Mining and Network Block Propagation
If you haven't recently read the Mining and Consensus chapter in Mastering Bitcoin, please review it before diving into the content below.
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- Larry Ruane has created a proof of work mining simulator along with exercises and discussion questions.
- 1.Why would some miners use parts of the version field as a nonce? What effect did this have on nodes?
- 2.How do P2Pools work? Advantages and disadvantages? Why aren't there any mainstream P2Pools today in the market?
- 3.How far back into the past can the timestamp in blocks be? Is this validated? How can this be attacked?
- 4.Have we seen the difficulty retarget algorithm be manipulated in other projects? Is this a threat to Bitcoin?
- 5.In your opinion, is it a good or bad thing that specialized hardware is now needed to mine bitcoin rather than letting individual users participate in that part of the ecosystem?
- 6.Consider the following scenario: Segwit2x didn’t happen (or miners didn’t throw in support for it) and UASF (BIP148) ended up causing a chain split on August 1st, 2017, with minority mining support (e.g. ~10-20%). What would likely happen as a result?
- 7.Can you ensure the transaction will be processed even if you send it with low fees? Which mechanisms do you have to ensure a stuck transaction (due to low fees) gets processed?
- 1.How can changes to Bitcoins p2p protocol affect mining?
- 2.How is a high stale block rate the best indicator that block propagation times are too high?
- 3.Alternatively, while a low stale block rate can be an indicator that block propagation times are good, it could also be an indicator of something more problematic. What could be a bad reason for there to be very few stale blocks?
- 4.Greg Maxwell mentioned that miners are hesitant to connect with one another directly, even though it would speed up block propagation. Why?
- 5.A low block-orphaning rate can be an indicator that block propagation times are good. It could also be an indicator of something more problematic. What could be a bad reason for there to be very few orphans?
- 1.How could we speed up block propagation in the network and why is that important for decentralization?
- 2.Compact block relay is a good way to reduce the amount of bandwidth to propagate new blocks to full nodes, but is it the fastest method for a synced node given peers may need to request missing transactions?
- 1.What is a BGP Hijack attack? What prevents it?
- 2.Why not encrypt all communications with pool operators?
- 1.What is the 'Selfish Mining' attack? How does it work? Is it a real threat?
- 2.Is it possible to identify and ignore a Selfish Miner's chain? Must we follow the most-work chain even if we identify that it came from a selfish miner?
- 1.How do pools give work assignments to client miners? Do all miners search the same block candidates?
- 2.What are 'shares' and how do they help facilitate pooled mining?
- 1.What is the difference between overt and covert ASIC Boost?
Last modified 2mo ago