Author: Nathan Wilcox 2015-07-11 08:05:25
Published on: 2015-07-11T08:05:25+00:00
The increasing popularity of "SPV Mining" has become problematic for Bitcoin's network. It has led to consensus-violating forks and weakened the network's robustness against such forks. The disincentive miners have for verifying transactions is the root cause of this problem. If there is a cost to verifying transactions in a received block, then miners have an incentive to skip transaction verification. This creates a risk of mining atop an invalid block. As more miners cut corners to save on costs, it becomes difficult to measure how many miners are not validating transactions. However, if true, this behavior could lead to a brittle network that is vulnerable to forking-persistence behavior. A malicious miner can take advantage of this by throwing an erroneous transaction into their winning block, causing all the "SPV Miners" to run off along a worthless chain. The solution to this problem is unclear, but it requires addressing the disincentive miners have for verifying transactions. Without proper verification, the network's security is at risk.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:20:25.040010+00:00