Author: Gregory Maxwell 2011-08-24 16:46:42
Published on: 2011-08-24T16:46:42+00:00
In an email exchange from August 24, 2011, Luke-Jr proposed several changes to the Bitcoin protocol. First, he suggested replacing hard limits with something that can adapt dynamically, possibly based on difficulty to avoid being gamed. However, it was deemed too early for such a change. He also suggested adjusting difficulty every block based on a sliding window, which could solve issues when hashrate drops overnight. However, there were concerns about allowing too much skew and potential difficulty inflation.Another proposal was to replace the 64-bit integers with variable-size fractions to increase precision, but there were concerns about creating bugs if people needed more than 64 bits. The idea of infinite numerator and denominator was considered "batshit insane" due to its weird consequences and factor inflation. Furthermore, asking financial software writers to use arbitrary rational numbers would be unrealistic.Finally, Luke-Jr suggested removing the 100 confirmation requirement for spending generated coins and flagging new outputs as "generated" or "recently generated" before 100 confirmations. However, this was not supported as it would make Bitcoin less trustworthy. The 100 block maturity on generated coins was deemed good since orphaning happens frequently without malice and causes losses that are worse than double-spending. While it may be obnoxious to not pad generation payouts, increasing the payout threshold was seen as a possible solution.
Updated on: 2023-05-18T22:13:15.654641+00:00