pterjan's diary
2014-02-16
OpenLibernet
I saw a link to OpenLibernet and after reading there FAQ I believed there was a fundamental problem. I quickly read the full paper but found no answer.
I guess I have missed something, please explain me :)
A peer address is the hash of a cryptographic public key. It is used to encrypt certain packets as part of the routing protocol, serve as a payment address for the payment system (similar to a Bitcoin’s wallet address), but also serves as a unique identifier for a node, similar to IP Addresses in the current internet.
Also, a node may simply generate a new Peer Address anytime it chooses to.
When the balance of a neighbor hits a certain threshold, a payment request is initiated.
Malicious nodes could however cheat their neighbors and refuse to pay them their due traffic. For that, the protocol is designed to punish such malicious behavior through ostracism. A node will be automatically isolated from the network until it pays all its dues and resolves all conflicts with its neighbors.
What is preventing some malicious node to re-join the network with a new peer address when it is getting close to receiving a payment request, and discard its balance?
The only limitation I see is First, and to eliminate the churn caused by unstable nodes, a Layer 2 link becomes active only after it has been alive for a set amount of time. but this is not a problem is you start another client in parallel when getting close to a payment threshold and switch to the new peer address when it is ready.
I believe what stops you from doing that is that first your other peer address needs to have traffic in its balance to begin with. your neighbor will blacklist your peer addresses after you've cheated them once. and if you're going to wait 10 minutes every time you try to re-join with a new peer address, imagine what kind of internet service you would have. they also don't specify the threshold that triggers payment, and they made clear commissions are higher. If the threshold is close enough to the commission (say 10MB) per transaction, cheating would quickly become pointless... i see potential. the incentive system is brilliant.