[HN Gopher] Cooperation among an anonymous group protected Bitco...
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Cooperation among an anonymous group protected Bitcoin during
failures
Author : Anon84
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-06-10 22:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| 100xdang wrote:
| Imnimo wrote:
| It's interesting that the centipede game experiment uses a high
| rate of appreciation - _doubling_ the payoff every round. On the
| one hand, this offers strong incentive to defect if you strongly
| believe the next player will defect - you double your reward
| (this is the strategy game theory predicts). But if you are less
| confident, it doesn 't take much cooperation before you profit
| significantly. If only the next two players also cooperate, you
| will have done better than if you had defected.
|
| It seems like rapid expected appreciation, combined with only a
| small amount of confidence that the other players will not defect
| (e.g. because you know they share your ideological preference for
| Bitcoin to succeed) is enough to stave off defection.
|
| I'd be curious to see what the human-player dynamics look like if
| the expected future price does not increase so sharply, or is
| even flat or expected to decline.
| danuker wrote:
| The last halvening, the price increased less than what a lot of
| people expected (didn't reach $100k or $250k as per the Stock-
| To-Flow model). And the peak was much smoother.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Did anyone really believe that the Stock-to-Flow model would
| be a correct predictor of price? That seems awfully naive,
| it's just some pseudoscientific nonsense.
| danuker wrote:
| If you used the raw model, without any smoothing, it still
| predicted the $50k price correctly.
|
| I think the smoothing gave too much weight to S2F and not
| enough to plain time.
|
| But I am really curious what will happen after 2024. That
| is when S2F _really_ diverges from a plain time power-law.
|
| https://danuker.go.ro/bitcoin-price-predictions.html
| DennisP wrote:
| This is an interesting paper in a lot of ways. I think the least
| interesting part is what most media is reporting, that
| shockingly, Bitcoin didn't suddenly become a massively
| decentralized network in its first two years of operation.
|
| The most intriguing part to me is this: "game in which anonymous
| players can choose to exploit, and thereby undermine, an
| appreciating good...we show that, even when individual payoffs
| are unchanged, cooperation is more frequent when the game is
| played by an anonymous group."
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| A 51% attack in those days would have made no sense. These were
| the days before exchanges or even an exchange rate. To trade you
| had to post on a forum or IRC and wait around for an answer. If
| the network was attacked, it would have been announced on those
| same forums. To pull off an attack you'd have to set up a room
| full of 100 computers CPU mining, hope that nobody noticed the
| hashrate suddenly doubling, and _maybe_ get a few pennies worth
| of BTC for your efforts.
|
| There was a much easier way to get bitcoin back then: Go to the
| bitcoin faucet and type in your address.
| arealaccount wrote:
| The internet button that gives you $150,000 of June 2022 money
| for free once a day every day.
| bozhark wrote:
| Oh, I saw $500/transaction.
|
| Thought that was the limit
| DennisP wrote:
| It was five bitcoins per day. I actually looked at it back
| then, and decided it wasn't worth the effort.
| tylersmith wrote:
| This is exactly how it was predicted to work in the whitepaper.
| I've always been skeptical about it holding longterm, but this
| paper seems to be confirming that's held for now.
|
| > If a greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than
| all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to
| defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to
| generate new coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play
| by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than
| everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the
| validity of his own wealth
| timmg wrote:
| What if he does it without being detected?
|
| There are probably a bunch of wallets from back in the day
| whose owner lost their key. Take some coin out of those. Then
| no one knows. Sell it. Move on.
| wmf wrote:
| A 51% attack cannot take other people's coins. It can only
| double-spend coins owned by the attacker and there's no way
| to do a 51% attack without people noticing.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| A double spend would _sort of_ be taking other people 's
| coins though. Once you revert the first spend, the
| recipient loses their coins.
| vincnetas wrote:
| yes, but you cant take random coins from random walets,
| you can only take what you transacted recently.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > we reveal that between launch (January 3rd, 2009), and when the
| price reached $1 (February 9th, 2011), most bitcoin was mined by
| only sixty-four agents.
|
| So who can work out which addresses were mine?
| bozhark wrote:
| There were pools even then though
| toomim wrote:
| This paper acts like it's surprising that miners would cooperate
| and play by the rules:
|
| > Although bitcoin was designed to rely on a decentralized,
| trustless network of anonymous agents, its early success rested
| instead on cooperation among a small group of altruistic
| founders.
|
| But the Bitcoin whiteppaer says very clearly that it's designed
| to give miners and incentive to cooperate:
|
| > The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest. If a
| greedy attacker is able to assemble more CPU power than all the
| honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it to defraud
| people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new
| coins. He ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules,
| such rules that favour him with more new coins than everyone else
| combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his
| own wealth.
|
| https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
| 0daystock wrote:
| Interesting paper, but whether the early cooperation was
| necessarily altruistic in nature remains a mystery to me. The
| highly centralized structure which transpired to make Bitcoin
| popular and regarded as secure raises suspicion about its
| legitimacy and true intentions, in my mind. Over a decade later,
| digital currencies have become much more palatable and even
| attractive to people, that there's even talk of government-backed
| DC's, and this resulting Overton window shift has significant
| implications for individual freedom and society.
| nwah1 wrote:
| No central bank digital currency is planning to use a
| blockchain. A blockchain would add fundamental insurmountable
| drawbacks. Digital money using databases has been around since
| before the internet. Central bank digital currency is just a
| minor addition to our current digital financial infrastructure.
| rvz wrote:
| > No central bank digital currency is planning to use a
| blockchain. f a l s e
|
| What is this then? [0][1] Where we have those same
| _blockchain_ technologies from the likes of Stellar, XPRL,
| Algorand, etc that are compliant with the ISO 20020 standard?
|
| As I said before on what is _really_ going on, both the
| crypto maximalists and the crypto skeptics are going to be
| very disappointed in achieving their unobtainable and extreme
| goals.
|
| [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ukraine-
| electronic-...
|
| [1] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005878/en/
| Roy...
| ljf wrote:
| That is not a central bank...
|
| From Wikipedia A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary
| authority is an institution that manages the currency and
| monetary policy of a state or formal monetary union, and
| oversees their commercial banking system. In contrast to a
| commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on
| increasing the monetary base.
| rvz wrote:
| > That is not a central bank...
|
| Assuming you read the entire press releases, so the Royal
| Monetary Authority of Bhutan as I previously mentioned
| [0], and the National Bank of Ukraine' NBU' mentioned in
| the press release and is part of the pilot program [2]
| are not central banks?
|
| What does this say here? [0] The Royal
| Monetary Authority of Bhutan is the central bank of
| Bhutan...
|
| And here [1] The National Bank of
| Ukraine is the central bank of Ukraine...
|
| It also says here [2]: The National Bank
| of Ukraine (NBU) selected the distributed ledger
| technology, in particular the private version of the
| Stellar protocol, to study opportunities of issuing
| e-hryvnia and to carry out the Pilot Project.
|
| The Reserve Bank of Australia have also implemented an
| Ethereum-based CBDC proof-of-concept which was
| successful. [3]
|
| So the claim _' No central bank digital currency is
| planning to use a blockchain.'_ is still _false_. I think
| there is a strange sense of denial with the commenter who
| created that unfounded and baseless absolute claim.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Monetary_Authorit
| y_of_Bh...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bank_of_Ukraine
|
| [2] https://bank.gov.ua/admin_uploads/article/Analytical+
| Report+...
|
| [3] https://www.rba.gov.au/media-
| releases/2021/mr-21-30.html
| nwah1 wrote:
| Every reputable organization that rolled out a pilot
| project did nothing afterwards. There is no plan to
| actually use a blockchain for anything beyond
| speculation, money laundering, criminality, and scams.
| rvz wrote:
| > Every reputable organization that rolled out a pilot
| project did nothing afterwards.
|
| I see. So after you realised your absolute claim was
| refuted, you set out moving the goalposts to create
| another absolute claim, yet that is still wrong again.
|
| The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is using a blockchain
| for their e-Naira CBDC and that has already launched many
| months ago. [0] So even when you tried moving the
| goalposts, your claim has still been refuted once again!
|
| > There is no plan to actually use a blockchain for
| anything beyond speculation, money laundering,
| criminality, and scams.
|
| So Moneygram is not a reputable organisation using a
| blockchain? [1] Perhaps Stripe isn't either [2] who's
| first partner with crypto payouts is Twitter. Maybe that
| is why they both waited for regulatory clarity before
| using these technologies?
|
| This is the problem of having very absolutist statements
| and creating sweeping claims as you have done. It forces
| you to move the goal posts on your original claims,
| create fallacies and do whatever to dodge counter
| questions.
|
| [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bitt-
| develops-afric...
|
| [1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/moneygram-
| launches-...
|
| [2] https://stripe.com/blog/expanding-global-payouts-
| with-crypto
| kriops wrote:
| A central bank and blockchain technology are antithetical
| concepts, and if a central bank is ever offering you
| something blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham
| decentralization.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>A central bank and blockchain technology are antithetical
| concepts,
|
| I feel I need to screenshot this. It demonstrates more
| succinctly than I could write an essay on, how much we are
| muddying up technology, and purpose / politics / ideals
| when we start discussing this area (Crypto currency etc)
|
| How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical" to a
| _technology_? Is a government "antithetical" to 3rd normal
| form or airline antithetical to a b-tree? You are inserting
| a large number of undisclosed assumptions to even begin to
| make such a statement (whether aware of it or not).
|
| >>if a central bank is ever offering you something
| blockchain it's probably a scam by means of sham
| decentralization.
|
| I don't disagree with this... I just think it neatly
| extends fully to "if anybody is ever offering you something
| block chain" :-)
| mintyDijon wrote:
| >How is a human institution in your mind "antithetical"
| to a technology?
|
| It's not human institution vs technology, it's the very
| structure of central banking vs decentral banking. It's
| the concepts themselves that are antithetical.
|
| -Edit I couldn't remember the word, but I believe the
| term that applies here is 'diametrically opposed'
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| But that's the unspoken assumption I'm talking about -
| that blockchain and decentralized banking are one and the
| same / that this is the only design use case for the
| technology. There are many people actively working in
| block chain space who do not believe these are identical
| concepts. They may yet win out long term.
| mintyDijon wrote:
| I'm not claiming that blockchain is a one use concept.
| Yes it can be used for other things then banking. I
| personally feel that NFTs are a great example of that,
| and that they hold many possibilities for the future.
|
| But the main benefit that blockchain provides is a way to
| decentralize a network, it's quite inefficient from a
| performance standpoint. So to use it for anything other
| than that is a waste (at least currently). Centralized
| currencies are better than decentralized ones performance
| wise, and I don't predict that will change anytime in the
| near future.
|
| To quote Eldenwrong's perfect comment here "You can use a
| rock as a spoon but that just makes you retarded"
|
| Hense blockchain currencies (the ones that aren't scams
| ofc) are decentralized by their nature, since that's the
| only draw to using that method.
|
| Because of the Pareto distribution this should fail at
| some point, but with the innumerable amount of new
| currencies coming into existence, that shouldn't be a
| problem.
| kriops wrote:
| I feel like you're intentionally playing semantic games,
| i.e. trolling, so let me tell you straight that I don't
| appreciate that.
|
| The fact a central bank is a "human institution" is
| irrelevant. The fact blockchain is a "technology" is also
| in itself irrelevant. The point is that each concept
| necessitates characteristics that are irreconcilable.
| Most importantly a central bank can not function without
| central authority. The defining property of the
| blockchain is the decentralization of authority.
| Authority can not be simultaneously centralized and
| decentralized, and so the blockchain and the central bank
| are antithetical concepts.
| kortilla wrote:
| > The defining property of the blockchain is the
| decentralization of authority
|
| No it's not. A blockchain can be used in a way that only
| specific central authorities can add to it. https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain#Private_blockchains
| eldenwrong wrote:
| You can use a rock as a spoon but that just makes you
| retarded.
| kortilla wrote:
| Are you familiar with git repositories?
| astrange wrote:
| I was kind of expecting you to link to an article about
| Git repository permissions.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >> The defining property of the blockchain is the
| decentralization of authority.
|
| So "unaware assumptions" it is then.
|
| I'm sorry if you perceive that as snarky (and not
| everyone that disagrees is a troll btw), but to me,
| decentralized authority is what some people perceive an
| important (if not zealous) use case. It is not the
| defining property of blockchain. There are many companies
| that are building distributed ledger with centralized
| authority. You may disagree with that use case. I feel
| it's lack of self awareness to think a valid and clearly
| implemented use case is somehow antithetical to a simple
| neutral well defined technology.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >There are many companies that are building distributed
| ledger with centralized authority.
|
| The fundamental innovation of the bitcoin protocol is how
| it made the blockchain, a traditionally centralized data
| structure invented in the early 1990s, a distributed
| append-only database using PoW consensus. It's
| _incredibly_ inefficient, its unimaginable inefficiency
| is there to buy trust in a trustless peer-to-peer
| network. You 're basically forcing every writer to cut
| down a pound of their own computational flesh to write to
| the database. How can this be necessary or useful in a
| trusted setting? why can you not rely on trust or
| traditional register-and-authenticate to write to the
| database?
|
| You're either using PoW consensus or you're not. If
| you're, you're not a central authority (unless the
| blockchain is somehow not an authoritative state and
| you're simply using it as a fancy bulletin board), if
| you're not, then whatever you're doing is different from
| what everbody else have been calling 'blockchain' since
| 13 years and you're just inviting confusion by calling it
| that.
| ryani wrote:
| I think there's a difference between "blockchain + PoW"
| and "blockchain". Blockchain taken literally is just
| verification of history via hashing. It's a form of
| provenance that is hard to fake. Even if you are a
| central authority as to what transactions are being made,
| you can't rewrite history beyond any point that you've
| made publicly visible, without losing the trust of people
| who rely on you as a central authority, as to do so you
| would need to break the hashing algorithm.
| DasIch wrote:
| Blockchain has a purpose: consensus without trust.
|
| Central banks are institutions that are trusted and
| cooperate with trusted institutions.
|
| In general as long as you have a mechanism to establish
| trust-based consensus by relying on people or a
| government there is really no advantage by using a
| blockhain and a huge number of disadvantages.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I agree.frequently it seems I'm in twilight zone minority
| :-)
| bozhark wrote:
| Both are, always have been
| audleman wrote:
| > The highly centralized structure which transpired to make
| Bitcoin popular
|
| What centralized structure?
| 0daystock wrote:
| Read the paper this thread is about.
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| It's not a huge mystery. "altruism" is author opinion not
| science. Double spending is a short term benefit, but risks
| destroying the value of your holdings by discrediting the whole
| system. Double spending only works in truly arms length
| transactions, where the victim can't retaliate AND trusts you
| enough to accept the transaction in the first place.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also the gains for such action must be larger than resources
| spend. You are over spending the rest of the network in work,
| thus the transactions must be larger than possible gains from
| doing the same work in "main" chain.
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