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Is this one also vulnerable to people creating fake nodes that "store files" for each other to earn coins for doing nothing?


The authors address Sybil attacks in the paper. Essentially, there is a PoW style consensus using hashes of files+metadata (as opposed to bitcoin which is hashes of nothing + metadata)


whats to stop the node replying with the hash of the file saying "yes the file is here" when in reality no file is there


Haven't read the paper, but could you ask for a hash of a random offset+byte count of the file?


That only works on direct person-to-person systems, not decentralized systems where the entire network has to reach consensus.


Exactly what I was thinking.


the proof-of-retrievability. see http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~hovav/dist/verstore.pdf


I'm at work and don't want to read either of the papers at the moment, but if A asks B to provide proof of having stored some bytes, could B proxy that request to C and replay the reply to A ?


FWIW, thats usually called 'delegation' or 'outsourcing'. Apparently it's intentionally not resistant to this (sounds like a pretty bad idea— IMO, but apparently intentional). See the IRC log I linked above.


As long as a node you control has the data and can retrieve the file, I don't think there's a problem. If you could proxy the "proof of retrieval" than you could surely proxy the retrieval itself. Pooling resources shouldn't break anything.


But you could make it look like several computers have copies of the data when there's really only one copy of the data. You would get credit/coins for multiple copies and reduce the redundancy of the files.


From what I read in the paper, it sounds like you _don't_ get paid for providing the data. You get paid for proving you have it when mining a block. Distributing your storage across multiples nodes would simply make it easier to "mine", but wouldn't get coins passively. That is, if I'm understanding the protocol correctly.


You're right that nodes get paid for proving. Though you do also get paid for providing pieces in Get transactions.

On outsourceability, Filecoin today makes no effort against it. But see Permacoin for a great (and compatible) solution.


I haven't RTFA or any of the papers but couldn't you perhaps add a different nonce to each copy of the file you want stored before encrypting?


FWIW: For the simpler case of two single entities there is a non-probabilistic (whole data needed for proof) proof-of-retrievability concept: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4326385_Reliable_Ev... Disclaimer: I am one of the authors.


No, files are contributed to the network as a whole, must be distributed, and require payment. See the discussions on mining and on rewards in the paper: http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf


Hey sorry for the OT but shouldn't this be on the new Show section? just saying...


Well, it's not something you can TRY yet -- i think those are the guidelines? :)


Exactly my thought! Seems like a big flaw.




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