Published on: 2017-06-08T06:38:48+00:00
In a recent discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, the Ethereum hard fork was a central topic of debate. Conner Fromknecht argued that the security of any cryptocurrency depends on its ledger and that any alterations made outside of the ledger's rules compromise its security. He equated an "irregular state change" to modifying the underlying ledger. Nick Johnson countered this argument by stating that while an irregular state change was indeed added at a specific block height during the Ethereum hard fork, the ledger itself was not edited. Tao Effect criticized Johnson for not understanding the severity of replay attacks in Bitcoin. Gregory Maxwell accused Ethereum of editing their ledger for the benefit of its centralized administrators, but Johnson reiterated that the Ethereum ledger remained unchanged.The discussion then shifted to the bitcoin-dev mailing list, where the focus was on the security and integrity of cryptocurrencies' ledgers and how they should be defined and maintained. Conner and Nick debated whether a cryptocurrency's state should only be defined by its ledger. Nick clarified that the Ethereum ledger was not edited during the DAO hard fork, but rather an irregular state change was added at a specific block height. Gregory Maxwell took issue with Tao Effect's assertion about the lack of experience in the bitcoin community regarding replay attacks and warned against insulting the community. The conversation also touched on the severity of replay attacks in the Bitcoin community and the lack of experience in dealing with them.Tao Effect sent an email to Nick Johnson to clarify that only an irregular state change was added at a specific block height in the Ethereum hard fork and the ledger remained unchanged. Gregory Maxwell cautioned against insulting the Bitcoin community and accused Ethereum of editing their ledger for the benefit of its centralized administrators. However, Johnson reiterated that the Ethereum ledger was not edited. The conversation also addressed the severity of replay attacks in the Bitcoin community and the lack of experience in dealing with them.Another email thread focused on the security concerns surrounding BIP148 and BIP149. Kekcoin suggested using "post-split coinbases from the legacy chain" as seedcoins for cointainting purposes to mitigate these concerns. The discussion then turned to replay attacks and their potential threat. Tao Effect expressed concerns about the lack of replay protection and its serious implications. They suggested that since BIP148 required over 51% support to succeed, it could adopt a similar approach to SegWit or lower the threshold to 80% as BIP91 did. Kekcoin argued that the replay threat would be irrelevant as there would be no alternative chain to replay transactions on. They claimed that the non-148 chain would have been reorganized into oblivion.The email exchange delved further into the discussion on replay attacks and proposed solutions to prevent them. Kekcoin argued that using "post-chainsplit coinbases from the non-148 chain" was more secure in extreme-adversarial cases such as secret-mining reorg attacks. Tao Effect expressed confusion about Kekcoin's statement regarding the mootness of the replay threat if the non-148 chain faced a large-scale reorganization. The recipient clarified that without replay protection, the threat of replay attacks is always present and very serious.In another email thread, Tao Effect expressed concern about the lack of understanding and discussion surrounding the severity of replay attacks within the Bitcoin community. They attributed this lack of awareness to the community's limited experience with such attacks. While replay attacks have been resolved, there is room for improvement in terms of simplicity and effectiveness. The proposed coin-splitting techniques suggested by BIP148 were deemed complex, risky, and lacking guaranteed success. Additionally, using 148 coinbase transactions for mixing compromised fungibility. The absence of replay protection not only threatens the main chain but also any potential legacy chains created by malicious miners, rendering their coins invalid on the main chain.In response to Tao Effect's concerns, another member of the Bitcoin community emphasized that replay attack issues were previously addressed during discussions surrounding Ethereum's hard fork. The limited dialogue on these matters is attributed to engineers prioritizing stability and not considering BIP148 as a viable solution. However, these concerns apply to all hard fork proposals, possibly even more strongly. It was noted that replay attacks are not the most significant technical challenge; network partitioning presents a larger obstacle. BIP149, with its timeframe allowing for addressing replay attacks and other issues, may avoid the need for a significant fork altogether.Greg Slepak objected to BIP148 and BIP149 based on their involvement in the ETH/ETC hard fork. They acknowledged the differences between the situations, as the ETC/ETH hard fork resulted in two incompatible chains, unlike BIP148 and other soft forks. However, both scenarios are susceptible to replay attacks.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T20:53:59.766266+00:00