Author: Cameron Garnham 2017-05-19 07:32:36
Published on: 2017-05-19T07:32:36+00:00
In an email sent to Tier Nolan by Cameron Garnham via bitcoin-dev, Garnham discusses the security assumptions of the Bitcoin PoW function. Garnham expresses concern that ASICBOOST, which he considers an attack on the Bitcoin PoW function, violates two security assumptions: 1) the choice of input outside of the dedicated nonce area fed to the PoW function should not change its difficulty to evaluate, and 2) every PoW function execution should be independent. These deviations from the Bitcoin Security Model could lead to security vulnerabilities. Nolan responds by suggesting that as long as the effort to find a block is proportional to the block difficulty parameter, it is simply an optimization rather than an exploit or attack. However, ASICBOOST performs multiple checks in parallel, violating the requirement that each hash should be independent.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:51:55.713347+00:00