Author: Peter Todd 2013-05-15 11:19:06
Published on: 2013-05-15T11:19:06+00:00
In an email sent on May 15, 2013, Adam Back discussed the vulnerability of protocols in the Bitcoin network. He stated that any attacker with enough hashing power to conduct a 51% attack could demand the use of a modified Bitcoin client to provide them with full access to transactions from the beginning. This would cause blocks containing unknown transaction contents to be attacked. However, if the attacker had less than 50% of the hashing power, they would have to let other blocks through and miners could bid to get their transactions mined with fees. Back also described a simple, efficient, and easy-to-implement symmetric key commitment protocol that could improve the byzantine generals problem in Bitcoin. This would remove the need for honest nodes, as long as there were honest clients to spend to, enabling transactions to be accepted without relying on CPU power. Peter Todd's signature was attached to the email.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T16:57:56.480776+00:00