Author: Tier Nolan 2015-05-13 11:29:23
Published on: 2015-05-13T11:29:23+00:00
The email conversation is about the security of nodes in Bitcoin network. A node only needs a path of honest nodes to the network, which means it can still sync with the main network even if it's connected to 99 dishonest nodes and 1 honest node. The concept of "weak subjectivity" is already embraced by Bitcoin through checkpoints embedded into the source code. These checkpoints are designed to prevent a disk consumption DOS attack and allow verification to go faster. In addition, they also protect against multi-month forks. However, if releases happen every 6 months and the checkpoint is 3 months deep at release, then for the average node, the checkpoint is 3 to 9 months old, which isn't adding much extra security. With headers first downloading, the checkpoints could be removed but it could cause a hard-fork. Therefore, they could be defined as legacy artifacts of the blockchain and future checkpoints could be advisory.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T20:43:29.801093+00:00