public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Jimmy Song <jaejoon@gmail.com>
To: "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon.cc>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] A Small Modification to Segwit
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 2017 17:26:25 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAJR7vkqnRNLv6xpg04Uh2ybu5DQnBSqc5rdBBJ77Dy=EsEAK2Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABm2gDoEBzoyjVVhxJXgzW6dBF=+hN-oo+jP1AWYznaGKA4HKA@mail.gmail.com>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3236 bytes --]

Jorge,

Suppose someone figures out an ASIC optimization that's completely
unrelated that gives X% speed boost over your non-ASICBoosted
implementation. If you ban ASICBoost, someone with this optimization can
get 51% of the network by adding N machines with their new optimization. If
you allow ASICBoost and assuming this gets a 20% speed boost over
non-ASICBoosted hardware, someone with this optimization would need 1.2N
machines to get 51%. The network in that sense is 20% stronger against this
attack in terms of cost.

Jimmy

On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 12:22 PM, Jorge Timón <jtimon@jtimon.cc> wrote:

> To be more specific, why "being higher will secure the Bitcoin network
> better against newer optimizations"?
> Or, to be more clear, let's forget about future "optimizations", let's
> just think of an attacker. Does asicboost being used by all miners
> make the system more secure against an attacker? No, for the attacker
> can use asicboost too.
> What about the case when not all the miners are using asicboost? Then
> the attacker can actually get an advantage by suing asicboost.
>
> Sometimes people compare asicboost with the use of asics in general as
> both providing more security for the network and users. But I don't
> think this is accurate. The existence of sha256d asics makes an attack
> with general purpose computing hardware (or even more specialized
> architectures like gpgpu) much more expensive and unlikely. As an
> alternative the attacker can spend additional resources investing in
> asics himself (again, making many attacks more expensive and
> unlikely).
>
> But as far as I know, asicboost can be implemented with software
> running on general purpose hardware that integrates with regular
> sha256d asics. There is probably an advantage on having the asicboost
> implementation "in the same box" as the sha256d, yet again the
> attacker can invest in hardware with the competitive advantage from
> having asicboost more intergrated with the sha256d asics too.
>
> To reiterate, whether all miners use asicboost or only a subset of
> them, I remain unconvinced that provides any additional security to
> the network (to be more precise whether that makes "tx history harder
> to rewrite"), even if it results on the hashrate charts looking "more
> secure".
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 8, 2017 at 6:27 PM, Jorge Timón <jtimon@jtimon.cc> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 8 Apr 2017 5:06 am, "Jimmy Song via bitcoin-dev"
> > <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> >
> > Praxeology Guy,
> >
> >> Why would the actual end users of Bitcoin (the long term and short term
> >> owners of bitcoins) who run fully verifying nodes want to change Bitcoin
> >> policy in order to make their money more vulnerable to 51% attack?
> >
> >
> > Certainly, if only one company made use of the extra nonce space, they
> would
> > have an advantage. But think of it this way, if some newer ASIC
> optimization
> > comes up, would you rather have a non-ASICBoosted hash rate to defend
> with
> > or an ASICBoosted hash rate? Certainly, the latter, being higher will
> secure
> > the Bitcoin network better against newer optimizations.
> >
> >
> > Why?
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3925 bytes --]

  reply	other threads:[~2017-04-08 22:26 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2017-04-07 20:06 [bitcoin-dev] A Small Modification to Segwit Jimmy Song
2017-04-08  0:05 ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-08 14:59   ` Luke Dashjr
2017-04-08 15:17     ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-08 16:05       ` Luke Dashjr
2017-04-08 16:16         ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-08 16:19   ` Timo Hanke
2017-04-08  1:48 ` praxeology_guy
2017-04-08  2:46   ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-08  8:33     ` Pavel Moravec
2017-04-08 14:35       ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-08 16:38         ` Pavel Moravec
2017-04-08 22:19           ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-08 18:15         ` praxeology_guy
2017-04-08 18:51           ` Eric Voskuil
2017-04-08 20:38             ` praxeology_guy
2017-04-09 11:46           ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-08 16:27     ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-08 17:22       ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-08 22:26         ` Jimmy Song [this message]
2017-04-09 11:48           ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-09 14:01             ` Jimmy Song
     [not found]               ` <CABm2gDqfsBREj2x5Uz9hxwt-Y6m=KHd2-hRw4gV0CbO+-8B0dg@mail.gmail.com>
2017-04-10  9:16                 ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-09 18:44   ` Erik Aronesty
2017-04-09 21:16     ` Jared Lee Richardson
2017-04-09 23:51       ` David Vorick
2017-04-10  0:20         ` Erik Aronesty
2017-04-10  1:45           ` Thomas Daede
2017-04-10 14:34     ` Bram Cohen
2017-04-10 14:46     ` Bram Cohen
2017-04-10 15:25     ` g
2017-04-10 18:17       ` Erik Aronesty
2017-04-11  2:39         ` g
2017-04-11 18:39           ` Staf Verhaegen
2017-04-11  9:31       ` Sancho Panza
2017-04-11 13:00         ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-11  7:59 ` Tom Zander
2017-04-11 13:25   ` Sancho Panza
2017-04-11 14:40     ` Jimmy Song
2017-04-11 21:25       ` Jorge Timón
2017-04-11 23:42         ` Jimmy Song

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to='CAJR7vkqnRNLv6xpg04Uh2ybu5DQnBSqc5rdBBJ77Dy=EsEAK2Q@mail.gmail.com' \
    --to=jaejoon@gmail.com \
    --cc=bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org \
    --cc=jtimon@jtimon.cc \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox