Author: Frank F 2013-11-06 09:26:27
Published on: 2013-11-06T09:26:27+00:00
The author of an email criticizes academics for not having to worry about the real world and getting paid to publish things rather than being helpful to society. The email goes on to discuss a paper called Selfish Mining, which the author believes is based on a flawed model that doesn't accurately simulate the bitcoin system. The paper assumes a total sybil attack, but the condition necessary for the attack is far worse than the attack itself, according to the author. To address the lack of a decent network simulator that allowed the paper to get press, the author offers a bounty of 1 BTC for building a general bitcoin network simulator framework. The simulator should be able to account for latency between nodes and simulate an attacker that owns varying fractions of the network. The bounty offer is serious but expires in one year and may be subject to change if the price on any reputable exchange breaks 1000 USD per BTC in that period. The author believes that if the paper's author had been able to see the importance of the stuff he was ignoring, correcting him wouldn't have been such a waste of time.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:33:42.814121+00:00