[HN Gopher] Removing Sybils from an Open Network
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Removing Sybils from an Open Network
Author : mattwilsonn888
Score : 27 points
Date : 2023-09-30 12:49 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wiki.saito.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (wiki.saito.io)
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| Solving Sybils for any blockchain is kinda something rational,
| ethical cryptographers wouldn't want to do... but I'm sure you
| can pay someone to claim they've solved it.
|
| I'm kinda okay with blockchains always remaining vulnerable and
| becoming relics of the past. It's all a scam. Not patching it.
| klabb3 wrote:
| You mean because of the hype and scams associated with
| blockchain technology?
|
| I would agree with the assessment, but avoiding it for research
| would be equally dumb. The tech itself has very interesting
| properties and potential applications outside of "finance".
| It's just a decentralized and slow global db with an
| (empirically battletested) consensus mechanism.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > with an (empirically battletested) consensus mechanism.
|
| In fact there almost as many consensus mechanisms as there
| are blockchains. In the beginning it was PoW that defined
| what was a blockchain, but with its obsolescence in favor of
| Proof of stakes for many chains the situation got muddier.
| Facebook's Libra/Diem for instance was based on a strongly
| consistent algorithm (as opposed to the eventually consistent
| nature of PoS) that's not that different from PBFT and
| ByzPaxos.
| katella wrote:
| Why should routing nodes be rewarded at all.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Ok, I've read about this before but can someone with big brain
| dispute this? Seems like a solution to quite a problem but as
| it's crypto, not entire truth could be told here
| f_devd wrote:
| The core of their argument is:
|
| > as any routing node which self-clones to gain a larger share
| of routing-work for a given transaction also reduces by half
| the ability for that transaction to contribute towards the
| valid block production work threshold
|
| Seems like the primary assumption is that Sybill only happens
| vertically (one node being taken as multiple), but in reality
| Sybil is usually a per-actor problem, i.e. a CDN could be by a
| single actor created to ensure minimal hops thereby creating an
| effective Sybill attack.
|
| Disclaimer: this is my read of their system it might have
| different counter-measures/assumptions.
| MollyRealized wrote:
| I asked GPT-4 if they could "summarize for idiots". I do not have
| enough knowledge to say if they summarized it accurately, but for
| anyone like me, who felt like a very big dummy while reading
| this, here's the summary:
|
| The essay discusses a method to prevent Sybil attacks, where a
| single adversary controls multiple nodes on a network to subvert
| the network's functionality, in blockchain networks by making it
| unprofitable for malicious nodes to add unnecessary 'hops' in
| transaction paths. Saito's mechanism rewards nodes for
| efficiently routing transactions to block producers, thus making
| Sybil attacks less lucrative. This is further illustrated with
| mathematical proof and examples comparing honest and Sybil
| behaviors, highlighting how the expected rewards change in both
| scenarios .
| 38 wrote:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
| xerox13ster wrote:
| I hate to be that person, but as someones with Dissociative
| Identity Disorder I really wish we would stop using this term
| and go back to pseudospoofing. I cannot express just how much I
| HAAATE that the "solution" for a "Sybil" attack is
| Decentralized IDentification, or DIDs. It's a wholesale theft
| of the language that defines my existence and will lead many
| people to associate those with DID with the story of Sybil
| which woefully outdated and from a time when we knew far less
| about dissociaton than we do today.
|
| This has led me to understand empathically why there were
| people suggesting we change bus terminology from master/slave
| to anything else.
| ilyt wrote:
| I don't think there is any context where those 2 shortcuts
| would be mistaken for one another.
|
| > This has led me to understand empathically why there were
| people suggesting we change bus terminology from master/slave
| to anything else.
|
| I guess you haven't been one fixing the fallout that
| pointless shit caused.
| kazinator wrote:
| I don't think there is any context in which a bus mastering
| DMA controller would be mistaken for a plantation owner.
| hifromwork wrote:
| This comment is very surprising to me. I don't think it's
| reasonable to expect any three-letter acronym will only mean
| one thing. For example my usual nickname has three letters,
| and has around 20 definitions on wikipedia, including sex-
| related, drug-related and politically charged meanings (I
| don't identify with).
|
| In fact, DID already has a disambiguation page on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DID_(disambiguation). I don't
| think Dublin Institute of Design or Data Item Descriptions
| constitute "a wholesale theft of a language".
| lovemenot wrote:
| It's not DID alone that's the problem. I believe the parent
| is triggered by the confluence of Sybil and DID.
| lovemenot wrote:
| It's clearly an unfortunate clash of both _DID_ and _Sybil_
| in two separate nomenclatures. Each of which, in its own
| domain, has different referents.
|
| However, like many of the peer comments here I feel the
| overlap of these two domains is vanishingly small. Presumably
| only yourself and a handful of others would even be aware of
| the etymology.
|
| As you feel so strongly, perhaps a well-written blog post
| would rank highly for anyone curious enough to disambiguate.
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(page generated 2023-09-30 23:01 UTC)