Author: nullius 2018-01-16 00:10:38
Published on: 2018-01-16T00:10:38+00:00
A proposal for reducing Bitcoin's power consumption was discussed on a mailing list. The concept of "next-coinbase" for miners was introduced, where any miner submitting a block will submit the "next-coinbase" for any new block mined by itself. The consensus algorithm will add next checks, and a hash from the just mined block and the previous one will have to match up to N bits for the next "next-coinbase" from the next block to be valid. However, this scheme drastically increases the upfront investment required for a new miner to start mining. Additionally, the proposal potentially destroys Bitcoin's transaction-ordering security, as a 51% attack could be executed by any miner who has >50% of the hashpower proportionate to miners allowed to mine a particular block instead of >50% of global hashpower. Furthermore, there are several potential attacks and issues with the proposal that need to be addressed, including how N is determined, how reorgs are handled, how it interacts with the difficulty adjustment algorithm, what happens to coinbase fees from a “new-miner-block,” and how miner anonymity can be preserved. Overall, there are many questions and concerns about the proposal that need further investigation before it can be implemented.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:50:12.608377+00:00