Author: Peter Todd 2015-08-22 00:01:27
Published on: 2015-08-22T00:01:27+00:00
In an email exchange, Tom Harding and Peter Todd used a car analogy to describe a potential problem with Bitcoin’s hash power. Todd likened the issue to a fatigue problem with brake cylinders in cars where they could fail during heavy braking, which would be fatal. However, Harding countered that the car crashes only when the brakes are bad (minority hash power partitioned) while the radio is on (partitioned miners had small individual hashrate). He checked the scenario where only the radio is on and found the car does not crash. In response, Todd asked for Harding’s acceptable revenue difference between a small and large miner and what kind of attacks on miners he thinks we need to resist. Todd said it’s important to know if Harding’s definition of “the brakes are bad” corresponds to normal usage or something that’s not reasonable to design for.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T20:05:51.783905+00:00