Since PARSEC publication, it has been mentioned in several topics that an attacker must provide 1/3 of the elders to disrupt the network. But in fact, this would be true only if the faulty elders are uniformly distributed among the sections.In all probabilities a section will be impacted with a much lower ratio of bad elders.
I have updated my Excel file implemented a long ago to compute the probable global ratios for disruption with PARSEC threshold (1/3). Maidsafe has indicated that the section size will be increased from its current value (8), but unless I missed it, the new value wasn’t given. So, I choose a section size of 31 similar to the initial old value 3 years ago. I have taken a total population of 100000 elders as an example. With these values I found that:
- a 12% ratio of malicious elders can disrupt one section (11/31 consensus)
- a 36% ratio of malicious elders can control one section (21/31 consensus)
Note: With higher populations the percentages are slightly lower (but of course, in absolute value the attacker must provide more vaults).
Here are the corresponding curves and tables:
Disruption of a section:
Control of a section:
