Author: Eric Voskuil 2016-12-11 05:29:08
Published on: 2016-12-11T05:29:08+00:00
The mining aspect of the Bitcoin security model is based on the presumption that a majority of independent miners and sellers will distribute hash power, rather than one individual controlling the majority. However, there is a qualifier in Satoshi's quote regarding nodes not cooperating to attack the network, which means that a single miner with the majority hash power is cooperating with himself and technically not attacking the network. Pieter Wuille argues that optimizing for minimal orphan rate may result in a single entity providing all double spend protection, which goes against the central principle of Bitcoin security that the money's security is linked to the number of independent miners and sellers. Daniele Pinna questions whether an unrecognizable 51% attack is possible, where the remaining 49% are dragged in against their will. In terms of predicting orphan rate, models can estimate it given block size and network/hashrate topology, but such factors cannot be controlled. Therefore, purely optimizing for minimal orphan rate may result in a single conglomerate of pools producing all the blocks, with no propagation delay and achieving zero orphans.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T20:49:58.721344+00:00