[EM] A secure distributed election scheme based on Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work protocol

[Mike Frank]

On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Andy Jennings <elections at jenningsstory.com
> wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 7:50 AM, Mike Frank <
> michael.patrick.frank at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Even if the total resources deployed on the Bitcoin network were to
>> someday fall to such a low level that a single attacker could easily produce
>> a forged chain of transactions, that would only mean that this attacker
>> could double-spend their own coins from that point onwards, not that they
>> could nullify the established chain that was already in existence and
>> accepted by all nodes on the network.
>>
>
> If the attacker truly had disproportionate computing resources, couldn't he
> go back to the chain as it was a year ago and start extending from there?
>

Yes, but that would require redoing all that work and then catching up with
and passing the consensus chain.  I suppose if the attacker had 2x the
aggregate power of the rest of the network (2/3rds of the total), it would
only take him a year to catch up.

Still, in *any* kind of "one computron-one-vote" system, any entity that
controls most of the compute power would be an absolute dictator anyway, so
it's not really a valid criticism of the idea of using this as an election
protocol, in the context of such a computer-centrified notion of democracy.
 Tyranny of the majority and all that.


> -Mike
-- 
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