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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @fourrules 8 Sep \ parent \ on: Murch and Chris have a conversation - What is Going on Here??? bitcoin
So why haven't they done it?
The answer is that unless Bitcoin Core changes default policies this sybil attack would be expensive and ineffective. If Bitcoin Core decides that the policy level is irrelevant to consensus then it's a trivial attack
I think the capital gains taxes rules are having their intended effect - they are keeping people from accepting Bitcoin especially on the business side. The tax compliance is too difficult.
Beyond that I think some of the runes/ordinals didn't "start out" as a government attack... but it represents more or less how I would attack the network.
The best government attack is one where the government pays miners to mine junk that keeps the hashrate high, blocks full, but bloats the UTXO set...
Or where the government directly bloats the UTXO set with OR without the arbitrary data component - the growth in UTXO set is actually what harms nodes from what I understand.
Eventually it makes nodes harder to run and with fewer nodes and more expensive hardware eventually the network will be starved of fee pressure, miner revenue, privacy, and a manageable UTXO set.
Then it just kind of... collapses or at best/worst is nerfed relative to central banks and the money printer which is the whole point anyway.
That's the approach I would take if I were government.
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They haven't done it because the defense doesn't work?
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What's to keep a government from spooling up their OWN nodes, and lots of them in a cloud with their own relay policies that start to censor certain kinds of transactions?
You ask:
So why haven't they done it?
I answer: because they recognize that doing it wouldn't achieve anything, because filters do not prevent transactions from getting mined on a censorship resistant network.
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Because doing so wouldn't implicate existing nodes in the propagation of CSAM. Changing the default policies in Bitcoin Core would implicate nodes in CSAM propagation. Bitcoin Core is so synonymous with Bitcoin that if it is corrupted in this way then not even Knots users could cleanse themselves of me taint associated with the Core users, including most of the miners, relaying such transactions.
The sybil attack you're describing simply isn't worth to effort, it would defeat itself. They need us to stab ourselves in the eye and you are willing entertain the idea for them.
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