Author: Matt Corallo 2015-08-06 20:38:41
Published on: 2015-08-06T20:38:41+00:00
The discussion on bitcoin-dev mailing list is about TheBlueMatt relay network and its documentation. Gregory Maxwell clarifies that Bitcoin Core has cached validation for many years which solves speed of transmission, technical block size issues and block validation. However, he is mystified by the large block discussion which is mostly divorced from the technology as deployed and possible. The technical/security implications of larger blocks are related to other things than propagation time, if one assumes that people are using the available efficient relay protocol (or better). He explains that SPV mining is a bit of a misnomer and what these parties are actually doing is blinding mining on top of other pools' stratum work. It was initially deployed at a time when a single pool in Europe has amassed more than half of the hashrate. This pool had propagation problems and a very high orphan rate, it may have (perhaps unintentionally) been performing a selfish mining attack; mining off their stratum work was an easy fix which massively cut down the orphan rates for anyone who did it.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T21:13:10.525451+00:00