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Comment by teawrecks | Hacker News Reader

IMO people listing things that discourage an attack (people will hate him, his credit cards won't work, etc) are just people trying to comfort themselves. It's like saying, "No one would break into my home because they might hurt themselves breaking in, or I might hurt them up, or they might get caught by the police and go to jail. It's just too risky."

At the end of the day, Dr. Evil will gladly spend 10s of billions to destroy the network if doing so nets him 100s of billions. Stop listing reasons people won't attack the network and start listing reasons they would.

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That's not what I said. Please don't attack a straw man. My main point was, and is, that the same attack-logic applies to ANY transaction network. The example with Doctor Evil was about other transaction networks.

Why would Doctor Evil attack a block chain network when he could attack global/national/regional credit card/wire transfer/ACH networks, many of which are built upon ancient pre-Internet technology, are full of discoverable vulnerabilities and critical points-of-failure, and are operated by cash-rish financial institutions with liquid, easy-to-short stocks?

You didn’t answer the parent post. Your point was, in game theory, there’s no benefit in attacking the network or the loss is huge that it doesn’t worth the the attack. The parent post gave the counter point that there could be a benefit which we haven’t thought. If Dr Evil is heavily invested in 2 network, he might destroy one to focus on the remaining. The chance of the attack is low but it is not zero

I like this point, but (as I think you are saying as well) it’s true for POW as well, right?

Fundamentally, if there are off-chain incentives to destroy the value of a given blockchain, much of our reasoning about the game theory doesn’t hold up.

I addressed it in the first paragraph of my comment above. Let me quote from it here: The theoretical attack argument is indeed "applicable, not just to Algorand and other block chains, but also, more generally, to ANY transaction platform" -- VISA, Mastercard, Amex, ACH, Fedwire, etc. No one disagrees that it is applicable, i.e., a theoretical threat, to all transaction platforms.

Now, if you think such an attack is an important problem for block chains, then you must also think it is an important problem for all legacy transaction networks. Yet we're all comfortable using our credit cards and bank accounts every day, and for virtually all practical purposes, we don't worry about a "Doctor Evil scenario." Why should we think and behave differently for block chain networks?

Moreover, as I wrote before, in practice, legacy transaction networks (like, say, regional VISA networks run by 100-year-old banks) are easier and cheaper to attack. If the Doctor Evil scenario were a real threat, it would be more profitable for him to target one of the legacy networks!

he's a POS shill, there's no point arguing with these kinds of people. Proof of work will outlast all consensus protocols

Arguably the same thing blockchain tech got away from — a primary stakeholder with a "monopoly on violence" (i.e. a government with armed police et al). If you attack the US banking system, they will stop you in quite short order. The FBI doesn't screw around.

If you attack the blockchain, well ... uh ... the owners will ... be really unhappy with you?

Realistically you're only in trouble for doing that if you're pissing off someone else with "the means to violence". If you screw up money laundering operations for a cartel, then what you're likely looking at is acts of violence between two criminal organizations, but if one of them has the upper hand, they can basically act with impunity.

When you're looking at the "small fry" – individual people with their own bitcoin/whatever stakes? They're just fucked. It's true if someone steals your wallet, but it's also true if someone torpedoes the whole system. That's the cardinal problem with all of these blockchain technologies — by deliberately designing the whole thing to disintermediate the authorities; they accomplished exactly that: there are no authorities to deal with systemic problems.

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