Author: Alan Reiner 2014-05-25 00:04:33
Published on: 2014-05-25T00:04:33+00:00
In a discussion among Bitcoin Core developers on May 24, 2014, concerns were raised about potential denial of service (DoS) attacks on the Bitcoin network. One developer noted that an attacker with sufficient hash power could use cut-through forwarding to carry out such an attack, while another pointed out the possibility of a teergrube attack in which the attacker prevents blocks from being transmitted to the network. The conversation also focused on issues related to block propagation and suggested improvements to the peer-to-peer protocol. One proposed solution was to allow for multiplexing of messages using something like HTTP chunked encoding to prevent slow messages from causing delays. Another suggestion was to modify the way Bitcoin Core prioritizes blocks by giving priority to the first valid header received rather than the first full block verified. This would allow nodes to mine on whatever full and verified block they have with the earliest header-received time, switching to mining on a new block only once it has done full verification of the block.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T23:25:14.774473+00:00