Then shouldn't this be something the pool deals with, not the bitcoin protocol?
On 12/19/15, Matt Corallo <lf-li...@mattcorallo.com> wrote: > Peter was referring to pool-block-withholding, not selfish mining. > > On December 19, 2015 7:34:26 PM PST, Chris Priest via bitcoin-dev > <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >>Block witholding attacks are only possible if you have a majority of >>hashpower. If you only have 20% hashpower, you can't do this attack. >>Currently, this attack is only a theoretical attack, as the ones with >>all the hashpower today are not engaging in this behavior. Even if >>someone who had a lot of hashpower decided to pull off this attack, >>they wouldn't be able to disrupt much. Once that time comes, then I >>think this problem should be solved, until then it should be a low >>priority. There are more important things to work on in the meantime. >> >>On 12/19/15, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev >><bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >>> At the recent Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong we had a >>chatham >>> house rules workshop session attending by representitives of a super >>> majority of the Bitcoin hashing power. >>> >>> One of the issues raised by the pools present was block withholding >>> attacks, which they said are a real issue for them. In particular, >>pools >>> are receiving legitimate threats by bad actors threatening to use >>block >>> withholding attacks against them. Pools offering their services to >>the >>> general public without anti-privacy Know-Your-Customer have little >>> defense against such attacks, which in turn is a threat to the >>> decentralization of hashing power: without pools only fairly large >>> hashing power installations are profitable as variance is a very real >>> business expense. P2Pool is often brought up as a replacement for >>pools, >>> but it itself is still relatively vulnerable to block withholding, >>and >>> in any case has many other vulnerabilities and technical issues that >>has >>> prevented widespread adoption of P2Pool. >>> >>> Fixing block withholding is relatively simple, but (so far) requires >>a >>> SPV-visible hardfork. (Luke-Jr's two-stage target mechanism) We >>should >>> do this hard-fork in conjunction with any blocksize increase, which >>will >>> have the desirable side effect of clearly show consent by the entire >>> ecosystem, SPV clients included. >>> >>> >>> Note that Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer have argued(1) that block >>> witholding attacks are a good thing, as in their model they can be >>used >>> by small pools against larger pools, disincentivising large pools. >>> However this argument is academic and not applicable to the real >>world, >>> as a much simpler defense against block withholding attacks is to use >>> anti-privacy KYC and the legal system combined with the variety of >>> withholding detection mechanisms only practical for large pools. >>> Equally, large hashing power installations - a dangerous thing for >>> decentralization - have no block withholding attack vulnerabilities. >>> >>> 1) http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/03/the-miners-dilemma/ >>> >>> -- >>> 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org >>> 00000000000000000188b6321da7feae60d74c7b0becbdab3b1a0bd57f10947d >>> >>_______________________________________________ >>bitcoin-dev mailing list >>bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >>https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > > _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev