📅 Original date posted:2011-09-14
🗒️ Summary of this message: A better retarget strategy for Bitcoin would be to use the real average time between all blocks, but it's not worth forking the chain over. Accurate time is important for discouraging blocks and should not be adjusted by more than 40 minutes.
📝 Original message:A better retarget strategy might be to use the real average time
between all of the blocks in the interval so that no blocks are
treated specially in the calculation. I agree that this is not
important enough to fork the chain over, though. An attacker would
have to maintain control for a *very* long time because of Bitcoin's
long retarget interval. (Maybe this kind of thing is why the retarget
interval is so long?)
I don't like requiring block times to be within minutes of reality. It
would be fine if only miners had to keep accurate time, but clients will
also need to have good time in order to see if a block will be
discouraged. A discouraged block should not count toward confirmations.
If relays will also discourage blocks, then they'll need accurate
time as well.
The network should not be allowed to adjust your time by more than 40
minutes to prevent the timejacking attack, but I don't see a problem
with the other time rules. Time is only used for retargets and LockTime,
so it only needs to be generally accurate.
theymos [ARCHIVE] /
npub10v…mper0
2023-06-07 02:26:02
in reply to nevent1q…e2kw
Author Public Key
npub10vt6y7m6shn8hfuj83zjlwcga4fky38kv73qz6xlcvtj4q7fjt0sqmper0Published at
2023-06-07 02:26:02Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2011-09-14\n🗒️ Summary of this message: A better retarget strategy for Bitcoin would be to use the real average time between all blocks, but it's not worth forking the chain over. Accurate time is important for discouraging blocks and should not be adjusted by more than 40 minutes.\n📝 Original message:A better retarget strategy might be to use the real average time\nbetween all of the blocks in the interval so that no blocks are\ntreated specially in the calculation. I agree that this is not\nimportant enough to fork the chain over, though. An attacker would\nhave to maintain control for a *very* long time because of Bitcoin's\nlong retarget interval. (Maybe this kind of thing is why the retarget\ninterval is so long?)\n\nI don't like requiring block times to be within minutes of reality. It\nwould be fine if only miners had to keep accurate time, but clients will\nalso need to have good time in order to see if a block will be\ndiscouraged. A discouraged block should not count toward confirmations.\nIf relays will also discourage blocks, then they'll need accurate\ntime as well.\n\nThe network should not be allowed to adjust your time by more than 40\nminutes to prevent the timejacking attack, but I don't see a problem\nwith the other time rules. Time is only used for retargets and LockTime,\nso it only needs to be generally accurate.",
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