On Wed, Jan 01, 2014 at 05:09:27AM +0000, Luke-Jr wrote: > > You assume the value of a crypto-currency is equal to all miners, it's > > not. > > > > Suppose I create a merge-mined Zerocoin implementation with a 1:1 > > BTC/ZTC exchange rate enforced by the software. You can't argue this is > > a scamcoin; no-one is getting rich. There's a 1:1 exchange rate so the > > only thing you can do with the coin is get some privacy. But inevitably > > some miners won't agree that enabling better privacy is a good thing, or > > their local governments won't. Either way, they can attack the Zerocoin > > merge-mined chain with a marginal cost of nearly zero. > > Not necessarily. If Zerocoin was tied directly to Bitcoin proof-of-work, the > worst they could do is not-participate by mining empty blocks.
Nope. Tying the alt-coin difficulty to the Bitcoin difficulty isn't some magic way to avoid a 51% attack - you still need a majority of consensus. The attackers can still mine a conflicting chain and there's still no reasonable way to choose between the two chains other than proof-of-something. Even worse, then can do a data-hiding attack by mining a conflicting chain without publishing the blockchain data, then revealing it some time in the future, or just sowing FUD by making it clear that the mining is happening. Like it or not crypto-coins solve double-spending with proof-of-publication, and that can't be done without some kind of mathematically verifiable majority aligned with the interests of the crypto-coin users. Recall that my zookeyv(1) and zerocoin alt(2) proposals from last summer was specifically designed to take that situation into account, and of course could at best only make it clear that it was happening and how many Bitcoins needed to be sacrificed to make the chain secure. 1) #bitcoin-wizards, 2013-05-31 2) http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg02472.html -- 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org 000000000000000f9102d27cfd61ea9e8bb324593593ca3ce6ba53153ff251b3
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
_______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
