cross-posted from: https://monero.town/post/6680879
More community input is needed on possible deployment of temporary rolling DNS checkpoints to defend against Qubic attacks: https://github.com/monero-project/monero/issues/10064
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TL;DR: A malicious mining pool is disrupting the network and could cause deep blockchain re-organizations. DNS checkpoints, which have existed for emergency use in the code since 2014, could prevent deep blockchain re-organizations, but Monero's blockchain consensus protocol would temporarily be less decentralized.
Advantages
Practical advantages
The code for this countermeasure has been in the Monero codebase for over ten years. The countermeasure is ready to deploy now, once final testing, "procedure smoothing" (see below) and successful outreach to honest mining pools is completed.
Humans (i.e. the Monero Core Team) could intervene by ceasing or modifying the checkpointing procedure if the checkpointing produces undesirable results.
Principled advantages
- Rolling DNS checkpoints could keep the Monero network working, with minimum disruption, for the thousands of users who depend on it every day for private peer-to-peer electronic cash.
Disadvantages
Practical disadvantages
Rolling DNS checkpointing has never been deployed on Monero's mainnet before. Something unforeseen could go wrong.
Successful checkpointing requires most of the major honest Monero mining pools to voluntarily enable DNS checkpointing enforcement. If the mining pools choose not to, rolling DNS checkpoints will likely be unsuccessful.
Maintaining control of the DNS records would require strict security procedures. Two previous security incidents in 2019 and 2023 involving malicious software hosted on getmonero.org servers and theft of community donated funds should be kept in mind.
Principled disadvantages
Without a doubt, Monero's consensus mechanism would be less decentralized if rolling DNS checkpoints were enabled.
Monero nodes would temporarily no longer follow the chain with the most proof of work.
Mining pools following the DNS checkpoints would be similar to a situation of the majority of mining hashpower coordinating and colluding against a minority hashpower miner. "Majority hashpower cannot collude" may be considered a security assumption of proof-of-work consensus.