Author: Ryan Carboni 2013-12-24 01:51:41
Published on: 2013-12-24T01:51:41+00:00
In 2013, Ryan Carboni suggested that Bitcoin should have a sanity check wherein if time > 3 days and after 4 blocks have been mined, then difficulty would be reset. Mark Friedenbach responded to this suggestion, stating that such adjustments would introduce security risks. He argued that if someone were isolated from the main chain by a low-hashpower attacker, they would not know until three days had passed when network block generation has stalled. After that, the block rate is normal but entirely controlled by the attacker and isolated from mainnet. Friedenbach recommended fast-acting alternative difficulty adjustment algorithms being explored by some alts, such as the 9-block interval, 144-block window, Parks-McClellan FIR filter used by Freicoin to recover from just such a mining bubble. If it were to happen to bitcoin, there would be a sophisticated alternative to turn to and enough time to make the change. Carboni projected a Bitcoin mining bubble, indicating that one would have to isolate roughly one percent of the Bitcoin network's hashing power to do so, which would indicate an attack by a state actor instead of anything else. He suggested that the safest way to run Bitcoin is through a proprietary dial-up network.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T22:55:33.851090+00:00