Last night, a message came from Zhang from the Technical Department: “Have you seen DUSK’s blind-auction consensus? They say it uses privacy-preserving sampling to pick the leader—pretty novel.” I opened Dusk Network’s SBA document and flipped to the page on Proof-of-Blind-Bid, and my finger hovered over the keyboard.
This project really has something to it. Dusk uses the Segregated Byzantine Agreement consensus. Block Generators participate in consensus rounds by submitting hidden DUSK bids, and they generate zero-knowledge proofs to compete for block leadership. The design is indeed innovative—hiding both the leader’s identity and the amount staked at the root, cutting off the pathways for MEV manipulation and targeted attacks.
But once I dissect the cryptographic blind-bid lottery logic, the problems start to surface.
The underlying logic of selecting the leader via blind bids heavily depends on the zero-knowledge proof system. Block Generators generate ZKP proofs to demonstrate that their bids are valid without revealing the bids themselves. The participant with the highest score is selected as the leader. If there’s a vulnerability in the zero-knowledge proof system, an attacker could construct fake proofs to bypass bid constraints—exactly the kind of risk OtterSec found in dusk-plonk. Even though that issue was at the level of a verification equation, Dusk’s blind-bid leader-selection logic also relies on the correctness of the proof system’s output. Once the proof system is compromised, the foundation of the leader-selection logic is shaken.
Even more unsettling is SBA itself. This is a brand-new, self-developed consensus protocol by Dusk, with no long-term battle-tested validation on any other public chain. The whitepaper claims the security model is based on Snow White, but in cryptography, “provable security” means it holds mathematically under certain assumptions—not that it has been tested in real-world conditions and is free of loopholes. Whether DUSK’s privacy-based auction logic has boundary-condition vulnerabilities, time-bias attacks, or information-leakage pathways in real adversarial environments currently lacks sufficient data.
A completely new, self-developed consensus protocol—its leader-selection logic depends on a proof system that has already had a vulnerability once, one severe enough to mint arbitrary tokens. If the cryptographic assumptions are breached in the real world, predicting leaders for DDoS attacks is only the first step toward the chain’s liveness collapsing.
The above is only my personal view and does not constitute investment advice. Do you believe Dusk’s blind-bid consensus can withstand the first truly real cryptographic attack? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
#dusk $DUSK @Dusk
This project really has something to it. Dusk uses the Segregated Byzantine Agreement consensus. Block Generators participate in consensus rounds by submitting hidden DUSK bids, and they generate zero-knowledge proofs to compete for block leadership. The design is indeed innovative—hiding both the leader’s identity and the amount staked at the root, cutting off the pathways for MEV manipulation and targeted attacks.
But once I dissect the cryptographic blind-bid lottery logic, the problems start to surface.
The underlying logic of selecting the leader via blind bids heavily depends on the zero-knowledge proof system. Block Generators generate ZKP proofs to demonstrate that their bids are valid without revealing the bids themselves. The participant with the highest score is selected as the leader. If there’s a vulnerability in the zero-knowledge proof system, an attacker could construct fake proofs to bypass bid constraints—exactly the kind of risk OtterSec found in dusk-plonk. Even though that issue was at the level of a verification equation, Dusk’s blind-bid leader-selection logic also relies on the correctness of the proof system’s output. Once the proof system is compromised, the foundation of the leader-selection logic is shaken.
Even more unsettling is SBA itself. This is a brand-new, self-developed consensus protocol by Dusk, with no long-term battle-tested validation on any other public chain. The whitepaper claims the security model is based on Snow White, but in cryptography, “provable security” means it holds mathematically under certain assumptions—not that it has been tested in real-world conditions and is free of loopholes. Whether DUSK’s privacy-based auction logic has boundary-condition vulnerabilities, time-bias attacks, or information-leakage pathways in real adversarial environments currently lacks sufficient data.
A completely new, self-developed consensus protocol—its leader-selection logic depends on a proof system that has already had a vulnerability once, one severe enough to mint arbitrary tokens. If the cryptographic assumptions are breached in the real world, predicting leaders for DDoS attacks is only the first step toward the chain’s liveness collapsing.
The above is only my personal view and does not constitute investment advice. Do you believe Dusk’s blind-bid consensus can withstand the first truly real cryptographic attack? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
#dusk $DUSK @Dusk