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How would they seal the network in their borders? Why would that bring the whole thing down? Countries that shut down internet don't seem to bring that whole th

How would they seal the network in their borders? Why would that bring the whole thing down? Countries that shut down internet don't seem to bring that whole thing down in any sense

lovich 3y ago
https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin
- hk__2 3y ago
  > Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin That doesn’t work with distributed systems. No single country is able to shut the whole Internet down, for example.
  - manquer 3y ago
    They don’t need to shutdown for everyone , they need to shutdown only for their country . Countries do this all the time , just yesterday we were talking about internet shutdown during elections and exams , then there are restricted countries like say North Korea.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    0) yes they do, in extremis half a dozen HAEMP would basically take out the whole internet (b) "seal the network in their borders" is much easier than that, lots of networks basically act like that already due to either voluntary compliance with local laws, or due to direct government interference with the networks iii. the miners aren't really all that distributed, they group together for the same reason everyone else groups together instead of being free-range anarchists [δ] all you need to do to shut down a currency within a country is arrest people using it, which is very easy and has a long history
  - lovich 3y ago
    The US is certainly capable of shutting down the internet with their control of some critical pieces of infrastructure like ICANN. They haven’t ever used it because levers like those are ones you only get to use once before other countries build an alternative, like when China shut down rare earth exports to japan years ago so countries like the US started up mines that were previously not worth it
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
mjburgess 3y ago
Cryptocurrencies are peer-to-peer systems. If you control the network they're on, you can do anything you like. Take the peer-to-peer traffic of the cryptocurrency network of any area, prevent it from getting outside that area (ie., just block it talking to IPs outside some range) -- then to that network, you can trivially control the total hashing power. So split any cryptocurrency network into small segements, then add your machine to that network with a false history, design the network to be small enough, and your machine will out-hash the rest, and so it's history will win. Rinse-and-repeat. It's trivial for any state to take down a cryptocurrency. There's nothing magic about it; it's an incredibly fragile system whose 'safety' relies on no one owning the network, and if that's the case, no one being able to russle-up huge amounts of electricity. In both cases, this is false for states. So any state, if it wishes, can really do anything it likes. The global bitcoin system is well within rearch of a hostile state 51%'ing it, even at the global level -- though the cost would be non-trivial. It would be trivial to do it in its own borders though. As any state, of course will, if you can ever go into a shop and buy somehting with it. At that point you're imperilling a state's ability to use monetary policy to manage its economy, and that's an existential security threat. So bye bye your monopoly money tokens.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  That's an elaborate and wasteful way to achieve the same results as banning crypto.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  You would be able to control the part of the network you cut off, but if anyone smuggles in as much as a microSD card with the outside blockchain state and syncs it to their client, every client in the segment would see this longer chain (since the outside has more hash power than you) and recognize it as legitimate, undoing all your fraudulent transactions (along with a lot of legitimate ones that never reached the outside network)
- null0pointer 3y ago
  > So split any cryptocurrency network into small segements, then add your machine to that network with a false history, design the network to be small enough, and your machine will out-hash the rest, and so it's history will win. Rinse-and-repeat. You cannot forge history, even with 100% of the hash power. Firstly, each transaction is cryptographically signed with the keys of the sender address. Secondly, each full node within the segmented network will have the full history. The only thing you can do is publish different blocks to the segmented network than the blocks the outside network has. You cannot create arbitrary transactions. You can only censor others’ transactions within the segmented network. Since the mining difficulty will not adjust instantaneously your segmented network will fall behind the outside network in block height unless you control more hashing power than everyone else mining Bitcoin on either network combined. So as soon as anyone in your segmented network re-establishes connection with the outside network (and they will, they could receive a physical hard drive with the blockchain on it and rebroadcast to segmented nodes) all your work is for nothing. You might say “yeah well I’ll publish an entire fake history that is MUCH longer than the outside network with lower difficulty so I can stay ahead”. Well, actually you can’t, because if you wanted vastly more blocks between Bitcoins inception and the present then the difficulty will necessarily be much higher because that’s how difficulty gets set, by how quickly blocks are produced. You would have to change the difficulty adjustment algorithm, creating a fork between your own malicious node(s) and the other nodes in your segmented network. Oh and by the way, you _still_ can’t create arbitrary transactions. > The global bitcoin system is well within rearch of a hostile state 51%'ing it I’ll believe it when I see it. They honestly have a better chance outlawing it and imprisoning anyone who’s ever used it.

How would they seal the network in their borders? Why would that bring the whole thing down? Countries that shut down internet don't seem to bring that whole thing down in any sense

lovich 3y ago

https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin

hk__2 3y ago
> Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin That doesn’t work with distributed systems. No single country is able to shut the whole Internet down, for example.
- manquer 3y ago
  They don’t need to shutdown for everyone , they need to shutdown only for their country . Countries do this all the time , just yesterday we were talking about internet shutdown during elections and exams , then there are restricted countries like say North Korea.
- ben_w 3y ago
  0) yes they do, in extremis half a dozen HAEMP would basically take out the whole internet (b) "seal the network in their borders" is much easier than that, lots of networks basically act like that already due to either voluntary compliance with local laws, or due to direct government interference with the networks iii. the miners aren't really all that distributed, they group together for the same reason everyone else groups together instead of being free-range anarchists [δ] all you need to do to shut down a currency within a country is arrest people using it, which is very easy and has a long history
- lovich 3y ago
  The US is certainly capable of shutting down the internet with their control of some critical pieces of infrastructure like ICANN. They haven’t ever used it because levers like those are ones you only get to use once before other countries build an alternative, like when China shut down rare earth exports to japan years ago so countries like the US started up mines that were previously not worth it
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

mjburgess 3y ago

Cryptocurrencies are peer-to-peer systems. If you control the network they're on, you can do anything you like. Take the peer-to-peer traffic of the cryptocurrency network of any area, prevent it from getting outside that area (ie., just block it talking to IPs outside some range) -- then to that network, you can trivially control the total hashing power. So split any cryptocurrency network into small segements, then add your machine to that network with a false history, design the network to be small enough, and your machine will out-hash the rest, and so it's history will win. Rinse-and-repeat. It's trivial for any state to take down a cryptocurrency. There's nothing magic about it; it's an incredibly fragile system whose 'safety' relies on no one owning the network, and if that's the case, no one being able to russle-up huge amounts of electricity. In both cases, this is false for states. So any state, if it wishes, can really do anything it likes. The global bitcoin system is well within rearch of a hostile state 51%'ing it, even at the global level -- though the cost would be non-trivial. It would be trivial to do it in its own borders though. As any state, of course will, if you can ever go into a shop and buy somehting with it. At that point you're imperilling a state's ability to use monetary policy to manage its economy, and that's an existential security threat. So bye bye your monopoly money tokens.

whatshisface 3y ago
That's an elaborate and wasteful way to achieve the same results as banning crypto.
wongarsu 3y ago
You would be able to control the part of the network you cut off, but if anyone smuggles in as much as a microSD card with the outside blockchain state and syncs it to their client, every client in the segment would see this longer chain (since the outside has more hash power than you) and recognize it as legitimate, undoing all your fraudulent transactions (along with a lot of legitimate ones that never reached the outside network)
null0pointer 3y ago
> So split any cryptocurrency network into small segements, then add your machine to that network with a false history, design the network to be small enough, and your machine will out-hash the rest, and so it's history will win. Rinse-and-repeat. You cannot forge history, even with 100% of the hash power. Firstly, each transaction is cryptographically signed with the keys of the sender address. Secondly, each full node within the segmented network will have the full history. The only thing you can do is publish different blocks to the segmented network than the blocks the outside network has. You cannot create arbitrary transactions. You can only censor others’ transactions within the segmented network. Since the mining difficulty will not adjust instantaneously your segmented network will fall behind the outside network in block height unless you control more hashing power than everyone else mining Bitcoin on either network combined. So as soon as anyone in your segmented network re-establishes connection with the outside network (and they will, they could receive a physical hard drive with the blockchain on it and rebroadcast to segmented nodes) all your work is for nothing. You might say “yeah well I’ll publish an entire fake history that is MUCH longer than the outside network with lower difficulty so I can stay ahead”. Well, actually you can’t, because if you wanted vastly more blocks between Bitcoins inception and the present then the difficulty will necessarily be much higher because that’s how difficulty gets set, by how quickly blocks are produced. You would have to change the difficulty adjustment algorithm, creating a fork between your own malicious node(s) and the other nodes in your segmented network. Oh and by the way, you _still_ can’t create arbitrary transactions. > The global bitcoin system is well within rearch of a hostile state 51%'ing it I’ll believe it when I see it. They honestly have a better chance outlawing it and imprisoning anyone who’s ever used it.