RE: Witness Update - Running my own softfork (22.3)

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RE: Witness Update - Running my own softfork (22.3)

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arcange in #witness-category • 5 years ago (edited)

Dear Tim,

I appreciate and respect your willingness to stick to your values while recognizing the reality of an existing threat to our blockchain.

Unfortunately, the solution you offer with your HF 22.3 is completely ineffective.

By only blocking operations related to voting for witnesses, nothing prevents "blocked" accounts from:

initiate a powerdown.
initiate a powerdown with a route, i.e. liquid STEEM are directly dropped to another account.
transfer STEEMs that have become liquid to one or more other "unblocked" accounts
transfer STEEMs or to one or more exchanges. In this second case, we can even completely lose track of the funds. These STEEMs can then be sent back anonymously to "dormant" accounts

Then, nothing prevents them to use the moved stakes to take control of the blockchain. thus reducing all your efforts to nothing.

This scenario was considered well before the deployment of the soft fork 22.2 and it is for this reason only that the other operations have been added: to avoid leaving security loopholes open.

5 years ago in #witness-category by arcange

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timcliff 5 years ago

If they make an attempt to power down their stake, the Steem community can fork and move on with a new chain without them.

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2 votes

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arcange 5 years ago

It will not be "an attempt" to power down, but a real power down!

How long will it take to coordinate and deploy such hard fork?
Do you already have such a hardfork on hand before potential damage has already been done?

We have already been deceived so many times. I don't want to be naive once again and have to wait for a potential damage to be done before reacting rather than being cautious and foresighted.

I work in IT security and my customers don't expect me to wait for a potential attacker to act before reacting. My job is to put in place the required protections so that this does not happen.

And I think the same goes for the job of witness.

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2 votes

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timcliff 5 years ago (edited)

Yes, we would have seven days.

We have had a ton of time to prepare for this, and there have been tons of signs pointing to this possibility for some time. Sorry, but I am not going to accept our lack of preparation as an excuse to do something that I believe is wrong.

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drakos 5 years ago

We're trying to avoid such a fork because it will complicate things with exchanges. Given that Justin owns Poloniex and is locked and loaded to swap, plus him being very friendly with Binance, you can imagine what could happen to STEEM when/if he pulls the trigger.

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1 vote

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timcliff 5 years ago

I want to avoid it too, but I’m not going to let that justify taking actions that I don’t believe are right. It would really suck, I am not trying to downplay that, but we have a way to deal with this that doesn’t violate property rights.

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firstamendment 5 years ago

Although anyone can sue anyone for about anything. Regarding the issue of ninja mined coins, it is a controversy that might eventually go to court.

Keeping the tokens restricted instead of burned may be enough to keep a legal remedy in chancery instead of tort if he were to go after the witnesses. I am not a lawyer. I don't think that Justin sun would prevail in a tort or equity against the witnesses [other than to just scare them], expensive as it may be, if he were to target them given the obligations of the witnesses acting in good faith to protect the chain on top of all the abuses of Sun/Tron upon projects on the Tron chain, and the history of these ninja-mined coins and their intended uses.

If his goal is to do a swap to the tron chain, what would he do with his steem based coins? He would be destroying his own property, and ours too. His goals are to mint a new "steem" tron token of an unknown size, do a swap, an air drop, and the distribution is still an unknown. To him the value of a Steem coin is already zero. He can cook up as many Steem tron tokens as he wants, so him seeking a civil suit against anyone is almost a moot point. He can make Steemit operate on tron without a coin swap.

He should just take his steemit dapp, and part ways with Steem. But to do that he should consider suing Ned Scott.

If we suppose Justin sun purchased the Steem coin in good faith from steemit/ned scott and Justin Sun sued Ned Scott, Then I think this is the area where the steem community can move to defend Justin Sun's property. The ninja mined coins themselves was an act of fraud to begin with, Scott/steemit agreed to restrict their use to develop the community (exact wording needs research, including that they would not be used for voting for witnesses), and then he converted the fraudulently minted coins for his own gain to Justin Sun who threatens to destroy the chain itself which act as a breach of fiduciary value to the Steem community. It is quite possible Ned Scott lied to Justin sun about what he was getting into, just as Ned lied to the steem community. If Justin Sun wants to be made whole then it should be the duty of Ned Scott-not the steem community-to make him whole. The witnesses to defend Justin Sun's stake should be willing to file declarations/affidavits in an hypothetical (not all suits are ideal) Sun V Scott case asserting the bad faith and fraudulent conduct by Ned Scott/steemit.

It could be argued a large steem holder could file an injunction against Justin Sun/Tron/Jon Does from taking over the chain. Little people are expected to follow injunctions or else, big people find ways around them or outright defy them. Once the kill switch is thrown, whats the point of contempt of court. A case following in tort for damages might be settled; Paid in tron s___ coins probably.

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1 vote

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timcliff 5 years ago

Lots of possibilities..

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marki99 5 years ago

Trying to hide a third of the supply is not that easy. We will notice such activity.

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arcange 5 years ago (edited)

The main purpose of my comment is not about tracking funds, but on the ineffectiveness of the solution proposed by Tim regarding blockchain security.

You don't even have to split the stake, you can move them all to an exchange. Then, when you are ready,

you deploy 20 witness nodes running your (malicious) hardfork version
you declare 20 new witness accounts on the blockchain
you move stakes back to an (unblocked) account
you promote your witness accounts in the top 20

And tada, in less than 6 seconds, you get control of the blockchain! 🎉

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marki99 5 years ago

True, that's why I like the idea of having a maturity period where every week a part of your SteemPower gains voting rights.

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2 votes

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arcange 5 years ago

That's a cool idea, but not easy to implement and will add more complexity to something already complex enough. Anyway, we should keep it in mind.

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novacadian 5 years ago

And tada, in less than 6 seconds, you get control of the blockchain!

But not control of a truly forked chain, @arcange. A true fork seems to me the only valid threat the community can offer a majority stake holder, like Mr. Sun, without breaking the trust of DPoS. Witnesses should get busy getting a true fork ready. They are only creating a very pissed off billionaire who has asked for enough time before parley to get goodness knows what in motion, in my opinion.

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deniskj 5 years ago

Exactly. While Tim's soft fork is well intentioned, it can easily be bypassed in three months. Even though the soft fork may be stringent it was not a light call but it was the right one.

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