📅 Original date posted:2015-09-11
📝 Original message:It's pretty obvious that Dave is suggesting an alternate tie-breaker:
> It also makes an empty block far less attractive because it is easily replaced, all the way until the next block locks it in.
I do see a problem with the proposal. Right now, when a miner sees a
new block with the most work and there are no ties, it is always a
good idea to build on top of it (unless they're in the middle of
building a private chain, or other pathological cases).
With this new heuristic (assuming it is actually followed by a good
chunk of people), a miner can reasonably know whether or not they can
safely mine a sibling of the block instead. When enough widely
propagated transactions exist, and the block to orphan is small,
there's minimal risk in mining a sibling block instead of a child
block (the only extra risk is in someone else mining a child block
right around the time we suceed in mining a siblish block, where we'll
definitely be orphaned instead of ~50% of the time).
Because the risk can be measured and is sometimes very small, it will
then be profitable for a miner to orphan a small non-empty block and
double-spend some confirmed transactions whenever the block confirming
them is easily replaced. This lowers the security of 1-conf
transactions.
Mind you, that risk doesn't apply if we prefer non-empty blocks to
empty blocks and leave it at that, or only switch if the new block
doesn't double spend transactions in the old one, so it's a fixable
issue.
On 11 September 2015 at 12:32, Jorge Timón
<bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> On Sep 11, 2015 12:27 PM, "Dave Scotese via bitcoin-dev"
> <bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>
>> Rather than (promising to, and when they don't actually, at least
>> pretending to) use the first-seen block, I propose that a more sophisticated
>> method of choosing which of two block solutions to accept.
>
> There's already a criterion to chose: the one with more work (in valid
> blocks) on top of it.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
Christophe Biocca [ARCHIVE] /
npub1mt…9g5zm
2023-06-07 17:39:59
in reply to nevent1q…wppx
Author Public Key
npub1mtxs7jztn027d9cylej99hltqq9vq84uxm80zl4naxafd9hpxqwsj9g5zmPublished at
2023-06-07 17:39:59Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2015-09-11\n📝 Original message:It's pretty obvious that Dave is suggesting an alternate tie-breaker:\n\n\u003e It also makes an empty block far less attractive because it is easily replaced, all the way until the next block locks it in.\n\nI do see a problem with the proposal. Right now, when a miner sees a\nnew block with the most work and there are no ties, it is always a\ngood idea to build on top of it (unless they're in the middle of\nbuilding a private chain, or other pathological cases).\n\nWith this new heuristic (assuming it is actually followed by a good\nchunk of people), a miner can reasonably know whether or not they can\nsafely mine a sibling of the block instead. When enough widely\npropagated transactions exist, and the block to orphan is small,\nthere's minimal risk in mining a sibling block instead of a child\nblock (the only extra risk is in someone else mining a child block\nright around the time we suceed in mining a siblish block, where we'll\ndefinitely be orphaned instead of ~50% of the time).\n\nBecause the risk can be measured and is sometimes very small, it will\nthen be profitable for a miner to orphan a small non-empty block and\ndouble-spend some confirmed transactions whenever the block confirming\nthem is easily replaced. This lowers the security of 1-conf\ntransactions.\n\nMind you, that risk doesn't apply if we prefer non-empty blocks to\nempty blocks and leave it at that, or only switch if the new block\ndoesn't double spend transactions in the old one, so it's a fixable\nissue.\n\nOn 11 September 2015 at 12:32, Jorge Timón\n\u003cbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\u003e\n\u003e On Sep 11, 2015 12:27 PM, \"Dave Scotese via bitcoin-dev\"\n\u003e \u003cbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\u003e\u003e\n\u003e\u003e Rather than (promising to, and when they don't actually, at least\n\u003e\u003e pretending to) use the first-seen block, I propose that a more sophisticated\n\u003e\u003e method of choosing which of two block solutions to accept.\n\u003e\n\u003e There's already a criterion to chose: the one with more work (in valid\n\u003e blocks) on top of it.\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e _______________________________________________\n\u003e bitcoin-dev mailing list\n\u003e bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\n\u003e https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev\n\u003e",
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