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Bitcoin Snafu Causes Miners To Generate Invalid Blocks
An anonymous reader writes: A notice at bitcoin.org warns users of the cryptocurrency that many miners are currently generating invalid blocks. The cause seems to be out-of-date software, and software that assumed blocks were valid instead of checking them. They explain further "For several months, an increasing amount of mining hash rate has been signaling its intent to begin enforcing BIP66 strict DER signatures. As part of the BIP66 rules, once 950 of the last 1,000 blocks were version 3 (v3) blocks, all upgraded miners would reject version 2 (v2) blocks. Early morning UTC on 4 July 2015, the 950/1000 (95%) threshold was reached. Shortly thereafter, a small miner (part of the non-upgraded 5%) mined an invalid block--as was an expected occurrence. Unfortunately, it turned out that roughly half the network hash rate was mining without fully validating blocks (called SPV mining), and built new blocks on top of that invalid block. Note that the roughly 50% of the network that was SPV mining had explicitly indicated that they would enforce the BIP66 rules. By not doing so, several large miners have lost over $50,000 dollars worth of mining income so far."
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You mean the money they just created out of thin air isn't really real?
Stop the presses.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The irony is that just a few stories down, there is a lot of talk about why more people don't drive EVs and how important it is for the world to get off fossil fuels.
So... how much power generated by fossil fuels was consumed "mining" bitcoins last month?
I can't think of anything less "green" than a computer pulling hundreds of watts sitting around 24/7 chewing on random numbers.
Fifty thousand dollars dollars?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
On the bitcoin.org website: "WARNING: many wallets currently vulnerable to double-spending of confirmed transactions."
Offhand, I'd consider that a significant "compromise", given that vulnerability to double-spending dramatically undermines confidence in using Bitcoin. If this situation continues for any length of time, you can just about guarantee that the bad guys will begin to exploit it.
Are they vulnerable to double spending attacks for the indefinitely future because of one bad block or was it just during the block's formation? And the way I understand it, the mining pool that solved the block would have to be the one injecting the malicious data itself since the old method of block validation is good enough to prevent double spend attacks but I could easily be wrong about that.
Ever listened to reassurances from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank?
So... how much power generated by fossil fuels was consumed "mining" bitcoins last month?
Very close to zero. Bitcoins are mined where power is cheapest, which means where there is plenty of hydropower, like in Iceland and the US Pacific Northwest. It is not cost effective to mine bitcoins using electricity from FFs.
Please be assured that if you aren't currently free and are in possession or mineral resources, we'll be on our way to bomb you into freedom shortly... :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Ah, screw that. It doesn't matter if you're free or not. If you've got oil or minerals, we're going to bomb the shit out of you...
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
How the fuck can anyone trust Bitcoin after this and the other incidents that have happened? How?
You can trust Bitcoin by learning how it works and following the proper procedures that you would if you playing with real money.
The Bitcoin system is highly resistant to "rouge" or bad actors in the system. Someone running mining software that does not follow the agreed upon rules for the system is an example of a rouge actor. When this happens the rest of the system votes down the decisions made by the rouge actors. In this case some miners were not following the system wide agreed upon protocol, generated bad data, and the rest of the system (correctly) rejected that bad data thus maintaining the integrity of the overall system as designed.
What was lost were some rewards that would normally have been paid out for operating correctly. Since the rouge actors were not operating correctly, they were not rewarded (for their invalid work). If you were hired to paint a house white and you painted it orange, would you expect to be paid? The miners did not do the work they were being paid to do. True, many miners mine within a pool and depend on the pool operator to do the right thing, but if the pool operator is not doing the right thing, it is not a flaw in Bitcoin. Lke the painting analogy, if you work for a painting company and the painting company gives you the wrong color of paint, you wouldn't expect the homeowner to pay you, if you want to get paid for your labor, your beef would be with your boss, the the homeowner.
On the transactional (non mining) side, if you are running an incomplete Bitcoin client, it is now taking longer to achieve a level of confidence that your transaction is officially as "approved" by the network. As always it is the responsibility of those making the transactions to wait an appropriate time to ensure that their transactions have been approved. This has always been the case with Bitcoin and has not changed.
Shortcuts? Since when has using not-up-to-date software been considered a "shortcut" to anything but being hacked?
It doesn't have to do with out of date software, but software that is pretending to say it has been updated to do checks when it doesn't to save cpu cycles. That is a shortcut, not doing proper checks.
Tell me, are "Rouge Actors" apt to break out in Song at the slightest provocation?
The whole thing is just a sneeze away from being compromised to the point of uselessness.
My power comes from coal and natural gas and costs less than 11 cents per kWh.
Are you suggesting that is too expensive to mine with?
Are you suggesting that no one outside of those areas are mining Bitcoin?
Very close to zero. Bitcoins are mined where power is cheapest, which means where there is plenty of hydropower, like in Iceland and the US Pacific Northwest. It is not cost effective to mine bitcoins using electricity from FFs.
Bullshit. Give us one shred of evidence that this is happening. Anyone involved in bitcoin mining isn't one bit interested in environmental issues, and coal is still the cheapest form of energy.
How about blanc and bleu :)
Let's just ask the guy who set it up. We can't? He's in hiding? He's been hiding for YEARS? Oh yes, I can really trust it now.
From learning how it works it's a shameless pyramid rewarding those who get in early so long as a steady stream of people decide to sign up but there is zero value or trust holding up the pyramid. Short term users who use it as a barter item and unload it quickly are not exposed to much potential pain, those who are holding onto it, their future is barely floating in very deep water and I must say I'm truly amazed the entire thing has not sunk yet.
My power comes from coal and natural gas and costs less than 11 cents per kWh.
Are you suggesting that is too expensive to mine with?
Yes. That is about twice the price of wholesale hydropower.
Are you suggesting that no one outside of those areas are mining Bitcoin?
There are a few small miners outside these areas, but the big ASIC miners are located in areas where cheap hydropower is available.
Anyone involved in bitcoin mining isn't one bit interested in environmental issues
They don't use hydropower because it is "environmental". They use it because it is cheap.
coal is still the cheapest form of energy.
No it isn't. Areas with plentiful hydropower have electricity prices much lower than coal.
However, in electricity usage per Bitcoin, the Bitcoin system is infinitely more efficient. In fact, the credit card network is just a transaction network. It has zero efficiency at actually producing dollars.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Perhaps my bad spelling makes me a moron, perhaps it doesn't. It does give my post a more humorous version of what I had intended to say.
It is not cost effective to mine bitcoins using electricity from FFs.
Jesus, Firefox now generates electricity too?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I always loose my mind when I see idiots writing rouge instead of rogue.
It really effects me deeply.
Let's just ask the guy who set it up.
Even if he was still around, he might have set up a broken system. Instead, you should learn about how it works and check the mathematical proofs.
We can't? He's in hiding? He's been hiding for YEARS? Oh yes, I can really trust it now.
I'm not sure why a public figurehead of something like this would be inherent trustworthy. I'd actally say some public CEO type pushing a reality distortion field would be less trustworthy than a bunch of open source software backed by provable, verifyable maths.
Short term users who use it as a barter item and unload it quickly are not exposed to much potential pain,
And that's why it's popular. For people who use it as a form of currency in transactions, the risk isn't high, so there's the trust. The thing with large crowds is that a huge number of people putting a small amount of trust in something equates to a large amount of trust. As long as people find it useful for transactions, money will keep cycling through and it will stay afloat.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I don't get your logic, because both EVs and computers use electricity. Are you saying that EVs get their electricity from green sources, and Bitcoins are mined with filthy old fossil-fuel power?
Also, consider monetary systems where banknotes are hauled around in armoured trucks, vs. a computer network that accomplished the same with a fraction of the resources.
In general, people should do more with computers/networks, instead of driving around to offices.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
How many bitcoin banks have decided to cut and run at this point?
Bitcoin is cash. What you call a "bitcoin bank" is really just a "bitcoin wallet" in somebody else's possession, and it is about as safe as trusting somebody with a wallet full of cash.
The closest thing to a bitcoin wallet involving a bank is putting cash in a safe deposit box. If you do that in the US it isn't protected by the FDIC. If you want to be protected by banking regulations you have to deposit your money.
Bitcoin was never designed around letting others hold your money. The design was really for individuals to hold their own money.
Yep. How many times has the Fed said "jeez, sorry, you know that cash that we issued, really it's not valid, you need version 2.137 of the cash, you lose.
And the original point stands... have you audited the source code? Have you compiled / built the product from the source code? If not, then have the alleged source code isn't any better than trusting the Windows source code.
Circular argument; I take it that you have done both?
Just because an individual states they do not have the competency to verify an action, it does not immediately make the original action invalid.
Source code verification and auditing is a problem in ALL fields, and is not a particular malignancy associated with any particular programming methodology. However, the ease at which one may perform a public audit, and verification, of any code in question is greatly enhanced when anyone can view the code. Furthermore, a closed source audit relies on trusting the entity doing the auditing, with no possible method of performing ones own personal audit unless one is prepared to enter into an agreement with the original owner of the source code in question.
At some point you have to trust something, and trust relies on repeated positive outcomes, or consistent outcomes; you can trust that something will fail in a given scenario, and something can be trustworthy even with known flaws (an aircraft's landing gear has several inherent flaws, but a pilot knows not to fly with it deployed all the time.) In this particular case the system is performing as expected, and the original source code is performing as expected. That several other pool operators deliberately altered their source code, and concealed this from their users and did not publicly publish the code, does not diminish trust in the original system, but diminishes trust in those who thought it would be a good idea to make a system variant that lied about its status and support. They are now paying for their transgression, figuratively and literally, as the correctly working part of the system mops up after their mess.
I always loose my mind when I see idiots writing rouge instead of rogue.
It really effects me deeply.
Agreed, I see red too...
BTW, it's "affects" :)
And lose. Pretty sure it was trolling.
Bitcoin leaves open the problem that people can scam you and take your money. Credit card companies and paypal and what have you mitigate that problem, but do so at the cost that people can falsely accuse you of scamming them and taking your money, pretend to pay you but don't, confiscate or freeze your money with little accountability, and do a lot of other nasty things.
Are the ways to abuse the system worse than the things the system is supposed to protect you against? I don't know. But it's a valid question - one that is likely to have different answers at different times and places. The answer may vary for different people too. For that reasons, bitcoin is a good thing. Whether the wild west mentality is better is one thing, but having the option of the wild west mentality can't really be bad.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
That's why they're called "plugins".
What about spending ridiculous amounts of electricity to print your own money (mining) ?
I always loose my mind when I see idiots writing rouge instead of rogue. It really effects me deeply.
Agreed, I see red too...
BTW, it's "affects" :)
Woosh :-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.