Digipl's battle. Read the assault and help provide clarity. Call to arms!

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This is what our brother @digipl has had to contend with on the www.burbuja.info forum.

As you will see, while their concerns are valid, it quickly degenerates to uninformed berating.

I have translated posts of those on the forum/thread who presented the greatest levels of contempt for the project and it’s founder. I included others like our friend digipl to provide proper context. I have retained most of the format and emoji’s to give a better sense of the the underlying sentiment of the participants.

I look forward to the day we can shut this all down.

History repeats itself. The small minded naysayers heckle and moan then fall on their face when the “impossible” emerges. The beauty is that SAFE will be the facilitator of open minds. The very thing its father isn’t given the benefit of by these onlookers. Take a gander. Tell me what you see…

A link to the discussion:

The following are excerpts with minor adjustments to the translations for accuracy. My Spanish isn’t the best but I applied what I know.

—In proper sequence—

digipl:

I mean. you are unable to read or understand, the two papers I have pointed ​​you to and now you come here to pontificate on the network. And yes, there is a patent, assigned to a foundation, and everything is now as GPL3 or it is free if your software is also free. If what you want is make money from the work of others, you will have to pay the foundation. A thing anyone would know had they bothered to minimally research. Another example of your absolute ignorance. And here what smells really bad is that the two largest bitcoin speculators of the forum giving me a pain in the ass about something they do not understand and do not believe. Have you come to tell us that this is a Ponzi scheme? Or that has no foundation? Or you need to find new suckers for the wheel turn? pathetic …

Sr.Mojón

(burbuja member):

Here a good thread on Reddit with clear, direct and concise questions about MaidSafe and see the usual responses of Irvine "… will soon a paper with simulated attacks … … Sybil attacks will be controlled by chains consensus … " Behold the perlite for those who want to enjoy: MaidSafe is creating a new decentralized Internet - Ask Us Anything! : Futuristparty

This response is the one that can best show what kind of guy this is:

—Quoting David —

There is some attacks on system start and there is a paper That is promised this week on Carried out by Strathclyde attacks uni. If you watch you will see These docs as well That. The Dev wiki Explains a lot of the Implementation Which will help Home · maidsafe-archive / MaidSafe Wiki · GitHub Sybil attacks though, Perhaps the largest threat are handled by consensus chains (take birthday paradox and make it unavailable to target a day, then a link Those days deterministically based on message types and network location) There is no way to condense it all down though. We did have some community folks over to spend two weeks on attack vectors as well as research projects Several. So there is a ton of info on how we get around these. In fact there is a repo simulations on our github account you can see some of this. I think the WWRF paper will be a great start.

—End Quote—

There you have two paragraphs that say nothing, do not clarify anything and leaves it all to future papers, simulations with conditions that then will not correspond with reality (like the software that has been released now), etc.

The author of the thread then goes directly after:

Are you using an existing Kademlia Implementation? Are you making any attempt at reduction in kademlia routing latency? (If not, average latency is lg (n) * mean_internode_latency) This would open Also you to latency-inducing attacks by adding large numbers of (honest, non-detecting) With high latencies nodes. (This raises n and mean_latency)

To which Irvine returns to hook up the blanket to his head and leave the ring with a splendid:

Yes and no :slight_smile: I typed up here an explanation to show what we did and Kademlia With Could not get it good enough. . We still use the concepts of K buckets but managed With reliable UDP connections (RT always connected nodes) Resilience - Autonomous network | SystemDocs will expain it a bit better (I hope). The docs are very much WIP right now. We have too many and are trying to centralize These here

Don’t you just love him? The answer of the seller of Hair Growth formula: “(Yes and no longer be explained later (I hope)”.

Literally.

And for the record that this is all a year ago, when people were already getting impatient by the state of development of the project.

After that he spontaneously takes over the discussion ( I imagine that seeing how ridiculous Irvine he looked) and gives some more coherent responses and recognize the stagnation of development in precisely those trouble spots:

Heres an answer from my own research ( not employee so i may be wrong). Space scaling, Maidsafe claim That They Will Be able to use deduplication to reduce the storage space required by an Estimated 70%. (Seems too optimistic in my opinion) They are starting off by using four copies of each piece of data (k = 4) , Although there is the Possibility for experimentation With This value. Inevitably, some small percentage of data will be lost With an unmaintained and sporadic Such network. Caching is supposedly maintained by nodes When retrieving data. Nodes measure the reliability of other nodes by monitoring Their actions and bits of data to

Requesting They Have Been check stored correctly. ( How this is done in practice is unclear ) As far as I know, Maidsafe has not update mechanism, new data is uploaded and old data is deleted. Maidsafe Essentially use Kademlia but With added on structures to help Deal with single Sybil attacks and unresponsive nodes. Maidsafe is vulnerable to large scale attacks Sybil Which Could cause network instability, DoS and economic disruption if the system is used overlaid coin, this is a critical problem Which can not be solved Easily. Nodes monitor each other to deal with defective nodes . Network messages are digitally signed but not encrypted, only data is encrypted and the key for decryption is retained by the end user (in the form of a password and security token) Maidsafe is not anonymous. At Least not in Its current form. It still use IP routing using UDP. Metadata collection is definitely possible, but there are ways around this : such as Requesting Which files you do not own and can not decrypt just to confuse onlookers. All files can be Requested They will all be but HENCE encrypted and useless.

Yes, the code will have changed after a year, there will be more developers, etc, but there have Irvine’s responses in police court long after the money from the IPO has been taken. Nobody explains anything until you jump spontaneously into the ring and throw some clarity. Well, a year later , here we are, trying to solve the same doubts thet existed then. EDIT: Here are more questions that users asked in the same thread and responses, this time, Nick Lambert, one of the leading developers of the “project”. Read:

—Reddit —

Username: ItsAConspiracy - 1 year ago

_From what I’ve seen, SAFE claims to solve the double spending problem without sending all transactions to all nodes, Which would be a huge breakthrough. _

_But there does not seem to be a clear paper Describing how it does this , just sorta vague discussion threads with fragmented descriptions of a lot of complicated stuff that’s still being worked out. ? When will there be a paper _

Can you describe Basically how it works here?

Username: NickLambert - 1 year ago

Hi, yes check out the following paper and if you go to section 3 of the appendix it Explains the transfer process. There is quite a lot of Past discussions in our forum. In essense, safecoin can only exist Within the SAFE network and is atomic, what I mean by this is That the transfer of ownership happens in one operation. I hope this info Helps!

Username: ItsAConspiracy - 1 year ago

_Hmm, I’m finding That unconvincing. _

_Suppose the 2.II request to TransactionManager fails, after debiting A’s wallet? Suppose TM’s notification to B’s Maid Manager group fails? Or B’s 4 - i acknowledgment fails? _

How exactly are these services Assigned to nodes, in a way That Prevents them being taken over by attackers? The exact algorithms are not described. (Sr.Majon: Good ​​God, he just discovered the bullshit )

(Already Looked through the forums, HENCE my comment above.)

Username: NickLambert - 1 year ago

We Have started work on Within our System documentation better Docs. These are a work in progress , pretty early stage, so please excuse grammatical errors and typos. We Have started to document and analyze attacks and the autonomous network section observe Who the transaction services are Assigned to nodes.

The algorithms are still being worked on (Sr.Majon: We have them , but nooot todaaay, tomoroooow) and it is faster for us to code them and get . the network up and running than it is for us to document them first We will go back and do This Once the network is Launched though. (Sr.Majon: As you all say, do not be impatient )

Username: ItsAConspiracy - 1 year ago

Honestly it does not seem like the kind of problem That can be solved correctly by Quickly hacking out some code. (Sr.Majon: Stop lying and beating around the bush, **** ya) It’s the kind of problem that’s solved by careful analysis and proofs, before coding even Begins. (Sr.Majon: to which I would add in English “lifelong whore of God”)

Username: NickLambert - 1 year ago

Hopefully 8 years qualifies as careful consideration (Sr.Majon: we took eight years with this, so do not come here to ask us for papers or tests, or anything, man of God) How about you jump onto our dev mailing list and our forum ( SAFE Network Forum ) These are the types of things That are Discussed there and it sounds like we might benefit from your Involvement. (Sr.Majon: Get out of here immediately, that we are seeing many people and we do not ride the shtick)

END OF SR. MAJON FIRST POST IN SEQUENCE

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Sr.Mojón

(burbuja member):

And now this blog, which briefly explains more about MaidSafe: Consensus Without a Blockchain | MaidSafe And where, in the comments, Vitalik Buterin (ethereum developer ) throws volleys of hits at D. Irvine:

Vitalik Buterin:

Thanks for the explanation, I’ve been looking for a clear description of Maidsafe consensus for a while and this answers it nicely So, two questions That Were not answered here: 1. What incentivizes nodes to Participate honestly? 2. What is the backup / failsafe procedure in the event of a successful collusion on to safecoin? Particularly, if 28 of 32 nodes collude in order to sign off on an infinite number of double Spends, Then What stops the hyperinflation from getting out of hand before it can somehow be detected and stopped? The particularly nasty attack vector here Is That Evil Malicious Mallory writes a patch Which, During every round consensus, (i) broadcasts a message to the other co-participants in the consensus group Stating "hey, I am evil. What about you? “, And (ii) if it finds 27 other” evil "participants, colludes to hyperinflate the safecoin or do whatever nasty consensus-breaking mechanism. Mallory Then pays $ 5 for every farmer to download this patch. What is the incentive not to individually download the patch? Alternatively, We Could Have the evil behavior be Refusing to sign off on transactions, in Which case a mere 13% non-altruists can lead to a halt of the network. Or are you okay Assuming a large proportion of altruism and bribe aversion as a security assumption? (note that “bribes” in cryptoeconomics do not have to corresponden a literal bribes in the real world; They Could be an instance of the government Applying regulatory pressure to coerce large farms to act in Certain ways, or Applying pressure to force software developers to add bugs, etc. Given Maidsafe’s emphasis on privacy and freedom, Such possibilities are probably something You should care about).

Buterin gives direct hit to the jaw. Irvine blanket tied to the head jumps into the ring. My comments are in this format(Sr.Majon:):

Nodes are programmed to carry out very simply predefined and measurable tasks deterministically. Not complex languages ​​or the like, in many of the This Way attack vectors are confined to what can happen in That realm. So for instance a node need not act With any ‘feeling’ altruistic or not, it need only behave as expected or be NOTED of-ranked and removed. The key is a very limited set of specific and measurable rules That must be Followed. There is no notion of honesty in These nodes only logic. This is like the ant analogy I use a lot, complex systems of Decentralised Control WHO follow very simply rules can create extremely sophisticated Communities, but the rules must be simple and measurable.

(Sr.Majon: Here we are again with whores ants. This fallacy is the worst of all. An ant is not a separate node following a few simple to cooperate with the colony instructions. This is a lie. a central node, the queen, has spent an enormous amount of energy creating each of these ants, also they are unable to behave themselves another way indicating that it is in DNA. Ants can not decide to behave dishonestly because it is not written in their DNA and neither do they perform a proof of work to prove to their peers who are honest. They simply recognize each other because they share DNA)

Then These can evolve over time, but truly Decentralised will mean a minimal very set of rules and extremely core algorithms and data types with a genus that is clear and concise. in the collusion attack you mention the would nodes 1: Have to Understand Mallories request (we will not be Implementing code to answer Mallory :-)) 2: not report her to her close group "Or are you okay Assuming a large proportion of altruism and bribe as a security aversion assumption ? " No! but neither would any system. If Mallory sent emails to all bitcoin miners Then yes it is a problem for bitcoin.

(Sr.Majon: This is false. You can not send emails to miners in Bitcoin because during the publication of the proof of work, that is, the new mined block the nodes of the network do not know which node has mined. so who are you going to send the email? To the node that has retransmitted you the block? to tell you that you can create 100BTC from nothing , when he actually did spend thousands of dollars in hardware? Here we have the importance of proof of work)

Here she will not know the Participants. In fact MOST users will not even know the address of Their vault or care about it. They will care Their wallet address is logged locally With the vault to make payments to.

Hope That Helps a bit Vitalik, it’s a pretty huge subject and , Although the rules are simply the number of people is large and each have Their own very confined measurable and Decentralised cryptographically secured via a PKI system type as to identification identify them properly. So its a decent amount to get though.

So Vitalik Buterin gets his checkmate:

Thanks for the reply, David.

So, in a decentralized system nodes are controlled by someone, and That someone has the Ability to download a patch Which Changes the node’s behavior. So I do agree that software defaults can place a moderately strong pressure in behalf of Certain behaviors, but ultimately from software is just there to do what the user wants and if the user really wants to perform a different behavior for Their own benefit Then They can download and install a software patch to do so.

The cryptoeconomic philosophy That I generally follow is a bit more restrictive: complex systems of decentralized monitoring can Certainly produces very outcomes beautiful, but They are only truly stable if the rules are self-enforcing - ie. . if the rules Themselves specify incentives That make it in a user’s interests to act honestly and cooperatively.

If you do not Have Such incentives, Then your only alternative is to probably go the ripple / stellar route (or something similar like http://128.199.188.22:1337/consensus.pdf ) and rely Primarily on reputation.

To which babbles Irvine:

No worries. Thanks for the response, it’s not straight forward and none of us will know the outcomes, like Steve Jobs Said you can join the dots looking backwards not forwards

(Sr.Majon: quotes him to look cool and something about fallacy of authority, as if Jobs could be regarded the authority of something) ,

I try not to spray dDT on mossies :-). In any case the nodes May be owned by somebody but not controlled .

(Sr.Majon: Lie, as Buterin already explained )

Their action are Directly managed by the network, so bad Behaviour is spotted by the WHO group manage the node and outbound requests are accumulated and deterministic signature checked. So changing the vault code will simply mean you will Have a defunct vault as it is de-ranked.

(Sr.Majon: As if he cares a **** what you just said Buterin, he continues with the same song that the network will be responsible for preventing behaviors you specified. The problem is that he never says how. Let me know you how the hell it will prevent one of the nodes convincing the remaining 31 which is connected to act maliciously , and not have a penny in hardware / safecoins invested in the system and still generate huge amounts of safecoins.)

I know your philosophy Regarding incentives and hear it a lot from others, but I disagree with it on a couple of levels (not all ). I think this is fine as I am not a game theory follower ( ) and Certainly not bought into any Nash equilibrium theories as you seem to be (closer to)

(Sr.Majon: That of game theory should be things of evil and selfish capitalists LOL. What this guy ignores is that a system of this type is only reliable if, indeed, it is based on selfishness of its actors)

and that’s Past fine. I believe you can Have a complex system That has inherent incentives as in nature

(Sr.Majon: again with whores ants)

why does the ant pick up the huge leaf, she let others Could do it and just munch away. The discussion Could take years and I still say vim emacs is better than kinda thing. Anyway the ant does it Because it knows if everyone does Their job They thrive, not through altruism but inbuilt logic .

(Sr.Majon: Bullshit The ant is nothing more than a simple tentacle of the true and important node: The Queen, Few things are more centralized. in nature that an anthill. there is no need for consensus or anything).

in Decentralised systems there are a huge number of indirect incentives : such as caching data, performing a transaction for Apparently no cost and there are Also a huge number of ways to Ensure correctness, if a node says 1 + 1 = 3 then others can tell it is rubbish (or SENDS wrong message to wrong node)

(Sr.Majon: False and more than already discussed. in open networks, where the network topology is unknown, as well as the lag in communications, reach this consensus is much more complex. Synchronizing and checkpoints are also necessary)

, if it signs Then it can be this Reported to the nodes close to it proof with or bad performance. They will de-rank As They want to survive and the node Loses out. To survive the node will not want to make mistakes and will act Such responsibly or kicked out. There are a miriad of These rules and checks happening in real time. So incentives need not always be direct and measurable Certainly not always Directly. So you May say why cache you get nothing, then a look much deeper and you whos get a lot From this apparent act of selflessness (it is whos selfish to do what is Asked of you in the network, we spend a huge time making sure of that) but it’s not Immediately Measured and the user is not Directly incentivized to do so.

(Sr.Majon: that is , altruism LOL. How many systems we know that work based on altruism?)

Then why report bad Behaviour, there is no payment and again look much deeper , the payment is survival of the species (or version of the code :-))

(Sr.Majon: again, altruism)

there are enormous going very deep into threads much of this on maidsafe.org and some papers

(Sr.Majon: run, go and look for them)

on the site etc. so you can dive very deep into the network. I recommend Eric’s lectures on the network as there are things not xor Immediately obvious in space and networks in particular. It Keeps our uni people happy writing papers on it all and the security Have we managed to Achieve it though. So please feel free to dive in, it’s hugely interesting, but very different for sure.

(Sr.Majon: Yes, and hopefully you get lost and stop asking “uncomfortable questions”)

Remonster

(in response to digipl):

Besides the type of verbiage used, I do not see what can be difficult about reading those papers. Maybe for you … We’ve taken a look above and read them, to me does not have to lack in detail to smell the stench they give off. The first is a cluster of generalities and the second is a project that is a mental straw that neither the author is sure that it can be made ​​to work. Just read this for example:

The initial response to the findings of this system are varied and range from impossible all the way to this is amazing. A point to note is That the systems Represented by this paper are at present very computationally intensive in areas, require significant bandwidth and May Appear to be unsustainable, however initial testing proves this not to be the case substantively, Although It Should Also be NOTED we are in a state of Moore’s Law growth in CPU and possibly faster than this with broadband bandwidth and hard drive Capacities. This area of growth has - been exponential over the last decade and the author is very aware That the further down a period of exponential growth then a each passing day Brings means cantly more CPU, bandwidth and disk space than the previous day did. As we are nearing the end (if there can be one) of These special exponential growth curves the daily Increase Tends towards infinity. Asked recently as part of a paper submission if the maidsafe network was sentient, That author replied, it self heals, grows , can segment, Calculates what to do at any point in time in any area by the actions of many nodes current status and is capable of Protecting itself, this is a question for the reader to decides upon.

It is clear that the paper does not describe how the problem of generals Nakamoto resolved, and contains many disturbing things. First, why is not there a brief paper describing the protocol simple and self - contained way? Second, why such a fundamental contribution is not published in one of the best computer magazines?

Other things that draw attention, apart from the “pirao” style of the author, is to put your references (pretty little academic) at the end of the article. I’ve never seen it in any serious article. Other things is that in the “more technical” item were sold the bike at the end with all possible applications …

Go … you will think that we are ignorant, but I think you’re a bit naive to put money in something like that. …

stupidcache:

The IPO was totally outrageous Forbes Welcome

Then I watched as they redesign the site when there was much overdue work and to top it off they had removed the roadmap to put one “better”.

Here I complain about this Roadmap explanation - beginners - SAFE Network Forum

Immediately after the subject of the roadmap I began to investigate and came to the same conclusion that mr.mojon (not agree on virtually nothing remonster the contrary). The conclusion is that they were not in the right condition to go to the ipo if the answers given just a year ago.

And add more, they were not able to go to promise the network output for December 2014 Keiser report, and even so they still did. They are not serious. I have disinvested. PS: using as MaidSafeCoin initials MSC mastercoin reminds me, if those were his initials. You call them otherwise.

TheRedHawk

(burbuja member):

Lads, I have to say that I have convinced. I have been a fan MaidSafe for two weeks, but the last comment by Sr. Mojon, with comments in red, has caught me completely. Let us be objective: the elusive developer response to technical challenge which you are asking. Conclusion: He has no ****** idea how to solve it . This is something you see in any job, any job that someone does not know how to solve internally, but when asked about it gives long answers. Talking much but saying little. Smoke and more smoke. Really, I think you are right to oppose MaidSafe. I join in your stance. Regards, TRH

stupidcache:

Not to mention his other “accident” would not have to smoke all mastercoins. Extra MAID generated from the crowdsale - safecoin - SAFE Network Forum They generated more maidsafecoines violating the terms of the IPO. Only at my request and they showed that several more have moved but never dared to violate the terms of the IPO x2

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Remonster

(burbuja member):

Do not give me the expert, that 's you. I do not need to get into the details. I have enough experience to detect fakes as academic Irvine, and the limited like you. You just try to discredit, and just do the ridiculous. No answer simple questions, such as why the “bright” Irvine contributions have not been published in prestigious computer magazines? He has had time since 10 years he has been mulling over the issue does. You’re not capable of linking to an article with the detailed description of the algorithms. Actually just read a little to know that do not exist. Just analyse some of Irvine responses to see him pulling balls out when asked for details. A whiff of the host …

Honestly I am concerned nothing can Maidsafe can do to overshadow bitcoin. But you’re worried a lot about what you’re begining to perceive … that Maidsafe is a fiasco. Actually the one that does not know shit is you, and you’ll end up realizing. From here, in two years Maidsafe will be nothing. —

This has to be a joke.

I’m going in my head.

I’ve been freaking out too

And the interview is today ??? Be responsible for communication … this is ifyou have no ****** idea what he’s saying.

Martinix

(burbuja member):

Irvine talked today about double spending, certainly in a thread where the same thread mentioned: -I wonder if someone might speak me the TLDR on how Maidsafe Prevents double-spend?

Irvine:

It’s atomic network. So you own coin Y and want to transfer to me. I ask network for coin And it says you own it. Ok We have a deal. Then you send to me and the group and see all your signed update to make me the owner. That When complete (they All have seen it) I can ask again and will be returned And as I safecoin as current owner. So cool. However, you then try to double spend. So you make a deal Also with John who does same as me. You send two messages to group Y, making me one owner and one making John owner. Group And get these very close together. Some think I own it, some think John owns it. If there is no QUORUM Then it does not accumulate and is in fact lost. the hacker losses and rightly so. So spend double the results in loss of Attempt That coin, but at no time did John or I even think we owned it. Hope That helps.

Source: What is our solution to the byzantine generals problem? - Development - SAFE Network Forum

remonster:

Good example of the level of accuracy of Irvine.

Why call And the coin and the group at the same time?

If there is no quorum the coin is destroyed … how is that “quorum” established? (remonster: that is the problem of the general!)

How to prevent a sabotage group transactions?

What is the timing and the timing of the whole process? What if certain network nodes are not “available” for technical reasons ( “they All have seen it”)? When I can go back to spend the coin received? How long I have to wait on average?

And remember that safecoins not exist … there are many cryptos and you invest in one for which there is only colored coins simulation! So cool … !!!

javi618

(burbuja member):

Remonster, it is clear that those questions have Irvine cornered. Surely all questions you have are shrewd and hasn’t even gone through Irvine’s head (for what, the forum is already filled with few hundred unwary members).

I think if you go to this scoundrels forum and hit him in the face with these four, showing that all the work done in recent years he and his team have done is a scam, many followers that believe the first thing Irvine says will thank you eternally.

I tell you because it has become clear that this forum has remained small, here no one can refute your arguments. It’s time that you hit Irvine with some strong shots as Vitalik did recently and how nicely Majon “translated” it.

Really, I’m looking forward to seeing you humble Irvine on his own forum. It will be epic. ! Go for it !

Edit: I see you went by the Maidsafe forum, great! Poor Irvine, which awaits you …

remonster:

Note that although I resist wasting time with this I just did:

Is there a required reference for all this process? I understand that “reaching a QUORUM” is equivalent to solving the problem generals Which is the original The question in this thread.

(to see if it captures “the snake that bites its tail” to expose him in the last part) But I do not think that he’ll answer. Nor do I pretend that something like what he describes can not work, but certainly to know if it works we need a precise and detailed argument that is not.

—END—

Rather than attacking the obvious flaws in their arguments, I instead want to point out the benefits of avoiding too much academic review. By minimizing exposure, David dodged negative criticism of a constantly evolving idea and ensured that academia would not solidify its judgments prematurely as has often been the case with many bleeding edge concepts. Allowing him and his team to bury themselves in code. Sparing them an even greater headache than the one they have until now experienced from their peers/community.

Enough time (several years IIRC) was spent opening the minds of investors to the potential of a decentralized internet. Such is the plight of visionaries. The late Nikola Tesla is a perfect example. Many times he has designed technologies without first entirely working through the details. He took it one problem at a time until completion. Of this David reminds me. I believe I’m witnessing the output of a visionary who refuses to accept failure. Problems will be solved and goals will be achieved. I don’t think the man can tolerate anything less. :sunglasses:

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I want to make a correction. I have said that they generated maidsafecoin over the IPO number but afterall they showed those coins never was moved or used. And I added that i disagree in not burned it inmediatly because a IPO is a big deal.
I think that you missunderstood my point or something was missing during the translation.

I love the safenetwork concept but I’m strongly concern about several points and I my faith is failing me.
Regards

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I made small grammatical corrections. Google did the rest. :relaxed:

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Scary stuff. Looks like people don’t believe the double spend problem is taken care of in SAFE? I thought we already addressed this.

(Looking ahead) please @moderators DON’T delete this.

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Wow, actually just finished reading all of it.

It seems like the major concern here is that the main achievements of the network are not properly documented yet, which worries people because it should be easier to write out a clear explanation than to actually code out the product, as the team opts to do.

Am I understanding the raised points correctly?

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Can we get a TL;DR on this please?

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Yes, I think that’s the main point that is arousing suspicion that the “Byzantine general” problem is not solved is an apparent lack of a clear explanation of the “quorum forming” mechanism used to solve this problem.
The other main point being contended by Vitalik and others is that there is an attack possible by way of vaults downloading a “patch” to misbehave. D Irvine’s position is that misbehaving nodes will be rejected by the Network - I think the retort to this has been that taken further, if “enough” nodes download the patch, then it becomes like a 51% attack?
The other raised issue I can see is the claim that latency will be a huge issue using “Kadmelia”(?) - the accusation is that a dodgy “workaround” or “patch” has been coddled together I think.
I’m probably one of the least technical people on here, but believe I have a reasonable grasp of where we’re up to and how these things are spposed to work (some in theory).
The question of “timing” and “consensus” keep coming up, which leads me to think that there is some misunderstanding with some detractors about this and the “atomic” nature of Safecoin.
As to those with the “killer arguments” to “humble Irvine on his own forum” …he already seems pretty humble and self effacing to me - the opposite of those who appear to want to belittle to aggrandize themselves.
Anyway…[quote=“javi618, post:3, topic:7999”]
Poor Irvine, which awaits you …
[/quote]

We’ll see…love the tone btw… can’t wait to get to know you better: :smile:

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There’s no explanation because the way that part works was never denied in the first place. I stated my thoughts on this several times, e.g. this topic:

The risk of “micro-attack” focused on your group only is independent of the size of the network and must be handled properly. It can’t be minimized or avoided by having a large network.

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Random XOR address allocation makes “micro attacks” very difficult in a large network. So I can’t agree. Other reduction or mitigation ideas are welcome. Most systems come with their caveats. I believe this one is tolerable. Even if it doesn’t immediately or consistently provide the anonymity and safecoin protection you’d prefer. For greater anonymity use Tor (to connect to SAFE). When it comes to safecoin, I’d see it as no more than a narrow use token in the short term. You win some and you lose some. Relying on them for financial security is no beueno before a perfect implementation arrives. Until then let’s enjoy a network far superior to the current incumbents. :wink:

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I followed your links, but I’m not really convinced there is any real problem - attacks seem to be pretty far fetched to me and appear to be most likely cost prohibitive. Your comments were helpful as always though:

gohan00760:
“How long can you maintain this attack? even less than the first idea cos its costing you even more than before.”

Janitor
“I’ve considered those problems and I have some ideas how they could be mitigated or worked around, but I’m not going to detail them.”

This actually leads on to the other criticism that “Game Theory” hasn’t been used to “incentivise” good behaviour. I believe that it actually has really (though not recognised as such) by dis-incentivising it financially. This attack vector also seems to be premised on nodes “knowing” their close groups which they don’t - so it would cost loads and become exponentially less effective/feasible as the Network grows…wouldn’t it?
I’m getting that the double spend is not possible due to the atomic nature of Safecoin, (which also seems to negate a lot of the “incentive” “consensus” “game theory” claims too).
I’m getting that the “Sybil” type attack is highly unlikely due to prohibitive costs and diminishing effectiveness over time.
I’m also getting that I don’t know/understand the technical details of how the “quorum” is established and maintained (and prob never will… ):smile:

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I think these people will be really surprised when the MVP goes live in a little while. It’ll be like “You mean it actually works as described? He pulled it off?”

First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.

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Seriously, I can’t ****** wait! :laughing: What kills me is that these people can attack this project so strongly without first thoroughly absorbing the details. You know they’ll find some way of justifying their derisive commentary to themselves. I’m hoping humility is the state they accept or at least consider when the time comes. But hey, few adapt quickly. We march on… :expressionless:

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Lol try debating the dangers of vaccines or GMOs with someone from the mainstream sometime. You’ll get the same kind of response. Total brainlock and conditioned denial. Of course they aren’t going to do their research. That would require them to challenge their most deeply held beliefs about the world. Whether it’s health, politics, the environment, cryptocurency, people are people and they operate pretty much the same.

Maidsafe is challenging the very foundation of what people have come to believe about the internet: servers, the blockchain, it’s breaking almost every rule imaginable and changing the whole paradigm. Of course people are going to have cognitive dissonance issues.

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My brotha blindsite, please say it again… A paradigm shift on so many levels is ahead. The wait is excruciating!! :confounded: … :tired_face: !!!

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Yes, however consider the idea from the text you pasted:

  • Create 28 patched bots. Make each join the network and broadcast their group info to the other 27.
  • Unleash them and wait.

Sooner or later, they’ll happen to for a group of 28 members of the same SAFE group

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Try it and see if you can win the hackathon.

Seriously there’s all this talk about how SAFE has all these security issues and whatever. We’re in bloody testing right now. And even after this we’ll be in BETA testing. So if you think there’s some kind of security hole then hack the bloody network! The Maidsafe team has even stated this explicitly and encouraged people to do it. There’s even talk of putting money up to ENCOURAGE people to try it so they can patch security holes. Being a whitehat hacker pays good money. You crack the system, expose the hole and help the team patch the leak. If people really believe SAFE is going to be falling apart at the seams why don’t they start lining up for the hackathon and try their hand at the winnings?

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The wait will be long and very unpredictable. Churn and random XOR assignment make this difficult. Don’t forget that XOR addresses are regularly changed for vaults. “Them” would have to be hosted by the attacker. Zombies will be harder to obtain. Direct hacks and JavaScript exploits being a narrowing window. Without cheap node acquisition, this attack becomes impractical.

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I can answer this one, if a node is unavailable then the next closest one takes it place. This decreases the “density” of the address space of the quorum. Before others accept a message as valid from another group, they check this density and compare it with the density of the part of the network that they know. Since address asignment is random this should be in roughly the same range. If it’s not dense enough it’s not considered valid. They also AFAIK send messages to surrounding nodes of the close group in question to check if the addresses are real.

I think vitalik’s second concern is the most valid one. I’d love to see better answers on that front, especially with SafeCoin implementation coming up.

His first concern about incentives is I think not a problem, because a vault will have to invest resources to become and stay a full member of a close group. Getting disconnected due to strange behaviour makes you lose that investment (just like in BTC mining, you lose your mining investment when you create a block that is invalid instead of a valid one).

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