Published on: 2015-11-09T18:33:27+00:00
On October 14, 2015, a conversation took place among Bitcoin developers regarding the use of microblocks in the Bitcoin-NG protocol. One issue raised was the lack of a mechanism to punish individuals involved in a double spend in a microblock that occurs in a key block, which reorganizes away the first transaction. It was suggested that users should wait before accepting a transaction to ensure no key-block was missed. Additionally, an attacker could continuously double spend by immediately mining a key block after sending a transaction and creating a microblock that double-spends the previous transaction.The confirmation time for microblocks may not need to be a full key-block, but it should be long enough for the attacker to lose more fees than the value of their double-spend. There was also discussion about the implementation of Bitcoin-NG and its compatibility with Bitcoin and Blockstream-like sidechains. It was suggested that NG could support privacy measures such as stealth sends or confidential transactions. NG could potentially be implemented as a feature in Bitcoin Core that users can activate or deactivate. Concerns were raised about managing and protecting information in the NG scheme, including references to previous blocks, current GMT times, cryptographic hashes of ledger entries, and cryptographic signatures of headers. The question of whether NG can support privacy measures remains unanswered.The Bitcoin-NG protocol aims to address scalability challenges faced by Bitcoin by increasing throughput and reducing latency without changing Bitcoin's trust model or open architecture. The whitepaper provides detailed information on the protocol, which involves electing a "leader" who vets future transactions. There are two options for the overlay-NG that runs on top of Bitcoin: significantly reduce observed latency or increase bandwidth once everyone is on board. Microblocks in Bitcoin-NG contain ledger entries and a header, but they do not affect the weight of the chain because they do not contain proof of work. The actual leader in NG is a key, not a specific node.Bob McElrath proposed that shutting down Bitcoin-NG could be done by identifying the current leader and launching a DDoS attack on them. Emin Gün Sirer countered this by explaining that Bitcoin-NG is designed to mitigate DDoS attacks by dynamically migrating the leader within the network. He also mentioned that defenses against DDoS attacks on miners can be applied to Bitcoin-NG as well. The success of Matt Corallo's high-speed bitcoin relay network has contributed to the rarity of such attacks.Ittay responded to a discussion on double-spending issues, suggesting that fraud proof could eliminate the attacker's revenue. He compared it to an attacker sacrificing an entire block for double-spending in the current system. The whitepaper provides more detailed insights into the topic.Bitcoin-NG is a technique specifically designed to tackle scalability challenges faced by Bitcoin. This approach increases throughput while reducing latency without compromising Bitcoin's open architecture or trust model. The creators of Bitcoin-NG do not intend to compete commercially with Bitcoin or Blockstream-like sidechains but rather see it as complementary. They aim to advance blockchain technology and inspire further innovations. Feedback from the community is encouraged. One comment suggests considering a miner's ability to choose the key block time to generate more miniblocks.In an email conversation, Emin Gün Sirer discusses the difficulties of resolving double-spending issues solely through fraud proofs. He refers to a whitepaper that provides technical details on this matter. The topic was also discussed in a -wizards thread. Fidelity-bonded ledgers are recommended for a system reliant on fraud proofs and threats.Overall, Bitcoin-NG offers a potential solution to scalability challenges in Bitcoin with its increased throughput and reduced latency. However, there are still concerns regarding the implementation and privacy measures of the protocol. The conversation among developers highlighted the need for further discussion and analysis to address potential issues such as double spending in microblocks.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T16:38:14.268302+00:00