Author: Nathan Wilcox 2015-07-11 12:09:16
Published on: 2015-07-11T12:09:16+00:00
The discussion revolves around the problem of individual incentives leading to a systemic problem in mining. It is suggested that all miners should validate transactions precisely because of the latest attack. However, "All X should do..." solutions which are oblivious to individual incentives don't scale. The bitcoin.org claim that "about half" of miner capacity does SPV Mining, is consistent with the incentives problem as described. Increased orphan rate means that the network is (slightly) less secure. As long as miners switch back to non-SPV mining after a timeout, SPV-mining is safe for everyone. If there's any cost to non-SPV mining, and the chance that an incoming block contains only valid transactions is very high, isn't there still an incentive to make this timeout longer and longer? 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 having to waste power when it isn't needed. It may be less of a problem if (when?) electricity costs dominate hardware capital costs. Ultimately, there are many individual rationales for SPV-Mining, but they come down to dropping a cost based on a bet about other miners' behavior.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:20:37.402641+00:00