3 ms·

I don't really see much benefit on this: I might be wrong but I understand the pool cannot spend btc from a discovered block until it's been confirmed 120 block

I don't really see much benefit on this: I might be wrong but I understand the pool cannot spend btc from a discovered block until it's been confirmed 120 blocks later (around 10 hrs). The attacking pool will need enough hashpower to discover blocks 0 and 121 before the network discovers block 121, even then, they will only get paid 25 btc + transaction fees for their trouble. Also, 10 hrs is plenty of time for paranoid miners to figure out and mitigate such an attack. Edit: grammar

ColinDabritz 13y ago
This isn't about 'cheating' in any direct way, it's about a better strategy for winning the block race. They are playing odds, but they are behaving such that 'on average' they have an advantage over the honest peers. When they get lucky, they can use their temporary advantage to race ahead, until eventually settling back into the normal flow and thus generate the (legitimate) block chain for a short period. Because of this control, they get more bitcoins than average miners. They aren't generating illicit coins, lying about transactions, double spending, or anything like that. They are happy to wait for the 120 block confirmation and spend the coins whenever.
- BrokenPipe 13y ago
  They can invalidate as much as get invalidated, this gets balanced out, so how is it an advantage ? It could easily be detected by nodes by checking the age of the transactions inside the block. An honest node block would contain more recent transactions than a bad node block