Could this kill small Assets ..or even bigger ones ?

[Marc]

First I want to state clearly that people should NOT SHOOT THE MESSENGER here.

My intention is a good one and I have not and will not use anything of the possible

method described below. But if I found this question others more smarter than me most prob.

will find it too ( or already have ..) so it makes no difference anyway.

I stumbled about this idea/problem when reading today about HiDevins asset and

comtemplating a little bit about it. Its a very small asset, currently paying out roughly

100 Burst against 25 shareholders so to speak at the cost of 1 Burst each payout.

Now, if an attacker would create 101 new wallets and fund it each with 1 Burst, then buys

0,1 of HiDevin Asset with 1 Burst (yes, thats possible), it would take him some time, but

the effect of his effort would be as follow:

Costs:

money: roughly 4 Burst / each account, 1 for activating it, 1 for the transaction fee, 1

for buying lets say 1 share for 1 Burst, 1 for what I forgot probably.

time: time consuming, but I have read about on here about the idea of creating subwallets

etc.

Im no coder so have no idea if this process (creating new wallets, then reading them into

like an own DB, then funding it with 3-4 Burst each, then putting up buying/selling

orders on the AE to act as a killer bot if youd like the term),could be automated in any

way.

Anyway, in above described situation a number of shareholders X holding 0.1 of the asset

each could possibly kill it as by that making the transfer fees higher than the amount

its paying out every time, no matter if daily/weekly/monthly.

I really would like to have some response from some dev ideally, anyway from somebody

more tech savy to the coin and in general than me.

(And no, dont shoot the messenger, thx.)

[RichBC]

@Marc It's already a problem Today, even without any manipulation, for any Asset making regular small payments. Solution is for dividends to be paid less frequently.

Rich

[Marc]

@RichBC I think its not.

In the above describes Scenario an attacker (and that prob. was my real question) would not only be able to half the payout and thus the AE share Price by making the costs equally high as the payout ( 100 payout weekly, 100 extra costs with HiDev) but to devastate it. Why not put 1000 costs on every 100 payout by creating 1000 new wallets, fund etc. automatically, u get my Point.

Reminds me of the days when there where not bots on Betfair, those were the days lol.

[LithStud]

@Marc for me thats not a problem as i use my own code for dividends calculations, if such malicious behaviors starts happening i can issue a notice that dividends are paid from a certain amount (say 1 BURST) and anything less than that caries over. This does add a bit more complications for me, but only in a way that i will need to keep that cumulative information somewhere.

And another thing - if i catch someone doing it (blockchain detective work and such) you bet i will exclude his account(s) from payments. We might not have strict rules on blockchain but thats why we as asset issuers need to use common sense and protect our investors from malicious intent as much as possible.

That being said this is me speaking from a pov not only as issuer but also as coder as i am able to make myself tools needed. When possible i try to share it with community - but one man can do only so much :)

[RichBC]

@Marc Good to put the problem in the public domain as it will make Asset issuers aware. I think the solution will be that Asset issuers take account of this in the pricing, number of Assets and size of the dividend payments.

I suspect that another part of the solution is to realise that small Assets do not make sense, they have other problems like a Whale gobbling the lot.Perhaps even some words in the release that would specifically exclude making payments of less than a certain amount?

Also what does the attacker gain from this?

Rich

[LithStud]

@RichBC one thing i see is - ruin the asset, that is if issuer is paying out. Or try ruin issuers credibility by crying of not getting paid and such.

[HiDevin]

I find this problem in other assets already, people put 8 decimals in their asset, and people buy their asset at 0.00000001 ( asset )

These are reasons why I limited my asset to 1 decimal, though it still doesn't stop people.

To stop this, it's just to create a long list of blocking investors with small decimals/ small investments and adding that to current dividend payouts, I already see this a problem for me, as more and more investors only invest 1 BURST into my asset, fees are getting higher for me, and I don't know what to do about it. edit: ( considering some people I sent 1 asset to, for a promotional reason, so I don't mind that )

EDIT: There's a reason for ( Accounts not to be distributed to ) in the asset administration menu,

The attacker OFC will be losing money, because I would block the account. and that 4 BURST used to create each account will be nothing, but it will just cause a lot of time and hassle for me :/

[HiDevin]

Reasons why most assets don't pay daily is because fees eat up most of their profit anyways, and it would be more wise to throw dividends every week, rather than every day.

[Marc]

@RichBC Also what does the attacker gain from this

Thats not the Point. We have forever seen People using their powers to choose the dark side of the force since.. ever, thats not related to Burst for different reasons, be it for the pure lust on destruction, be it to proof a Point like their coding skills, be if for hopefully gaining some monetary Advantage etc. Ive seen People cracking the C64 games just because... :-) Yeah Mission Impossible and Summer Games.

Remember the time when Virus/Malware etc. was written just for the pure proof to be able to, Win 3.1 not like These days where Ransomware is written to push some BTC out of the Victims?

I aprr. your Response LithStud as a dev. Still, my Initial question is unanswered. To make it more concrete,

would it from a devs view be possible to write a bot creating the Actions described above for the cost of not much say a couple of 100$s and what would be the effects - on the AE on prob. on Burst as such?

Rich, I do agree that small assets dont make much sense whatsoever. Not for the issuer who should treat them as a Hobby with much to much time invested for what he earns - if ever. Not for the Investor, and not for the Trader . Whats the Point in trading +30% a day on $ 10.- lol.

Hope to see lex or similar on this Topic, thx.

[HiDevin]

@Marc said in Could this kill small Assets ..or even bigger ones ?:

would it from a devs view be possible to write a bot creating the Actions described above for the cost of not much say a couple of 100$s and what would be the effects - on the AE on prob. on Burst as such?

A crap ton of the asset issues time copy/pasting a crap ton of address to block, It shouldn't affect BURST as you can block their accounts, I know people would use some money to piss off assets issuers, but near 100$?, I wouldn't think it would affect our AE that much either

[Marc]

@HiDevin Each time reading your post believing less and less your a "14 year old trying to fit in", lol..

Blacklisting isnt a very good concept if the pool gets bigger, be it IPs banned from a Server access or Burst IDs banned from payout. The reason for that is simple:

While there is virtually Billions of IP/Burst IDs out there - there is only a handfull of IPs/Burst IDs out there to whom you would like to grant Access to your Server/payout. Blacklisting means HUGE effort to handle for the admin, BIG config files/lists to handle the banned ones etc.

Whitelisting compared to that is much much more effective. Hold a file of 25-100 entries who are allowed and ban the rest instead of creating bigger and bigger lists with millions of entries getting bigger all the time youd never catch up.

[LithStud]

@Marc well thats how it should be :) its same principal as with my assets shares with bonus status. When generating a list of IDs to pay it checks current held shaer amount with the recorded one and assigns the lesser one as a bonus (so if someone sells shares with that status assigned system will know). So now porting that same reasoning for dividends as a whole its even simpler. Check dividends amount -> if less then approved one store its value for future else add to the list of accounts to pay.

If staying purely on blockchain -> automatically ignore accounts with less than approved amount with ability to include them back in if issuer knows its a trusted investor.

[ZapbuzZ]

What i can see killing Assets is undercutting from immature investors. Immature in the sense they do not see the true nature of the asset models before purchase ultimately to sell again for less in fear. Its a bad habbit. Moreover Fear is the root of lots of issues in crypto currency causing crypto warrior behavior. Its essential to remember buying is what raises value. Spending causes loss of value. So if more people actually purchased burst the more it would be worth; and transaction fees to process. Assets are not a get rich quick scheme. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Most people are better off just mining and selling their coins for they appear to lack the nerve to invest here.

[Marc]

@ZapbuzZ Its a bad habbit

Greed and fear is what thrives any kind of (stock) market and probably is built very deep within any human behaviour. Its two sides of the same coin and you cant have one without the other, so critizicing one side as such seem pretty pointless to me.