3 ms·
Would a 1 hour attack have any long-term effect though? Once the attack stops, won't the legitimate chain catch up to and surpass the one that contains the fals
by GhostVII 5y ago
Would a 1 hour attack have any long-term effect though? Once the attack stops, won't the legitimate chain catch up to and surpass the one that contains the false transactions? If the only effect of the attack is to have some false transactions be on the dominant chain for a few hours, the damage isn't that much different than Visa being down for a few hours, so long as you are able to either detect that the attack is happening, or just always be aware you need to wait a few hours for things to fully settle.
- remram 5y agoIsn't the entire point of blockchain to automatically prove what the consensus is? If there is a fool-proof off-the-chain way to figure out which is the "legitimate" fork, what is the point of blockchain?
- GhostVII 5y agoThe legitimate fork will take over because honest nodes will reject the illegitimate one because it contains double-spends. So as long as the majority of nodes are honest it will eventually take over.
- remram 5y agoNo fork can "contain double-spend". The idea of a double-spend is to spend once in two separate forks, e.g. taking back your money and spending it again even though you have received a service or good in exchange of it already.
- GhostVII 5y agoInteresting, so basically no transactions are illegitimate they are just wiping out old ones by publishing a longer chain? In that case, could you protect yourself against an x hour attack by waiting x hours to consider a transaction confirmed?