Lee ★!★ Clagett

Software Developer; Monero Dev.
PGP: DC42 4DA4 A231 64FC 515F :: 1835 D184 C359 97CA 627A

Do not take my follow list as an endorsement for their content.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

The 51% attack ... no.

With selfish mining and 51% hashrate you get 100% of the blocks because you've perfectly sliced the "target" hashrate in two.

Look at the graph in the selfish mining paper for concept. It shows a convergence to 100% revenue with 51% of hashrate.

[Charles Guillemet @P3b7_]

Monero appears to be in the midst of a successful 51% attack.

The privacy-focused blockchain, launched in 2014 and long targeted by governments and 3-letters agencies, is already banned from most major centralized exchanges.

The Qubic mining pool has been amassing hashrate for months and now controls a majority of the network. A major chain reorganization was detected this morning. With its current dominance, Qubic can rewrite the blockchain, enable double-spending, and censor any transaction.

Sustaining this attack is estimated to cost $75 million per day. While potentially lucrative, it threatens to destroy confidence in the network almost overnight. Other miners are left with no incentive to continue, as Qubic can simply orphan any competing blocks, effectively becoming the sole miner.

In effect, a $300 million market-cap chain is taking over a $6 billion one. Monero’s options for recovery are limited, and a full takeover is now possible and even likely.

So far, XMR has dropped only 13%.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@edleonklinger Some (all?) might believe the hype.

But they _have_ to believe it because they are so heavily invested.

These things aren't dangerous in the way people think (movie tropes); they are dangerous because their output is attached to things that should never be under their control.

[Financelot @FinanceLancelot]

When companies go public they must file paperwork disclosing their financials.

Doing so would expose the massive cash burn OpenAI is using. Therefore, Sam Altman can't go public but he also has run out of money.

Enter "whistle blower" Jacob Coxon.

It made no sense how an obscure nobody got 165 million views on his first X post saying AI could kill us all. Then he was on every news station within 48 hours, scaring the public.

This was a psyop to "regulate" the AI companies... aka give them government funding to "protect the public from the dangers of AI."

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@OrangeSurfBTC I've been wondering about these takes too.

People need to etch a seed into some "steel" product, but rolling dice is way too absurd!

If anything, passphrases are worse as they typically won't contain the entropy of a dice roll, and require additional backup to the seed.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@GaryCardone I mean buying some obscure hardware, writing down 24 words onto paper AND "steel" products, but damnit users will never roll dice!

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@rapidlab309 Probably for the best.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@BitPaine Is your point that most people "feel" like the dice method can't possibly work compared to "machine magic"?

The obvious antidote is reminding them that simplicity is king.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@BitPaine Yes, you covered the broken TRNG case. But I fail to see how a TRNG is superior.

Simplicity is usually better, and auditing dice+RNG mixing/stirring is easier than auditing any TRNG.

Just do all of the above, TRNG+os RNG+dice+multisig is a tough nut to crack.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@0xShomari @TheDesertLynx This clearly doesn't change what I said. The issue was with the coldcard RNG, not some stupid beef with RBF.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@MedusaOnchain I'd be interested in whether anyone at coinkite used an LLM against their codebase.

The Monero folks have been doing this like crazy the past ~6mos on core code, wallets, just about everything. And varied LLMs too.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@KLoaec Eh, those always seemed sketchy to me, as in they are harder to review/audit compared to the pure software approach. I think most places don't rely solely on TRNG because of this.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@0xShomari @TheDesertLynx The victim lost when the coldcard dev botched the RNG. Figuring out a convoluted reason to also attack RBF is just dumb.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@0xShomari @TheDesertLynx Did you miss the 2nd part? Where it was always a race to the finish, and this RBF rant was just red herring?

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@JoelHodlman I think there's also a disconnect between who social media influencers consider leaders, and who people "in the trenches" would consider leaders.

I wish I had followed the nvk situation closer, to see if I would've had a different opinion on coldcard than the avg BTCer.

[Vik Sharɱa - Cake Wallet & Radar Chat 🇺🇸 📡 @vikrantnyc]

I can't pay for my burger at @SteaknShake with IBIT. Bitcoin self-custody and using it as a currency is what matters.

Someone telling you to buy IBIT reveals what they want out of bitcoin, which is fine too. They are just dollar maxis and bitcoin is "just" an investment.

[Nick Neuman @Nneuman]

Seeing a lot of people saying “self custody is over” thanks to the Coldcard hack.

Couldn’t disagree more. ~1,100 BTC has been stolen so far (est). And ~11,000 BTC went to exchanges yesterday. Potentially 10x more BTC was saved thanks to the fact that it was held in self custody! Why?

The distributed defense of self custody GAVE PEOPLE TIME to save their own money. If that RNG bug happened at a centralized custodian, all of the BTC is gone in one swoop. No time to react. But when it happens to a self custody wallet, each wallet has to be found and swept individually. People have time to act.

It makes the entire Bitcoin system more systemically resilient. And yes, it’s terrible that people are losing money. But in a scenario where this happens at a custodian, you eliminate any chance to react and save some people. If all bitcoin is held by a few centralized companies, you reduce that distributed defense and significantly increase the systemic risk of Bitcoin as a monetary network.

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

@AMoneroHodler I just posted about this - how are the hack numbers being calculated? It's gotta be complex to determine real numbers, no (even with BTC-level transparency)?

[Lee ★!★ Clagett @vtnerd]

How are these cold card hack numbers calculated? Seems like a good way to scare people from crypto without solid evidence.

I guess you can see consolidation on-chain, and infer that there were stolen? But if valid users swept to coinbase/kraken you would see consolidation too.