Author: Ashley Holman 2014-04-21 15:40:48
Published on: 2014-04-21T15:40:48+00:00
Peter Todd and another individual are discussing the idea of mining on top of just a block header. Peter Todd claims that this would disadvantage small miners since they would earn no profit while waiting for the information to validate the block and update their UTXO sets. This puts them at a disadvantage compared to large pools who can validate either instantly or more quickly than smaller miners. The other individual argues that under the headers-first scenario, the full block would still reach everyone in the same time as it would under the current rules. They claim that small miners lose nothing in terms of updating their UTXO set but gain an early "heads up" alert that a new block is coming. This allows them to spend the propagation time working more productively on an empty block in the new chain rather than wasting time on an orphan. While this doesn't solve the problem of larger pools vs smaller pools, if it doesn't make it any worse, headers-first propagation would be a net benefit to the network since it removes the incentive to make small blocks.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:28:36.110650+00:00