Self regulating blockchain?

[Payton]

I’m not sure if this is even possible, but would there be a way to leverage the existing trusted nodes to be able to reverse fraudulent transactions?  For example, if an address is reported and an investigation finds that the reports are true, is there a way for the existing infrastructure to then go in and reverse all of the transactions? You would be using the nodes that already exist, and the same requirements on voting would apply.  I am just seeing a lot of scams lately and figured if this could be done by the network itself, as opposed to some oversight committee, that it would be beneficial to everyone. Could be done by each blockchain individually so there wouldn’t be any requirement for oversight, as it would work exactly as the network is intended to. 

[at3n]

It seems like you're asking for conflicting things: you talk about "an investigation finds that the reports are true", and then you say that it "could be done by the network itself, as opposed to some oversight committee". So who would do the investigation if not an oversight committee?

Any sort of human intervention with the potential to reverse a transaction would defeat the decentralisation that (almost) all cryptocurrencies try to achieve, so I don't think anyone would accept an option like that.

 

Setting aside the technical difficulties, and even if it could be entirely automated by the network, with no human interaction: I think that the biggest reason that it will never happen, is that you're looking to decrease the reliability of a system whose core principal is that you (the individual wallet holder) have ultimate power over the coins in your wallet. At the moment, nobody and nothing can take your funds unless they know the secret key, or trick you into sending to them. If you allowed the network to reach in and take your money, even under controlled circumstances, then you have a much less secure system for the individual users.

Effectively you'd be significantly reducing the maximum available level of security of the existing system, to benefit the people who (sorry) were operating with a low level of security (they got scammed/hacked). So then people who want to take the precautions to use it as a highly secure store of value could no longer be certain of that security. It'd mean than no matter how careful and safe you are, there's a mechanism in place that has the power to take your funds without you being able to do anything to stop it, which is exactly what crypto tries to avoid at all costs.

[BillyOckham]

4 hours ago, Payton said:

Could be done by each blockchain individually so there wouldn’t be any requirement for oversight, as it would work exactly as the network is intended to. 

Can I just add to the excellent reply by @at3n above that you appear to be asking for an automation of a process that shouldn’t exist.

 

Reversing blockchain transactions undermines and negates one of the very properties that make the chain desirable in the first place.

It is the immutability and the irrefutability of transactions that underly one of the blockchains biggest appeals to the new fiscal system.  [Edit :  Which is why ProofOfWork is a terrible blockchain methodology. ]

 

And apart from any of those design and fiscal architecture considerations, such a capacity would create all sorts of unintended secondary injustices. The same kind of injustice that happens when one is innocently duped into buying stolen goods which are then confiscated from you.

 

Your basic premise is attacking the infrastructure rather than the root causes of the problem. 
 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2022 by BillyOckham

[wojake]

This could work (very very unlikely) IF the "blockchain" could access external data like users' browsing history, purchase history outside of the payment network, servers, chatrooms, friends and family... aka everything plus the blockchain must be sentient and be able to process the data in a secure yet scalable manner, which is a wet dream.

Blockchain will never replace human work like investigation, it requires a lot of external data and a lot of human psychology/criminology.

[Payton]

On 1/4/2022 at 4:09 PM, BillyOckham said:

Can I just add to the excellent reply by @at3n above that you appear to be asking for an automation of a process that shouldn’t exist.

 

Reversing blockchain transactions undermines and negates one of the very properties that make the chain desirable in the first place.

It is the immutability and the irrefutability of transactions that underly one of the blockchains biggest appeals to the new fiscal system.  [Edit :  Which is why ProofOfWork is a terrible blockchain methodology. ]

 

And apart from any of those design and fiscal architecture considerations, such a capacity would create all sorts of unintended secondary injustices. The same kind of injustice that happens when one is innocently duped into buying stolen goods which are then confiscated from you.

 

Your basic premise is attacking the infrastructure rather than the root causes of the problem. 
 

 

 

I appreciate all of the insight! I wasn’t really sure how to ask the question to be honest, so I know it’s a but clunky. I was assuming the blockchain could use external data to some extent, and a group like xrplorer.com would be the control box. 
 

In terms of oversight, I meant more like the blockchain having their own divisions specifically for this, as opposed to a larger scale committee that oversees this for very blockchain. So it could be voted on by the holders themselves who have a vested interest in the security and integrity of the blockchain, not some outside party who may look to undermine what the technology is trying to provide. 
 

I am still in the head space that there are people who oversee the operation of the blockchain and I genuinely am unclear whether that is actually the case or if it at the point where it runs independently of human interaction, now that it is functional.

[BillyOckham]

No chain functions without humans caring for it.  Adding extra memory to nodes if that’s a bottleneck etc.  In some chains that’s done by a foundation, in others it’s a dao, others again have a dev community stepping up.

 

So all of this is airy fairy and it’s easy to wax lyrical about vague qualities.  What exactly would you want the oversight to achieve?  Not comprehensively necessarily,  just a sample of functions.

Perhaps if you say what it is that this oversight does?  Roll back transactions?  Stop access to the chain for certain wallets?

 

[Payton]

I was wondering if this oversight would be able to monitor and investigate scam/fraud reports. From an XRPL stand point, a group who would work with pages like XRPlorers on determining fraudulent wallets/transactions. 

[BillyOckham]

1 hour ago, Payton said:

I was wondering if this oversight would be able to monitor and investigate scam/fraud reports. From an XRPL stand point, a group who would work with pages like XRPlorers on determining fraudulent wallets/transactions. 

There are already groups who do just that.  XRPforensics for instance.  (Not sure of name…. a Google will find it).

But sure, the more the better.

 

[at3n]

1 hour ago, Payton said:

I was wondering if this oversight would be able to monitor and investigate scam/fraud reports. From an XRPL stand point, a group who would work with pages like XRPlorers on determining fraudulent wallets/transactions. 

What do you think about the possibility that a closed group like that could be corrupted/bribed? It sounds like you're suggesting to give them authority over the entire blockchain, which is potentially worth billions. Even setting aside the decentralization argument, I think it's difficult to justify giving a group of people authority over so much value, just to allow them to recover a tiny percentage of that for a small number of users?

On 1/6/2022 at 8:22 PM, Payton said:

I am still in the head space that there are people who oversee the operation of the blockchain and I genuinely am unclear whether that is actually the case or if it at the point where it runs independently of human interaction, now that it is functional.

The people who oversee it have no power to influence individual transactions. At worst (for XRP), a validator could attempt to hold up a transaction that had just been submitted, and delay it from being processed. But if they continued to do this over a sustained period, it would be obvious that they were breaking the rules, and everyone else would choose to ignore them, and then the transaction would go through. There's no way at all for any network operator to reverse or create a transaction from a wallet that they don't own.

[Payton]

9 minutes ago, at3n said:

What do you think about the possibility that a closed group like that could be corrupted/bribed? It sounds like you're suggesting to give them authority over the entire blockchain, which is potentially worth billions. Even setting aside the decentralization argument, I think it's difficult to justify giving a group of people authority over so much value, just to allow them to recover a tiny percentage of that for a small number of users?

The people who oversee it have no power to influence individual transactions. At worst (for XRP), a validator could attempt to hold up a transaction that had just been submitted, and delay it from being processed. But if they continued to do this over a sustained period, it would be obvious that they were breaking the rules, and everyone else would choose to ignore them, and then the transaction would go through. There's no way at all for any network operator to reverse or create a transaction from a wallet that they don't own.

I’m not saying the group does the execution of this, merely the investigation to the being it to the network administrators and have the node validators be the ones who vote on it. The trusted people who already run the network

[BillyOckham]

1 minute ago, Payton said:

I’m not saying the group does the execution of this, merely the investigation to the being it to the network administrators and have the node validators be the ones who vote on it. The trusted people who already run the network

I’m sorry but I don’t see the point of this thread.  You started with ‘what about getting a self fixing blockchain’ (paraphrasing).  Now it’s ‘wouldn’t it be good if there were people monitoring and tracking it’.

 

All of that is just pipe dreaming.  Automation is both virtually impossible and a terrible idea.

The monitoring aspect is already being done so adding to that is fine.  But your not adding to it,  merely proposing it.  It already exists.  By all means offer support or create new entities doing that but us gasbagging about it is pointless.

 

[at3n]

14 minutes ago, Payton said:

merely the investigation to the being it to the network administrators and have the node validators be the ones who vote on it. The trusted people who already run the network

They're not trusted to override, modify or create transactions though (or even to veto transactions). They're trusted to run highly reliable infrastructure, and not to collude with the other validators. They don't control the flow of value in any way.

The level of trust you're talking about goes way beyond anything a human is currently given, it's handled by the code only, and even the code is not given the option of arbitrarily deciding which transactions are blocked. There's a set of rules that determine whether a transaction is technically valid, and if a validator broke the rules, it would be immediately obvious (and ignored by everyone else).

So giving the validators the option to manually vote on transactions would amount to a massive increase in the level of trust given to them, beyond anything that I think people would find acceptable.