Author: Dave Scotese 2015-12-29 21:51:29
Published on: 2015-12-29T21:51:29+00:00
The discussion on altering the block-selection mechanism, specifically when two block solutions appear at nearly the same time, continued with a proposal to use "BitcoinDaysDestroyed" as a metric for selecting which block to build on. The metric would rely on using only transactions that have been in the mempool for some time and using the one that has the most old BitcoinDaysDestroyed, rather than the one that came in first. The goal of this change is to reduce the profitability of withholding block solutions and reduce the chances that a block solved a while ago can orphan one solved recently. However, there were concerns raised about network propagation effects between large and small miners, where the profitability difference between them without attacks going on is a hugely worrying problem. The importance of default behavior was discussed and it was noted that enforcement is not important when setting defaults, but rather allowing anyone who cares to deviate from them to do so. Enforcement is proportional to the number of folks who mess with the defaults, which among miners is pretty small.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T02:29:46.882838+00:00