Author: Ittay 2015-12-25 11:15:27
Published on: 2015-12-25T11:15:27+00:00
The potential for block withholding attacks in open pools could drive miners away from large pools, but attacking multiple small pools would not be effective as the attack is proportional to the size of each pool. It is not ideal to rely on such attacks and threats against honest large pools, including GHash, which did nothing more wrong than being successful. There are techniques that can be used to detect block withholding attacks, but these are unlikely to be effective against savvy attackers. KYC has a particular financial-regulation connotation in Bitcoin circles, and it is unlikely that every single open pool would implement some notion of identity checking. Instead, bigger pools may become more suspicious of signing up new hash power, which is good for decentralization. DRM tech can also easily be used to prevent block withholding attacks by attesting to the honesty of the hashing power. There are solo miners who can attack the big open pools, but the loss of the biggest open pools would not be a bad outcome. Pools greater than 25% pose a danger, and home miners do not need a pool greater than 25% for protection against variance. One suggestion from Luke-Jr requires a change to the Bitcoin PoW and would make the GHash-at-51% situation possible again.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T02:30:24.016348+00:00