Author: Pieter Wuille 2011-11-07 15:02:43
Published on: 2011-11-07T15:02:43+00:00
In September 2011, Gavin Andresen proposed a solution to prevent timejacking and other related exploits that had been launched against low-difficulty alternative chains in the Bitcoin network. The proposed solution involved keeping all network rules as they were but changing the timestamp value of multiple-of-2016-blocks to be equal to the highest timestamp that occurred in the previous 11 blocks, instead of the current time. This would always obey the previous rules and prevent an attacker from introducing a time lapse between the 2015-block windows.The proposal suggested rolling out software that only uses this new rule for block creation but doesn't enforce it initially. When enough miners have upgraded, a point in the future will be chosen when it becomes mandatory, causing a block chain split only for those creating blocks using old software. However, one problem with this solution is that it prevents X-Roll-Time for miners. The proposed solution suggested allowing a short interval (1 minute or 10 minutes) instead of a fixed value for the multiple-of-2016 blocks.
Updated on: 2023-05-18T22:19:07.059392+00:00