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Why do all crypto currency enthusiasts assume that when a government cannot guarantee monetary stability there will still be reliable, always on, high bandwidth

by foepys 9y ago

Why do all crypto currency enthusiasts assume that when a government cannot guarantee monetary stability there will still be reliable, always on, high bandwidth internet connections to sync distributed ledgers across the globe? Also: Does any crypto currency have anything in store to protect itself against bad nodes? I don't mean nodes that send invalid packages but nodes that act like real nodes but just eat transactions and blocks without relaying them. Flood a network with a few million of these nodes, don't relay addresses of valid nodes and the network will split eventually.

xiphias 9y ago
The internet you're talking about doesn't exist (have you been to rural Africa?), but Blockstream satellites do ( https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/ )
nsomaru 9y ago
> Flood a network with a few million of these nodes, don't relay addresses of valid nodes and the network will split eventually. Could you direct me to the theory supporting this assertion? Was considering doing a simulation of this but need some kind of model.
- foepys 9y ago
  That's a thought I came up with a couple of months ago but I wasn't able to find time to test it out myself. From my point of view this seems like a very viable, albeit expensive attack vector without any potential to make money. The only result is destroying confidence in the network, so state level attacks might be the only reason to apply it.
  - jebeng 9y ago
    I think there are a few viable, but expensive attack vectors that have been well known within the community for years. But one thing that's always bugged me is how many people out there seem to think that a cryptocurrency could survive being an actual target by a sufficiently powerful state. The economic damage alone just by the whisper of an actual 'war on Bitcoin' would be devastating, without anyone actually lifting a finger. Let alone putting resources into actual attacks on technical, economic, and social levels. Doesn't really matter if a few enthusiast cypherpunks around the world can keep a few nodes going and technically say 'bitcoin is not dead, see!' when the economic model and security is fundamentally based on continued demand for BTC. I've been really interested in Bitcoin and have followed it closely since Satoshi was still active, and consider myself a pretty big fan of it in general. But the general arrogance and delusion about the reality of where real power is in the world is a bit cringeworthy. And it's always been that way in the community. It might get interesting in the future if two or more states have competing interest in Bitcoin(or whatever). I can imagine some hypothetical situation where the US political tide turns very anti-BTC, but say China has enough money tied up in it that it's incentivized to attempt to defend it. Like say if enough people in positions of political power have significant portions of their wealth tied up in it. That's possible, I guess. Sounds messy though for something that relies on economic confidence. Either way, so far all the luck has been on the side of Bitcoin, as really there's been little to no political pushback against the technology itself. That's pretty awesome, and it's made for a very interesting 7 years or so since BTC really woke up and people around here and elsewhere started seriously discussing it. But the political risk is very real and understated imo. The technical risk is interesting in theory for sure, but just knowing a sufficiently powerful state has the ability to attack is probably more than enough to cause massive economic damage without actually pulling any technological triggers.
oelmekki 9y ago
I consider myself a cryptocurrency enthusiast (I regularly browsed bitcointalk forum since 2013, even if I did not buy anything until 2015), but I have no problem with, nor fear about, governments managing money: what I'm interested in cryptocurrencies on the long run is to replace banking services for individuals, which I find to be of lesser and lesser quality with the years. But I get why you think this is "all crypto currency enthusiasts", given cryptoanarchists are a prominent group. The distinction was clear during the fail of the DAO [1] from ethereum in 2016. When ethereum core devs decided to fork to revert the blockchain and "erase" the steal, there was basically two groups of people: those who were happy that it meant fraud can be dealt with (a not-so-small minority group, which I was in) and those who thought it meant manipulation, regulation, intervention, everything they despise from governments. Granted, the later are way more numerous, but please don't assume it's just all cryptocurrency enthusiasts :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)
keymone 9y ago
mode of operation during war (attack against bitcoin, oppressive regime, etc) would be very different to current mode of operation. radio to receive new blocks and any means of sending 250-500 bytes of data (sms, radio, morse code, flashlight) is enough to do almost all you will ever need to do with bitcoin, no internet required. network of trust based acceptance of peers could be a solution to bad nodes flood attack, i think.

by foepys 9y ago

xiphias 9y ago

The internet you're talking about doesn't exist (have you been to rural Africa?), but Blockstream satellites do ( https://blockstream.com/satellite/ https://blockstream.com/satellite/ )

nsomaru 9y ago

> Flood a network with a few million of these nodes, don't relay addresses of valid nodes and the network will split eventually. Could you direct me to the theory supporting this assertion? Was considering doing a simulation of this but need some kind of model.

foepys 9y ago
That's a thought I came up with a couple of months ago but I wasn't able to find time to test it out myself. From my point of view this seems like a very viable, albeit expensive attack vector without any potential to make money. The only result is destroying confidence in the network, so state level attacks might be the only reason to apply it.
- jebeng 9y ago
  I think there are a few viable, but expensive attack vectors that have been well known within the community for years. But one thing that's always bugged me is how many people out there seem to think that a cryptocurrency could survive being an actual target by a sufficiently powerful state. The economic damage alone just by the whisper of an actual 'war on Bitcoin' would be devastating, without anyone actually lifting a finger. Let alone putting resources into actual attacks on technical, economic, and social levels. Doesn't really matter if a few enthusiast cypherpunks around the world can keep a few nodes going and technically say 'bitcoin is not dead, see!' when the economic model and security is fundamentally based on continued demand for BTC. I've been really interested in Bitcoin and have followed it closely since Satoshi was still active, and consider myself a pretty big fan of it in general. But the general arrogance and delusion about the reality of where real power is in the world is a bit cringeworthy. And it's always been that way in the community. It might get interesting in the future if two or more states have competing interest in Bitcoin(or whatever). I can imagine some hypothetical situation where the US political tide turns very anti-BTC, but say China has enough money tied up in it that it's incentivized to attempt to defend it. Like say if enough people in positions of political power have significant portions of their wealth tied up in it. That's possible, I guess. Sounds messy though for something that relies on economic confidence. Either way, so far all the luck has been on the side of Bitcoin, as really there's been little to no political pushback against the technology itself. That's pretty awesome, and it's made for a very interesting 7 years or so since BTC really woke up and people around here and elsewhere started seriously discussing it. But the political risk is very real and understated imo. The technical risk is interesting in theory for sure, but just knowing a sufficiently powerful state has the ability to attack is probably more than enough to cause massive economic damage without actually pulling any technological triggers.

oelmekki 9y ago

I consider myself a cryptocurrency enthusiast (I regularly browsed bitcointalk forum since 2013, even if I did not buy anything until 2015), but I have no problem with, nor fear about, governments managing money: what I'm interested in cryptocurrencies on the long run is to replace banking services for individuals, which I find to be of lesser and lesser quality with the years. But I get why you think this is "all crypto currency enthusiasts", given cryptoanarchists are a prominent group. The distinction was clear during the fail of the DAO [1] from ethereum in 2016. When ethereum core devs decided to fork to revert the blockchain and "erase" the steal, there was basically two groups of people: those who were happy that it meant fraud can be dealt with (a not-so-small minority group, which I was in) and those who thought it meant manipulation, regulation, intervention, everything they despise from governments. Granted, the later are way more numerous, but please don't assume it's just all cryptocurrency enthusiasts :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)

keymone 9y ago

mode of operation during war (attack against bitcoin, oppressive regime, etc) would be very different to current mode of operation. radio to receive new blocks and any means of sending 250-500 bytes of data (sms, radio, morse code, flashlight) is enough to do almost all you will ever need to do with bitcoin, no internet required. network of trust based acceptance of peers could be a solution to bad nodes flood attack, i think.