Author: Gareth Williams 2014-12-13 13:32:22
Published on: 2014-12-13T13:32:22+00:00
The debate about the security of client-side validation versus SPV continues, with Alex Mizrahi arguing that the former is mathematically secure while the latter is economically secure. However, the comparison is fallacious since the alternative to a proof-of-publication system reliant on client-side validation is a blockchain. The question of whether the token used on said blockchain should be two-way-pegged to BTC is completely orthogonal. Bitcoin nodes not being smart enough to detect when something is going wrong with human intervention saved the day during the Great Fork of 2013. A proof-of-publication system would pose a serious challenge if something similar were to happen. The absence of reliable ways to detect lapses in consensus or any mechanism to incentivize convergence renders such a system less secure than its counterparts. Using scheduled updates would require clients to stop working at a certain block and users to download an update, which may lead to centralization. An alternative to this is mandatory updates, but this poses the risk of centralization as well. Such systems are effectively "mandatory updating" due to the risk of subtle consensus bugs that could result from different software versions.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T14:45:19.471043+00:00