There's been 2 people now under maybe a month that have brought up the governance vector of Hive and for some reason they seem to be under the impression that Hive can easily be "51% attacked".
It kind of made me facepalm a bit but I understand not everyone may understand it and I'm sure there's plenty of people outside of Hive and maybe even here who are under the impression that what happened when we forked to Hive is something that can easily happen again. So I spent some additional time explaining it to them and I thought I'd write a post about it for any other readers out there who may be interested, if anything to maybe feel a bit more secure?
If you have the time, or wanna just use AI to give you the scoop, you should read Tim Copeland's peace on what happened during the Steem fork: https://decrypt.co/38050/steem-steemit-tron-justin-sun-cryptocurrency-war
During the time Steem and Hive were quite the talk of crypto twitter, with Vitalik praising the community fork and that you can't just buy a community. In contrast to Ethereum Classic, Hive actually surpassed its predecessor to become worth more and get most of the community, developers, dapps, services, etc to migrate over.
Could this happen again?
What people call a 51% attack is usually something that can only happen to some blockchains, Bitcoin being one of them. Since bitcoin is quite limited as to what you can do with it, the main thing an attack would attempt to do is to double-spend, i.e. send 1000 Bitcoin to Binance, exchange it for usdt, withdraw, then suddenly you still have 1000 Bitcoin in your wallet because you convinced the whole network that you never spent it and tricked Binance that you did. Kind of in simple terms I suppose. This is why many exchanges and services often require multiple confirmations before they let you trade with your deposit or withdraw it. If you own more than 51% of the network, you have a "more than 51% chance" to find the next block and thus push a double spend in it.
I'm getting too old and haven't really spent way too much time when it comes to how Bitcoin works so please don't quote me on the above and feel free to correct any mistakes I may have tried to simplify and may simply be mistaken on.
The point of this post, however, is if something similar can happen to Hive.
and I'm try to make this short so I won't go into too much details or history of what happened way back during the Hive fork.
Simply put, to take over governance of Hive, which would then allow you to hardfork its code into whatever you like, you would need a supermajority of witnesses to either belong to your or be under your control and agree to update their servers with your hardfork code. This requires 17 of the top witnesses to accomplish and they all need to be running the hardfork code at the same time during a set date/time for the chain to fork. That's why every update is called a hardfork.
The last one Steem did stole over 28 million Steem Power from targeted accounts, but they even failed at stealing it as someone stole it back and then later they got sued to give it all back to the rightful owners.
Something many may forget is that Justin Sun was losing very hard with his fake witnesses. Every stakeholder was changing their votes from some backup witnesses to make sure they're voting for top witnesses to win back supermajority and even though JS was buying up Steem on exchanges, he couldn't get enough to stay on top. Even with Steem having gone from 15c to 70c+ if I recall correctly during his attempts. The community was overwhelming him, contacting afk stakeholders to come back and vote for real witnesses, people taking their liquid Steem from exchanges or other accounts/savings to power it up to beat JS and we were winning.
JS, being the weasel that he is, had a trump card however, something so unexpected and disgusting that I think no one thought would occur, but it did. He "tricked" or colluded most likely with Binance (he's related to CZ) and Huobi (CEO was also chinese) to take all of their customer's liquid Steem, this means any customer on Binance and Huobi who just held Steem on the exchange without knowing what it does or doesn't do, and power it up to use that extra power to surpass his fake witnesses into supermajority.
This caused a huge backlash towards Binance and Huobi, and while CZ and Huobi CEO pretended they got tricked under the false pretense that Steem was being "attacked" by "hackers", most people understood what had happened, at least the ones with a regular and higher IQ; that 2 of the biggest exchanges in the space had helped centralize a decentralized chain.
Okay, so what does this mean for us now?
If you look at the witness counter, you can see that the top 4 witnesses have over ~96 million Hive power worth of voters behind them. The reason I'm looking at the top 4 is because for supermajority you need 17 top witnesses, but even if they'd only get the lower end of spots, meaning rank 4 all the way to 20, they would need at least 96m HP to get spot #4 and the rest.
What we know:
There's roughly 500m+ liquid Hive in existence (excluding virtual hive (existing hbd converted to hive)), with 200m+ powered up and 300m+ liquid on exchanges/elsewhere.
Currently you would need roughly half of all powered up stake to vote for 17 new witnesses into position to attempt to overthrow governance.
One could think of a scenario where someone has been hoarding millions and millions of Hive on exchanges to attempt to do this again. Say they would suddenly withdraw 100 million Hive and power it up. The current barrier we have against that is that it takes 30 days for powered up stake to be effective in governance voting, meaning we would see this "100m Hive move" in time and we could react to it. We could warn the community not to vote for these fake witnesses and ask them to change their votes around to support the original top 20 instead, so their acceptance rate would grow from ~96m to 110+ as an example, overshadowing the newly powered up 100m hp, if we had reason to believe that they want to attack the chain through governance.
This does not mean that if a random institution or whale mentioned they're powering up 100m hive that we'd need to worry about their intentions, nor would their stake ever be at risk. Technically they could overthrow governance if they thought we were doing a bad job and they wanted to implement changes to Hive themselves, that's how the chain works and we'd have to go along with it.
If, however, they were malicious, and wanted to implement code that takes people's stake away, takes away their right to vote, starts censoring text from posts and comments, through hardforks, then we would fight with our voting power to push them back under supermajority. As has happened once.
and even in the worst case scenario, where let's say they'd power up 200m or 300m hive and we wouldn't be able to outvote them and they started to do malicious things with the code, we will always have the last option available that we did when we forked over to Hive. We hardfork again.
A new blockchain but including the old blockchain. Hive2 (cause I'm unoriginal) would airdrop every hiver the same amount of Hive as hive2 and same amount of Hivepower as Hive2power and same amount of HBD as HBD2 as long as they didn't vote in favor of the malicious attacker's witnesses which forced us to fork again.
So what does this mean. It means that every regular user, as long as they kept their witness votes on the same witnesses as usual (or whatever parameters we'd set up based on what happened), would now have two coins of the same balance and could yet again choose which chain they wanna be on. Do they wanna move to Hive2 where decentralization continues, where account's stake isn't stolen, where freedom of speech and censorship resistance continues to exist, etc, or do they wanna stay on Hive1 with their value. I.e. they could trade their Hive1 for Hive2 or Hive2 for Hive1 or keep both, as some did.
I hope you understand I was trying to simplify most things here to not make this post too long and bring too much trauma back to some readers who already went through it back then. My point being that the beauty of blockchains like Hive is that even in the worst case scenario's we survive and continue to thrive while attackers are left with the "bad" coins and don't get an airdrop because of their actions.
For those who have been asking me about these scenario's, I hope this post gives you a better overview of the whole thing. I don't believe Hive stakeholders would be against people/institutions/etc powering up a lot of Hive, it would make for a far more competitive pool and maybe they'd even use it better than most of us have been doing here, both in terms of curation and governance votes/proposals. I think we'd welcome that. The only thing we wouldn't welcome would be someone trying to undermine our values that we share that sets us apart from web2 boundries and politics and centralized limitations.
Basically trying to take over on hive would be a Pirro's victory, it would be extremely expensive to get enough hive to push 17 of your own witnesses to the top, and when you the community can just fork and tell you goodbye leaving you with worthless tokens... You win of course, but spent milions to end up with crumbs, an obvious suicide for whoever has even half a brain (not for justin of course)
It’s easy if u are willing to throw millions down the drain, that’s for sure! You are right, it would be a huge cost to win a worthless platform after said party destroyed it.
So when Hive forked from Steem, did Hive have to be very sure of the decision and that it would receive support?
I wasn't around back then but I guess no one wanted to stay in a chain taken over by Justin 😄
I suppose even AI distrust him
Haha, those of us who lived it know what's going on. I love that art decrypt... it's our best story. And here it touches on everything... our marketing department does nothing but spend money living off the chain... they're just leeches using and living off the DHF.
By the way, where the money comes from is super easy... get tokens, just offer a competitive APR like this in Binance and you'll have a lot of hive to tap into and boost it, and do a 51% attack. Hope it never happens... despite low prices and voting circles, there are still many here, but others already left and I don't think they'll return.
But let's keep building... hoping JS doesn't come back.
Despite his shenanigans, js was the best thing that happened to us and we got a second chance to life.
Of course the community (in reality the big stakers) prove to be equally bad and greedy (if not worse) than steemit inc. Surprise surprise, we are in our dieing moments much like steemit before js happened. this time though nobody comes to saves us 😀
Maybe we will death we hope, this not happens.
But unfortunately you have reason, of this a lot of people, only want money.
I don't consider my coins safe on exchanges, there's been many who've defaulted and imploded. Upbit gets hacked at least once per year or does something suspicious. Binance itself didn't let users withdraw their Steem when they staked them to help Justin Sun overtake governance for instance.
While APR's may seem nice, I consider it as a carrot on the stick and wouldn't stay there for long. I'd rather spend it voting people/projects/services that may bring value to us longterm than have it sitting on exchanges or in savings in the form of hbd.
I do however wish there'd be more usecases for Hive to "lure" people back into staking it and enjoying doing different things with it.
Yes the exchanges, are bad idea, if you remember
Mt. Gold for example there is not safe place.
Ok i will consider your advices thank you so much.
I remember the Justin Sun situation so well and it still makes me laugh that little dweeb not completely wrecked by the community. I doubt we'll ever see another hostile takeover like that, but I wouldn't rule out people getting disenfranchised with the way Hive is currently operating and attempt to run their own forked thing from the code. So not a hardfork, but an entirely new chain using the Hive (formerly Steem) codebase.
There are some real problems here I think that need addressing, most notably the DHF which is super flawed and a lack of basic features we've needed for years. But once again, a hardfork wouldn't really fix those.
I don't really see a need for a fork, I would however welcome a lot more tokens and experimentation. I feel like we've barely scratched an itch when it comes to experimenting with tokens on hive-engine or upcoming implementations that allow tokenization. Especially in terms of experimenting with proof of brain and the countless variations of it one could come up with.
Maybe I'd have time and people/AI to help me dive into some of those examples in the future cause there's definitely things on Hive that could be fine-tuned, such as the way downvotes work currently.
Hive needs native tokens. There have been murmurs about building an official layer-2 solution to handle this, but from what I can tell, that's about as far as it's gotten. It looks like the focus for the core team for some reason is mobile nodes support for ARM-based phones when the number one priority should be the tokens/smart contracts work that is also on the roadmap.
Hive-Engine fills the gap and it works, but it's a third-party project and that matters. Something as fundamental as token creation and management shouldn't be sitting outside the core protocol. If something happens to the team running Hive-Engine, or they pivot, the ecosystem has a problem.
Things I think Hive actually needs:
Native token support at the protocol level. As above. SMTs were promised years ago and ultimately have been indefinitely parked. I know that's the intention behind the smart contract stuff which appears it will be layer-2 (not ideal, but better than nothing).
The DHF needs a pause. Paying out proposals in a volatile market just doesn't make sense right now. The fund is supposed to support the ecosystem, not drain it during a downturn. And to be honest, all I've seen is the DHF being used as a piggy bank.
Better onboarding. Creating a Hive account is still unnecessarily painful for new users. It's not as straightforward as onboarding with other chains.
Remove downvoting entirely. It was never really used the way it was intended. In practice it's always been a way for large stakeholders to suppress people they disagree with. Anyone who was on Steemit remembers what berniesanders did with it. Hive forked away from Justin Sun but kept the same broken system. There are better ways to handle spam that don't give whales a weapon.
Actual marketing. Hive is basically invisible outside of people who already know about it. There's no real push to get developers building here, no presence where it matters, and the community mostly talks to itself. That's been a problem for years and where I believe the DHF should have been used for
Cross-chain bridges that aren't painful to use. Getting value in and out of Hive is clunky. If you want broader adoption, people need to be able to move between ecosystems without it feeling like a chore.
bruh, I'm literally writing a post about some good examples for its usecase.
I generally agree with the other points, except maybe DHF pausing completely which kind of touches on your last point.
Oh god, I've buried it all deep down - serious PTSD. My biggest memory is of livinguktaiwan on video burning a piece of paper and saying 'fuck sun'. That was brilliant.
I'm not sure I've got it in me to live through another Big Big Hardfork. As you say, too old.
Eh, it'll probably be easier a second time around, but let's hope it won't be necessary. :D
I hope not. It'd be a shame to lose all that hard work we have all out in. Though sometimes a fresh start can create something better - perhaps. Or we will be a second Bl*rt, aaaaaaaaahhhhh
This was a very good rundown. I feel like @edicted wrote some really good posts about this sort of thing a long time ago as well. It's nice to have it revisited and more light shone on it.
Good breakdown of why repeated forks are unlikely here. Thanks for the clarity.
Thanks for reading!
I arrived after the hard fork, and having this kind of content to better understand things is really great. Even though I’ve read dozens of other posts about it, thank you for keeping things simple. Sometimes that’s all we need.
But one question: do you think that if someone arrived with that much voting power, someone not so “familiar,” they could still gain the support of users? I see Hive as something very, let’s say, friendly, a small community, almost like a small town where everyone knows each other. Could that happen?
Sorry for my ignorance if I said anything wrong.
it depends on what they do with their stake, I remember when @theycallmedan appeared and powered up a lot, he used it to curate well and build projects and most people on hive love him, whereas you also had accounts like @transisto that didn't really care much for using it well and barely received any engagement/following aside from some bad apples potentially.
Whale hivepower is like a dick I guess, doesn't matter how big it is, it depends on how you use it.
It makes perfect sense. It depends on who owns the
dick... HP, that’s what will determine its efficiency.Nice analogy, by the way.
Man I wish I had the funds to buy a million hive. I'd just go around making people's day by upvoting them though. :P
I largely understand what you're saying, however I'm going to study the story and the link you shared further, but I understand the main idea. I've previously researched on my own what happened with Steem and Hive, and the AI doesn't have very good references for Steem, which gives one pause for thought.
How much would the price rise if someone were to try and buy 100m HIVE in a short time frame
Asking for a friend 😅
I just bought 10K $HIVE and it went down 🤑, BUTT I'm not in it for the $$$. I'm here for the genuine interactions and amazing content
When price went from 15c to 70c on Steem he didn't even manage to get many millions, maybe 3 if I recall correctly but not sure. Don't think there's too much liquidity but who knows in this day and age when alts are mostly rekt and easy to buy many of from traders who are capitulating.
Thank you so much @acidyo .
Well articulated!
Great breakdown. I like how you explained the governance side in a simple way shows that Hive is more resilient than people think. The power up delay and community response really make a takeover much harder than it sounds. Respect to the community spirit behind Hive.
Obvious that Hive's design offers strong protection against these kinds of threats
I dunno if I’d say strong protections, it is an open disk to anyone willing to spend millions to do so. Like a lot of millions, so it makes zero sense and I’d say and agree it is ultra low risk.
!LADY !PIZZA
Whatever happened to the documentary about this debacle? Is it available to watch somewhere?
cc @lordbutterfly
If someone buys 200 million hive from his pocket I am definitely staying on "their" hive 🤭😂🤭😂
Interesting. Hive seems to be failing in the Mass Adoption front.
It appears there are a few big whales capable of downvoting you out of exiatence. Making it unsafe to invest meaningful sums to build a blogging base here.
At least that's my underatanding and i'm willing to be corrected.
Wonder how many individuals own the top 51% on hive ?
This is factually wrong, as proof by the person who upvoted you I can still see he exists and continues on existing, even at no one's value.
Thanks for the response. Im bere to learn
What I am curious about is how come Vitalik used to talk about Hive, Justin Sun wanted to take over Hive and we were the talk of the crypto Twitter and now nobody talks about Hive?
If you search YouTube there are tons of videos about every shitcoin out there, but nobody talks about Hive outside our small community?
Perhaps you are identifying one of the Achilles heels of a decentralized system. We don't have a centralized marketing department, or PR department, to send non-stop press releases and maintain relations with every news outlet that covers crypto, nor to run an official YouTube and Instagram account for Hive.
We like to say idealistic things like "well any member can take up that baton and run with it" but very few people on their own have the skill set or resources to do that. It's something that requires a coordinated team or group with sufficient funding to happen.
And I'm not talking about advertising here I'm talking about PR which is a completely different beast. Remember way back when, when Amanda B. Johnson was the face of the DASH currency? People might not have liked her, but her pervasive presence definitely helped put Dash on the map.
To find a PR team, isn't that something we can use th DHF funding for?
Cause hive is still very vague to the outside crypto world...
Yeah, but we do have plenty of money to have a rally car and wells in Africa amongst other things (btw I am 100% for wells in Africa). The Ninja Mine should have been burned at the fork. Any DHF type of fund should have been outside capital not inflated tokens. But it is what it is...
Because Hive has been building the same features for 5 years and shipping press releases about it instead of users. Justin Sun wanted Steem because it had momentum. We won that fight and then did nothing with it. Vitalik doesn't talk about Hive anymore because there's nothing new to talk about. No users, no apps anyone outside the community actually uses, no reason for anyone to care. The shitcoins get YouTube videos because they have marketing budgets and hype cycles. Hive has neither. That's not a conspiracy, that's just what happens when a community spends more time congratulating itself than growing.
Hive has the DHF sitting there with millions in it and we still can't coordinate a single sustained marketing effort. This was what the DHF was meant to be used for.
That sounds like truth despite being rather depressing...
Hive Rally Car though ...
What a colossal waste of money that was. Oh man. Did anyone ever work out the final cost for this?
My boy calculated that we were fleeced
Hive uses delegated proof of stake. This set up makes a 51 % attack far from easy, it's much harder than on typical proof of work chains.
I’d say it’s not hard, if u are willing to spend many millions to win nothing in end. Only thing that would make sense is a Elon type billionaire doing it for fun. Luckily he’s never heard of it so no this isn’t a high risk concern at all just based on how it wouldn’t make financial sense. Technically it is “easy” is spending millions to do so was no big thing. In reality it is beyond ridiculous anyone would spend millions to earn nothing.
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A rather topic It's complicated; I'll have to do some research to find out what we're talking about. But it sounds like there might be a split within Hive. Is that currently being considered?