Author: Mike Hearn 2013-11-04 15:27:58
Published on: 2013-11-04T15:27:58+00:00
In an email conversation between individuals, the topic of mining strategies and potential attacks on the Bitcoin network was discussed. One participant raised concerns about a sybil attack where an attacker could connect to every identified miner with fast nodes, using DoS attacks and low latency to gain an advantage. However, another participant pointed out that this would require the attacker to be able to race the rest of the network and win some non-trivial fraction of the time. The discussion then turned to the correct approach for miners, which is to always mine to extend the block that the majority of hashing power is trying to extend. However, there is no stable way to know what the majority is, as it is constantly changing. A suggested solution involved estimating the hashing power on each fork and switching to the majority side if necessary, but the reliability of this estimation method was questioned.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:10:34.188466+00:00