Author: Tier Nolan 2015-07-11 10:39:38
Published on: 2015-07-11T10:39:38+00:00
In an email conversation, Jorge Timón suggested that it would be more rational for miners to keep mining on top of the old block until they have fully validated the new block, even if this increases the orphan rate slightly. However, increasing the orphan rate makes the network less secure- if miners have a 5% orphan rate, an attacker can launch a 51% attack with 49% of the network. While the difference may not be significant, miners still have an incentive to do full validation so that they can include transactions and get transaction fees. SPV-mining is to prevent hashing hardware from wasting power when it isn't needed, and it may become less of a problem if (when?) electricity costs dominate hardware capital costs.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:21:45.851849+00:00