Author: Alan Reiner 2014-04-21 15:58:06
Published on: 2014-04-21T15:58:06+00:00
In an email conversation between Ashley Holman and Peter Todd, they discussed the possibility of headers-first propagation as a solution to the problem of larger pools mining most blocks. Peter Todd argued that small miners are disadvantaged because they earn no profit while waiting for block validation and updating their UTXO sets. However, Holman suggested that under headers-first propagation, the full block would still reach everyone at the same time, but smaller miners would receive an early "heads up" alert that a new block is coming. This would allow them to work more productively on an empty block in the new chain rather than wasting time on an orphan. Holman also emphasized that nodes can reliably decide on "first received," regardless of how they subsequently act on it. Nodes can receive a header and continue mining the old block or a subsequently-verified competing block until it has the necessary pieces to fully verify the first header received. If that block data doesn't come, then it will be naturally ignored. But if multiple blocks come at once, even if a competing block verifies first, the node would still switch to considering the first header received as the best block when it later receives proof it is valid, which may only take a couple of seconds.In summary, headers-first propagation limits certain kinds of block-injection/racing attacks and effectively propagates new blocks at the speed of 80 bytes. While it does not solve the problem of larger pools vs smaller pools, it removes the incentive to make small blocks and offers smaller miners an early alert and more productive mining time.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:29:00.566314+00:00