[Cryptography] Robust Linked Timestamps without Proof of Work.

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 12:01 AM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:

>
>
> On 08/19/2016 05:55 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
>
> > ​Explain the attack more fully. Assume that each server is signing each
> > output value and has a trust relationship with the parties it exchanges
> > values with.​
> >
> > The key servers are not anonymous entries or random bloggers.
>
> So you have Trent instead of Sibyl.  Technically either is just as bad,
> and nobody wants to take the time and trouble to deal with Trent.  The
> whole point of the Proof-of-work thing is that Sibyl can't do damage
> for free.  If you're using a Trusted system with gatekeepers who can
> screw it over or keep people out, then you don't have Sibyl in the first
> place.  But that doesn't mean you have a problem that's any smaller.
>
>                                         Bear
>

​It isn't Trent though. Its a hundred Trents. And as the BitcOin folk
admit, the security of their scheme actually rests on exactly the same
principle.

There are in fact suppliers that rent the scale of computing resources
required to break bitcoin, they support the animation industry.

​Rooms full of machines ​loaded with GPUs isn't an economic way to mine
coin but it still works.


And lets just get real for a minute. People are always claiming how secure
BitCoin is and how it doesn't need any trusted parties. How many bitCoins
have been created to date? How many biTcoinS have been stolen in frauds at
exchanges? If you ignore the Bitcoins that Hal probably dumped into the bit
bucket in the early years and have never been available to spend, the
typical Bitcoin in circulation has been stolen twice or so.

​This is what many of us find so frustrating about analyzing Bitcoin. The
actual real world experience of running the system and the actual code is
ignored. Meanwhile hypothetical problems that don't actually turn out to be
problems in the real world banking systems are presented as insuperable
obstacles.

The total number of BitCoin transactions in the history of the system are
substantially less than the amount one of the ACH systems handles in an
hour.
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