Author: jl2012 2015-12-19 20:03:28
Published on: 2015-12-19T20:03:28+00:00
During a Scaling Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong, block withholding attacks were discussed as a real issue among pools, with bad actors threatening to use them against the pools. While P2Pool is often suggested as a replacement for pools, it too is vulnerable to block withholding and has other technical issues preventing widespread adoption. Peter Todd suggests fixing block withholding through a hardfork, using Luke-Jr's two-stage target mechanism, which will require SPV-visible hardfork. It is noted that small pools could potentially use block withholding attacks against larger pools but this argument is academic and not applicable in the real world. The proposed solution requires all miners to sacrifice 1% of their rewards for 10 years and results in slower confirmation times. After 546096 blocks or 10 years, the secondary target becomes 2 ^ 252, making detection of block withholding attacks easier. Any nodes not updated become more vulnerable to attack. The proposal is still a softfork by definition. A link to the original discussion is provided.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T02:28:45.425436+00:00