

Bitcoin: Did you ever ask yourself why ... - petar

... you cannot find a single paper, published in even a semi-prestigious venue, in the academic literature?<p>You don't believe me? Go to Google Scholar and try for yourself.<p>Well. It's because Bitcoins are not at all a spectacular idea. The Bitcoin system is vulnerable to some of the most well known attack classes, in particular the Sybil Attack, which is most likely the reason why no professional algorithm designer/scientist has ever bothered writing a commentary, much less a paper, about them.
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dfgonzalez
I'm reading the definition of Sybil attack... but I do not understand how
multiple accounts per user could damage the platform. Do you mind to extend a
little your point?

Def: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack>

~~~
nbpoole
Something like this, I assume:
[http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5328668205/deepbit-50-perce...](http://www.bitcoinminer.com/post/5328668205/deepbit-50-percent-
threshold)

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wmf
I'm surprised to see you take this position. How many papers were published
about BitTorrent in the early years? Not too many that I remember. I also
disagree that Bitcoin's flaws are so obvious that it's not even worth writing
them down (and I disagree with that attitude in general, since there are many
people in the world who can't figure out obvious things for themselves).

~~~
petar
Yes, but this is not my attitude. This is the attitude of the entire Computer
_Science_ community. That's my point. No one seems to have pointed this out
before.

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jdhopeunique
David Chaum has published many papers on digital cash:

<http://www.chaum.com/articles/list_of_articles.htm>

As well as several patents:

<http://www.chaum.com/patents.htm>

~~~
petar
None of which seems to have anything to do with Bitcoin.

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ricardobeat
How about the original: <http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf>?

Would you care to explain how a Sybil attack applies? There are no identities
nor any kind of reputation system in bitcoin.

~~~
petar
Of course there are. The identities and "distributed part" has to do with the
servers that keep record of things in Bitcoin. In fact, a few months ago an
economist wrote an article (which was here on HN) that described how the
protocol among the "bank" servers in Bitcoin can be broken if there is a
coalition of other "bank" servers that choose deviate. This was, in Computer
Science terms, one expression of a Sybil Attack.

You should check Wikipedia for the background on Sybil Attacks.

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lysol
I'm definitely not in the anti-college crowd, but I'd have to say that
academia isn't the final judge over tech ideas. Plenty of great ideas start
outside of that realm. Not to say that Bitcoin is or isn't a good idea.

~~~
petar
To this meta comment, my response is: It is true that some good ideas rise
from non-academics. However, if you have an extensive view on academic
literature you will also know that any idea that enters the spotlight (like
Bitcoin) usually gets picked up by the academic community and gets examined.
This never happened to Bitcoin.

