Published on: 2014-10-31T03:31:12+00:00
In an email thread on October 30, 2014, Rusty Russell proposed an algorithm to limit confirmation latency in Bitcoin by allowing weaker blocks after a certain time. He asked if anyone had considered this before or knew of any flaws. Gregory Maxwell responded by stating that irregularity is required for convergence, as exact intervals would cause fragmentation and prevent convergence. He also mentioned that the variance allows the network to converge. Bitcoin testnet has implemented a rule that allows lower difficulty blocks after a delay of 20 minutes, but it is not secure. It was noted that at least one altcoin has copied this behavior and been exploited. If faster evidence of the network working on a particular transaction set is needed, mechanisms like the p2pool sharechain can provide it. Citations were promised to be provided later.The Bitcoin testnet is a network that allows developers to experiment with new features and test their applications without risking actual bitcoins. On October 30th, 2014, Rusty Russell proposed an algorithm to limit confirmation latency by allowing weaker blocks after a certain time. He shared the details of his proposal via a blog post. Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist, signed off the email chain with his signature information.In a forum post, Rusty Russell shared his thoughts on an algorithm to limit confirmation latency by allowing weaker blocks after a certain time. He wondered if anyone had considered this before or if there were any flaws in the scheme. For more details on how this algorithm would work, Russell provided a link to his website where he outlines the "gory details" of the process.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T10:35:39.239977+00:00