Author: Gregory Maxwell 2018-01-29 21:54:23
Published on: 2018-01-29T21:54:23+00:00
When it comes to check locktime, the median of the last 11 blocks is used as an indicator of what the actual real time is. This approach assumes that a majority of miners are honest. However, using the block's own timestamp for nlocktime and time based nlocks were common on the network, each miner would maximize their fee income by setting the value as high as they could get away with. This creates an incentive for a runaway situation that could harm network stability. Thus, the median is used to mitigate this issue. The timestamps in Bitcoin aren't intended to be particularly accurate as they're used only for controlling the difficulty. It's not clear whether much better can really be done. If times need to be accurate, Bitcoin would need to use a rather different design. Open-timestamp calendar servers provide more precise time-stamping under the assumption that the calendar server is behaving correctly.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T05:06:41.840071+00:00