v0.10.15.x Testing

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crowning said:
eduffield said:
Nope. There's a few of them on the network. they're anonymous and the network functions without them, just masternode payments wouldn't be as predictable.
Click to expand...
I don't like this kind of centralization.

As fall-back for the 'normal' payout heuristic it's kinda okay, but there should be a solution where ALL Masternodes are involved.
Click to expand...

eduffield, still no answer whether this will be done or not?

After thinking about it a second time I find it even WORSE than last time for several reasons:

  1. Forget "anonymous" nodes. Security by obscurity doesn't work (never has, never will; each security guy will tell you that). Someone WILL find them, DDOS them to dead, fire up some own nodes and the payments will be very predictable his. Or hers. Or if I'd hire that guy, mine!
  2. Now that we have almost 1000 Masternodes (which lots of people still consider a kind of centralization) we add _another_ kind of rare, special nodes. Explain THAT to the public.
  3. What do they can do what a normal Masternode can't do?
 
^^ Maybe the Übernodes are just regular MNs selected ad-hoc to act as such. Would be good to hear more about how this works.
 
crowning said:
eduffield, still no answer whether this will be done or not?

After thinking about it a second time I find it even WORSE than last time for several reasons:

  1. Forget "anonymous" nodes. Security by obscurity doesn't work (never has, never will; each security guy will tell you that). Someone WILL find them, DDOS them to dead, fire up some own nodes and the payments will be very predictable his. Or hers. Or if I'd hire that guy, mine!
  2. Now that we have almost 1000 Masternodes (which lots of people still consider a kind of centralization) we add _another_ kind of rare, special nodes. Explain THAT to the public.
  3. What do they can do what a normal Masternode can't do?
Click to expand...

1. Sure, someone might be able to find one of them and DDOS it. But there's more than one. If they find all of them and DDOS them, the system falls back to the way it works now. DDOSing them doesn't give you some special ability to print money and they can be checked by any user on the network to make sure they're working correctly.

2 & 3. All it can do is sign a special message that the network understands, which will tell the network who to pay for a specific block in the future. The code it uses is deterministic, so someone else can run one and check that the payments are being made correctly.

The solution I came up with is fantastic, but no one has really looked through the code yet and I haven't written a technical document showing how it works.

- These nodes are ran by trusted people in the community
- These nodes can't cheat, it can be detected
- There is nothing bad that happens if they aren't present, the network continues to pay nodes ... just more randomly.
- The system can't be exploited by mining pools. They must pay a specific address and a specific amount.
- These nodes can be 100% anonymous by using the multi-path routing system to talk to the network: https://darkcointalk.org/threads/open-source-announcement-and-future-plans.2528/
 
eduffield said:
1. Sure, someone might be able to find one of them and DDOS it. But there's more than one. If they find all of them and DDOS them, the system falls back to the way it works now. DDOSing them doesn't give you some special ability to print money and they can be checked by any user on the network to make sure they're working correctly.

2 & 3. All it can do is sign a special message that the network understands, which will tell the network who to pay for a specific block in the future. The code it uses is deterministic, so someone else can run one and check that the payments are being made correctly.

The solution I came up with is fantastic, but no one has really looked through the code yet and I haven't written a technical document showing how it works.

- These nodes are ran by trusted people in the community
- These nodes can't cheat, it can be detected
- There is nothing bad that happens if they aren't present, the network continues to pay nodes ... just more randomly.
- The system can't be exploited by mining pools. They must pay a specific address and a specific amount.
Click to expand...
I really do not like the idea of having to rely on trusted parties. The whole concept and process should be trustless by design. Why structurally couldn't the existing population of masternodes do the same task and reach consensus?
 
eduffield said:
1. Sure, someone might be able to find one of them and DDOS it. But there's more than one. If they find all of them and DDOS them, the system falls back to the way it works now. DDOSing them doesn't give you some special ability to print money and they can be checked by any user on the network to make sure they're working correctly.

2 & 3. All it can do is sign a special message that the network understands, which will tell the network who to pay for a specific block in the future. The code it uses is deterministic, so someone else can run one and check that the payments are being made correctly.

The solution I came up with is fantastic, but no one has really looked through the code yet and I haven't written a technical document showing how it works.

- These nodes are ran by trusted people in the community
- These nodes can't cheat, it can be detected
- There is nothing bad that happens if they aren't present, the network continues to pay nodes ... just more randomly.
- The system can't be exploited by mining pools. They must pay a specific address and a specific amount.
Click to expand...
Is this the "round-robin" you talked about before? If so the MN payment isn't going to be a variance system anymore, correct?
 
oblox said:
I really do not like the idea of having to rely on trusted parties. The whole concept and process should be trustless by design. Why structurally couldn't the existing population of masternodes do the same task and reach consensus?
Click to expand...

It's still trustless due to the deterministic algorithm that determines the payee. It's just a specific set of clients that are allowed to send the message.
 
eduffield said:
It's still trustless due to the deterministic algorithm that determines the payee. It's just a specific set of clients that are allowed to send the message.
Click to expand...
So how come existing masternodes can't serve this purpose in terms of consensus? If all of them are running the same deterministic algorithm and the majority (most likely all) are coming to the same payee, then why the need for special nodes serving this purpose?
 
eduffield said:
1. Sure, someone might be able to find one of them and DDOS it. But there's more than one. If they find all of them and DDOS them, the system falls back to the way it works now. DDOSing them doesn't give you some special ability to print money and they can be checked by any user on the network to make sure they're working correctly.
Click to expand...

I DDOS yours and run mine, which pay my Masternodes only. Others can check of course, but what can they do against it?

- These nodes are ran by trusted people in the community
Click to expand...

That's completely orthogonal to a trustless network. I trust no one!

- These nodes can be 100% anonymous by using the multi-path routing system to talk to the network: https://darkcointalk.org/threads/open-source-announcement-and-future-plans.2528/
Click to expand...

I do a brute-force for every IP on port 9999 and throw away the known Masternodes from the result. Needs some time, but isn't impossible for a proper botnet.
And the bad boys HAVE botnets...
 
eduffield said:
It's still trustless due to the deterministic algorithm that determines the payee. It's just a specific set of clients that are allowed to send the message.
Click to expand...
oblox said:
So how come existing masternodes can't serve this purpose in terms of consensus? If all of them are running the same deterministic algorithm and the majority (most likely all) are coming to the same payee, then why the need for special nodes serving this purpose?
Click to expand...

I also would feel more comfortable with a system that relies on quorum opposed to selected address signatures.
 
eduffield said:
It's still trustless due to the deterministic algorithm that determines the payee. It's just a specific set of clients that are allowed to send the message.
Click to expand...

Is there a reason why those nodes cannot be selected randomly among normal MNs in the network each round and use a majority type win...
 
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eduffield said:
It's still trustless due to the deterministic algorithm that determines the payee. It's just a specific set of clients that are allowed to send the message.
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I don't think this is going to fly. The community is speaking to you and they are saying that the uber nodes run by 'trusted members of the community' are not acceptable. We've already tarnished the decentralized nature of Bitcoin by introducing masternodes. As a community, we have accepted that masternodes are a necessary infrastructure to do what Darkcoin does, and there are future capabilities that will be built using the masternodes. So on the whole they are a benefit more than a hazard.

Adding a third layer of node hierarchy to fix a problem with masternode payouts is going to be impossible to sell to the larger bitcoin-savvy community. If our goal is to replace Litecoin, we need to consider that our target audience will be highly critical of Darkcoin's construction. They will be looking for 'automatic checkpoints' and 'trusted nodes' to laugh us off the reddit forums and BCT.

Somehow, the masternode payout system needs to be pushed up to the masternode level (i.e. run by all masternodes, good and bad) and be robust enough to check for bad MNs and ban them for a period of time when they are not agreeing to the deterministic payee.
 
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I think so many of you guys were asking for a "fair payment" on your MNs.... So I guess you're getting what you asked for and however you want to slice it... someone is going to complain? :tongue:

Edit: Or however Evan is going to slice it.... lol
 
moli said:
I think so many of you guys were asking for a "fair payment" on your MNs.... So I guess you're getting what you asked for and however you want to slice it... someone is going to complain? :tongue:
Click to expand...

There is more than one way to accomplish this is all we're saying.
 
moocowmoo said:
There is more than one way to accomplish this is all we're saying.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Personally, I'm more concerned about fixing the theft of MN payouts from cheating miners and other potential exploits than I'm concerned about low variance payments. As it stands, I would rather keep the flawed but 95% effective high variance (RC5) system we have today than move to a three tiered 'trusted nodes' system to make payouts100% and low variance. I just don't think we can sell that kind of setup outside our own enclave.
 
Although the solution is good technically, it would be a public relations disaster. Trolls & dummies already scream about "CENTRALIZED masternodes", now the majority will join them, only the already converted who have bothered to understand everything properly would defend us. The perception of the coin would remain tainted even after such a change was reversed. The crypto community *really* doesn't like anything that smells of centralization, even when it's a perfectly brilliant idea in practice.

Solution: find a way to do it using either all masternodes, or those older than a certain age, or a random subset of such. Maybe require a supermajority to agree to the new deterministic payments, or it reverts back to the way it works now till consensus is restored. No-one will bother trying to game the system if they need 75% of the masternodes to do it.
 
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crowning said:
I DDOS yours and run mine, which pay my Masternodes only. Others can check of course, but what can they do against it?
I do a brute-force for every IP on port 9999 and throw away the known Masternodes from the result. Needs some time, but isn't impossible for a proper botnet.
And the bad boys HAVE botnets...
Click to expand...

Drop the IPv4 support, IPv6 has more work for brute-forcers. :)
 
HinnomTX said:
Sorry, but I don't think this is going to fly. The community is speaking to you and they are saying that the uber nodes run by 'trusted members of the community' are not acceptable. We've already tarnished the decentralized nature of Bitcoin by introducing masternodes. As a community, we have accepted that masternodes are a necessary infrastructure to do what Darkcoin does, and there are future capabilities that will be built using the masternodes. So on the whole they are a benefit more than a hazard.

Adding a third layer of node hierarchy to fix a problem with masternode payouts is going to be impossible to sell to the larger bitcoin-savvy community. If our goal is to replace Litecoin, we need to consider that our target audience will be highly critical of Darkcoin's construction. They will be looking for 'automatic checkpoints' and 'trusted nodes' to laugh us off the reddit forums and BCT.

Somehow, the masternode payout system needs to be pushed up to the masternode level (i.e. run by all masternodes, good and bad) and be robust enough to check for bad MNs and ban them for a period of time when they are not agreeing to the deterministic payee.
Click to expand...
Very well said. For the love of god, lets not go down this road of trusted nodes. The backlash will be far worse than any sort of good out of it. If "trusted nodes" as is are capable, there is no reason that all masternodes can't serve this purpose. I can't see any viable reason that would prevent implementing it into all masternodes vs just a select few, trusted nodes.
 
Here's my stab at a possible solution. Please feel free to rip it apart.

1) from blockchain: during daemon startup, walk last 4000 blocks, collect paid masternode addresses.
2) from network: collate all masternode addresses from peers into array 'mnlist'
3) prune masternode addresses having been paid within length(mnlist) blocks
4) prune masternode addresses with 1k deposits newer than length(mnlist) from array. (i.e. 3000 active masternodes requires 3000 confirmations to receive payments.)
5) array now contains nodes due for payment.
6) sort array by address.
7) pay top address
8) GOTO 2

This will create a deterministic payout list all masternodes can confirm with their peers before accepting.

This assumes masternode addresses (mnlist contents) are valid/validated and that we haven't yet grown past 4000 masternodes. (step one would be adjusted accordingly.)

tl;dr: use the historical blockchain payments to prevent dupes, filter out the too-new, alpha sort the to-be-paid and pay the top address.
 
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