Author: Mike Kelly 2020-02-10 15:28:20
Published on: 2020-02-10T15:28:20+00:00
The conversation begins with M explaining the purpose of his proposed mechanism, which is to discourage miners from including transactions in their block that conflict with the eventually-consistent state of consensus in the mempool. ZmnSCPxj argues that this would require making consensus dependent on the state of the mempool, which could lead to persistent chainsplits. They also mention that purge attacks are a form of censorship attack that can be defended against by offering increased mining fees for transactions being censored. However, ZmnSCPxj warns that using Child Pays For Parent to defend against an opportunist attacker retrieving spent Bitcoin via RBF is a losing game for the defender. The conversation then shifts to the topic of G20 states seizing major mining operations and destroying value and confidence in Bitcoin. M proposes a scenario where the G20 could reorg deeper than 6 - say 10, or even 20 - and use replace by fee (RBF) to conduct a successful attack. ZmnSCPxj argues that getting rid of RBF is not possible because miners have an incentive to implement it. They also point out that regardless of however many blocks are attacked, it is still a censorship attack attempting to censor Bitcoin completely. The conversation ends with M agreeing that a purge attack is a form of sabotage that compromises the integrity of previously-adequately-confirmed transactions by allowing users to double spend them.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T23:21:38.034449+00:00