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If the senaro you describe were remotely possible BitCoin would not exist. A chain more than a couple of blocks behind has almost no chance of catching up unle
by jcoffland 11y ago
If the senaro you describe were remotely possible BitCoin would not exist. A chain more than a couple of blocks behind has almost no chance of catching up unless over 50% of the hashing power consolidated on the shorter chain. Since miners automatically abandon short chains and it is in their best interest to do so this is extremely unlikely.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y agoWhat if mining pools would deliberately hold back mint blocks until they find more? That way they could invalidate transactions if they like.
- jsprogrammer 11y agoYou can only hold a mint block until right before another block arrives. Once another block is known your mint block is garbage.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago> You can only hold a mint block until right before another block arrives. Once another block is known your mint block is garbage. What controls this?
- jsprogrammer 11y agoEach block must incorporate the hash from the previous block.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y agoSo what stops you from mining ahead secretly?
- colejohnson66 11y agoMy guess is the difficulty of making a block means it would take too long
- jsprogrammer 11y agoAs colejohnson said, the difficulty. The network, as a whole, expects to generate 1 block approximately every 10 minutes. Someone with less than 50% of the network power will never be able to sustainably mint a longer chain of 'fake' blocks before someone else mints a legit one.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago> As colejohnson said, the difficulty. The network, as a whole, expects to generate 1 block approximately every 10 minutes. Someone with less than 50% of the network power will never be able to sustainably mint a longer chain of 'fake' blocks before someone else mints a legit one. If you look at the blocks mined you can see that there are plenty of mining groups that manage to mine consecutive blocks: https://blockchain.info/blocks https://blockchain.info/blocks
- jsprogrammer 11y agoMining a few consecutive blocks isn't enough. All it itakes is one known block to cancel all the witheld blocks. Additionally, the attacks you can perform by extending a known chain a few more 'fake' blocks are minimal.