Author: Mike Brooks 2019-07-29 02:19:55
Published on: 2019-07-29T02:19:55+00:00
The conversation between Mike Brooks and ZmnSCPxj discusses potential attacks on the blockchain due to the use of `OP_PUBREF` in `scriptPubKey`. The attack involves replacing a recently-confirmed transaction with one that pays to a different public key via a history-rewrite attack. This attack is doable by miners, and it is suggested that 100 blocks might be an acceptable amount of time for the attack to occur, similar to the acceptance of miner coinbase maturity as "acceptably low risk." There are concerns about the size of the data set required to validate the scripts, which would not fit in memory for many devices practical for running full nodes. Pruning can help to mitigate this issue, as if all transactions for a wallet have been pruned, there is no need to index the PubRef. However, it is noted that current pruned nodes did not retain that data and would be forced to re-download the entire blockchain.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T20:08:42.861602+00:00