Author: Billy Tetrud 2021-05-25 08:01:07
Published on: 2021-05-25T08:01:07+00:00
The discussion revolves around the vulnerabilities of Bitcoin. The mining pool problem can be solved with Stratum v2, while widespread compromise of mining systems seems unlikely. A Sybil attack draining the resources of public full nodes is considered a more significant vulnerability as only about 10,000 public full nodes serve the entire network. It would not take much money to create a Sybil botnet of 100,000 or 1 million nodes that connect to the Bitcoin network and simply take up public node resources, denying service to most people's full nodes. Regarding covert compromise of mining pool operations, it is suggested that changing the PoW algorithm slightly could make purchased ASIC mining equipment partially or wholly unusable to compromise the chain. This could deter multibillionaire attacks and temporarily reduce energy usage without necessarily reducing security. However, a 51% attack, which impacts some parts of chain operations but not others, remains a concern.As for the possibility of a government compromising their nation's mining farms, it is argued that skilled operatives have their limits. While it could be kept secret if spies were hired as employees and systematically infected all the machines in a mining operation, one mistake could give the game away. It would be harder to keep a backroom deal secret, especially in large operations. Propaganda has its limits too, as convincing sophisticated miners that things are fine would be difficult.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T22:07:14.073162+00:00