• Skip to main content

Biz Builder Mike

You can't sail Today's boat on Yesterdays wind - Michael Noel

  • Cryptocurrency Exchange
  • Blockchain Consultants
  • About Us
  • Blog

Hard Fork

Oct 12 2020

Things just got MESSy for potential Ethereum Classic 51% attackers

Over the past weekend, on block 11380000, a solution for the prevention of 51% attacks was introduced to the Ethereum Classic (ETC) community. Several such attacks have recently placed ETC at a crossroads, leaving the very survival of the chain uncertain. In the weeks that followed these attacks, the community worked to evaluate numerous potential solutions. 

The first one that has been implemented is called MESS, which stands for Modified Exponential Subjective Scoring. Its predecessor was first suggested by Vitalik Buterin back in 2014. It builds on the assumption that while small chain reorganizations that go back a few blocks are perfectly normal, the ones proposing reorganizations going back hundreds and even thousands of blocks are highly suspicious.

With most proof-of-work blockchains, the longest chain with the most work wins. This means that malicious attackers must mine a longer chain in isolation and then, propose it to the world. This was the case during recent attacks, which cost honest participants millions of dollars.

MESS polynomial curve. Source: Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal 1100.

MESS disincentivizes shadow mining by weighing chains differently depending on the time of publication. Isaac Ardis, one of ETC Core’s developers, explained this mechanism to Cointelegraph:

“The intention with that is to weight chains which occur and are available first over chains that come later. And so in that way, there is an incentive to publish work on the chain and it disincentivizes chains that are defined in private and that would come later.”

The algorithm employs a multiplier that determines the required difficulty from a proposed chain in order to be considered canonical. The multiplier ranges from 1 to 31 and depends on the aforementioned time of publication. The more suspicious the proposed reorganization, the higher the multiplier. Thus a shadow chain would have to provide manifold more proof-of-work to be deemed canonical.

MESS does not make 51% attacks impossible as it is rather a probabilistic and not deterministic solution, but it makes them prohibitively expensive. This is one of the reasons why the community has discussed implementing it in conjunction with a checkpointing solution. Ardis said that although it is a possibility, there does not seem to be much benefit to this duplication:

“Though you can use them together, you may not have to use them together and may not even want to use them together.”

MESS has several advantages. The code base is compact and it will not require a hard fork to implement. The nodes that choose to run MESS will be compatible with the ones that do not. Any discordance will only come into play when and if another 51% attack happens, said Ardis:

“If there is a large attack, then the miners, the operators and the nodes who have activated MESS, we certainly hope, will successfully dissuade the attacker while those nodes that haven’t upgraded would move to the attacker’s chain.”

The assumption is that most of these attacks tend to be short-termed and opportunistic. Once the attacker leaves, the remaining honest miners will rejoin the canonical fork.

MESS appears to be a short to mid-term solution. Although Ardis believes than no chain is immune from a 51% attack, he agreed that the only viable protection is the network’s growth. One of the bets is on Ethereum (ETH) miners joining Ethereum Classic after the former migrates to the proof-of-stake consensus. Another is taking advantage of the compatibility between the two networks, which allows for a painless migration from a congested Ethereum to Ethereum Classic. Ardis said that now that they are done with this mess, the team can focus on developing new tools for ETC.

Things just got MESSy for potential Ethereum Classic 51% attackers

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: cryptocurrency · Tagged: algorithm, blockchains, ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Fork, Go, Hard Fork, miners, mining, vitalik-buterin, work, world

Aug 30 2020

Offline Staking of Digital Assets to Be Offered on Qtum, a Major Blockchain Network that Recently Completed Hard Fork Upgrade

ForkThe developers of Qtum (QTUM), a platform for developing decentralized applications that aims to leverage certain technical aspects related to the security of the Bitcoin (BTC) network while providing smart contract functionality (somewhat similar to Ethereum), claims that there are only a few pieces of software that can “truly stand the test of time without needing to be updated before they go outdated.”

The Qtum team notes that it seems like whenever we open up an Apple or Microsoft product, we receive a notification telling us that we need to perform or download an update to the software.

The developers state that those days of “static, yet classic,” Super Nintendo games that never required updates are now “long gone,” and nearly every week Mario Kart has to be updated to the latest version.

A blog post by Qtum explains:

“Blockchain … developers are [also] … pushing out improvements, patches, and fixes [all the time] so their code can live another day. While some code changes are small and don’t require an update to keep using your favorite software (or blockchain), some code changes do require the update, and those updates aren’t always backward compatible.”

They further note:

“The same way game developers make improvements to your favorite title, i.e., make switching items more frictionless or adjusting the physics for more superhero-like jumping, blockchain developers need to make tweaks and adjustments to make using the blockchain more feature-rich and easier.”

The Qtum team says that they want to be one of the easiest to use or user-friendly blockchains, which is why in their first generation of staking (MPoS), just about anyone is able to operate a node and begin validating cryptocurrency transactions with a machine that’s as easy or straightforward to use as a Raspberry Pi. While this establishes a really low entry barrier, the distributed ledger tech (DLT) sector has made significant improvements during the past few years since Qtum introduced its platform.

Qtum’s development team claims that this is why they’re offering offline staking, which they think is the easiest proof-of-stake implementation for digital asset transaction validators to operate a node and for users to delegate.

As explained by the Qtum team, the reasons offline staking is a good idea are that there’s no need for slashing (penalizing validators for undesirable actions), and there’s no minimum staking amount required to become a “Super Staker” (anyone can become one). There’s also “no limit” to the number of Super Stakers that can participate.

Additionally, there’s “no 7 or 21-day unlock (your coins stay liquid)” and “delegation payouts are trustlessly done through the protocol.”

However, to take advantage of the benefits of offline staking, Qtum will have perform a hard fork (backwards incompatible upgrade) of their blockchain network.

As explained by the Qtum team, a hard fork means there’s “a hard split in the network for the new consensus rules.” To initiate this type of DLT network update, “everyone” must agree by updating to the new blockchain consensus rules or “be left behind on the dustheap of blockchain history.”

The Qtum team adds:

“The protocol developers and community usually pick a certain block height (time in the protocol), in Offline Staking’s case, the network changes get activated at block 680,000 or roughly August 28, 2020.”

Users on the old chain (following old consensus rules) will still be able to use native QTUM tokens if they decide that they want to keep the old network going. However, the Qtum team clarifies that with “non-contentious hard forks, the coins on the old network typically become worthless (since the network shrinks) and any value in the pre-fork network tends to transfer to the network with the new rules.”

On August 29, 2020, Patrick Dai, the Founder of Qtum, confirmed that the hard fork had been successful and liquidity mining was on the way.

Source

Written by bizbuildermike · Categorized: Biz Builder Mike · Tagged: apple, bitcoin, blockchain, Blockchain & Digital Assets, blockchain consensus, blockchains, blog, btc, crypto-assets, cryptocurrency, decentralized, digital assets, distributed ledger technology, dlt, ethereum, founder, game, Go, Hard Fork, Mario, Microsoft, mining, nintendo, note, offline staking, passive income, physics, product, qtum, security, smart contract, Software, staking, tech, tokens, transaction, us

Copyright © 2021 · Altitude Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in