Author: John Tromp 2020-09-25 17:23:46
Published on: 2020-09-25T17:23:46+00:00
A new proposal called Floating-Point Nakamoto Consensus has been introduced that departs from cumulative proof-of-work (POW). This new system still uses cumulative calculation but instead of cumulating network difficulty, it cumulates the log_2(solution difficulty). If two solutions are found simultaneously and one has a hash that's only half of the other, then that solution will have twice the solution difficulty and thus contribute one more to the cumulative log_2(solution difficulty). When asked what happens if a node with this patch and no history starts to sync and receives a block with a better fitness test for a specific height, the response was that nothing would happen if the new block is still far behind the tip in cumulative score. Similarly, if the proposal is activated at block 750,000 and someone publishes a new block with a better fitness test at block 800,000, nothing happens to the previous 50,000 blocks.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T23:53:24.692791+00:00