion was specifically *in the context of* a working
>>>> proof-of-burn protocol
>>>>
>>>> - vdfs used only for timing (not block height)
>>>> - blind-burned coins of a specific age used to replace proof of work
>>>> - the required "work" per block would simply be a competition to
>>>> acquire rewards, and so miners would have to burn coins, well in
>>>> advance, and hope that their burned coins got rewarded in some far
>>>> future
>>>> - the point of burned coins is to mimic, in every meaningful way, the
>>>> value gained from proof of work... without some of the security
>>>> drawbacks
>>>> - the miner risks losing all of his burned coins (like all miners risk
>>>> losing their work in each block)
>>>> - new burns can't be used
>>>> - old burns age out (like ASICs do)
>>>> - other requirements on burns might be needed to properly mirror the
>>>> properties of PoW and the incentives Bitcoin uses to mine honestly.
>>>>
>>>> 3. i do believe it is *possible* that a "burned coin + vdf system"
>>>> might be more secure in the long run, and that if the entire space
>>>> agreed that such an endeavor was worthwhile, a test net could be spun
>>>> up, and a hard-fork could be initiated.
>>>>
>>>> 4. i would never suggest such a thing unless i believed it was
>>>> possible that consensus was possible. so no, this is not an "alt
>>>> coin"
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, May 18, 2021 at 10:02 AM Zac Greenwood <zachgrw at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > Hi ZmnSCPxj,
>>>> >
>>>> > Please note that I am not suggesting VDFs as a means to save energy,
>>>> but solely as a means to make the time between blocks more constant.
>>>> >
>>>> > Zac
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > On Tue, 18 May 2021 at 12:42, ZmnSCPxj <ZmnSCPxj at protonmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Good morning Zac,
>>>> >>
>>>> >> > VDFs might enable more constant block times, for instance by
>>>> having a two-step PoW:
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > 1. Use a VDF that takes say 9 minutes to resolve (VDF being
>>>> subject to difficulty adjustments similar to the as-is). As per the
>>>> property of VDFs, miners are able show proof of work.
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > 2. Use current PoW mechanism with lower difficulty so finding a
>>>> block takes 1 minute on average, again subject to as-is difficulty
>>>> adjustments.
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > As a result, variation in block times will be greatly reduced.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> As I understand it, another weakness of VDFs is that they are not
>>>> inherently progress-free (their sequential nature prevents that; they are
>>>> inherently progress-requiring).
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Thus, a miner which focuses on improving the amount of energy that
>>>> it can pump into the VDF circuitry (by overclocking and freezing the
>>>> circuitry), could potentially get into a winner-takes-all situation,
>>>> possibly leading to even *worse* competition and even *more* energy
>>>> consumption.
>>>> >> After all, if you can start mining 0.1s faster than the competition,
>>>> that is a 0.1s advantage where *only you* can mine *in the entire world*.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> Regards,
>>>> >> ZmnSCPxj
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>>>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Michael Dubrovsky
>>> Founder; PoWx
>>> www.PoWx.org <http://www.powx.org/>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Dubrovsky
>> Founder; PoWx
>> www.PoWx.org <http://www.powx.org/>
>> _______________________________________________
>> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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2023-06-07 18:14:47

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2018-09-22
📝 Original message:I see one benefit which i am looking for. I may not need to use all public
keys in p2sh script instead i can use p2pkh and retrieve funds by using
threshold number of keys..so in case i loose a public key along with
private key i still may have other public key private key pairs to
retrieve. For me it sounds interesting. I need to understand how it is
going to get implemented in more detail.
On Sat 22 Sep, 2018, 9:53 AM Christopher Allen via bitcoin-dev, <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 11:18 AM Andrew Kozlik via bitcoin-dev <
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
>> We are currently writing a new specification for splitting BIP-32 master
>> seeds into multiple mnemonics using Shamir's secret sharing scheme. We
>> would be interested in getting your feedback with regard to the
>> high-level design of the new spec:
>> https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips/blob/master/slip-0039.md
>> Please focus your attention on the section entitled "Master secret
>> derivation functions", which proposes several different solutions. Note
>> that there is a Design Rationale section at the very end of the
>> document, which should answer some of the questions you may have. The
>> document is a work in progress and we are aware that some technical
>> details have not been fully specified. These will be completed once the
>> high level design has been settled.
>>
>
> I and a number of companies & communities I am involved with are very
> interested in this.
>
> A challenge is that Shamir Secret Sharing has subtleties. To quote Greg
> Maxwell:
>
> > I think Shamir Secret Sharing (and a number of other things, RNGs for
> example), suffer from a property where they are just complex enough that
> people are excited to implement them often for little good reason, and then
> they are complex enough (or have few enough reasons to invest significant
> time) they implement them poorly”.
>
> Some questions for you:
>
> * What other teams or communities besides Trezor are committed to
> standardizing a Shamir Secret Sharing Scheme? I can say that the
> #RebootingWebOfTrust community (meeting again for the 7th time next week in
> Toronto https://rwot7.eventbrite.com) are very interested.
>
> * Where do you want to hold discussions on this? Do people object to
> having this discussion on this mailing list? Or should it be issues in
> SLIPS repo or on some other mailing list?
>
> * Presuming a successful split of secrets, I don’t know all the
> adversarial problems that are associated with recovery of a SSS. As this
> would be an interactive event, I presume an attacker can DOS a request to
> reassemble keys (so maybe some the of integrity of each share vs all is
> required). And of course there are the biggest problems: impersonation of
> a reassembly request and a MitM of a reassembly request. Are there other
> attacks? Are you trying to mitigate any of these?
>
> Two comments:
>
> * The Lightning Network community has added to their BIP32 mnemonics the
> ability to have a birthday in the seed, to make it easier to scan the
> blockchain for keys, as well as a byte with some way to know how to derive
> keys paths for it. I don’t seee a BOLT for this (it was mentioned in
> https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/74805/what-is-birthday-in-the-context-of-bip39-lightning-seed-generation)
> I would suggest that you also get some of their latest thoughts and
> incorporate them.
>
> * I worked with Chris Vickery while at Blockstrham on various possible
> ways to improve mnemonic word lists. I’m not suggesting that you
> necessarily go as far as we did to try to create a mnemonic that is iambic
> pentameter poetry (inspired by
> https://www.isi.edu/natural-language/mt/memorize-random-60.pdf), however,
> we did find sources for words that are concrete (for example table is more
> concrete than truth
> http://crr.ugent.be/papers/Brysbaert_Warriner_Kuperman_BRM_Concreteness_ratings.pdf
> ) or have strong emotional valence attachment (truth is more emotional than
> table), both of which make can words more memorable. I also found lists of
> words that are hard to pronounce unless you are English native, and
> eliminated them from my own list.
>
> Among the results of this was a new BIP-39 2048 word compatible word list
> filtered for memorability (concreteness & emotional valence) and
> suitability for iambic pentameter, which is located:
>
>
> https://github.com/ChristopherA/iambic-mnemonic/blob/master/word-lists/iambic-wordlist.json
>
>
> …which was created from the repo at
>
> https://github.com/ChristopherA/password_poem
>
> You can a number of other word lists that I’ve collected here
> https://github.com/ChristopherA/iambic-mnemonic/blob/master/word-lists/
>
> If you want to replicate what we did with your own criteria, you may want
> to incorporate information from the CMU dictitionary
> http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict, the top 5000 words
> https://github.com/ChristopherA/password_poem/blob/master/top5000.json,
> concrete word lists
> http://crr.ugent.be/papers/Concreteness_ratings_Brysbaert_et_al_BRM.txt
> and emotional words (valence) http://crr.ugent.be/archives/1003
>
> — Christopher Allen
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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