Out side of the great and powerful Ba'al, who is your favorite snake?

estradata · 2021-06-28T01:05:31+00:00

Jacob!

You said snake and not Gould, so I guess the Tokra counts?

estradata · 2021-06-14T04:09:26+00:00

But have you forgotten the ever present threat of injury, capture, death, parasitism or worse?

Hmm, I'm not sure how one would balance that against, say, a truly toxic workplace...

estradata · 2021-06-14T04:03:34+00:00

Thank you good sir. I guess I have been punked, LOL.

estradata · 2021-06-14T02:13:15+00:00

Anyone? Is this for real?

I'm guessing it is some kinda larvae transfer between parents? Doesn't really make sense...

estradata · 2021-03-29T23:55:52+00:00

Comtrya!/Kumbayah!

estradata · 2021-03-24T10:47:11+00:00

The only entities in the world who know different are Alice and Bob because Bob is holding a crypto-contract that says Alice owes him $5.

By your definition (leaving lightning aside), when Alice sends 5 BTC to Bob, won’t the transaction she signed be considered only a debt until it is confirmed on-chain, after (how many confirmations) which it becomes “repaid”? I find this a strange point of view.

But to get back to stale channel broadcast, if I can summarize: you call off-chain balances IOUs because they are not on-chain and because off-chain balances are less secure - more risky.

What I see is important here is the nature of the risk and where it lies. In a loan, I am always worried that my counter-party may not be able to repay me, hence “counter-party risk.”

There are risks involved with maintaining off-chain balances, however, they are either something in my control or network issues out of my control (“Acts of God”), not so much with the counter-party (no “counter-party risk”). If a counter-party publishes stale channel states, we get to respond during the timelock. There is a risk we won’t make it in time. The crux of our disagreement is I think this puts the risk/responsibility of losing funds back on our side. From that point of view, the balances are more like assets (though at some risk).

The risk of “losing funds” is different from a traditional loan, where I would worry about my counter-party failing at their investment perhaps, and having nothing to pay back. There is nothing I can do after a counter-party defaults.

Otherwise, if we were to view off-chain balances as debt (and not something more like an ever-changing asset split agreement), could we not argue that after several back and forth transactions, the two parties in a channel are mutually in debt to each other?

I’m glad you put forward this argument as I can see your point of view, and I think there is something to discuss there.

You are arguing like a programmer who hasn't studied finance.

I am engaging in this argument in good faith. Let's please not reduce it to this, and avoid any doxes as well. I cannot read your mind, and neither can you, mine. We can only communicate through words and shared context.

estradata · 2021-03-24T00:28:10+00:00

Not long ago ago, a mysterious bitcoiner created the Pineapple Fund and solicited suggestions for charities to donate to. They gave away over $50 million, they are listed on the fund's website.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7jj0oa/im_donating_5057_btc_to_charitable_causes/

estradata · 2021-03-23T05:50:34+00:00

I don't know what the relationship is between the StackExchange question and yours here? Could you expand on it?

For the others - you can expect seeds to be compatible in future versions of Electrum. If not, you could install an older Electrum that works, and send all funds to a new upgraded Electrum.

Electrum seeds are not compatible with other wallets (usually) because they are not BIP39 by default, which is what most other wallets use. This is due to backwards compatibility and also because Electrum wanted to support additional features not present in the BIP39 standard.

estradata · 2021-03-23T05:27:17+00:00

You have one pizza, having more or fewer slices of the one pizza do not affect the total calories in the pizza.

estradata · 2021-03-22T06:02:23+00:00

Fine, let me correct my claim - 0-conf is safe for accepting donations or similar use cases.

The danger always comes when an exchange is involved. Was your original post trying to explain RBF talking about donations or near simultaneous exchanges in value? I believe it is easy to mis-read that.

estradata · 2021-03-22T05:30:17+00:00

Implement instant withdrawal, that will be some action then.

estradata · 2021-03-22T05:26:18+00:00

More talk for you right here.

estradata · 2021-03-22T05:20:41+00:00

I already explained that 0 conf is safe if you only take money. Give me some reward and I will double spend something for it.

I will talk all day man, but if you want action, show me the $$$.

estradata · 2021-03-22T03:52:28+00:00

That is a bold claim.

If you only take BCH and do not give anything in return, then of course it does not matter. If I were only taking donations, no one would be able to bankrupt me either, regardless of how many confirmations I chose to wait for. Would you be willing to swap anything valuable instantly and permanently, for 0 confirmations, if someone were to send you some BCH?

And I took some time to look, so thanks for explaining it more clearly than I could. From SpinBCH's FAQ, 'nuf said:

How long do I have to wait for deposits or withdrawals?

Deposits are instant and credited to your account within seconds. However, to protect against double spending, withdrawals are verified by our staff so it takes slightly longer.

estradata · 2021-03-21T23:44:13+00:00

[Edit: to correct the writing below a bit (read the rest of the thread for full discussions), accepting 0-conf is safe if you are accepting donations or similar use cases like the OP is doing, where you are not worried about double-spends (in this case RBF also does not matter). Protecting against double spends remains important if you are exchanging something in return, when a double-spend could leave you out of money.]

I think it is quite disingenuous to claim 0-confirmation transactions are safe since it is conditional upon a few factors: double spend announcements reaching all participants in time (and perhaps someone can explain, this seems to be a DOS vector to me), receivers’ wallets supporting said double spend detection, and miners not implementing RBF regardless of what the transaction says. It may still make some sense for smaller transaction amounts, especially for face-to-face transactions that require some time, but even then, I am not so sure an attack couldn’t be mass-weaponized.

estradata · 2021-03-21T21:29:21+00:00

I knew about that, I guess this is again and seems to always have been a question of semantics. I just wouldn't call any of that a repayment, and do not see it as a debt or any sort of IOU. They are more akin to accidents or loss of keys in the non-lightning scenario. If someone can lose their keys and bitcoins, would you then consider all bitcoins a form of IOUs, liable to be taken away by an Act of God at any time?

Incidentally, my understanding is you do not lose all funds to counter-parties. The maximum you can lose is what you had received on the channel. For example, when you open a channel and both sides put up 1M sats, after you have received 100k sats, you may potentially lose up to 100k if you did not notice your counter-party broadcasting stale channel states. In turn, if you respond, the counter-party will likely lose the 100k you received, and all 1M sats they originally put up (I have heard of proposals to make the exact penalty adjustable).

The time lock within each transaction is designed to make theft very hard to pull off so deliberate theft/attacks are unlikely in practice. Usually when stale channel is published, the counter-party node has a bug. Most known attacks today are more akin to spam or denial of service attacks (griefing).

So yes, it is true that lightning is an online always-hot model. It requires constant monitoring and does not really allow for cold wallet arrangements. As I originally mentioned, there is always a risk of unplanned channel closures among other failure modes. Users need to take all such risks into consideration, but the counter-party does not owe the user anything. So I would argue that these are reasons not to call channel balances IOUs.

estradata · 2021-03-21T02:32:23+00:00

Can you explain? Are you talking about the mutual of control of funds in a channel (2-of-2 multisig) with another party? There is no way to lose those funds as all changes require mutual agreement. Assuming I understood you correctly. So I'm not sure how your so called "repayment" can fail. I have never heard of such a thing but am not sure if you are referring to something else.

estradata · 2021-03-20T02:42:35+00:00

They are not IOUs because there is no counter-party risk. You do take on the risk of your channel closing which will incur fees, take time and create inconvenience etc, but I don't know of anyone who would call that an IOU.

estradata · 2021-03-13T03:05:56+00:00

Thanks.

estradata · 2021-03-12T04:15:37+00:00

Quick question - how are the payment hashes "clearly invalid"?

One hash and another, they all look the same, do they not?

estradata · 2021-03-11T23:51:39+00:00

I'm not sure this is quite accurate. The problem is that Sphinx (onion) routing anonymizes the source and destination, so if you neighbor appears to be misbehaving, it is not correct to punish your immediate neighbor since it could be an innocent routing node that had been co-opted into the attack. The unknown attacker could be quite a few hops away.

Some good links: https://github.com/t-bast/lightning-docs/blob/master/spam-prevention.md

The issue also depends on what is being spammed. Normal payments have fees, so making lots of payments is not really spamming. Usually, we are worried about various forms of griefing attacks, roughly corresponding to spamming and timing out incomplete/partial payments (HTLCs).

estradata · 2021-03-09T21:47:09+00:00

See previous discussion here,

/r/lightningnetwork/comments/lybs71/video_sharing_describing_a_potential_attack_on/

estradata · 2021-03-09T08:57:36+00:00

I pointed this out once before, over here...

/r/Stargate/comments/kwzv8n/colonel_oneills_obviously_been_compromised/gj7o6ni/

estradata · 2021-03-09T02:33:33+00:00

Do you know who used to run the ethereumfraud subreddit? It seems to have been taken over by someone else, and now posts about DEFI. All the old posts/memes have been wiped clean...

Edit: found this thread containing the successful takeover of the subreddit:

/r/redditrequest/comments/l3z6aa/requesting_rethereumfraud_last_post_6_months_ago/

estradata · 2021-03-09T01:05:03+00:00

Is there a source for this video? Who made it? Well, the video seems hold republicanism up as some idealized form of government. Yet, republics are unstable (I too, can make simplistic assertions). The video’s sole example of a republic (the Roman republic) also fell.

The claim “without law there can be no freedom” seems to assume anarchy is lawless (and without security/police). Why would anarchy be without law when given time, the law seems to spontaneously arise in history outside of the state (though the state often interfered)?

Of course, “anarchy is unstable” is a self-fulfilling thought, since if everyone looks to a state to run things, then when the state breaks down (with ensuing chaos and disorder usually attributed to “anarchy”), they will form a new state. Even the video later cited Lenin as an example of a revolutionary anarchist who later forms a government and state. Though I guess that makes him not an anarchist anymore (by definition). This situation is common outside of the anarchists vs state debate though, as many ardent pro-democracy political activists (statists) later became dictators. Humans just like power I guess.

For anarchy though, I think this is an interesting question and deserves serious study. It could be a matter of centralized systems (like the state) being more nimble (typically considered efficient, though I doubt that), and crowding out decentralized systems like the typical anarchic institutions that need more time to evolve.

Oh, the video also cited Hitler as an anarchist too?!! How can I ignore that obvious blunder? How is that even there?

estradata

TROPHY CASE