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From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: Christophe Biocca <christophe.biocca@gmail.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 11:03:37 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20140424150337.GA24314@savin> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANOOu=8XLdS-v-xULrv8Y5XukapCafTLDGa0M0q_W1speb2Ykg@mail.gmail.com>

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On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 10:47:35AM -0400, Christophe Biocca wrote:
> Actually Peter, coinbase confiscations are a much worse mechanism for
> enforcement of widespread censorship rules than simple orphaning. They
> lose their power when the transaction miners are punished for can
> build up over time without losing their usefulness:
<snip>
> Of course, in such a dystopian future, orphaning would be the
> enforcement mechanism. It would be stupid to rely on coinbase
> reallocation/burning to do this task when the existing tools work so
> much better.

I don't disagree with you at an end stage, but the thing with coinbase
blacklists/confiscation is because it's a voting mechanism the initial
stages of enforcing widespread censorship rules with it are much easier.
For instance, if a 10% pool that has been forced/wants to blacklist
certain transactions can do so, and then vote to blacklist blocks that
do not abide by that blacklist. Casting that vote does them no harm.
Every time another pool joins the blacklist, there's no harm to them to
doing so.  At some point they will reach a majority, which causes the
blacklist to actually apply. The whole process happens smoothly, letting
the blacklist be applied safely and easily.  With orphaning/reorging on
the other hand you just can't be sure that the other miners will
actually adopt it, making adoption risky.

Of course, that's above and beyond the fact that you can't prove a
Finney attack happened to a third-party, making it easy to attack
smaller miners with Sybil attacks, get them creating blocks with
double-spends in them, and using that as an excuse to punish them.

> What's interesting is that this mechanism is especially tailored to
> blocking time sensitive transactions (that need to be confirmed
> now/soon, or are worthless), such that their total out-of-band fees
> can't build up over time. Double spending is one such category. I'm at
> a loss to come up with something else, but maybe someone has a good
> example?

Decentralized markets are a great example: the bids and orders they
depend on are time-senstive and become much less valuable if they get
delayed greatly.

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
0000000000000000091ae589c034bc0466e2feca51dc018bb2c3303e8ab8648b

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  reply	other threads:[~2014-04-24 15:04 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 90+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-04-23  7:55 [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks Mike Hearn
2014-04-23  9:57 ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 11:07   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 11:39     ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 11:45       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 13:21         ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 13:31           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24  9:21             ` Andy Parkins
2014-04-23 12:43 ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-23 12:51   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 14:52 ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 15:07   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 17:19     ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 17:47       ` Gavin Andresen
2014-04-23 17:49         ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 17:57           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 18:04             ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 18:15               ` Peter Todd
2014-04-23 18:20                 ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 18:37                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 18:49                     ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-23 19:01                       ` Drak
2014-04-23 18:58                     ` Tier Nolan
2014-04-23 15:04 ` Alex Mizrahi
2014-04-23 15:09   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 15:38     ` Alex Mizrahi
2014-04-23 16:04       ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-23 16:19         ` Chris Pacia
2014-04-23 16:21         ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 16:33         ` Kevin
2014-04-24 11:22     ` Jorge Timón
2014-04-24 11:43       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 13:57         ` Jorge Timón
2014-04-24 14:28           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 15:37             ` Jorge Timón
2014-04-24 17:07               ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-25  4:31             ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-25 10:17               ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-25 13:19                 ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-25 15:28                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-26 12:15                     ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-27  1:42                       ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-27 12:53                         ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-27 14:31                           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-27 23:10                             ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-28 21:41                           ` Adam Back
2014-04-29 14:13                             ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-29 14:21                               ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-29 14:26                                 ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-30 13:12                                   ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-30 13:55                                     ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-30 14:31                                       ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-29 19:29                               ` Justus Ranvier
2014-04-30 13:00                               ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-30 17:06                                 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2014-04-30 17:13                                   ` Jameson Lopp
2014-04-30 14:08                               ` Gareth Williams
2014-04-23 15:28   ` Peter Todd
2014-04-23 15:34 ` Kevin
2014-04-23 15:41   ` Pieter Wuille
2014-04-23 15:55     ` Peter Todd
2014-04-23 18:57 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 19:19   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 19:47     ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 19:59       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 20:24         ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 20:37           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 20:44             ` Adam Ritter
2014-04-23 20:51               ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 15:13                 ` Sergio Lerner
2014-04-24 15:34                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-23 20:53               ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 21:23                 ` Tier Nolan
2014-04-23 21:39                   ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 22:26                     ` Tier Nolan
2014-04-24  0:55                   ` Tom Harding
     [not found]                 ` <CAKuKjyWDniyP503XSw8=tK9XQW-T58j+VD6ajXCxz=HihN93mQ@mail.gmail.com>
2014-04-24 14:52                   ` [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: " Adam Ritter
2014-04-23 20:41         ` [Bitcoin-development] " Daniel Krawisz
2014-04-23 22:06     ` Alex Mizrahi
2014-04-24  7:58       ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24  8:19         ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-24  8:39           ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24  9:25             ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-24  9:56               ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 13:44                 ` Peter Todd
2014-04-24 14:09                   ` Mike Hearn
2014-04-24 14:47                     ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-24 15:03                       ` Peter Todd [this message]
2014-04-24 16:05                         ` Christophe Biocca
2014-04-24 16:14                         ` Mike Hearn

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