Is a Mining Manufacturer Blocking SegWit to Benefit from ASICBOOST?
In a post on the Bitcoin development mailing list today, Blockstream CTO and long-time Bitcoin Core contributor Greg Maxwell laid out the case that an unnamed Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer is using a flaw in Bitcoin’s proof-of-work implementation to gain an efficiency advantage of up to 30 percent over other miners. Moreover, this could explain....
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Overall, the Bitcoin community seems happy about this development, even though it is not exactly news. An exciting development has taken place in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. ViaBTC and Roger Ver have seemingly indicated they are not interested in blocking SegWit. This news came as quite a surprise, as the majority of Bitcoiners seemed to think otherwise. This does not mean SegWit will suddenly get activated on the network overnight either, though. To put this “news” into perspective, neither ViaBTC nor Roger Ver has any interest in blocking SegWit. In fact, they made that....
Peter Todd, backed by Matt Corallo, has proposed hard-fork changes to the bitcoin network to make “useless” patent pending algorithmic improvements which give mining an Asicboost of 20%, leading to increased profits of some $30 million if used by one of the biggest mining pools. In a striking post to the bitcoin mailing list, Todd states: “As part of the hard-fork proposed in the HK agreement we’d like to make the patented AsicBoost optimisation useless, and hopefully make further similar optimizations useless as well.” Arguing that the patent pending optimization may lead to mining....
According to the statement posted by one of the Bitcoin Core developers, this change will be made to fight the centralization of Bitcoin mining. An interesting statement was posted on Twitter by Olivier Janssens, as he explained an upcoming change in the Bitcoin Core client software. A patented optimization for ASIC mining – called AsicBoost – will be made obsolete in the next client update. That news did not go over well with a lot of members for sure. Bitcoin Core Developers Dislike AsicBoost. This news is part of a substantial debate on Reddit for the past few days, as the AsicBoost....
Bitcoin gained $40 in two hours on Wednesday evening as news broke that a bug was allowing miners - specifically Bitmain - to unfairly economize on costs. Through the use of so-called AsicBoost technology, Bitmain’s miners were able to exploit a loophole in Bitcoin’s proof-of-work system. Jihan Wu, the company’s CEO, is a known staunch opponent of Segregated Witness as a solution to Bitcoin’s scaling problem, with sources now asserting that the AsicBoost benefits could lie at the heart of his position. The vulnerability was first discovered and relayed to Core members by Blockstream’s Greg....
Litecoin seems to be on the path towards adopting Segwit, the proposed soft fork (and malleability solution) by the Bitcoin core development team. But there seems to be confusion among users about what exactly the soft fork is. Since Litecoin is based on the Bitcoin codebase, it also has the choice to adopt Segwit, and founder Charlie Lee believes this....