[bitcoin-dev] BIP proposal: Inhibiting a covert attack on the Bitcoin POW function

On Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 07:39:08PM -0700, Bram Cohen wrote: > On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 7:31 PM, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev < > > While I'm in favour of blocking covert usage of ASICBOOST, there's every > > reason > > to block non-covert usage of it as well. In a low margin business like > > mining, > > the advatange it gives is enormous - quite possibly 10x your profit margin > > - > > and given that barrier free access to being able to purchase ASICs is > > already > > an archilles heal for Bitcoin there is every reason to eliminate this legal > > vulnerability. Additionally, it's a technical vulnerability as well: we > > want > > getting into the ASIC manufacturing and design business to have as low > > barriers > > to entry as is feasible, and the ASICBOOST exploit significantly increases > > the > > minimum capital requirements to do so. > > > > Asicboost also has the problem that it isn't treating the hashing as a > black box, and thus has impacts on what gets mined. In particular it > creates an incentive to make blocks smaller. That's a very unwanted effect, > and anything like it should be engineered out on principle. Agreed! There's no benefit to Bitcoin for having it - one way or the other miners are going to destroy ~12BTC/block worth of energy. Meanwhile it appears to have lead to something like a year of stupid political bullshit based on a secret advantage - there's no reason to invite a repeat of this episode. -- https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 455 bytes Desc: Digital signature URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170405/887d8809/attachment.sig>