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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @88b0c423eb OP 22 May \ parent \ on: Devil's advocate on node runners bitcoin
Hmm I see your point, and i agree one can be mostly safe with the solutions you propose, but if most average bitcoiners running nodes get blocked, those others that just use it without a node could send tx to other nodes not respecting the consensus rules, right? If that happens most likely there would be a fork as I understand, and would be a war with the state, blackrock saylor wanting the miners to follow their consensus rules....I just want to stress the worst case scenario, maybe that's not how it works.
if most average bitcoiners running nodes get blocked, those others that just use it without a node could send tx to other nodes not respecting the consensus rules
Ok, let's Assume every node on the BTC network is unreachable. However, there is now an attacker node (or many attacker nodes) which are identical to BTC except for one consensus critical difference, that makes it a shitcoin.
If I send a BTC tx to one of these new altcoin nodes, it may or may not be accepted. Depends on the degree to which these new nodes disagree with the BTC consensus and whether my tx falls within consensus of the altcoin chain.
Best case, the altcoin nodes rejects any txn that would have been valid on BTC.
Worst case, Maybe lots of people were fooled into selling their goods and services for a shitcoin. Once BTC nodes come back online and the attack ends, they realize they "lost BTC" that was paid to them during the attack. In reality, they never received any BTC, only shitcoins. Maybe these people got ripped off so hard that they want to keep using the altcoin just so they "keep their money". Meanwhile those that spent their coins during the attack, only spent shitcoin. Their BTC never changed address.
BTC still exists during the attack, it just has no nodes adding new blocks to the BTC chain or forwarding txns to miners. In the scenario you describe, every node is just blocked, but their historical data is in tact, funds are SAFU.
The source code of BTC implementations also still exists so people could compare the types of txns included in the new altcoin nodes and identify any that would be breaking consensus of BTC.
This kind of attack would be extremely obvious to everyone. Its also extremely unlikely to work since attackers need nearly every node to go offline and stay offline long enough to somehow trick wallet developers, exchanges, block explorers, miners, and other industry leaders to use their new altcoin nodes in order to trick customers who don't run their own node.
would be a war with the state, blackrock saylor wanting the miners to follow their consensus rules
IDK, these players all have significant "investments" in BTC. Seems like they have a lot to lose by trying to change consensus and being targeted as an attacker. BTC is not proof-of-stake, owning lots of the token does not give you more control over the network. If anything, it puts you at the will of the network... if every bitcoiner wanted to make saylor's stack worthless, they could just decide to make his coins unspendable. Either by refusing to relay any tx which spends his coin, or changing consensus to disallow it at the block level.
I think the best course of action in this scenario would be to just wait it out and do what you can to bring your own BTC nodes back online.
As others have said, I'm more worried about the non-obvious attacks like KYC and surveillance that manage to get exchanges, etc to do the attack on behalf of the state on their own customers and many customers comply without even seeing it as an attack.
But I like to imagine how these "obvious" disaster scenarios would play out, makes good material for a Bitcoin-themed scifi novel.
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