Message-ID: <527AC07E.5030401@bitonic.nl>
Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 23:19:42 +0100
From: Jouke Hofman <jouke@bitonic.nl>
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To: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net
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Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] we can all relax now
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bounty++

On 06-11-13 06:33, kjj wrote:
> One of the things that really gets me going is when someone devises a 
> model, tests it against itself, and then pretends that they've learned 
> something about the real world.
> 
> Naturally, the Selfish Mining paper is exactly this sort of nonsense.  
> Their model is one with no latency, and one where the attacker has total 
> visibility across the network.  An iterated FSM is not a suitable 
> simulation of the bitcoin system.  The bitcoin network does not have 
> states, and to the extent that you can pretend that we do, you can't 
> simulate transitions between them with static probabilities.
> 
> The authors understand this deep down inside, even though they didn't 
> work out the implications.  They handwave the issue by assuming a total 
> sybil attack, and in true academic spirit, they don't realize that the 
> condition necessary for the attack is far, far worse than the attack itself.
> 
> Greg said he'd like to run some simulations, and I'm thinking about it 
> too.  Unfortunately, he is busy all week, and I'm lazy (and also busy 
> for most of tomorrow).
> 
> If neither of us get to it first, I'm willing to pitch in 1 BTC as a 
> bounty for building a general bitcoin network simulator framework. The 
> simulator should be able to account for latency between nodes, and 
> ideally within a node.  It needs to be able to simulate an attacker that 
> owns varying fractions of the network, and make decisions based only on 
> what the attacker actually knows.  It needs to be able to simulate this 
> "attack" and should be generic enough to be easily modified for other 
> crazy schemes.
> 
> (Bounty offer is serious, but expires in one year [based on the earliest 
> timestamp that my mail server puts on this email], and /may/ be subject 
> to change if the price on any reputable exchange breaks 1000 USD per BTC 
> in that period.)
> 
> Basically, the lack of a decent network simulator is what allowed this 
> paper to get press.  If the author had been able to see the importance 
> of the stuff he was ignoring, we wouldn't be wasting so much time 
> correcting him (and sadly the reporters that have no way to check his 
> claims).
> 
> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324413.msg3495663#msg3495663
> 
> 
> 
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