Author: Peter Todd 2013-11-04 14:26:21
Published on: 2013-11-04T14:26:21+00:00
In an email conversation, Mike Hearn proposed using IP addresses of nodes embedded into coinbases and having any bitcoind that is creating work automatically connect to IPs that appeared in enough recent blocks to address the miner backbone problem. However, he later realized that this approach would make the attack described in the paper easier to carry out. The selfish miner strategy outlined in the paper is essentially a way to use knowledge of what blocks miners will be mining on, from the "first seen" rule, and the ability to broadcast blocks you have mined more widely than other miners. By making all miners easily identifiable, gaining that informational and broadcast capability becomes easier for attackers. Therefore, Peter Todd proposed two solutions: relay all blocks that meet the PoW target and relay block headers that nearly meet the PoW target. Miners should mine to extend the first block they see, but as they receive "near-blocks" that are under the PoW target, use them to estimate the hashing power on each fork, and if it looks like they are not on the majority side, switch. This effectively defeats the selfish-miner strategy and puts the 51% attack threshold back at 51%.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:10:16.648498+00:00