Author: Jorge Timón 2015-07-12 18:37:19
Published on: 2015-07-12T18:37:19+00:00
In a conversation between Tier Nolan and Jorge Timón, they discuss the security risks associated with SPV-mining. An increased orphan rate means that the network is less secure. If miners switch back to non-SPV mining after a timeout, SPV-mining is safe for everyone. The average cost to the miner from building on an invalid block is small, as long as invalid blocks only happen rarely. 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. Mining on top of the non-most-work-but-surely-valid may be less risky than mining on top of a most-work-but-potentially-invalid block. This has risks too. In both cases, if they don't mine a block during the block validation, everything is fine. If they successfully SPV mine, they risk having mined on top of an invalid block, which not only means lost coins for them but high risk for regular SPV users. If they successfully mine on top of the previous block, they start a mini-race that they can win or not, but the impact to regular SPV users is much lower. The later may be slightly less profitable, but the difference is negligible. It would be interesting to know if miners actually did these calculations and how (in case their model is incomplete or flawed).It is important to note that while SPV mining requires you to produce empty blocks, mining on the previous on top of the previous block allows you to include transactions and earn fees. In a future where block rewards aren't so overwhelmingly dominated by subsidies, the numbers will run against SPV mining. In a future without (or with negligible) subsidy, SPV mining is always inferior to just keep mining on top of the same block you were mining until you fully validate the next one. It may be less of a problem if (when?) electricity costs dominate hardware capital costs. The shorter the full validation time of a block is, the less worrying it is.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:19:58.069824+00:00