Author: Peter Todd 2013-11-05 17:05:41
Published on: 2013-11-05T17:05:41+00:00
On Tue, Nov 05, 2013, Ittay submitted a BIP for raising the selfish mining threshold. The proposal suggested replacing the arbitrary choice among equal-length chains with explicit randomness, which would be controlled by the protocol. The change aimed to eliminate vulnerabilities and did not introduce any new executions that were not possible with the old protocol. However, Gregory Maxwell pointed out that the random choice solution introduced a vulnerability whereby large pools could withhold blocks rather than broadcasting them to create incentives. When such pools eventually chose to reveal their mined block, 50% of the hashing power would switch, thus splitting the network and benefiting the attacker. This strategy was profitable even without investing in a low-latency network. Peter suggested that someone should analyze a deterministic switching scheme.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:20:48.323770+00:00