https://github.com/mikekelly/btc-endgame

https://github.com/mikekelly/btc-endgame

Last synced: 11 days ago
JSON representation

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/mikekelly/btc-endgame
• Owner: mikekelly
• Created: 2021-02-17T18:13:45.000Z (over 3 years ago)
• Default Branch: master
• Last Pushed: 2021-03-31T23:31:12.000Z (over 3 years ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-08-02T14:12:29.203Z (4 months ago)
• Language: Ruby
• Size: 59.6 KB
• Stars: 216
• Watchers: 10
• Forks: 9
• Open Issues: 2
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.txt

Awesome Lists containing this project

README

        
 /$$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$$ /$$$$$$                                  /$$

| $$__  $$|__  $$__//$$__  $$                                | $$

| $$  \ $$   | $$  | $$  \__/        /$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$   /$$$$$$$  /$$$$$$   /$$$$$$  /$$$$$$/$$$$   /$$$$$$

| $$$$$$$    | $$  | $$             /$$__  $$| $$__  $$ /$$__  $$ /$$__  $$ |____  $$| $$_  $$_  $$ /$$__  $$

| $$__  $$   | $$  | $$            | $$$$$$$$| $$  \ $$| $$  | $$| $$  \ $$  /$$$$$$$| $$ \ $$ \ $$| $$$$$$$$

| $$  \ $$   | $$  | $$    $$      | $$_____/| $$  | $$| $$  | $$| $$  | $$ /$$__  $$| $$ | $$ | $$| $$_____/

| $$$$$$$/   | $$  |  $$$$$$/      |  $$$$$$$| $$  | $$|  $$$$$$$|  $$$$$$$|  $$$$$$$| $$ | $$ | $$|  $$$$$$$

|_______/    |__/   \______/        \_______/|__/  |__/ \_______/ \____  $$ \_______/|__/ |__/ |__/ \_______/

                                                                  /$$  \ $$

                                                                 |  $$$$$$/

                                                                  \______/

BTC endgame is a research project aiming to test defensive strategies of

the Bitcoin network under various attack scenarios, via a wargame.

v1 simulates a nation state sabotaging Bitcoin through a denial of service

attack on the network; preventing users' payments from going through by

stopping any transactions from being confirmed, trapping them in the mempool

forever.

The attack strategy works by using majority mining power to continually mine

empty blocks, which effectively "jams up" the network.

A detailed summary of the attack is here:

https://joekelly100.medium.com/how-to-kill-bitcoin-part-1-is-bitcoin-unstoppable-code-7a1b366f65ee

https://joekelly100.medium.com/how-to-kill-bitcoin-part-2-no-can-spend-66e59385a4a5

There is currently no defense for this attack in the Bitcoin protocol itself, as the

simulation demonstrates.

The idea of this wargame is to challenge others to develop a defense strategy

against the attack, in response to which further attack strategies can be

proposed and tested, then a further defense strategy, and so on and so forth.

Bitcoin users can choose to violate the heaviest chain rule and ignore specific

chains they beleive are nefarious. Bitcoin Core has an RPC endpoint called

`invalidateblock` for this purpose. An attacker can shape blocks (with their own transactions)

in order to make identifying nefarious chains harder for users, creating the risk of

chainsplits. For this reason, it is likely that mechanisms for coordinating

invalidateblock between nodes would be necessary. At time of writing, the

simulated attacker does not bother shaping blocks, mostly to save my time :)

The intent of this work is to research potential ways to make Bitcoin more

robust under attack, and to identify/discuss where there may be limitations or

trade-offs with various defensive strategies.

If you'd like to sponsor development of this project, you can do so here:

BTC: bc1q9nyrtnwfkh2yu5dejjzzpmlpe40g6mzyf6jave

XMR: 8BxwbtkaXmHLpG1F2E18QD8TLPU7yKp5gCM4towfR7xRMUFeJDaBHw8gck9BXYKoGJ9xpuvgBGtNc49BbtgzuRobJjmk7Ue

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

More tech details...

It is a simulation of mainnet Bitcoin, composed of various docker containers

orchestrated via docker-compose:

* full nodes

* blue team mining operation (ie. honest miners)

* red team mining operation (ie. the attacker)

* red team "noc" that orchestrates the attack strategy

* simulated users transacting on the network

Pulling submodule deps:

$ git submodule init && git submodule update

Running the simulation is a two step process:

$ ./seed-network.sh

$ docker-compose up -d

There's a block explorer included for observing the network, it's a web

server exposed on port 3002:

http://localhost:3002/blocks

If you want to inspect a node just exec into it and you can use bitcoin-cli

from there (the cookie auth is all setup for you):

$ docker-compose exec blue-node bash

Notes:

- At time of writing, it based on a fork of Bitcoin Core 0.21.0