Re: [Bitcoin-development] Bitcoin difficulty sanity check suggestion

[Robin Ranjit Singh Chauhan <robin@pathwayi.com>]

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Mark, thank you for a very clear explanation of why this proposal would be
dangerous.

What I have noted in many discussions regarding blockchain security and
proof-or-work schemes, is there is a wide gulf between those few people who
can clearly reason about it, and those who have a lot trouble with it (I
mostly fall into the later camp).

I wonder if anyone can point to resources who can help "the rest of us"
reason clearly about these types of proposals, prior to bringing them to
this list or a senior dev.

Ideally it would illustrate various past proposals, explain why they would
and wouldnt work, and build up some fundamental concepts, like a "Newtons
laws of blockchain security" that would help us evaluate such ideas on our
own.

Blockchain stuff is often counterintuitive.



On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Mark Friedenbach <mark@monetize.io> wrote:

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> Ryan, these sort of adjustments introduce security risks. If you were
> isolated from the main chain by a low-hashpower attacker, how would
> you know? They'd need just three days without you noticing that
> network block generation has stalled - maybe they wait for a long
> weekend - then after that the block rate is normal but completely
> controlled by the attacker (and isolated from mainnet).
>
> There are fast acting alternative difficulty adjustment algorithms
> being explored by some alts, such as the 9-block interval, 144-block
> window, Parks-McClellan FIR filter used by Freicoin to recover from
> just such a mining bubble. If it were to happen to bitcoin, there
> would be sophisticated alternative to turn to, and enough time to make
> the change.
>
> On 12/22/2013 07:10 PM, Ryan Carboni wrote:
> > I think Bitcoin should have a sanity check: after three days if
> > only four blocks have been mined, difficulty should be adjusted
> > downwards.
> >
> > This might become important in the near future. I project a
> > Bitcoin mining bubble.
> >
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