📅 Original date posted:2011-11-23
🗒️ Summary of this message: A hard block found in a short time frame could incentivize miners to keep it secret and build more blocks on top of it, causing a potential network split.
📝 Original message:On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Christian Decker
<decker.christian at gmail.com> wrote:
> At some point you might find an incredibly hard block that makes your forked
> chain the hardest one in the network
Seems to me that's the real problem with any "hardest block found in X
minutes" scheme.
If I get lucky and find a really extremely hard block then I have an
incentive to keep it secret and build a couple more blocks on top of
it, then announce them all at the same time.
If the rest of the network rejects my longer chain because I didn't
announce the extremely hard block in a timely fashion... then how
could the network ever recover from a real network split? A network
split/rejoin will look exactly the same.
Bitcoin as-is doesn't have the "I got lucky and found an extremely
hard block" problem because the difficulty TARGET is used to compute
chain difficulty, not the actual hashes found.
---
PS: I proposed a different method for dealing with large hash power
drops for the testnet on the Forums yesterday, and am testing it
today.
--
--
Gavin Andresen
Gavin Andresen [ARCHIVE] /
npub1s4…d44kw
2023-06-07 02:41:20
in reply to nevent1q…fgyr
Author Public Key
npub1s4lj77xuzcu7wy04afcr487f0r3za0f8n2775xrpkld2sv639mjqsd44kwPublished at
2023-06-07 02:41:20Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2011-11-23\n🗒️ Summary of this message: A hard block found in a short time frame could incentivize miners to keep it secret and build more blocks on top of it, causing a potential network split.\n📝 Original message:On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Christian Decker\n\u003cdecker.christian at gmail.com\u003e wrote:\n\u003e At some point you might find an incredibly hard block that makes your forked\n\u003e chain the hardest one in the network\n\nSeems to me that's the real problem with any \"hardest block found in X\nminutes\" scheme.\n\nIf I get lucky and find a really extremely hard block then I have an\nincentive to keep it secret and build a couple more blocks on top of\nit, then announce them all at the same time.\n\nIf the rest of the network rejects my longer chain because I didn't\nannounce the extremely hard block in a timely fashion... then how\ncould the network ever recover from a real network split? A network\nsplit/rejoin will look exactly the same.\n\nBitcoin as-is doesn't have the \"I got lucky and found an extremely\nhard block\" problem because the difficulty TARGET is used to compute\nchain difficulty, not the actual hashes found.\n\n\n---\n\nPS: I proposed a different method for dealing with large hash power\ndrops for the testnet on the Forums yesterday, and am testing it\ntoday.\n\n-- \n--\nGavin Andresen",
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