[HN Gopher] Sybil attacks on airdrops
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Sybil attacks on airdrops
Author : rckrd
Score : 35 points
Date : 2022-07-17 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (matt-rickard.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (matt-rickard.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| cheap transactions also makes mixing crypto cheaper
| droffel wrote:
| Why use a mixer at all? The technology is fundamentally
| centralized/trust-based, and even assuming a perfectly
| trustworthy mixer, vulnerable to many forms of analysis (the
| list of which will only grow as time passes). If you want
| privacy, use something that actually gives it to you, like
| Monero.
| paulpauper wrote:
| no one accepts monero
|
| you don't have to use an actual mixer. just set up 1000s of
| addresses and just cycle many tiny transactions
| cowtools wrote:
| On the contrary, no one accepts bitcoin.
|
| Alphabay2 is the only market left and it's monero-only.
| syzygyhack wrote:
| It's an interesting problem and one that many decentralized
| applications will be forced to contend with, beyond simple
| airdrops. Many on-chain protocols and primitives simply don't
| need to differentiate between human user and program, but the
| ones that do are usually crippled if they fail to adequately do
| so. Quadratic funding mechanisms, for example.
|
| I believe we're still very early on this front, there's lots of
| opportunity for innovation in terms of Sybil defense. Dox Your
| Customer is the easiest and naturally the most at odds with the
| Web3 paradigm, but there are others that make fewer compromises
| which have been tried with varying levels of success. Vouch
| networks/social graphs, attestation or reputation systems, video
| identity registries, recurring cost, time-coordinated Turing
| tests, etc.
|
| I am certain novel approaches will continue to emerge until we
| land on something robust without sacrificing decentralization or
| the right to privacy.
| pjdkoch wrote:
| I'm partial, because I work for them, but maybe use
| https://fractal.id/?
| plopilop wrote:
| Another funny example is the one of Juno: a whale Sybil-ed the
| airdrop, and gathered 10% of the tokens. Then, the community
| voted to strip the whale of most of their tokens.
|
| I find the example interesting because it shows that Layer 2
| protocols can very much strip you away from your coins, just like
| banks/governments can.
|
| (https://beincrypto.com/juno-community-votes-to-reject-tokens...)
| 1-6 wrote:
| The attack surface of Apple's products grow day-by-day with
| features meant to make life convenient.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _attack surface of Apple's products_
|
| Cryptocurrency airdrops [1]. Not Apple's AirDrop feature.
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/airdrop-
| cryptocurrency....
| sahkopoyta wrote:
| Apple's products? This is not about them
| katbyte wrote:
| This has nothing to do with apple and is about a crypto thing.
| JaggerFoo wrote:
| I'm suprised that Gitcoin was not mentioned, they have dealt with
| sybil attacks and have processes to try and detect it.
| cinquemb wrote:
| Seems like if protocols don't provide any liquidity for their
| tokens, but the tokens can be used to have access to a protocol
| revenue, I don't see the problem.
|
| Except for most tokens/protocols don't have any revenue they can
| share with token holders...
| droffel wrote:
| I'm reminded of this scene from It's Always Sunny in
| Philadelphia. In theory, the goal of the airdrop is to create new
| users, but in practice the airdrop receivers just cash out their
| chips and go home.
|
| https://youtu.be/cyxxE1AcUSM
| xbar wrote:
| Yup.
|
| That was the Divergence Ventures/Bridget Harris play listed in
| the article. To their credit, they returned the money when
| called out on it.
| game-of-throws wrote:
| I think at this stage it's impossible to fairly distribute a coin
| to new users.
|
| Bitcoin was born into a unique environment. The world did not
| know what to think, and largely ignored it, so it was able to
| spread organically for years, detached from any notion it would
| ever be worth anything. Because it had no value, it could grow
| without having to worry about these kinds of attacks. Only once
| it spread far enough did it begin to take on economic value and
| an exchange rate, reaching one penny and beyond.
|
| Airdrops these days do the exact opposite. They're premined,
| listed day 1 on exchanges, and the creators try to pump the
| exchange rate in order to finance later development. The entire
| process is corrupted by users viewing projects through an
| economic lens, and creators trying to extract value before
| delivering value. Now that the cat is out of the bag, it's likely
| the conditions of bitcoin's creation will never happen again.
| cowtools wrote:
| Well bitcoin's distribution in the early days also relied on
| faucets, which were susceptible to sibyl attacks
| drexlspivey wrote:
| grin started a couple years ago same as bitcoin, the day of the
| v1.0 release the devs hardcoded the latest bitcoin block hash
| in the genesis block (to prove there was no premine) and as
| soon as they pushed the commit people were able to build the
| code and start mining
| yieldcrv wrote:
| people dont consider instamines any less unfair than premines
|
| there is zero consensus on fair and therefore it is
| impossible to have a fair launch
|
| all outcomes result in consolidation unless
| inflation/dilution is extremely high and uninteresting
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