
Finally, the roller coaster-like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork night has passed, and the war of words between Craig Wright (csw) and Wu Jihan may be coming to an end.
The two main Bitcoin Cash protocols - Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV - have split into separate blockchains. Controversy between the two parties has grown as mining pools that "stand in line" have stepped up their support for their respective camps, culminating in the so-called "hashrate war" that took place last night.
But, when ashes return to ashes and ashes return to ashes, can the two versions of Bitcoin Cash live in harmony in the future? The so-called one mountain cannot accommodate two tigers. In the case of two different Bitcoin Cash blockchains, there must be a certain degree of concern in the community-after all, the mining power of one blockchain can now be used as a countermeasure against another blockchain. The weapon of the block chain.
Craig White, chief scientist at NChain, the company leading Bitcoin SV, said in a recent tweet:
"A Bitcoin SV miner can legally kill another blockchain, that's the miner's right, that's Bitcoin."
Computing power is the computing resource for cryptocurrency miners to ensure the stable operation of the blockchain. Due to the basic design architecture of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, which has gathered 51% of the computing power, can launch attacks on other "minority chains", while Craig· White has actually put the 51% attack on the table.
However, according to Peter Rizun, Chief Scientist of Bitcoin Unlimited in the "Jihan Wu camp", computing power attacks can actually test the basic security of Bitcoin, because it is detailed in the white paper of "Satoshi Nakamoto". Security can only be guaranteed when 51% (or a majority) of nodes behave non-maliciously. Pete Rizan added:
"The security of the blockchain actually comes from economic incentives, not mathematics. If a 51% attack occurs, we can only pray that the attacker nodes can follow the rules of the game and not destroy the blockchain."
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Method 1: Fork attack
In fact, Craig Wright, "Satoshi Aobaen", has long seen through that this hard fork of Bitcoin Cash is actually a split of the longest chain rule of Bitcoin, which is also the underlying Bitcoin rule. The consensus mechanism of - that is, in the case of discovering multiple blocks at the same time, the default is the longest chain.
When a blockchain fork occurs, it means that if the two blockchains start a "death struggle", only the last one alive will be considered by the nodes as the "real" Bitcoin Cash. In other words, for "Aoben Cong" and Wu Jihan, there can only be one of them who can "live" to have the last laugh.
In this case, the most likely thing that could happen is that both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV refuse to add so-called "replay protection", or coding that allows funds to be spent safely in the event of a fork. Earlier this month, Bitcoin SV software development company NChain wrote in a press release:
“Neither Bitcoin SV nor Bitcoin ABC implements transaction replay protection, the purpose of which is to ultimately allow only one blockchain to survive.”
We can see that one of Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC was doomed to perish from the very beginning.
But for users, this means that without special protection measures, transactions on the forked chain may lead to the risk of loss of funds. Likewise, hackers can exploit this vulnerability to steal funds from cryptocurrency exchanges. Chris Pacia, a core developer of OpenBazaar, believes that Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC made a "fight to the death" decision, which is likely to cause users to lose money in the end, because not adding replay protection is an extremely important decision. Bad choice.
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Method 2: Empty block attack
Bitcoin SV can mine empty blocks that do not contain transactions, and they are said to have started the empty block attack last night.
Empty block attacks require large-scale computing power support. This attack may cause real user transactions to be rejected by the blockchain, thereby pushing the blockchain to a standstill. According to Pete Rizan, Chief Scientist of Bitcoin Unlimited, for Bitcoin SV, the cost of this attack is almost zero, because they already have the majority of Bitcoin Cash computing power (as of this writing, its total network computing power ratio has reached 72-76%).
However, for those miners with only a small amount of computing power, the cost of empty block attacks is very high. Pete Rizan explained:
"Miners with insufficient computing power need to spend more resources to find a block. If these blockchains are likely to be empty blocks, they will lose the block mining reward of 12.5BCH, so some honest miners may choose give up."
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Method 3: Double spending attack
With 51% of the computing power, Bitcoin SV is able to perform what is known as a "double spend attack," in which an attacker can "print" non-existing funds from cryptocurrency exchanges. Bitcoin SV may create a forked BCH block, put the original transaction and the forged transaction on the block and start mining based on the fork.
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Method Four: "Satoshi Nakamoto's Shotgun"
It seems that Craig White, "Satoshi Ao Ben", really hates Wu Jihan, so he may have other means of attack.
According to Chris Pacia, the core developer of OpenBazaar, before using large-scale computing power to cover the block, "Ao Ben Satoshi" Craig White may also use his computing power advantage to make the Bitcoin ABC blockchain grow. Chris Parcia says:
"This will cost users, especially cryptocurrency exchanges, millions of dollars as they will see their trades reversed, and Craig Wright has already threatened Wu to do just that."
Not only that, but Chris Parcia also listed other possible attack methods of "Satoshi Auben" Craig White, such as "poison block" attack, denial of service attack, network partition attack, and zero-day attack (zero-day exploits) and so on.
For example, there have been rumors that an attack named "Satoshi Nakamoto's Shotgun" will break out in the near future. flooding, thereby slowing down the time required for standard transaction confirmations. Chris Parcia added:
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Finally, is it possible to have a "fair duel"?
Peter Rizan, chief scientist of Bitcoin Unlimited, said that there is actually another possibility for the struggle between Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin ABC - "fair duel". In this case, Bitcoin SV would simply prevent the series of blockchain changes required to activate Bitcoin ABC.
Not only that, but due to its powerful computing power, Bitcoin SV can actually mine on both chains, and then simply reject blocks from miners who try to activate the Bitcoin ABC update. Pete Rizan said:
“In this way, Bitcoin SV can gradually dry up the resources of those incredibly loyal Bitcoin ABC miners until they give up on the change.”
This type of attack is actually relatively "fair" because it just prevents Bitcoin ABC from activating and ensures that Bitcoin SV becomes the dominant leader of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, and is the most sensible and cost-effective form of attack. However, this attack is also technically the most difficult to implement. Pete Rizan continued:
“If Satoshi Craig Wright really cared about Bitcoin Cash, this is actually a good choice. But if Bitcoin SV wants to destroy Bitcoin Cash, they certainly will not do it.”
Bitcoin Cash has completed the hard fork amidst the noise, but the battle between Satoshi Omoto and Jihan Wu has just begun...