Author Topic: The reverse acquisition attack: Buying the bitcoin POW to DPOS hardfork  (Read 12808 times)

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Offline Rune

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Edited the OP.

Turns out the attack isn't possible. The assumption that miners can always mine empty blocks that the main chain has to accept is mistaken. Developers would release a full node update in response that rejects empty blocks and there would be a network partition if this was ever attempted.

The good news is that it means no one can perform this attack, so we won't be at risk by some competitor or mining pool creating a bitcoin 2.0 blockchain that destroys us. This also means that bitcoin will never be able to upgrade its consensus algorithm away from POW, and will have to die eventually, which is a shame.

I'm going to continue trying to figure out of this kind of attack can actually be done, because I still think controlling miners with the prisoners dilemma has the potential to work. But if I come up with anything I'll post it straight to the bitcoin community instead of here, to avoid negative connotations of us discussing a bitcoin attack amongst ourselves. If it turns out a hard fork can be bought in some way, it is also more fair to give the bitcoin community a chance to "choose" who should take them over, rather than simply coming out of nowhere and doing it. The important thing is to prevent a situation where a malicious actor eats bitcoin and then copies our features.

Also donkeypong mentioned if such an attack was to be launched, a better strategy would be to clone BTS and 100% sharedrop all current BTS holders, then announce the attack. This would keep the current BTS community out of direct contact with it and avoid the negative risk associated with failure, but keep the positive upside of success. This is a much better idea and I wish I'd thought of that from the beginning.

Offline gamey

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I think bitcoiners would just rebel, fork back to the old chain, and continue on from there.

Bitcoin people will never just give up and rage quit or whatever Rune wants to call it.  This is all poppycock and we don't really need Bitcoiners hating us.  There are numerous points at which the plan would likely fail.

Why would you think that a network with 10s of million in VC capital is just going to roll over and move to Bitshares with the 1000s of merchants already in place?

We can only out compete them.
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zerosum

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I am too lazy (aka I read like 15-20 standard pages of text in this thread), was it anywhere answered:

"Who/how are those BTC miners paid after the merger?" so they do not bring back to life the original (not reverse acquired) BTC chain?

Offline donkeypong

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By 99%, don't you really mean 100%, to a person? Why exactly would customers need a second bank when BitShares gives them a one-stop-shop?

The myth of satoshi will never die, the cult of satoshi will never die.

We might beat bitcoin and take most of the market cap, but there will ALWAYS be someone trying to keep bitcoin alive, no matter what.  It will never die, imo.  It might fall down the charts and get passed by 2.0 coins eventually, but it will never completely die.  Not completely.

That's why I have a specially outfitted bed with dozens of Casascius Bitcoins stuck under my mattress. But how usable will BTC be when users and merchants have moved onto something far better?

Offline hpenvy

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Brilliant concept, but
We get essentially the same effect by simply positioning BitShares
as a nice, friendly crypto-savings account that pays interest. 
A complement to Bitcoin's crypto-checking account.
Bring in more new users than Bitcoin has through our funnels.
Educate them with this checking vs savings metaphor. 
Then let the ordinary consumer decide how much to keep in savings vs. checking. 
(I seldom keep more than 1% of my cash in checking.)
I expect 99% of Bitcoin's market cap to move to BitShares voluntarily.

;)

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Offline starspirit

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Is it possible to be the friendly messenger rather than the hostile messenger?

It probably was, but Bitshares already looks like the hostile messenger now.
I'm not sure. One just needs to be up-front that it was raised in free discussion and rejected by the community. Could add to the marketing.

Offline Ander

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Is it possible to be the friendly messenger rather than the hostile messenger?

It probably was, but Bitshares already looks like the hostile messenger now.
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Offline starspirit

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Is it possible to be the friendly messenger rather than the hostile messenger?
Post a public notice making bitcoin holders aware of the potential for this attack and how vulnerable they are to it.
Paint any potential party that might attempt it as acting hostile to their interests, so that such other parties are actually disincetivized thereafter from attempting it.
Point out how using bitshares can free them from those risks and offer other benefits.
Incentivize the bitcoin holders to transition over.
A Reverse-Marketing Campaign?

Offline fluxer555

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By 99%, don't you really mean 100%, to a person? Why exactly would customers need a second bank when BitShares gives them a one-stop-shop?

The myth of satoshi will never die, the cult of satoshi will never die.

We might beat bitcoin and take most of the market cap, but there will ALWAYS be someone trying to keep bitcoin alive, no matter what.  It will never die, imo.  It might fall down the charts and get passed by 2.0 coins eventually, but it will never completely die.  Not completely.

Just look at Dogecoin... it simply refuses to die.

Offline Ander

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By 99%, don't you really mean 100%, to a person? Why exactly would customers need a second bank when BitShares gives them a one-stop-shop?

The myth of satoshi will never die, the cult of satoshi will never die.

We might beat bitcoin and take most of the market cap, but there will ALWAYS be someone trying to keep bitcoin alive, no matter what.  It will never die, imo.  It might fall down the charts and get passed by 2.0 coins eventually, but it will never completely die.  Not completely.
https://metaexchange.info | Bitcoin<->Altcoin exchange | Instant | Safe | Low spreads

Offline Stan

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Brilliant concept, but
We get essentially the same effect by simply positioning BitShares
as a nice, friendly crypto-savings account that pays interest. 
A complement to Bitcoin's crypto-checking account.
Bring in more new users than Bitcoin has through our funnels.
Educate them with this checking vs savings metaphor. 
Then let the ordinary consumer decide how much to keep in savings vs. checking. 
(I seldom keep more than 1% of my cash in checking.)
I expect 99% of Bitcoin's market cap to move to BitShares voluntarily.

;)

This is the public, diplomatic answer, Stan. In reality, the "checking" feature here is far better than at that other bank. It takes 10 seconds to 'write a check' with BTS or BitUSD, while BTC can take 40 minutes to clear. By 99%, don't you really mean 100%, to a person? Why exactly would customers need a second bank when BitShares gives them a one-stop-shop? Why would anyone choose to pay exchange fees to move their 1% back to BTC for a feature which BTS does better anyway?

Exactly.  A savings account that works better than checking.  ;)

Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline donkeypong

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Brilliant concept, but
We get essentially the same effect by simply positioning BitShares
as a nice, friendly crypto-savings account that pays interest. 
A complement to Bitcoin's crypto-checking account.
Bring in more new users than Bitcoin has through our funnels.
Educate them with this checking vs savings metaphor. 
Then let the ordinary consumer decide how much to keep in savings vs. checking. 
(I seldom keep more than 1% of my cash in checking.)
I expect 99% of Bitcoin's market cap to move to BitShares voluntarily.

;)

This is the public, diplomatic answer, Stan. In reality, the "checking" feature here is far better than at that other bank. It takes 10 seconds to 'write a check' with BTS or BitUSD, while BTC can take 40 minutes to clear. By 99%, don't you really mean 100%, to a person? Why exactly would customers need a second bank when BitShares gives them a one-stop-shop? Why would anyone choose to pay exchange fees to move their 1% back to BTC for a feature which BTS does better anyway?

Offline Rune

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I think bitcoiners would just rebel, fork back to the old chain, and continue on from there.

True, many of them undoubtedly would, in fact there would probably be dozens of forks to different mining algorithms. None of them will be the original bitcoin blockchain, though, so it will be impossible for individual bitcoin holders or service providers to decide which chain to honor. If they want to be sure that their bitcoins actually have value, their only choice will be to use the bitshares blockchain, since that is the only place where trading will still continue (even if bitcoin exchanges dont switch over immediately the bitshares exchanges will still function). Once they redeem their bitcoins on the bitshares blockchain they will have revealed the private key and their coins will be lost on all other blockchains and bitcoin forks.

According to jgarzik this attack can be defended against with a future system that has full nodes ignore blocks without almost all currently broadcasted transactions. I think the danger with this will be that someone can create a network partition by sending lots of small random transactions to different parts of the network, but if it prioritizes based on transaction value then perhaps it will work.

Offline Ander

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I think bitcoiners would just rebel, fork back to the old chain, and continue on from there.

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Offline Rune

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If someone tried this attack it would almost certainly fail.

If discus fish announced they were going to perform this attack do you think it would fail? Considering how insane the payoff for them, and all miners in general, would potentially be, I think it is a real possibility they will do it. And if not them, then someone else.

Making the attack succeed for us instead would just be a matter of getting discus fish or some other pool on board to support our reverse acquisition, instead having to create their own new coin. They would still be able to profit immensely just by buying into bitshares before publicly announcing the attack.