Author: Peter Todd 2015-12-19 18:42:40
Published on: 2015-12-19T18:42:40+00:00
During the Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong, representatives of a super majority of the Bitcoin hashing power discussed block withholding attacks as a real issue for them. Pools offering their services to the public without anti-privacy Know-Your-Customer have little defense against such attacks, which is a threat to the decentralization of hashing power. Although P2Pool has been brought up as a replacement, it is still vulnerable to block withholding and other vulnerabilities. Fixing block withholding requires an SPV-visible hardfork, which should be done in conjunction with any blocksize increase. Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer have argued that block withholding attacks can be used by small pools against larger ones, disincentivising large pools. However, this argument is academic and not applicable to the real world, as the legal system combined with withholding detection mechanisms provides a simpler defense against such attacks. Large hashing power installations have no block withholding attack vulnerabilities.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T02:33:49.406606+00:00