3 ms·
Say you have 10,000 miners, once you find a hash you can start all your miners mining the next block. Can you use the time between blocks to your advantage? If
by fyfy18 9y ago
Say you have 10,000 miners, once you find a hash you can start all your miners mining the next block. Can you use the time between blocks to your advantage?
If you find the hash after say 6 minutes, you could delay broadcasting the block to the network for another minute or two, and give yourself an advantage.
Yes there’s a risk another miner would find the same hash, but statistically you could estimate the optimal delay for risk vs reward.
- Retric 9y agoThere is zero benefit in waiting. Supose you had 1/3 of the hashing power and got it in the first second. You have a 1/3 chance of getting the extra block before someone else gets the first block and published risking your block. However, if you publish the first block you still have a 1/3 chance of getting the next block first and ending up with 2 blocks. Thus waiting provides risk but zero gain. In theory this changes if you can do a 51% attack, but that erodes trust in the block chain.
- rjp0008 9y agoThere is more than one solution to a block, so if someone does find it before you it's probably not the same solution. Making your head start worthless.
- benchaney 9y agoAdding to this. If two miners both discover a solution it is astronomically unlikely that it will be the same solution.
- mnw21cam 9y agoGiven that two different miners will be setting the mining fee address differently, I'd say that it is guaranteed that they will have different solutions.
- JeremyBanks 9y agoMore or less, yes. This is a known minor weakness in the protocol. See https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243 https://arxiv.org/abs/1311.0243
- mihaifm 9y agoInteresting. Any ideas if this is indeed a realistic scenario, or if it has been addressed yet?
- nicky0 9y agoThere is no such thing as a head start.