Author: Dave Scotese 2019-04-15 00:44:51
Published on: 2019-04-15T00:44:51+00:00
The Bitcoin consensus requires a memorable feature to provide anti-sybil-attack checking. However, since significant data occurs every ten minutes, the memorable feature must be rare yet recurrent. Ken Shirriff's blog post describes artifacts that can be found in the blockchain, which are not tied to their location in the blockchain. Therefore, anyone building an alternative blockchain can easily add artifacts with the same timestamp and height, masking the counterfeit. To prevent this, the memorable feature must be intimately tied to work-intensive results such as the ratio of the hash to the target. While Nelson Mandela's image appearing in the blockchain does not prove its authenticity, the smallest block hash after all the zeroes on 12/13/13 starting with 3da1 and having two occurrences of a double-e amongst three block hashes from that day would. Peter Todd suggests not basing any features on the property of hashest smaller than the target as it has no significance to the Bitcoin consensus and is just as arbitrary as picking whole decimal number block heights. Furthermore, it is harder to compute and likely to confuse people regarding how the Bitcoin consensus works.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T18:04:31.840664+00:00