"Peercoin v0.5 is under development, currently work is being done on the checkpoint system. First step, user would be able to opt out enforcement of broadcast checkpoints."
Now I’m not an expert on this, so I’d like to understand exactly what this means. Sunny said that opt out is the first step. What other steps would follow after that? Also, are checkpoints actually being removed, or are they only being decentralized, so he can no longer directly control them? This quote is from the previous interview…
"Let me clarify, what I mean is that the checkpoint will be disabled like in primecoin, but if an emergency occurrs and the community has general consensus, I can still broadcast them but users would need to explicitly issue a command to enforce checkpoint"
Does this mean that control is being given to the community? If so, is there a next step after this to remove them completely, or will they always be with Peercoin? Maybe these answers aren’t available yet? The main reason I’m asking is because I’ve been showing people Sunny’s quote when they bring up checkpoints and I’m not sure what it really means.
[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:1, topic:2614”]Now I’m not an expert on this, so I’d like to understand exactly what this means. Sunny said that opt out is the first step. What other steps would follow after that? Also, are checkpoints actually being removed, or are they only being decentralized, so he can no longer directly control them? This quote is from the previous interview…
Does this mean that control is being given to the community? If so, is there a next step after this to remove them completely, or will they always be with Peercoin? Maybe these answers aren’t available yet? The main reason I’m asking is because I’ve been showing people Sunny’s quote when they bring up checkpoints and I’m not sure what it really means.[/quote]
Guess we get a checkbox with default checkmark for enforcing of checkpoints next release. This means you can opt out if you want but default is on. Next logical step would be default off and after this total removal. The plan for next release will give the community the power to vote if we want to give Sunny the power of making a checkpoint and as metioned the default vote will be to give Sunny this power.
Personally, I’d like to believe that there’s a solution out there that would allow the network to “lock in” block history based on the current consensus and therefore not require any sort of opt-in central checkpointing. It seems to me that it’s a technical challenge awaiting an elegant answer (I believe that there are some options involving “trailing checkpoints” that are feasible, but not perfect, yet).
I’m not going to pretend that I understand all of the technical concerns with trying to close the attack vector that the current checkpoint system prevents, but I do ascribe to the “where there’s a will, there’s a way” and “very few things are truly impossible” philosophies when it comes to most things.
This is a very fair question. The answer is more complicated than, “make them optional, then disable them by default,” because of the security implications.
It would be great if Sunny King and/or Sigmike weighed in on this topic.
It’s useful to keep the checkpoint capability in client. It’s a safe guard against 51% attack, or unforeseen vulnerabilities exploited by attackers, so under such situations the community has a last resort to defend against 51% DoS on blockchain, before a solution is available to the situation.
When checkpoint feature is by default disabled, there is really not much control of devs over the blockchain, unless with enough community consensus to follow checkpoint. Also, in the future checkpoint key and alert key will be kept by multiple core dev members.
People underestimate the reality of 51% attack, the threat is real. For example FTC is repeatedly attacked, despite it being a reasonably large mining network. Even at the size of bitcoin, the threat is still there.
Agree, but it should be phased out when the network is strong enough to survive. Actually it is also a security risk with checkpoints since the network won’t grow as fast if people don’t think it is decentralized. At some point in time the risk of 51% attack gets smaller than the risk of stagnant adoption of the coin. At this point in time we should phase out checkpoints.
The problem with this is that you don’t really need a consensus. If you controll over 50% of the nodes you can decide whatever you want. It should not be necessary to trust any of the core devs. The code should speak for itself.
Yes. Attacks happen and are successful on some POW coins, but I still have not heard about it happen to a POS coin. I once again urge you to think about the risk that Peercoin won’t be accepted by a large community as long as it is not trully decentralized in the form of no checkpoints.
You have to weigh the risk against benefit. What’s the meaning of truly decentralized? Why do bitcoin use hard checkpoint in source code? So there is an argument to be made that bitcoin isn’t truly decentralized.
When checkpoint feature is disabled by default, the level of decentralization is not all that different from bitcoin. Instead of the devs asking everyone to upgrade client, the devs ask everyone to turn on checkpoint enforcement.
[quote=“Sunny King, post:8, topic:2614”]You have to weigh the risk against benefit. What’s the meaning of truly decentralized? Why do bitcoin use hard checkpoint in source code? So there is an argument to be made that bitcoin isn’t truly decentralized.
When checkpoint feature is disabled by default, the level of decentralization is not all that different from bitcoin. Instead of the devs asking everyone to upgrade client, the devs ask everyone to turn on checkpoint enforcement.[/quote]
When the devs ask you to upgrade the client you can read through the source code and decide to run it or not. The update is also backed by the mining power of those running it.
When devs ask everyone to turn on checkpoint enforcement you don’t know what they will do. You just have to trust them to do the right thing. It is also a big problem that voting to turn on checkpoint enforcement is only backed by the percentage of nodes you hold. It is easy to throw up some nodes.
Yes. Attacks happen and are successful on some POW coins, but I still have not heard about it happen to a POS coin. I once again urge you to think about the risk that Peercoin won’t be accepted by a large community as long as it is not trully decentralized in the form of no checkpoints.[/quote]
51% POS attack doesn’t have to take 51% of all Peercoins, of which only ~10% are taking part in minting currently. Sunny is totally right to concentrate on the icebergs a couple miles ahead than how deck chairs are arranged. I am unimpressed by the decentralized state of bitcoin in light of the ghash.io saga. True decentralization is a long way to go for the entire crytpocurrency community.
It is alot easier to get 51% of the mining power in FTC than it is to build up the coin age you need for an attack on PPC. Removal of checkpoint enforcement is not a deck chair. It is vital to grow the network. We have alot of POS coins on our tail and the ones without checkpointing will grow faster and surpass us if we don’t follow suit. I just point out that the iceberg ahead might not be a direct attack on PPC, but rather that we lose the competition as the dominant POS coin in the market.
It is alot easier to get 51% of the mining power in FTC than it is to build up the coin age you need for an attack on PPC.[/quote]
I don’t know. One of the exchanges has already been finding 6 blocks in a roll every 6 months, on average. If they were ghash.io, they’d try double spending. Maybe they’ve already done it but no one else has found out.
We have alot of POS coins on our tail and the ones without checkpointing will grow faster and surpass us if we don't follow suit.
It’s my prediction that some of the ~50 new POS coins will get 51% POS attack soon. We have to keep a step ahead of them by improving Peercoin POS system so that in such event we can say, “We are different.”
It is alot easier to get 51% of the mining power in FTC than it is to build up the coin age you need for an attack on PPC. Removal of checkpoint enforcement is not a deck chair. It is vital to grow the network. We have alot of POS coins on our tail and the ones without checkpointing will grow faster and surpass us if we don’t follow suit. I just point out that the iceberg ahead might not be a direct attack on PPC, but rather that we lose the competition as the dominant POS coin in the market.[/quote]
I agree with this: “I just point out that the iceberg ahead might not be a direct attack on PPC, but rather that we lose the competition as the dominant POS coin in the market.”
Because, as I understand it, people are nervous about committing serious funds to a coin which depends on one person or party of people for its security.
We are dependent on banks, but we know who they are, and can get legal redress. Crypto, however, is anonymous
For PPC and other cryptos to to be widely accepted, they must be freestanding of control by individuals, for people to trust and adopt them
People accept checkpointing when a coin is in its infancy and can easily be successfully attacked. When the coin has matured and is very safe, people don’t accept it due to the centralization it brings. Personally I invested in PPC because I believe in POS and I was sure that checkpointing would be phased out over time. Since PPC is very safe without checkpointing today, I fear that people will hold back on investing in PPC until checkpointing is removed.
People accept checkpointing when a coin is in its infancy and can easily be successfully attacked. When the coin has matured and is very safe, people don’t accept it due to the centralization it brings. Personally I invested in PPC because I believe in POS and I was sure that checkpointing would be phased out over time. Since PPC is very safe without checkpointing today, I fear that people will hold back on investing in PPC until checkpointing is removed.[/quote]
I think your are right. For PPC to be taken very seriously, the checkpointing has to be removed in the future. I hope Sunny could understand this.
ok, thanks i understand. the thing is that since cryptocoins are mainly software, there is always the need for an
experienced dev team to support and maintain it.
although this is not considered centralization due to the open source of the software. but in any case i am trusting the coin’s
dev team and the ways it chooses to make the coin safe.
even if the checkpointing is stopped, i will still have to trust the dev team that they are doing a good job to secure
the coin. this makes the coin non-trustless.
you see my point here, i cannot name a coin decentralized if it isn’t trustless or you thing they are different aspects of a coin?