Author: Christophe Biocca 2014-04-24 16:05:55
Published on: 2014-04-24T16:05:55+00:00
There is a proposed enforcement mechanism for enforcing widespread censorship rules, which involves coinbase confiscation. However, Christophe Biocca argues that this method would be worse than simple orphaning. He suggests that if a pool wants to blacklist certain transactions, they could do so by casting a vote. The initial stages of enforcing censorship rules with this voting mechanism are much easier and every time another pool joins the blacklist, there is no harm in doing so. At some point, they will reach a majority, which causes the blacklist to be applied. This process happens smoothly, letting the blacklist be applied safely and easily. However, this mechanism has its drawbacks as well. It can be difficult to prove if a Finney attack happened to a third-party, making it easy to attack smaller miners with Sybil attacks, get them creating blocks with double-spends in them, and using that as an excuse to punish them. Decentralized markets are a great example of time-sensitive transactions that become much less valuable if they get delayed greatly. Therefore, coinbase confiscations may not be the best method for enforcing censorship rules.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:53:52.895691+00:00