Very clever! SPV wallets can have real time data on this.https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/949746681662205952 …
1/ In order to manipulate min feerate for each block, you have to make that block a *single-transaction block*, meaning you'd be giving up tons of fees by excluding other txs. And you need to do that consistently for at least 51 out of 100 blocks. That costs a lot of money.
-
-
2/ That’s kinda like Antpool mining empty blocks, but doing it more consistently & on a much larger scale. If mining cartel can truly do this we have a bigger problem than fees: the miners have completely taken over the network & can impose artificial block limit on the users.
-
3/ 51 single-transaction blocks out of 100 means that the total available block space would be effectively cut in half.
-
4/ But the kicker is that the benefits of this manipulation (which again costs a lot of money) would go directly to the your mining competitors.
-
5/ Since the other 49 blocks would be mined by other miners, not you. You’ll be spending a lot of money just to line your competitors’s pockets and weaken your own cartel. Makes no sense.
-
6/ This attack, if carried out, can also be easily spotted on the blockchain.
-
7/ It also can be easily mitigated, as Charlie has pointed out, as long as SPV clients don’t use the same rule for estimating fee. Min feerate is only a fee signal, it’s up to each SPV client how to interpret it.https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/949802676056834048 …
-
8/ In conclusion, I think this attack is unrealistic, easily spotted, and easily mitigated against.
-
I think it's unlikely, but not unrealistic. My main point was that I think the risk of this attack, or more clever variants, means that SPV clients would be better off using existing semi-centralized fee estimation services rather than the miner-curated minimum block fee info.
- 3 more replies
New conversation -
-
-
The block can contain the usual number of transactions as long as they're all made by associates of the cartel. It's already the case on Bitcoin that we see some high-volume spenders making out-of-band payments to miners for preferential treatment of their transactions.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
