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It is indeed possible to withold a transaction while trying to mine it into a block But this still doesn't provide 100% certainty that you will collect the tra
by wcoenen 11y ago
It is indeed possible to withold a transaction while trying to mine it into a block
But this still doesn't provide 100% certainty that you will collect the transaction fee. You risk that other miners try to orphan the block once it is published (i.e. ignore it and build on the previous one instead) in order to put the transaction in their own block.
- CydeWeys 11y agoAny miner that would want to steal a block fee would have to mine two blocks in succession before the rest of the network gets another one. It's possible, but quite unlikely, and if you don't pull it off you've thrown away a lot of hashing cycles. The only way to make it probable is to control a majority of the network hashrate, but in that case, there are much larger problems afoot (i.e. a 51% attack). It does place an upper bound on the total amount of BTC that can be laundered through transaction fees on a single block, though. I won't do the math right now but it's some multiple of the block reward fee that depends on what percentage of the network hash rate you control. Fortunately (?) for the would-be launderer, the average pool is mining a good deal more than one block per day, so you just spread your laundering across a series of blocks.
- URSpider94 11y agoThis is an excellent point. If a block with unusually high fees comes up, you'd be well served to try to re-mine it as long as P(win)^(n+1) * fee > P(win) * mining reward, where n equals the number of blocks after the few was published. If you have a 10% chance of earning a block, you could push on for quite a while.