Author: Gregory Maxwell 2015-09-23 19:24:06
Published on: 2015-09-23T19:24:06+00:00
In a discussion regarding Bitcoin scalability, Bryan Bishop shared links to recent discussions on the topic. He also referenced his response to Peter R's paper, detailing a scenario where miners only include previously committed transactions and voluntarily participate in a fast consensus mechanism. Gavin Andresen proposed a scheme where miners pre-announce weak blocks to peers, which are validated and lead to faster block propagation. However, there is a risk of making mining not progress free because bigger miners would have more access to the weak/strong one/two punch. To avoid this, merged mined block DAGs with blocks of arbitrary strength were suggested. While there is additional overhead from communicating efficiently encoded weak blocks, participation is optional and does not impact history. Peter R questioned why miners and mining pools should not pay for such solutions that improve their profitability. However, better common open infrastructure helps put propagation disadvantaged miners on an equal playing field, and centralizing through bigger pools is a simple, expedient, and low-risk way to improve mining equality.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T21:56:29.145637+00:00