Author: Alexander Leishman 2018-06-18 18:47:40
Published on: 2018-06-18T18:47:40+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, a potential attack called "Dilution" was brought up by a member named Artem. Dilution involves a malicious actor acquiring a majority of hash power and using it to produce valid but empty blocks. This would effectively reduce the block rate by half or more and could not be adjusted by nodes. The cost to maintain such an attack is estimated at $2 billion for equipment and $0.4 billion per month for power costs, making it feasible for even a minor government-scale actor. However, it is usually in the economic interest of miners to collect transaction fees, which should hopefully discourage them from producing many empty blocks. Moreover, if a nation-state attacker decides to allocate billions in resources to attack Bitcoin, then double-spends would be the risk, not empty blocks.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T03:36:33.575800+00:00