First of all, do not worry, your Bitcoins are safe (unless you have certain unspent coins from 2009-2011, I’m looking at you Satoshi Nakamoto). The headline is not sensational though, unless action is taken it is inevitable that at some time in the future millions of Bitcoins will be stolen. You could argue that rather … Continue reading "The great P2PK Bitcoin heist. Millions of Bitcoins WILL be…
Yesterday I wrote about how Bitcoin Cash (also bcash/BCH) has a major vulnerability that because it is running far ahead of the bitcoin blockchain, it is going to have a window at the next halvening where it is susceptible to a heavily discounted 51% attack, the mere threat of which could end up being self … Continue reading "Follow up: Bitcoin Cash has 51% attack vulnerability double jeopardy"
TLDR: Due to a flawed emergency difficulty adjustment at its creation, Bitcoin Cash is now running ahead of the Bitcoin blockchain. Since future supply ‘halvenings’ should occur around 48 days before the Bitcoin network, it creates a window where it is ‘half price’ to 51% attack the network. The mere threat could cause the value … Continue reading "Bitcoin rival has a major vulnerability which…
This idea is highly contentious as it would guarantee a viable chain of Bitcoin with SegWit activated whether BIP148 gained sufficient support or not. I am not necessarily advocating it – just putting it out for discussion. While the downside is that it could permanently split the network, the upside is that it could heap … Continue reading "The Nuclear Option: BIP148 + MR POWA"
I’m very worried about the state of miner centralisation in Bitcoin. I always felt the centralising effects of ASIC manufacturing would resolve themselves once the first mover advantage had been exhausted and the industry had the opportunity to mature. I had always assumed initial centralisation would be harmless since miners have no incentive to harm … Continue reading "Malice Reactive Proof of…
I used to argue that we shouldn’t worry about a lack of fees because blocks were subsidised ‘until 2140’. I thought it would be a problem ‘for the future to worry about’. I figured the world would have changed so much by then that there was no point limiting ourselves now, and that they’d be … Continue reading "A quick reminder on why we can’t depend on the block reward until 2140"
For a soft fork to activate miners currently are required to signal their support. For SegWit that requires 95% of blocks over a 2016 block window signalling in favour. Currently the Bitcoin network has around 6,000 nodes. ~5,000 of those are running Bitcoin Core, and ~3,000 nodes are running Bitcoin Core versions that fully support … Continue reading "How user activated soft forks (UASF) work and…
We’ve got so caught up in the whole SegWit and Bitcoin Unlimited dispute that there’s something we may all have overlooked. For either of these changes to be activated requires miner support, of which neither side has anywhere near enough. What if the reason we’re seeing no progress is because miners don’t want the block … Continue reading "A tragedy on our hands? What if miners would rather have…
Anybody who argues against SegWit because it uses “anyone can spend” transactions is either being disingenuous does not understand what they are talking about. “Anyone can spend” is just words to describe a transaction which has no conditions attached to how its output can be spent. This has been part of the Bitcoin protocol since… … Continue reading "SegWit facts – Not ‘anyone can spend’ so stop…
Proof of Nodework (PoNW) is a way to reward individual nodes for keeping a full copy of and verifying the blockchain. Hopefully they also do useful ‘traditional’ node activities too like relay transactions and blocks, but there isn’t really any way I can think of to trustlessly verify this. PoNW would require a new separate … Continue reading "Proof of Nodework (PoNW) – trustlessly rewarding nodes…