Author: Quinn Harris 2013-11-05 22:07:16
Published on: 2013-11-05T22:07:16+00:00
Alice has the ability to hear of a block before all other miners do, which gives her an advantage over others. Colj at Safe-mail.net raised his concern about Alice's behavior regarding mining blocks. He explained that Alice could mine on a valid block longer than any other miner and gain an advantage without increasing her hash rate by revealing her previously mined block when Bob broadcasts his block. In response, Quinn suggests a possible solution where if N amount of blocks built on the same previous block are received within a time frame of T, miners should mine on the block with the lowest hash value. Quinn also suggests that the block chosen should be pseudo-random and not give Alice any knowledge ahead of time if her block will be chosen. One simple possibility is to start at the least significant bit of the hash, and whichever has a 1 is chosen, and if both bits are the same, the next bit is used. This would prevent the network hash power from being split between two branches unlike each node choosing a random block.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:27:23.477316+00:00