Orfeas Stefanos Thyfronitis Litos [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: 📅 Original date posted:2019-11-22 📝 Original message: Good morning ZmnSCPxj, > ...
📅 Original date posted:2019-11-22
📝 Original message:
Good morning ZmnSCPxj,
> requiring a fee is equivalent to requiring proof-of-work, incentive-wise.
Not necessarily, given that
1) there is a finite bitcoin supply but an eventually infinite PoW
supply (relevant in the unlikely case fees are burned)
2) sats are transferrable, whereas PoW isn't (relevant in the case fees
are paid)
On the other hand, there exists this paper with the fancy name that
claims using PoW for spam prevention in the context of email (the
original context in which PoW was discovered) is ineffective due to the
high per-message PoW required to beat spam [0]. Therefore we have to see
whether this paper applies to LN as well before going down that road.
Spam prevention in an unauthenticated system is much more complex than
it seems at first, because it boils down to avoiding the Sybil attack,
(one of) the most difficult problem(s) in such systems. A (traditional)
reputation system in essence enables authentication (eww), per-message
PoW might be too expensive, and per-message fees seem to have incentives
issues and are kind of misaligned with LN's aims.
Maybe I've missed something, but what makes spam in LN a bigger problem
than it is in every other p2p network out there? Why won't traditional
bad activity thresholds do the job?
I don't think spam is something that will be completely wiped out, only
contained. LN should provide for many orthogonal spam prevention
measures (local tunable activity thresholds, gossipable reputation
systems (eww), per-message fees, per-message PoW) with sensible defaults
to allow users to experiment and choose what is best for them, but that
may lead to unacceptable protocol and UI complexity. What a tradeoff...
Best,
Orfeas
[0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
📝 Original message:
Good morning ZmnSCPxj,
> requiring a fee is equivalent to requiring proof-of-work, incentive-wise.
Not necessarily, given that
1) there is a finite bitcoin supply but an eventually infinite PoW
supply (relevant in the unlikely case fees are burned)
2) sats are transferrable, whereas PoW isn't (relevant in the case fees
are paid)
On the other hand, there exists this paper with the fancy name that
claims using PoW for spam prevention in the context of email (the
original context in which PoW was discovered) is ineffective due to the
high per-message PoW required to beat spam [0]. Therefore we have to see
whether this paper applies to LN as well before going down that road.
Spam prevention in an unauthenticated system is much more complex than
it seems at first, because it boils down to avoiding the Sybil attack,
(one of) the most difficult problem(s) in such systems. A (traditional)
reputation system in essence enables authentication (eww), per-message
PoW might be too expensive, and per-message fees seem to have incentives
issues and are kind of misaligned with LN's aims.
Maybe I've missed something, but what makes spam in LN a bigger problem
than it is in every other p2p network out there? Why won't traditional
bad activity thresholds do the job?
I don't think spam is something that will be completely wiped out, only
contained. LN should provide for many orthogonal spam prevention
measures (local tunable activity thresholds, gossipable reputation
systems (eww), per-message fees, per-message PoW) with sensible defaults
to allow users to experiment and choose what is best for them, but that
may lead to unacceptable protocol and UI complexity. What a tradeoff...
Best,
Orfeas
[0] https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf
--
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.