Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lrvick 1242 days ago
> Good luck assassinating a Sybiled validation node.

No need. We distribute it on an IP blocklist and carry on, just like we handle bad actors on other decentralized systems like email.

Remember that chain splits have happened before and the minority chain and those that agree with its rules and history continue on. Eth Classic is still a thing.

Modern Eth was literally an -intentional- 51% attack to erase a hack. The majority agreed to erase that and on the main ETH network, it became so.

> No one who has bought in to the protocol. But of advantage to an entity that wants a particular protocol to fail.

Once again, we can easily detect and block nodes that are repeatedly trying to lie. It would be annoying, but so is dealing with spam. This is inevitable but manageable and without violence I may add.

> Yes, you'd get a forced split. Can you guarantee that the 51% attacker couldn't gradually hop back on and attack again?

The community could ban all of their nodes and assign higher trust to nodes that did not participate. Any fullnodes that agree they are on a fraudulent chain could agree to go back to the minority chain.

If it happened often we would get better at doing this quickly.

In short, you can temporarily disrupt the Bitcoin network with enough money, but you will never be able to stop those that wish to continue maintaining an honest history.

1 comments

> "In short, you can temporarily disrupt the Bitcoin network with enough money, but you will never be able to stop those that wish to continue maintaining an honest history. "

If your goal is to make regular people want to avoid using it all you need are sufficient temporary disruptions.

The internet has had many many temporary disruptions over the years due to botnets, etc. The Slammer worm even fully made it inoperable globally. The will to continue communicating at a distance lived on though, and so did the internet.

There are plenty of people like me that actually use and rely on Bitcoin as a tool, so it will live on too.