Author: Christophe Biocca 2015-09-11 19:06:43
Published on: 2015-09-11T19:06:43+00:00
The discussion in the given context revolves around the proposal made by Dave Scotese via bitcoin-dev mailing list. He proposed a more sophisticated method of choosing which of two block solutions to accept instead of using the 'first-seen' block. The current criterion already in place is to choose the block with more work (in valid blocks) on top of it. However, there is confusion about how to determine which of 2 blocks with the same height is newer. From the perspective of a particular node, Dave's code about switching blocks means that "old" refers to the first sibling the node saw, and "new" refers to any subsequent block. It is suggested to disambiguate this in the future as it is confusing for at least one person. It is also discussed whether miners would benefit from running the proposed policy in the long run or not. There is always a default, and if miners don't have any overriding reason to change, they'll likely stick to it. Any changed logic is non-binding, as recognized by Dave himself. If miners don't use the proposed policy, users won't benefit from running that policy themselves either. They will still have to wait for block confirmation to reduce the chances of a successful double-spend attack with each new confirmation. However, there is a suggestion that the risk doesn't apply if we prefer non-empty blocks to empty blocks and leave it at that, or only switch if the new block doesn't double spend transactions in the old one. This issue can be fixed, but it is important to determine which block is newer in this case.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T22:18:51.291447+00:00