SYBILing nodes! 😱 Exploiting IC Network... Community Attention Required!

[Lorimer]

@sat

if we shuffle frequently, that means that a malicious NP (if there is one) will be in the subnet from time to time instead of always or never, which might actually make their life easier, since they can now predict that they will be in the subnet at some point.

I think the probabilities work in favour of node shuffling (at least according to some back of the envelope calculations )

@Lorimer

the probability that a 13 node subnet will be in a state that facilitates collusion (to the point of controlling the subnet) after a shuffle step is 0.1^9. If a shuffle step occurs daily, it would take many many thousands of years for a 24 hour collusion time windows to plausibly open up (by my back-of-the-envelope calculations). Also, shuffling doesn’t need to be a silver bullet, it just needs to be better than not shuffling.

I hope node shuffling is taken under consideration moving forward rather than considered a non-starter. I don’t think shuffling should be made a priority, but I do think it will eventually be needed. I’d love to see it implemented once automated on-chain subnet membership changes are a thing, once the IC has scaled a little more (so there are more NP options), and I guess once/if performance related protocol changes get implemented to reduce catchup latency.

@sat

If we had a lot more unique node providers, then I’d view shuffling differently.

@sat

With some changes in the protocol we could make it good in practice as well