Author: Devrandom 2017-11-03 01:02:25
Published on: 2017-11-03T01:02:25+00:00
In a recent email thread, Devrandom proposed the idea of introducing a Proof of Work (PoW) change in Bitcoin to mitigate mining centralization pressures. The proposal suggests introducing an intermediary confirmation point between normal blocks, which reduces the impact of mining power fluctuations and allows cooperative miners to migrate over time. The new intermediate block and pointers are introduced via a soft-fork restriction, which keeps backwards compatibility with existing software. However, the choice of a suitable POW will require deep analysis as some pitfalls include botnet mining, POWs that seem ASIC resistant but are not, unexpected/covert optimization etc. The proposal is intended to be a less disruptive approach since it allows for gradual transitions. The reward for the Aux POW smoothly increases from zero to a target value over time. The reward is transferred via a soft-fork restriction requiring a coinbase output to an address published in the aux-POW block. The heaviest chain definition changes from sum of difficulty to sum of mainDifficulty^x * auxDifficulty^y. Difficulty adjustments remain independent for the two POWs. The difficulty of the aux POW is adjusted based on the average time between normal block found to aux block found.Devrandom suggests evaluating various POW candidates such as SHA256, Proof of Space and Time (Bram Cohen), Equihash, Ethash, and evaluating difficulty adjustment rules, simulating miner behavior to identify if there are incentives for detrimental behavior patterns (e.g. block withholding/selfish mining), and protocol details. Bram Cohen had previously come up with a similar idea back in March.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T21:54:07.070554+00:00