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Failing an audit by dodging it (how? blocking the roads with trucks? pointing a gun at the auditor's agent?) is a failure. Same solution in PoS slashing for st

by gwern 5y ago

Failing an audit by dodging it (how? blocking the roads with trucks? pointing a gun at the auditor's agent?) is a failure. Same solution in PoS slashing for stakers who don't maintain required latency: too bad, we don't care why, it was your job to do it right, your stake is slashed. (See the NashX exploding equilibrium for another example of this: the buyer doesn't give a s—t whatever excuses the seller might come up with, because it's cheap talk; the seller makes things right, or their stake gets burned. Period.)

acdha 5y ago
Here are just a few things which come to mind – I’m sure there are others: Flood with volume so there isn’t audit capacity & the time limit expires without a challenge. Bribe the auditor. The auditor turns out to be you under an alias. Setup a mix of legit captured CO2 and something cheaper so when the auditor checks the easiest part to reach it appears valid. Find something which will trigger the cheapest tests but costs less. Pocket the difference. Truck the sequestered material from site to site, spending the proceeds long before anyone catches on. Rely on the fact that since the auditing appears to be completely optional, most people will choose not to pay for it. Bet on auditors being selected for being as cheap as possible and find the ones who will pass anything plausible. Flood the system with fake challenges until people demand something like a quorum vote which increases the odds that someone won’t scrutinize your business too closely, or you and your pals try to convince everyone to adopt a more secure fork. The key thing to remember is that a system which tries to be money is effectively its own bug bounty and it’s much harder to fix problems. Once you have money at stake every angle of the system will be under attack, and the security will come down to the real-world institutions backing it. Blockchains prevent silently rewriting history but that’s only one of the potential things people will try if there’s money at stake.

by gwern 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

Here are just a few things which come to mind – I’m sure there are others: Flood with volume so there isn’t audit capacity & the time limit expires without a challenge. Bribe the auditor. The auditor turns out to be you under an alias. Setup a mix of legit captured CO2 and something cheaper so when the auditor checks the easiest part to reach it appears valid. Find something which will trigger the cheapest tests but costs less. Pocket the difference. Truck the sequestered material from site to site, spending the proceeds long before anyone catches on. Rely on the fact that since the auditing appears to be completely optional, most people will choose not to pay for it. Bet on auditors being selected for being as cheap as possible and find the ones who will pass anything plausible. Flood the system with fake challenges until people demand something like a quorum vote which increases the odds that someone won’t scrutinize your business too closely, or you and your pals try to convince everyone to adopt a more secure fork. The key thing to remember is that a system which tries to be money is effectively its own bug bounty and it’s much harder to fix problems. Once you have money at stake every angle of the system will be under attack, and the security will come down to the real-world institutions backing it. Blockchains prevent silently rewriting history but that’s only one of the potential things people will try if there’s money at stake.