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From: Jouke Hofman <jouke@bitonic.nl>
To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] we can all relax now
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:19:42 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <527AC07E.5030401@bitonic.nl> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5279D49D.5050807@jerviss.org>

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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> 




  parent reply	other threads:[~2013-11-06 22:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-11-06  5:33 [Bitcoin-development] we can all relax now kjj
2013-11-06  9:26 ` Frank F
2013-11-06 11:35 ` Jeff Garzik
2013-11-06 18:06   ` Christophe Biocca
2013-11-07  3:44     ` Peter Todd
2013-11-07  4:15       ` Kyle Jerviss
2013-11-07  4:33         ` Peter Todd
2013-11-07  4:59           ` Kyle Jerviss
2013-11-07 13:09             ` Peter Todd
2013-11-07  4:56       ` Gavin Andresen
2013-11-07 13:24         ` Peter Todd
2013-11-07 16:14           ` Mike Hearn
2013-11-07 18:28             ` Daniel Lidstrom
2013-11-08 19:49               ` Andreas M. Antonopoulos
2013-11-08 20:33                 ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-11-15 10:58               ` Peter Todd
2013-11-07  8:07       ` Jannes Faber
2013-11-07  5:24     ` Kyle Jerviss
2013-11-06 18:17 ` Melvin Carvalho
2013-11-06 22:19 ` Jouke Hofman [this message]
2014-05-10 11:05 ` E willbefull

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