Emergency Deployment of SegWit as a partial mitigation of CVE-2017-9230



Summary:

A recent email on the Bitcoin development mailing list suggests that the reason 67% of miners have not yet adopted SegWit is because they are instead using a technique called ASICBoost, which has been patented by a company owned by former Bitcoin Core developer Sergio Lerner. The suggestion is that this has led to a political stalemate. Details of how ASICBoost works can be found here. The email elaborates on the mathematics of blocking ASICBoost and how to make it work. A simple approach would be best, as any technical attempt to block ASICBoost use is likely to fail or result in a chain split.


Updated on: 2023-05-20T02:34:20.212290+00:00