Consensus on the list of delegates

[Come-from-Beyond]

How about a penalty for delegates not including transactions that the network has seen for 30 secs and are valid? Penalty would be to deny 2-10 rounds of payment.
Would that help in this case?

How could you know that the network "sees" a transaction?

[Come-from-Beyond]

So then what would be the point of doing all this?

The point is just to show that power that controls election will stay on the top forever. This is what we observe in a lot of dictatorship countries where elections are faked.

[xeroc]

How about a penalty for delegates not including transactions that the network has seen for 30 secs and are valid? Penalty would be to deny 2-10 rounds of payment.
Would that help in this case?

[svk]

1 delegate can ignore blocks from the other 100 and thus fork the network without bribing anyone, but that doesn't gain him anything.

51 delegates all ignoring blocks from the other 50 doesn't gain them anything either. Their fork will have 51 delegates, but the honest fork will quickly replace them and have 101 delegates.

Chain of 1 delegate will be very short and ignored.

51 delegates ignoring blocks from other 50 get the bribery money. How the honest fork can win if its chain is shorter?

I still fail to see why on earth anyone would jeopardize their reputation and future pay for a laughable 1% bribe (spread out over time as well), and more importantly how you expect to be able to bribe >50 delegates without a single person refusing and blowing your scheme open.

To me this whole scenario is so far fetched I don't understand how it's gotten to 4 pages of discussion.. You're saying the delegate will use 80% of his pay in order to stay elected, but that's just not realistic so in reality you'd have someone paying more to stay in than what they're earning by staying in. So then what would be the point of doing all this?

[Come-from-Beyond]

You're missing the point here. The fork is created by some delegates ignoring transactions and blocks that include votes that take away their power.  The other fork therefore includes those votes. Therefore the honest fork automatically heals itself, and the dishonest fork cannot.

The other fork is shorter, why is it accepted as legit?

[Troglodactyl]

How will their chain be shorter, when they have 101 delegates and the attackers only have 51?  The attackers can't replace the honest delegates without shareholder support, so their branch will be crippled.

This is why the title of this thread is "Consensus on the list of delegates". Consensus can be achieved only via blockchain. If 51 delegates control information that is stored on the blockchain then there is no a way to replace them with other delegates in a reliable manner. You inevitably come to necessity to make a centralized decision.

You're missing the point here. The fork is created by some delegates ignoring transactions and blocks that include votes that take away their power.  The other fork therefore includes those votes. Therefore the honest fork automatically heals itself, and the dishonest fork cannot.

[Come-from-Beyond]

How will their chain be shorter, when they have 101 delegates and the attackers only have 51?  The attackers can't replace the honest delegates without shareholder support, so their branch will be crippled.

This is why the title of this thread is "Consensus on the list of delegates". Consensus can be achieved only via blockchain. If 51 delegates control information that is stored on the blockchain then there is no a way to replace them with other delegates in a reliable manner. You inevitably come to necessity to make a centralized decision.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Then users will swarm the boards wondering why their transactions went through.  The community will discover they've been attacked, and will roll back / fork the network to vote in a new set of delegates.  The attackers attack will have been for naught.  Short term, this attack will give BitShares a minor black eye, but long term it will show how resilient the network is and there will be no more incentives to perform this attack again.

This won't work for DACs. They can't read forums. A good solution ought to be automatic.

[Troglodactyl]

1 delegate can ignore blocks from the other 100 and thus fork the network without bribing anyone, but that doesn't gain him anything.

51 delegates all ignoring blocks from the other 50 doesn't gain them anything either. Their fork will have 51 delegates, but the honest fork will quickly replace them and have 101 delegates.

Chain of 1 delegate will be very short and ignored.

51 delegates ignoring blocks from other 50 get the bribery money. How the honest fork can win if its chain is shorter?

How will their chain be shorter, when they have 101 delegates and the attackers only have 51?  The attackers can't replace the honest delegates without shareholder support, so their branch will be crippled.

[sschechter]

This also assumes that our non anonymous delegates are willing to harm their own reputation and risk their own investments for peanuts.

They won't harm their reputation because you can't prove that they saw a transaction but decided to ignore it.

Then users will swarm the boards wondering why their transactions went through.  The community will discover they've been attacked, and will roll back / fork the network to vote in a new set of delegates.  The attackers attack will have been for naught.  Short term, this attack will give BitShares a minor black eye, but long term it will show how resilient the network is and there will be no more incentives to perform this attack again.

[Come-from-Beyond]

1 delegate can ignore blocks from the other 100 and thus fork the network without bribing anyone, but that doesn't gain him anything.

51 delegates all ignoring blocks from the other 50 doesn't gain them anything either. Their fork will have 51 delegates, but the honest fork will quickly replace them and have 101 delegates.

Chain of 1 delegate will be very short and ignored.

51 delegates ignoring blocks from other 50 get the bribery money. How the honest fork can win if its chain is shorter?

[Come-from-Beyond]

This also assumes that our non anonymous delegates are willing to harm their own reputation and risk their own investments for peanuts.

They won't harm their reputation because you can't prove that they saw a transaction but decided to ignore it.

[Come-from-Beyond]

I don't get why this is not a classical 51% attack?

It's like 51% but without chain reorg.

[Troglodactyl]

The point is that being "rational" he thinks that all 101 delegates would immediately accept payment from the smart contract, and reject any new voting transactions that would replace any delegate.  He's basically asserting that the BitShares network would be unable to find even 1 out of the 101 delegates who would refuse to sabotage the network if offered a 1% pay raise as a bribe to sabotage it:

Not all 101. 50 is enough, because with 1 briber this group gets majority and can ignore blocks of other 50 delegates.

1 delegate can ignore blocks from the other 100 and thus fork the network without bribing anyone, but that doesn't gain him anything.

51 delegates all ignoring blocks from the other 50 doesn't gain them anything either. Their fork will have 51 delegates, but the honest fork will quickly replace them and have 101 delegates.

[sschechter]

The point is that being "rational" he thinks that all 101 delegates would immediately accept payment from the smart contract, and reject any new voting transactions that would replace any delegate.  He's basically asserting that the BitShares network would be unable to find even 1 out of the 101 delegates who would refuse to sabotage the network if offered a 1% pay raise as a bribe to sabotage it:

This also assumes that our non anonymous delegates are willing to harm their own reputation and risk their own investments for peanuts.

 

Even in these EXTREME scenarios you present, whats the harm to the network? Why can't the network be forked?

Sony was hacked, Target was hacked....a PR blunder for sure but did that actually stop anyone from shopping at Sony or Target?