Top all-time · #6892
GavinTech
Personal blog · gavintech.blogspot.comeconomicsprogramming
GavinTech is a personal blog at gavintech.blogspot.com about economics and programming. Since 2012, 11 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “Neutralizing a 51% attack on bitcoin”. The last post was in 2015, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link this Bitcoin developer's blog for posts on 51% attacks and a plan to neutralise them, sidechain oracles, smart contracts, and a 2012 faucet hack. Comments only cite or link it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Neutralizing a 51% attack on bitcoin4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2012-10-04
- Bit-thereum3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-06-09
What Hacker News says?
A 2012 Bitcoin hack victim was none other than a lead developer of Bitcoin. Back then, they ran a Bitcoin faucet on it that gave out a paltry 0.25 Bitcoin at a time. I never bothered to jump through those hoops for like a dollar (now about US$10k): http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/03/bitcoin-faucet-hacked.... He only lost 5 bitcoin (like $20 then or $200k today), but another lost 3100, or around… $124 million toda…
Comment linking /2012/03/bitcoin-faucet-hacked.html?m=1
on “Akamai to Acquire Linode”Submitted Bit-thereum as a story · 43 points
HN discussionNSA, China, Russia, most governments really, and possibly a lot of banks, could do a 51% attack and shut down transaction processing... or do double spends, but shutting down all transaction processing seems more damaging. This won't ever change, unless Bitcoin really causes governments to lose most of their power and money. Edit: gavin has a plan ( http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack... ) b…
Comment linking /2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html
on “Are Bitcoins The Future?”Submitted Bitcoin Core Developers Join MIT's Media Lab as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThat's fair point. ""So I’ll start there, and imagine that there are semi-trusted ‘oracles’ that compete to be the most reliable and trustworthy verifiers of contracts. People involved in contracts choose N of them, and then require that contract conditions be validated by one or more of them before the contract pays out. Pick more than one so no single oracle can steal the contract’s funds, but less than N in case…
Comment linking /2014/06/bit-thereum.html
on “Simple Contracts are Better Contracts: the Meltdown of the DAO”Submitted Full disclosure: Bitcoin-Qt on Windows vulnerability as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWith a small change to bitcoin protocol it should be possible in some cases. But right now the only viable option is to use M of N oracles: https://github.com/orisi/wiki/wiki/Orisi-White-Paper http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2014/06/bit-thereum.html Basically, you choose a panel of up to 15 independent entities to verify that the funds were locked indeed. The panel can be modified by a majority of votes if some of the…
Comment linking /2014/06/bit-thereum.html
on “A simple explanation of Bitcoin “Sidechains””Submitted Neutralizing a 51% attack (2012) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionCorrect, it would only block legit transactions. This is one of the proposed solutions. Basically centralize bitcoin by somehow whitelisting good blocks or blacklisting bad ones. The problem is this would require a change to _all_ bitcoin software. Meaning EVERYONE has to upgrade to this new centralized approach. Plus the decentralization of bitcoin is lost. Pretty sure that solution would spell certain doom for bit…
Comment linking /2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html
on “Bitcoin Non-Technical FAQ”Submitted Looking Before the Scaling Up Leap as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThis could solve that issue: http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack...
Comment linking /2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html
on “Bitcoin is a Startup”Submitted Neutralizing a 51% attack on bitcoin as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhile I mostly agree with you - it's easier said than done. How exactly are you going to buy $150 million (or whatever the needed amount is) of ASICs without being noticed? The government could obviously do it - but at least in the near future that sounds far fetched. Like wise as soon as your attack is noticed your IP addresses would be blocked by the other clients preventing you from adding to the chain. Edit: aft…
Comment linking /2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html
on “Bitcoin is a Startup”
