Author: Ittay 2013-11-05 17:26:46
Published on: 2013-11-05T17:26:46+00:00
In an email exchange from 2013, Ittay presented a proposal to raise the selfish mining threshold and asked for feedback. Peter Todd responded with concerns about a potential vulnerability introduced by the proposed change. Currently, the choice among equal-length chains is done arbitrarily, depending on network topology. Ittay's proposal replaces this arbitrariness with explicit randomness, which is at the control of the protocol. However, Todd pointed out that this introduces incentives for pools over a certain size to withhold blocks rather than immediately broadcasting all blocks found. When the pool eventually chooses to reveal the block they mined, 50% of the hashing power switches, thus splitting the network. This can be profitable for larger pools without investing in a low-latency network. Todd suggested analyzing a deterministic switching scheme as an alternative.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:22:52.004528+00:00