On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 05:45:13AM -0500, fred concklin wrote:
from https://github.com/wetube/bitcloud/blob/master/bitcloud.org#protected-routin... —proof-of-bandwidth "Basically, the law is applied by judging (checking) that every node and client is doing the work as it should, so, when asked, it should answer with the truth of what is asked. If it is found that the node or client is lying, it is penalized or banned, and its transactions rejected are not included in the blockchain.
Laws are written in the source code in the form of *generics* and the corresponding *methods*. A *method* is a specific application of a *generic*. For example, for the *generic* of the Law of Bandwidth there are going to be several *methods* for judging nodes, users and publishers."
----------------
It all breaks down there. You can attack by polluting the network with nodes that share no bandwidth but report fraudulent bandwidth statistics of honest nodes. Moreover, fraudulent node collections can overreport their bandwidth capabilities, thus funneling all traffic into chokepoints. You can disrupt the network as well as build attacker controlled majority routes for traffic analysis and subsequent deanonymization of hidden service protocols and/or onion routing. They are describing a MIX network but they've removed the routing properties of an effective MIX network with their prioritization of nodes (thus partitioning traffic heavily in a nonuniform manner as it passes through the MIX). If they are not mixing and instead onion routing they sacrifice the beneficial property of onion routes being difficult for an adversary to observe by performing route selection in a geospatially indiscriminate manner.
I'm convinced (for the moment) that the anonymity cost is going to kill the project. For http://minco.me (which I wrote in a fit of political speech), I came to the conclusion that there must be some sort of 'local authority' as a 'method' to evaluate human-usable proof-of-work, and this would have to utilize the pre-existing legal and court infrastructure. If you can sue the operator of a node fraudulently collecting 'proof of bandwidth' rewards for theft, it might work. However, in a global network with no clear idea where (or who) the node operators are, it's going to take a lot more human mathematical and crypto work to prove bandwidth. All that being said, I'm encouraged that there is wild-eyed optimism and excitement about what's possible, so between my pet project for per-packet micropayments (I might as well call it IPv7), and bitcloud, we might collective make enough mistakes to learn how to make it happen.