Who is Sybil?

& Why did Byzantine generals have a problem?

Believe it or not these 2 questions define the 2 fundamental security vulnerabilities of human networks. Human networks today are mostly based on the underlying global internet network. If James Lovelock’s thesis of the “Novacene” is correct and we are already cyborgs. Then doesn’t that mean that the internet is Gaia’s human neural network.

It is the best example of a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) being defined by a set of decentralised and interconnected computer infrastructure running the same TCP/IP computer protocols (parameters and semantics). At the heart of how the internet works is the concept of peering. China is not connected to Google but both China and Google are connected to Stanford so that Gaia only has one internet.

A Sybil attack is a crisis of identity more than anything else. Sybil is a story about a woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder. Although it seems that up until now it is always usually men or a group of men who are behind these 51% style attacks on the global commons. This occurs when the attacker attempts to subvert the reputation system of the network by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities and uses them to gain a dispraportionately large influence. It is this vulnerability that capitalism has exploited so compellingly with its marketing/spin (media) industry and the associated Culture Infowars. Rupert Murdoch’s media ownership is a prime example of a $ybil attack. I will dare say, lies at the heart of its global dominance, a term that is probably most appropriate is propaganda, or what trump calls the truth, it is the obsession of individuals or small groups of people to control the “shared truth” or dominant global narrative.

The mainstream blockchain world of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, that either use a Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, doesn’t know how to deal with Sybil and are vulnerable to 51% style attacks. Hararri in his book “Nexus” points this out and therefore discounts blockchain as a secure solution for decentralised governance of human networks. Hararri’s Zionist colleagues are very familiar with Sybil as they are by far the most sophisticated exponents of the 51% style attack strategies as outlined in Anthony Lowenstein’s book “Palestine Laboratory”. Since the 1950’s Anthony has pretty much traced the finger prints of the Zionist regime that is the state of Isra$ell to all of the authoritarian regimes in the world, through its military industrial complex of surveillance technology and Genocidal Artificial Intelligence. As a nation state Isra$ell has exported the technologies used to ethnically cleanse indigenous or minority groups to anyone in the world who has an interest in such technologies.

The way the Stellar Consensus Protocol prevents these attacks uses the same kind of principle that the internet does, this concept of peering or Proof of Agreement (PoA) – choosing other nodes on the network that you trust and are going to listen to and agree with. This is a form of social contract that is based in the real world between two parties that know each other and have verified not only their real world existence but also have exposure to understanding something about their reputation and values, before they agree to trust them. This is then replicated or mirrored in the digital realm of the blockchain through this function of “trust lines”, which nodes or users can extend to other nodes and digital assets on the network. The Stellar Consensus Protocol (SCP) then implements a very fast series of messages between participants (nodes) that trust each other to confirm transactions and finalize them on the ledger.

Anyone can set up a Stellar node and participate, but they must provide their identifying information on the public record. This way, other nodes can decide who to include in – or exclude from – their trusted group. SCP gains Proof-of-Agreement on which transactions are added to its blockchain from a series of voting processes by these mutually trusted nodes. When enough nodes in their trusted overlapping groups (called a quorum) agree that a transaction set and the assets and actions in it are valid, it will be permanently added to the blockchain. This entire process generally takes about 5 seconds. 

This is where the Byzantine generals come into the story. The computer scientists who coined the term “The Byzantine generals problem” I think assumed the Byzantine generals were aware of the problem because their empire lasted so long. The Byzantine generals had to secure consensus amongst themselves on whether to charge or retreat, because if the enemy has infiltrated the army and taken control of one of the generals they could send the message to other generals to retreat when in fact the whole army wanted to charge. This would create chaos and lead to defeat for the army. The entire intelligence industry is dedicated to gathering data on one’s peers in the effort to control them visa vi hegemony (American imperialism in its current form) by exploiting this type of vulnerability in its perceived adversaries. As Narendra Modi said in 2018 “whoever controls the data controls the world”. Having a secure consensus mechanism that is Byzantine Fault Tolerant and can withstand Sybil attacks allows each node on the network to control its own data and therefore decentralise control of the data and the network.

The way Stellar reaches consensus is through a Federated Byzantine Agreement protocol called Proof of Agreement (PoA). This system solves the Byzantine General’s problem with a Byzantine Fault Tolerant algorithm that is based on real world social contract (agreement) represented by flexible trust lines on the network i.e. if you agree with another node you extend a trust line to them, if you no longer trust their state of the ledger you can remove the trust line. A federated system refers to a collection of interconnected but autonomous systems or components that work together to achieve a common goal. These systems maintain their independence while sharing data and resources as needed. Forests are very good examples of federated systems with trees behaving like nodes and mycelium providing the network that connects them.

One of the most prominent political scientists in the west John Mersheimer has developed what he calls his thesis of “offensive realism” to describe the belief he has that humans are not able to develop the necessary levels of trust to establish the collective agency to be able to protect themselves. He therefore concludes that Nation states must constantly seek hegemony over their peers.

David Mazieres who developed the Stellar Consensus Protocol says he uses the “Internet Hypothesis” to develop it and ultimately prove it out. Meaning decentralised decision making in the ongoing development of the global internet could have led to the creation of many different internets but didn’t, because transitively everyone wants to talk to everyone. In this sense I feel Mazieres disagrees with Mersheimer in the way that the Internet is proof that humans can develop the sufficient levels of trust necessary to maintain and protect a global shared network from attacks. Applying the same principle to an open and decentralised public blockchain network, then enables Gaia to have an open and transparent immutable karmic ledger that is controlled by Gaia (the sum of the collective) empowering everyone that participates with the agency of flexible trust.