I think the problem of sybil participants is not that they stall the process, but that they enter the anonset with lots of UTXOs, manage to include several of their UTXOs in each coinjoin, and then trivially trace the other participants who coinjoin with several of their UTXOs.
reply
oh, I didn't realize that
oops
reply
On the other hand it's not clear to me how (or even if?) Whirlpool and Wasabi were able to mitigate this threat.
Fidelity bonds arbitrarily raise the cost to be a sybil attacker (e.g. you need to cough up and provably freeze for some time 4X more BTC than you want to coinjoin, for instance).
reply
Whirlpool was extremely easy to Sybil attack since the attack victims pay the mining fees to move the coins of attackers.
Wasabi's coinjoins require users to pay for their own block space, which aligns incentives to defend against attackers passively spying on rounds for free.
reply
Emessbee also requires users to pay for their own block space. The mining fee is calculated after all change addresses are submitted, then divided up equally among all participants, and deducted from the amount that would otherwise go to users as change
reply
Kicking trolls is avoiding DoS attacks but sybil attacks are different in which attackers will participate in each round to deanonymize others.
reply
oh
oops
reply
Funny how people blindly zap you, even though you didn't address the mentioned issue.
reply
perhaps they appreciate the information about the kickout protocol even though it addresses something else
I talked with some folks about sybil resistance after making that post and it looks like the two main sybil resistance methods are:
- ensure every coinjoin costs a high fee so that sybils bankrupt themselves by joining it with multiple fake accounts
- make each coinjoiner prove they deposited 4x the coinjoin amount into a timelocked bitcoin address that they get back after a year, ensuring that sybils don't have enough money to make lots of fake accounts
Of the two models I think the first one is easier to implement (I can just increase the mining fee parameter) but I prefer the second option
reply
The Kickout Protocol (not yet implemented in Emessbee)
Kicking trolls out of Round 1
Kicking trolls out of Round 2
Kicking trolls out of Round 3
Conclusion