Author: Peter Todd 2013-11-04 15:46:39
Published on: 2013-11-04T15:46:39+00:00
In an email conversation between Ittay and Peter in 2013, the former asked how Peter could guarantee that the majority mines on the non-selfish block. Peter responded by explaining that feedback is the key. He gave an example of hashing power being split equally between two blocks with a near-target threshold of 1/64th, meaning a block header with difficulty 1/64th of the actual difficulty will be broadcast around the network by nodes. At a 10 minute block interval, near-target block headers are found on average every 9.4 seconds. Once one of the halves finds a near-target PoW solution, the corresponding block-header will be broadcast on the network. If a miner receives such a PoW solution, they know that the block has more hashing power than other competing blocks and would switch to mine it to extend that block. This forms a feedback effect that quickly brings everyone to consensus as everyone starts mining to extend the same block. There's nothing the selfish miner can do as there's no disagreement to exploit.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:09:28.874772+00:00