Author: Jeff Garzik 2015-07-11 15:34:54
Published on: 2015-07-11T15:34:54+00:00
The issue of SPV mining and its impact on Bitcoin's network robustness is the subject of a discussion by Nathan Wilcox, who argues that miners' disincentive to verify transactions weakens the network against forks. According to bitcoin.org, SPV mining has become popular among miners, allowing consensus-violating forks to persist. The incentive for SPV Mining lies in the cost of verifying transactions, which leads some miners to forego transaction verification in favor of saving costs. However, this behavior increases the risk of mining atop an invalid block, which can result in a loss of bitcoin income. Wilcox highlights the difficulty in measuring how many miners are neglecting transaction verification since there is no evidence until they mine atop an invalid block. He fears that over time, more miners may cut this corner to save on costs, making the network more brittle towards forking-persistence behavior. In extreme cases, no miners may verify any transactions, leading to a high expected cost of skipping transaction verification.Wilcox identifies a potential solution to fix this issue, suggesting that miners could be incentivized to verify transactions through a reward system. This would prevent malicious miners from throwing erroneous transactions into their winning blocks, as all "SPV Miners" run along a worthless chain. In conclusion, the discussion calls for a solution to address the problem of SPV mining and its impact on the robustness of Bitcoin's network.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:19:26.209675+00:00