Author: Gavin Andresen 2015-09-29 18:01:59
Published on: 2015-09-29T18:01:59+00:00
The discussion on the mailing list revolves around Bitcoin's basic security assumption that a supermajority of miners are honest. The thread was started to understand how two chains could persist for more than a few days after a hard fork. It is stated that fraud would occur when 51% miners send bitcoin in exchange for something valuable, wait for confirmations and then reverse the transaction. Mining empty blocks is not considered as fraud. The definition of an honest miner is one that follows the rules of the protocol. Running a full node doesn't help in such cases. It is emphasized that relying on miners' honesty is necessary even if you run a full node. In the white paper, it is mentioned that a dishonest miner majority can commit fraud against you by mining only empty blocks or doing other things that render your money worthless.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T23:27:57.061169+00:00