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You are spreading false information. Besides the "centralization" thing that was already replied, the part of > and if you try to validate and not censor, you

You are spreading false information. Besides the "centralization" thing that was already replied, the part of > and if you try to validate and not censor, you will get your staked coins taken from you by the protocol (as opposed to PoW, where you just fail to get your block in the chain) Is outright false. It is the same as PoW. You choose what transactions you include in your block. So some people may choose to not include some transactions (Ethermine is already doing this on PoW with Tornado Cash). But there is no mechanism that slashes your staked coins because the other validators didn't like what transactions you included. At most your block will not get attested. Slashing can only happen for other reasons (proposing twice, attesting twice, attesting something that surrounds something else). PoS is in fact even more resistant because in PoS you can kick out the malicious validators by doing a social fork that slashes their stake. In PoW if 51% of miners are malicious there's nothing you can do, you can't slash their hardware.

deleted 4y ago
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tboyd47 4y ago
This 51% attack thing is such a canard. If 51% of Bitcoin miners are malicious, the most harm they can do is fail to include your valid transaction in their blocks. So, your transaction will be confirmed in the next block mined by one of the other 49% of miners. Big whoop.
- proto-n 4y ago
  Not correct, they can choose to not accept any blocks containing banned transactions, and still have the longest chain (statistically speaking). That's why the 51% number is significant.
  - tboyd47 4y ago
    That assumes the other 49% won't accept the bad guys' blocks in their chain. Those blocks are valid, so the 49% will accept them and build off of them. At any point there is still a 49% chance the next block will be mined by a good guy. If the bad guys decide not to accept the good guys' blocks, then they are hard forking Bitcoin and will end up just like Bitcoin Cash: irrelevant. This is the exact problem PoW was designed to solve, and it works very well, which is why a 51% attack has never succeeded or even been attempted against Bitcoin, and never will.
    - proto-n 4y ago
      They are not hard-forking, it will be compatible with the original chain and original rules. There will be two competing forks, one censored, one not censored, and the censored one is longer (because 51%). Consensus rules say longer chain is valid. So it _is_ the official "bitcoin", according to consensus rules. The 51% attack is not some made up thing.
      - tboyd47 4y ago
        If 51% of miners decide to totally ignore the other 49% then their chain will most definitely not be the longest chain for any more than 30 minutes. Because the 49% are still using 100% of miners' work. The only way they can maintain that chain is by a hard fork.
        gus_massa 4y ago
        It's easier to explain a 66% attract. The censored chain produce the double of blocks of the censored one. Each time the uncensored chain produce a block it's ignored by the censored one. So after a time, they are behind and have to jump to the other chain and ignore their own old blocks. Something like this graph: Censored blocks: - Uncensored Fork blocks: \ Uncensored Normal blocks: * Censored: *-------------------------- Uncensored: \** \* \*** \** \*
        tboyd47 4y ago
        So, now that I've obliterated the 51% attack idea, shall we move on to 66% attack? It doesn't matter if it's a 90% attack. The minority miners are constantly receiving and using the majority's blocks. So it is not 66% vs. 33%, or 90% vs. 10%; it is 60% vs. 100% and 90% vs. 100%. All it takes is for the less-restrictive minority to mine two blocks in a row and they've permanently outpaced the majority's more restrictive chain.
        cesarb 4y ago
        > The minority miners are constantly receiving and using the majority's blocks. They can use the majority blocks at the cost of discarding their earlier blocks. Every time they accept a block from the majority, they undo all the work they had done earlier. > All it takes is for the less-restrictive minority to mine two blocks in a row and they've permanently outpaced the majority's more restrictive chain. All it takes then is for the majority to mine three blocks in a row. The probability is always on their side.
- redox99 4y ago
  Not true. If 51% of bitcoin miners are malicious they can reorg as often as they'd like, so your transaction will never be included.
- ithinkso 4y ago
  51% is Bitcoin. That's what decentralized means
- sam0x17 4y ago
  51% attack on a proof of stake network would be a truly "I just want to watch the world burn" scenario, since you'd have to control 51% of the currency, why even bother. You control most of the money, why risk losing it with a takeover attempt?
- remram 4y ago
  51% can do double-spend in Bitcoin, e.g. they can undo entire blocks of transactions and spend that money again. They can also prevent you from getting your transaction in ever. The 49% cannot prevent this because they cannot make a longer chain, that is the entire point of proof-of-work.
  - tboyd47 4y ago
    Adding the double-spend concept into it makes it even more silly. If you are changing the validation rules of Bitcoin to allow double-spend, then your block is rejected by the entire network and you must fork, even if you had 99% of the hashpower.
    - ahtihn 4y ago
      You don't need to change the validation rules to double spend. What you do is this: - spend btc with a transaction and get it included in the chain. - start mining blocks starting from before your transaction in secret - include a trnasaction to a different address in the secret chain - broadcast the secret chain once it's longer than the "official" one - since your chain is longer, your chain is now the official one. All the transactions in the other chain are now discarded
    - remram 4y ago
      I'm describing an attack. An attack happens when the attacker doesn't play by the rules, while the rest tries to. Here an attacker controlling 51% of mining power decides to not play by the rules; we are considering what that means for everybody else. For Bitcoin it means they can block transactions forever, and they can double-spend. Obviously if the attacker plays by the rules there is no attack.
    - simiones 4y ago
      This thing actually happens ALL THE TIME in Bitcoin. That's why no one accepts a transaction (at least not one for any significant amount of BTC) as soon as it is in the latest block - they wait until the transaction is in the 3rd, 4th or older block. The Bitcoin blockchain constantly "forks" for the latest 1-2 blocks. If you sell your car for BTC and hand over the car the moment you see the latest block contains the transaction where the BTC enters your wallet, you may see 1h later that the longest chain does NOT contain your transaction, and in fact your transaction is now invalid, because the buyer wallet has sent all the money somewhere else.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
<< Ethermine is already doing this on PoW with Tornado Cash This only proves that ether is already too centralized. FWIW. I used to mine eth on a small scale so I am obviously biased.
- redox99 4y ago
  That doesn't prove anything. You can solo mine with a single GPU and choose to censor whoever you want. Any miner no matter how small can censor their own blocks.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    What you say is true in the same way like saying that taking a cup of water out of the ocean lowers the ocean level a little. It is true, but it is not significant. The moment the mining is moved to mostly non-solo miners ( and even now non-solo miners seem to vastly outnumber in sheer mining power established solo miners ). Basically, concentration of power means that eth will quickly become everything the banks are.. only worse ( because with banks you at least have some regulation to back you up ):P
    - lesuorac 4y ago
      Isn't eth's power already concentrated more than banks are? Like 4 pools control 51% of the hashrate so they already can easily bully solo-miners.
jimmydorry 4y ago
You appear to have contradicted yourself? >So some people may choose to not include some transactions (Ethermine is already doing this on PoW with Tornado Cash). But there is no mechanism that slashes your staked coins because the other validators didn't like what transactions you included. >PoS is in fact even more resistant because in PoS you can kick out the malicious validators by doing a social fork that slashes their stake. If a group of validators don't agree with your particular arrangement of transactions in the block, they can engineer a "social fork" that slashes your stake.
- pa7x1 4y ago
  What I think he means is that there is no in-protocol mechanism for slashing a censoring validator. But you can reach a social consensus (i.e. outside the protocol) and decide to slash the censors. At that point there would be effectively two different chains, the censored one and an uncensored one. The worth of each chain would be decided by market dynamics.
- redox99 4y ago
  Social fork here means running some other software basically. Imagine Vitalik saying "Ok, since coinbase is being evil, let's all move to a new Ethereum-without-cb that is a copy of Ethereum but their ETH is removed. To do so download the following software that follows a new Ethereum-without-cb chain instead of the Ethereum chain. And if enough people agree, we'll probably just call that just Ethereum (like the original Ethereum is now called Ethereum classic, and the current Ethereum is actually forked).
  - sph 4y ago
    How is this a good thing, that a "charismatic leader" can censor transactions? It's absolutely terrible. Wasn't the goal to create digital money no one can control? I might as well use the US dollar then.
- 735409264082 4y ago
  > If a group of validators don't agree with your particular arrangement of transactions in the block, they can engineer a "social fork" that slashes your stake. Why would I want to be on their fork? They can have their censored fork, but they can't do anything to anymore who doesn't want to be a part of it.

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tboyd47 4y ago

This 51% attack thing is such a canard. If 51% of Bitcoin miners are malicious, the most harm they can do is fail to include your valid transaction in their blocks. So, your transaction will be confirmed in the next block mined by one of the other 49% of miners. Big whoop.

proto-n 4y ago
Not correct, they can choose to not accept any blocks containing banned transactions, and still have the longest chain (statistically speaking). That's why the 51% number is significant.
- tboyd47 4y ago
  That assumes the other 49% won't accept the bad guys' blocks in their chain. Those blocks are valid, so the 49% will accept them and build off of them. At any point there is still a 49% chance the next block will be mined by a good guy. If the bad guys decide not to accept the good guys' blocks, then they are hard forking Bitcoin and will end up just like Bitcoin Cash: irrelevant. This is the exact problem PoW was designed to solve, and it works very well, which is why a 51% attack has never succeeded or even been attempted against Bitcoin, and never will.
  - proto-n 4y ago
    They are not hard-forking, it will be compatible with the original chain and original rules. There will be two competing forks, one censored, one not censored, and the censored one is longer (because 51%). Consensus rules say longer chain is valid. So it _is_ the official "bitcoin", according to consensus rules. The 51% attack is not some made up thing.
    - tboyd47 4y ago
      If 51% of miners decide to totally ignore the other 49% then their chain will most definitely not be the longest chain for any more than 30 minutes. Because the 49% are still using 100% of miners' work. The only way they can maintain that chain is by a hard fork.
      - gus_massa 4y ago
        It's easier to explain a 66% attract. The censored chain produce the double of blocks of the censored one. Each time the uncensored chain produce a block it's ignored by the censored one. So after a time, they are behind and have to jump to the other chain and ignore their own old blocks. Something like this graph: Censored blocks: - Uncensored Fork blocks: \ Uncensored Normal blocks: * Censored: *-------------------------- Uncensored: \** \* \*** \** \*
        tboyd47 4y ago
        So, now that I've obliterated the 51% attack idea, shall we move on to 66% attack? It doesn't matter if it's a 90% attack. The minority miners are constantly receiving and using the majority's blocks. So it is not 66% vs. 33%, or 90% vs. 10%; it is 60% vs. 100% and 90% vs. 100%. All it takes is for the less-restrictive minority to mine two blocks in a row and they've permanently outpaced the majority's more restrictive chain.
        cesarb 4y ago
        > The minority miners are constantly receiving and using the majority's blocks. They can use the majority blocks at the cost of discarding their earlier blocks. Every time they accept a block from the majority, they undo all the work they had done earlier. > All it takes is for the less-restrictive minority to mine two blocks in a row and they've permanently outpaced the majority's more restrictive chain. All it takes then is for the majority to mine three blocks in a row. The probability is always on their side.
redox99 4y ago
Not true. If 51% of bitcoin miners are malicious they can reorg as often as they'd like, so your transaction will never be included.
ithinkso 4y ago
51% is Bitcoin. That's what decentralized means
sam0x17 4y ago
51% attack on a proof of stake network would be a truly "I just want to watch the world burn" scenario, since you'd have to control 51% of the currency, why even bother. You control most of the money, why risk losing it with a takeover attempt?
remram 4y ago
51% can do double-spend in Bitcoin, e.g. they can undo entire blocks of transactions and spend that money again. They can also prevent you from getting your transaction in ever. The 49% cannot prevent this because they cannot make a longer chain, that is the entire point of proof-of-work.
- tboyd47 4y ago
  Adding the double-spend concept into it makes it even more silly. If you are changing the validation rules of Bitcoin to allow double-spend, then your block is rejected by the entire network and you must fork, even if you had 99% of the hashpower.
  - ahtihn 4y ago
    You don't need to change the validation rules to double spend. What you do is this: - spend btc with a transaction and get it included in the chain. - start mining blocks starting from before your transaction in secret - include a trnasaction to a different address in the secret chain - broadcast the secret chain once it's longer than the "official" one - since your chain is longer, your chain is now the official one. All the transactions in the other chain are now discarded
  - remram 4y ago
    I'm describing an attack. An attack happens when the attacker doesn't play by the rules, while the rest tries to. Here an attacker controlling 51% of mining power decides to not play by the rules; we are considering what that means for everybody else. For Bitcoin it means they can block transactions forever, and they can double-spend. Obviously if the attacker plays by the rules there is no attack.
  - simiones 4y ago
    This thing actually happens ALL THE TIME in Bitcoin. That's why no one accepts a transaction (at least not one for any significant amount of BTC) as soon as it is in the latest block - they wait until the transaction is in the 3rd, 4th or older block. The Bitcoin blockchain constantly "forks" for the latest 1-2 blocks. If you sell your car for BTC and hand over the car the moment you see the latest block contains the transaction where the BTC enters your wallet, you may see 1h later that the longest chain does NOT contain your transaction, and in fact your transaction is now invalid, because the buyer wallet has sent all the money somewhere else.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

<< Ethermine is already doing this on PoW with Tornado Cash This only proves that ether is already too centralized. FWIW. I used to mine eth on a small scale so I am obviously biased.

redox99 4y ago
That doesn't prove anything. You can solo mine with a single GPU and choose to censor whoever you want. Any miner no matter how small can censor their own blocks.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  What you say is true in the same way like saying that taking a cup of water out of the ocean lowers the ocean level a little. It is true, but it is not significant. The moment the mining is moved to mostly non-solo miners ( and even now non-solo miners seem to vastly outnumber in sheer mining power established solo miners ). Basically, concentration of power means that eth will quickly become everything the banks are.. only worse ( because with banks you at least have some regulation to back you up ):P
  - lesuorac 4y ago
    Isn't eth's power already concentrated more than banks are? Like 4 pools control 51% of the hashrate so they already can easily bully solo-miners.

jimmydorry 4y ago

You appear to have contradicted yourself? >So some people may choose to not include some transactions (Ethermine is already doing this on PoW with Tornado Cash). But there is no mechanism that slashes your staked coins because the other validators didn't like what transactions you included. >PoS is in fact even more resistant because in PoS you can kick out the malicious validators by doing a social fork that slashes their stake. If a group of validators don't agree with your particular arrangement of transactions in the block, they can engineer a "social fork" that slashes your stake.

pa7x1 4y ago
What I think he means is that there is no in-protocol mechanism for slashing a censoring validator. But you can reach a social consensus (i.e. outside the protocol) and decide to slash the censors. At that point there would be effectively two different chains, the censored one and an uncensored one. The worth of each chain would be decided by market dynamics.
redox99 4y ago
Social fork here means running some other software basically. Imagine Vitalik saying "Ok, since coinbase is being evil, let's all move to a new Ethereum-without-cb that is a copy of Ethereum but their ETH is removed. To do so download the following software that follows a new Ethereum-without-cb chain instead of the Ethereum chain. And if enough people agree, we'll probably just call that just Ethereum (like the original Ethereum is now called Ethereum classic, and the current Ethereum is actually forked).
- sph 4y ago
  How is this a good thing, that a "charismatic leader" can censor transactions? It's absolutely terrible. Wasn't the goal to create digital money no one can control? I might as well use the US dollar then.
735409264082 4y ago
> If a group of validators don't agree with your particular arrangement of transactions in the block, they can engineer a "social fork" that slashes your stake. Why would I want to be on their fork? They can have their censored fork, but they can't do anything to anymore who doesn't want to be a part of it.