I remember when I used to look at a new consensus design and ask one question first.
How does an attacker break this?
Studying Dusk changed that habit.
With Succinct Attestation, I started thinking about a different scenario.
Imagine you’re a provisioner. You’re voting on the current iteration, but you already know you’re selected to generate a block in a later iteration.
Now there’s a strange choice in front of you.
Do you help the current block move forward and collect your voter reward?
Or do you stay quiet, allow the current iteration to fail and potentially improve your position as the future generator?
That’s the Future Generator Incentive Problem Dusk identified in its consensus design. The interesting part is that this isn’t about a hacker finding a bug from outside.
It comes from the incentives available to a legitimate participant.
@Dusk_Foundation response was to reshape those incentives, including separating generator and voter rewards and restricting the next iteration generator from current voting.
That detail stuck with me.
Because it’s easy to say a consensus is secure.
It’s harder to design one where the most rational move is also the honest one.
That’s the real game happening underneath the cryptography.
#dusk $DUSK #Dusk
How does an attacker break this?
Studying Dusk changed that habit.
With Succinct Attestation, I started thinking about a different scenario.
Imagine you’re a provisioner. You’re voting on the current iteration, but you already know you’re selected to generate a block in a later iteration.
Now there’s a strange choice in front of you.
Do you help the current block move forward and collect your voter reward?
Or do you stay quiet, allow the current iteration to fail and potentially improve your position as the future generator?
That’s the Future Generator Incentive Problem Dusk identified in its consensus design. The interesting part is that this isn’t about a hacker finding a bug from outside.
It comes from the incentives available to a legitimate participant.
@Dusk_Foundation response was to reshape those incentives, including separating generator and voter rewards and restricting the next iteration generator from current voting.
That detail stuck with me.
Because it’s easy to say a consensus is secure.
It’s harder to design one where the most rational move is also the honest one.
That’s the real game happening underneath the cryptography.
#dusk $DUSK #Dusk