Author: Pieter Wuille 2020-10-16 21:58:20
Published on: 2020-10-16T21:58:20+00:00
In a Bitcoin-dev email thread, user yanmaani suggested an amendment to the timestamp rules in the Bitcoin network. Currently, according to the rules, block timestamps must not be lower than the median of the last 11 blocks, greater than the current time plus two hours, or greater than 2^32 (which would cause Bitcoin to "die" around February 7th, 2106). Yanmaani's proposed solution involves treating block headers as having a 64-bit timestamp, with the requirement that the difference between the timestamp and the median timestamp of the past 11 blocks is at least one and at most 2^32. The higher 32 bits of the timestamp are set equal to the median of the past 11 blocks on deserialization, and if this violates the rule above, it is set one higher. User Pieter believes this solution is in line with what will eventually be addressed and thinks it may be worth considering as a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) in the future.
Updated on: 2023-05-21T00:02:07.043677+00:00