xor [ARCHIVE] / is on Nostr

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🗓️ Active from 2014-06-03 to 2015-12-09
💬 Posted a total of 16 messages
📚 Participated in the following categories: Bitcoin-development, bitcoin-dev
🔇 Please do not DM this user as it's used for archive purposes only.

Last Notes

2023-06-07 19:44:50

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📅 Original date posted:2015-11-13
📝 Original message:BIP65 [1] says this:
> Motivation
> [...]
> However, the nLockTime field can't prove that it is impossible to spend a
> transaction output until some time in the future, as there is no way to
> know if a valid signature for a different transaction spending that output
> has been created.
I'd interpret "can't prove that it is impossible to spend" = cannot be used
for freezing funds.
Then later, at "Motivation", it says:
> Freezing Funds
>
> In addition to using cold storage, hardware wallets, and P2SH multisig
> outputs to control funds, now funds can be frozen in UTXOs directly on the
> blockchain.
This clearly says that funds can be frozen.
Can the BIP65-thing be used to freeze funds or can it not be?
Notice: I am by no means someone who is able to read Bitcoin script. I'm
rather an end user. So maybe I'm misinterpreting the document?
I'm nevertheless trying to provide a "neutral" review from an outsider who's
trying to understand whats new in 0.11.2.
You may want to discard my opinion if you think that BIP65 is aimed at an
audience with more experience.
Greetings and thanks for your work!
[1]
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/d0cab0379aa50cdf4a9d1ab9e29c3366034ad77f/bip-0065.mediawiki
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2023-06-07 19:44:50

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📅 Original date posted:2015-11-13
📝 Original message:On Friday, November 13, 2015 09:53:57 PM Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> The first text is explaining nlocktime without BIP65 in order to
> explain the reason for having BIP65.
Thanks. I would recommend changing the BIP65 to clarify what you just said,
this clearly is the missing piece of information there.
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2023-06-07 17:37:10

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-10
📝 Original message:http://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don%E2%80%99t-download-software-from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/
TL;DR:
> In 2013, GIMP’s developers pulled the GIMP Windows downloads from
> SourceForge. SourceForge was full of misleading advertisements
> masquerading as “Download” buttons — something that’s a problem all over
> the web.
[...]
> In 2015, SourceForge pushed back. Considering the old GIMP account on
> SourceForge “abandoned,” they took control over it, locking out the
> original maintainer. They then put GIMP downloads back up on SourceForge,
> wrapped in SourceForge’s own junkware-filled installer.
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2023-06-07 17:29:24

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📅 Original date posted:2015-02-01
📝 Original message:Why is that?
Also, is it correct that there wasn't a release candidate before the release?
Sounds dangerous to me.
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2023-06-07 17:26:32

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📅 Original date posted:2014-10-19
📝 Original message:On Wednesday, October 15, 2014 10:29:43 AM Wladimir wrote:
> B) I also think it makes sense to move the BIP discussion (both about
> the BIP process and individual BIPs) to a separate mailing list.
>
> bitcoin-development currently has a dual function: discussion of
> Bitcoin Core implementation concerns, as well as global changes to
> Bitcoin (in the form of BIPs).
>
> This makes the list too busy for some people, but it is critical that
> everyone writing a Bitcoin node or client is up-to-date with proposals
> and can comment on them.
I joined the list when Bitcoin was already in the 10-billions of market
capitalization, and it actually really surprised me how low the traffic is here
given the importance of Bitcoin.
So as a random stranger to the project, I would vote against that if I was
allowed to. There really should be *more* discussion here, and splitting the
list up won't help with that.
Greetings
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2023-06-07 17:26:20

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📅 Original date posted:2014-10-10
📝 Original message:Hey folks,
FYI the issue is that Luke-Jr wants to include code which can censor stuff like
SatoshiDice transactions because he thinks they are denial of service:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=524512
While everyone is jumping on the neutrality Bitcoin should have, you're
forgetting that there are also *legal* implications:
The *technical ability'* to filter certain types of network traffic can cause you
to be legally liable to *USE* it to filter illegal stuff.
So even if the filter code is disabled by default, it can put Bitcoin users in
legal danger: Law enforcement can try to force them to use it.
This for sure depends on the country you are living in, but in general I think
it can be agreed that it will be a lot easier to defend a "my node relays
everything uncensored" policy against law enforcement if you wouldn't even
have the technical ability to filter stuff because the code just cannot do it
anyway.
So please do not even include this code as disabled, and if possible do not
even write or publish it :)
Also, as I don't have a Gentoo bugtracker account, can someone please add this
comment there?
Thanks & Gretings,
xor - a developer of https://freenetproject.org/
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2023-06-07 17:25:30

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📅 Original date posted:2014-08-22
📝 Original message:On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 08:02:37 AM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> It would be nice if the issues and git repo for Bitcoin Core were not
> on such a centralized service as github, nice and convenient as it is.
Assuming there is a problem with that usually is caused by using Git the wrong
way or not knowing its capabilities. Nobody can modify / insert a commit
before a GnuPG signed commit / tag without breaking the signature.
More detail at the bottom at [1], I am sparing you this here because I suspect
you already know it and there is something more important I want to stress:
Bitcoin has currently 4132 forks on Github. This means that you can get
contributions by pull requests from 4132 developers. That is a HUGE amount,
and you shouldn't ditch that due to not using all features of git :)
To get a grasp of how much that is: When you search projects with more than
4100 forks, there are only 32 of them!
You are one of the top open source projects, and you should be grateful for
that and keep Github up so the other people can send you pull requests with
their improvements :) Volunteer contributions need to be honored and made as
easy as possible, for people are investing their personal time.
Greetings and thanks for your work,
xor, one developer of https://freenetproject.org
[1] If you GPG-sign a commit / tag, you sign its hash, including the hash of
the previous commit. So is a chain of hashes and thus of trust from all
commits up to what is signed. It's pretty similar to the blockchain actually
:)
So Github cannot modify anything. If they did, the head of the hash-chain
would change, and thus the signature would break. Git would notify people
about that when they pull.
Of course people can still ignore that warning and let Github rewrite their
Git history. But people who aren't educated about this shouldn't be release
managers. They should not even have push access to your main repository, they
should only be sending pull requests. Thats is where the decentralization of
Git is: In the pull-requests. The people who deal with them should verify tag
and possibly even commit signatures carefully, and not accept anything which
is not signed. Also, before deploying a binary, the very same commit which is
going to become a binary has to be given a signed tag by the release manager,
and by everyone who reviews the code. The person who deploys the actual binary
needs to verify that signature.
There is an article which elaborates on some of the ways you have to ensure
Github doesn't insert malicious code - but please read it with care, some of
its recommendations are bad, especially the part where its about rebasing
because that DOES rewrite history which is what you want to prevent:
http://mikegerwitz.com/papers/git-horror-story
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2023-06-07 17:25:24

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📅 Original date posted:2014-08-23
📝 Original message:On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 07:40:39 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Encryption is of little value if you may deduce the same information
> by observing packet sizes and timings.
Instead of spawning a discussion whether this aspect is a reason to NOT
encrypt, you should do the obvious:
Fix that as well. X being broken is not a reason for not fixing Y.
Pad the then encrypted packets with random bytes. The fact that they are
encrypted makes them look like random data already, so the padding will not be
distinguishable from the rest.
Also, add some random bias to their timing.
And besides: It would be nice if everyone could acknowledge that making
Bitcoin as anonymous as possible is a natural desire. People demanding you to
do this is bound to happen over and over again until you do it :) So just get
on with it instead of postponing it due to doubts.
There is Tor, there is Freenet, and there are other anonymous P2P networks,
and they can help you do get it done - the said problems have been well-known
there for quite some time and people have thought about how to solve them.
Greetings,
xor, a developer of https://freenetproject.org
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2023-06-07 17:24:52

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📅 Original date posted:2014-08-07
📝 Original message:On Thursday, August 07, 2014 12:22:31 AM Tim Ruffing wrote:
> - Decentralization / no third party:
> There is no (trusted or untrusted) third party in a run of the protocol.
> (Still, as in all mixing solutions, users need some way to gather together
> before they can run the protocol. This can be done via a P2P protocol if a
> decentralized solution is desired also for this step.)
[...]
> http://crypsys.mmci.uni-saarland.de/projects/CoinShuffle/ for a technical
> overview.
I think the description at your website leaves out the truly interesting part:
How do you decentralize this securely?
- How do Alice, Bob, Charlie and Dave communicate, i.e. which network is used
for communication and how?
- How does Alice know that Bob, Charlie and Dave are not the same person?
(= how do you prevent a Sybil attack?)
Because thats the real problem with mixing it seems - ensuring that your
mixing partners are actually 100 people and not just 1 attacker. There are
probably many mixing algorithms which work if you solve that problem, but I
don't see how you offer a solution for it :(
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2023-06-07 17:22:37

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📅 Original date posted:2014-06-13
📝 Original message:-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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On Friday, June 13, 2014 12:18:37 PM Wladimir wrote:
> If I do not hear anything, I will do a
> last-minute language import
High risk projects as Bitcoin should NOT see ANY changes between release
candidates and releases.
You can cause severe havoc with ANY changes. Humans make mistakes!
Please do not do such things!
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2023-06-07 17:22:13

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📅 Original date posted:2014-06-03
📝 Original message:-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Hi,
I thought a lot about the worst case scenario of SHA256d being broken in a way
which could be abused to
A) reduce the work of mining a block by some significant amount
B) reduce the work of mining a block to zero, i.e. allow instant mining.
Bitcoin needs to be prepared for this as any hash function has a limited
lifetime. Usually crypto stuff is not completely broken instantly by new
attacks but gradually. For example first the attack difficulty is reduced from
2^128 to 2^100, then 2^64, etc.
This would make scenario A more likely.
Now while B sounds more dangerous, I think in fact A is:
Consider how A would happen in real life: Someone publishes a paper of a
theoretical reduction of SHA256d attacks to 2^96 bit. Mathematicians will
consider this as a serious attack and create a lot of riot.
If no plan is made early enough, as in now, the Bitcoin Core team might then
probably want to just do the easiest approach of replacing the hash function
after a certain block number, i.e. a hard fork.
But what about the Bitcoin miners, those who need to actually accept a change
of mining algorithm which renders their hardware which cost MILLIONS
completely worthless?
Over the years they have gotten used to exponential growth of the Bitcoin
networks hashrate, and therefore exponential devaluation of their mining
hardware. Even if the attack on SHA256d causes a significant growth of
difficulty, the miners will not *believe* that it is an actual attack on SHA256d
- - maybe it is just some new large mining operation? They are used to this
happening! Why should they believe this and switch to a new hash function
which requires completely new hardware and therefore costs them millions?
They will just keep mining SHA256d. Thats why this is more dangerous, because
changing the hash funciton won't be accepted by the miners even though it is
broken.
Something smarter needs to be thought of.
Now I must admit that I am not good at cryptography at all, but I had the
following idea: Use the altcoin concept of having multiple hash functions in a
chain. If SHA256d is broken, it is chained with a new hash function.
Thereby, people who want to mine the new replacement hash function still will
need ASICs which can solve the old SHA proof of work. So existing ASIC owners
can amend their code to do SHA256d using the ASIC, and then the second hash
function using a general purpose CPU.
This would also allow a smooth migration of difficulty - I don't even know how
difficulty would react with the naive approach of just replacing SHA with
something else: It would probably be an unsolvable problem to define new rules
to make it decrease enough so new blocks can actually be mined by the now
several orders of magnitude slower CPU-only mining community but still be high
enough to be able to deal with the fact that millions of people will try their
luck with mining at the release date.
While this sounds simple in theory, it might be a lot of work to implement, so
you guys might want to take precautions for it soon :)
Greetings,
xor - A Freenet project developer
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