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The Eyal & Sirer paper is pretty interesting - they basically point out that there is actually some game theory involved in when miners should reveal that they
by roenxi 10mo ago
The Eyal & Sirer paper is pretty interesting - they basically point out that there is actually some game theory involved in when miners should reveal that they mined a block to compete most effectively with their fellows. If a pool can set up a situation where they mine a block and wait X seconds to reveal it, they can force other miners to waste X seconds of has power and gain an advantage.
It looks like a result with complex implications - eg, maybe making it impossible for new miners to set up unless they have a meaningful advantage in operating costs instead of just parity with the entrenched players. It is hard to tell because market reality is a mess but if there is a meaningful strategic choice to be made beyond simply announcing a block when it is mined then there is a lot of room for weird equilibriums even if the paper's specific analysis turns out to have flaws.
- mvkel 10mo agoIsn't this the same thing as saying "if everyone just agrees that a dollar bill is actually just a piece of paper, USD becomes worthless"? Albeit at a smaller scale
- ycombinatrix 10mo agoI don't think it is the same thing. Everyone agrees that mining the next block is valuable.
- cheschire 10mo agoUnless they didn’t. There’s nothing inherently valuable about crypto beyond what value people assign to it in their minds.
- krupan 10mo agoSame with all money. Please research more before parroting this argument. You are not the first person to think of it.
- cheschire 10mo agoGP was arguing against GGP’s point and I was simply pointing out that the argument was hollow. What are you referring to with “research more”?
- krupan 10mo agoHmm, maybe I wasn't following the thread very well? Many people like to discredit Bitcoin by saying it's only worth is what people decide it is. If that's not what you were trying to do then I apologize.
- cheschire 10mo agoI don’t discredit any crypto based solely on its ability or inability to fulfill debts, public and private. But I do wonder if the abstract nature of it will forever hinder its ability to do so universally. I’m also interested why Bitcoin Cash wasn’t more successful after the fork.
- TylerE 10mo agoFalse. Gold and silver have intrinsic value beyond their use as currency.
- llmslave2 10mo ago
- ycombinatrix 10mo agoOkay, fine. Everyone involved** agrees that mining the next block is valuable.
- palata 10mo agoBut that's irrelevant to the question above. The question asks "isn't [this attack] the same as saying that if everybody agrees that the USD is worthless, then it is worthless?". The answer is "no, it's not the same". The attack does not require everybody to agree that the bitcoin is worthless. Obviously if everybody agrees that the bitcoin is worthless, then it is worthless. But that's a separate topic.
- palata 10mo agoThat's a good question, but it is different. The equivalent would be "if everyone just agrees that a bitcoin is worth nothing, then it is worth nothing". I don't know if I have a good comparison here, but maybe something like "if the bank keeps your money for a little longer before validating your transaction, they can use your money for a little longer and make more money from it". Of course if your bank says that a transaction takes 1 year, you will go to another bank. But if they say it takes a day...
- copirate 10mo ago> If a pool can set up a situation where they mine a block and wait X seconds to reveal it, they can force other miners to waste X seconds of has power and gain an advantage. How is it wasted if they work on the current chain? If they find a block during those X seconds, they'll propagate it before the waiting pool does. The waiting pool will then just lose the revenue from the block they put on hold. They're the ones wasting mining time when that happens, while the others never do.
- RealityVoid 10mo agoRight, but the odds of this happening is small(ish) - I'm certain there is a sweet spot for witholding time. If they don't find a block within the time interval, then effectively all the work for that time is "wasted" by the other participants since it could not have been put on the chain anyway AND the witholder has a headstart of a couple of seconds searching for a new block.
- copirate 10mo agoWasting time would mean not receiving the rewards if they find a block. But that's not the case here. If they find a block within the time interval, they get the rewards (and the withheld block is discarded).
- adgjlsfhk1 10mo agothe odds depend on how much hash power you have. if you're at 5% of the network you can wait longer than if you're at 1%. the other really big problem here is it creates incentives for miners to work together to be able to delay longer
- yellow_lead 10mo agoI might be wrong but I think it's like this.. A finds a block after 1 minute, then powers off and waits for another minute. They reveal the block after 2 minutes. B searches for the block for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, A has used 1 minute of their compute, and B has used 2.
- jcfrei 10mo agoTake a look at the recently mined blocks. there are some miners that very frequently mine two blocks within quick succession, like just now for example: Block 930256: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/930256 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/930256 Followed by block 930257: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/930257 https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/blocks/btc/930257 The second block is usually almost empty.
- Bootvis 10mo agoThis can have another explanation as well: the moment a block is found, the miner starts building on top of the previous block but hasn't constructed a new full block of transactions yet as that costs a bit of time to calculate and distribute. In this period, a new block could be found.
- thesz 10mo agoBlocks are Merkle trees, only the head transaction contains global seed. So, for one to mine block, one needs to walk Merkle tree up from head and then finish work with small amount of data in the block header. Thus, the time spent mining block is directly dependent on the logarithm of number of transactions in the block. If one can mine a block with 3000 transactions (11-12 hashes to the header) in 10 minutes, one can mine a block with one transaction (1 hash to header) about ten times as fast. The construction of the block is negligible if we talk about complete block mining time.
- monerozcash 10mo ago>If one can mine a block with 3000 transactions (11-12 hashes to the header) in 10 minutes, one can mine a block with one transaction (1 hash to header) about ten times as fast. Huh? Surely the attempts for both take exactly the same amount of time after you've initially constructed the block, you're calculating only a single hash for each attempt.
- Bootvis 10mo agoThis is incorrect. The miner just changes the header of the block and rehashes. The transaction set is fixed for many tries.