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Dormant POW could be as much of a benefit as it is a drawback. If someone owns 10s of millions of dollars worth of miners that are temporarily turned off, do y

by stale2002 8y ago

Dormant POW could be as much of a benefit as it is a drawback. If someone owns 10s of millions of dollars worth of miners that are temporarily turned off, do you think this entity would want an attack to succeed? No. They'd want to protect their future investment in mining equipment. They might just turn that hashpower back in, if an attack was in progress, and take a temporary loss to fight off a temporary attack. Even the threat of a big player coming in to prevent an attack would make the risk of attacking way to high. We saw this happen recently when someone tried to attack the Bitcoin Cash network. Defending miners temporarily turned on their hashpower to stop any attacks. And it worked.

Nursie 8y ago
> If someone owns 10s of millions of dollars worth of miners that are temporarily turned off, do you think this entity would want an attack to succeed? Well that depends on how much they're holding and how deep they are in the hole at the given time. > No. They'd want to protect their future investment in mining equipment. Unless they were in financial trouble and an attack would get them some cash, fast. The sort of financial trouble that can happen when a company invests, say, millions and millions of dollars into now-unprofitable hardware.
- stale2002 8y ago
  What I am saying is, that it one "desperate" miner attacks, then 5 other miners, who don't want to lose their investment, will defend. The network is not static. It doesn't matter if one miner wants to make a quick buck, because the defenders have more to lose, and would spin up defending POW if needed.
  - Nursie 8y ago
    Until/unless a large player takes this sort of approach, like, say, Bitmain, who have just hit massive financial difficulties. It absolutely can be in the rational self interest of such players. Relying on other dormant capacity to come up in defence seems fanciful at best.

Nursie 8y ago

> If someone owns 10s of millions of dollars worth of miners that are temporarily turned off, do you think this entity would want an attack to succeed? Well that depends on how much they're holding and how deep they are in the hole at the given time. > No. They'd want to protect their future investment in mining equipment. Unless they were in financial trouble and an attack would get them some cash, fast. The sort of financial trouble that can happen when a company invests, say, millions and millions of dollars into now-unprofitable hardware.

stale2002 8y ago
What I am saying is, that it one "desperate" miner attacks, then 5 other miners, who don't want to lose their investment, will defend. The network is not static. It doesn't matter if one miner wants to make a quick buck, because the defenders have more to lose, and would spin up defending POW if needed.
- Nursie 8y ago
  Until/unless a large player takes this sort of approach, like, say, Bitmain, who have just hit massive financial difficulties. It absolutely can be in the rational self interest of such players. Relying on other dormant capacity to come up in defence seems fanciful at best.