Author: Pieter Wuille 2012-03-01 14:30:30
Published on: 2012-03-01T14:30:30+00:00
In an email exchange on March 1, 2012, Ben Reeves raised concerns that the reference patch implementation, while fixing the blockchain forking issue, still left patched clients vulnerable to blockchain corruption. He noted that spent coinbases could still be disconnected and cause errors in LoadBlockIndex() upon restart. While he acknowledged it was not an immediate issue, he expressed concern about potential problems for new clients during the initial blockchain download.Pieter, responding to Reeves' email, suggested that disallowing duplicate coinbases entirely was possible but would require keeping a set of all coinbase transactions indefinitely. Instead, he proposed adding the block height to the coinbase as a reasonable solution. However, Pieter noted that this solution is more difficult to implement network-wide, given that coinbases are used for various purposes. As an interim measure, he suggested the emergency solution already in place that prevents practical attacks, with a later step of forcing unique coinbases so that transactions can be identified by their hash again.
Updated on: 2023-05-18T23:34:48.440894+00:00