There is an incoming improvement on XOR Distance that ensures the network is sybil resistant. This is a simple, but powerful mechanism. Basically it’s what I have noted below.
In addition though I have 2 more issues
- Node size needs to be much larger, 20-50Gb
- We need to get rid of logs altogether. (replace with a metrics type API for those that are interested, @Shu has neat work there).
To me logs are purely a debug tool, they consume cpu, cause data bloat and are a terrible way to monitor things. They are unnatural and inefficient. Folk love them, I hate them in production.
Anyway, summation of XOR distance fix is below:
In a decentralised network based on kademlia we have an issue with Sybil nodes. To overcome the effect of such nodes giving bad data we use verifiable data or indeed unique signed data. The latter being either mutable and crdt base or is mutable signed and unique. The latter type being the issue. Let’s call this type transactions.
We introduce a distance metric to ensure Sybil injected nodes cannot present doublespend type transactions as the distance measure must include honest nodes that will transmit the other transaction meaning the malicious injected transaction is not unique and therefore provably bad. The way this metric works is that we analyse each GetNode or GetClosestAddress and check the distance of the close group. We then take the average of the last 100 calls and use that distance to get all nodes within that distance to an address. This means injected nodes cannot take over an address space at the expense of honest nodes as the honest nodes are contained in the returned nodes from such network calls.