Bitcoin

Questions tagged [consensus]

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Questions about the consensus system of Bitcoin and the protocol rules that are consensus critical.

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39 views

How many people are needed to make a decision to increase Bitcoin money supply? [duplicate]

Yes, it is currently capped at 21m. But it is just a line of code. Anybody can go and change it to whatever they want and what is needed then is to persuade the miners to accept it. Blockchain ...
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2answers
359 views

Can Bitcoin nodes vote to increase the money supply beyond 21 million?

Is it possible for 51% of the Bitcoin nodes to pool and vote to increase the money supply limit? Is that allowed in the protocol?
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4answers
2k views

Would Bitcoin still work without a target difficulty?

Suppose that Bitcoin nodes had no target difficulty at all, and instead just accepted the block with the largest PoW every 10 minutes. Ignoring the increased bandwidth (since nodes would be ...
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3answers
243 views

Could the threat of centralization be realized if a sufficiently large entity acquired enough Bitcoin?

This is primarily a hypothetical, but not an impossible one. If a sufficiently large entity such as a massive company with a lot of cash or the U.S. Federal Reserve were to acquire more than half of ...
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2answers
41 views

Will Nakamoto consensus work if a nontrivial portion of miners/nodes are on the moon? [duplicate]

Will Bitcoin (or Nakamoto consensus) work if a non trivial portion (say 5%) of miners/nodes are on the moon? What about mars? How about one of the moons of Jupiter? If not, why not? If yes, how does ...
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1answer
45 views

Noob question: Why is there not a limit of the number of blocks in a chain revision?

I have a noob idea and I want to understand where I'm going wrong :) Say nodes agreed on a block revision limit, say, 6. This would mean that if they see an incoming chain that is longer than the ...
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0answers
21 views

What are the options to recover from 51% attack purely from algorithmic standpoint

Assuming there exists a malicious entity, they have managed to own 51% hash power, and executed a sustained 51% attack on Bitcoin, say 24 hours. In this case : What are the options then to recover ...
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2answers
6k views

How can we trust supply won't be increased in 2140 by just a few lines of code?

How can we trust supply won't be increased by just a few lines of code?
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1answer
66 views

1-CPU-1 Vote Bitcoin confusion

How does the 1-CPU-1 vote works because if we're talking about miners doing computation power to vote, then successful solver of the hash wins the block, so basically only the single cpu (considering ...
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2answers
50 views

If there was an easy way to check for double spends, will consensus algorithms be needed?

Currently, checking for double spends is very computationally expensive, so consensus algorithms, like POW, were put in place to more easily prevent double spends among other things. Ignoring the fact ...
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2answers
108 views

Decreasing Energy Consumption of Bitcoin's PoW with paired mining rounds

I found the following whitepaper on an algorithm called "Green-PoW" by the authors and i'm quite sure this would be a perfacet solution and also would get acceptance by the miners and the ...
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1answer
47 views

Who enforces new consensus rules in Bitcoin?

I have been reading at few places that miners will enforce new consensus rules. Examples: https://twitter.com/BitMEXResearch/status/1391014115968274433 https://twitter.com/ajtowns/status/...
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1answer
146 views

51% attack, miners, nodes or both

If 51% of the hashrate was controlled by bad actors mining invalid blocks, this would become the longest chain. Where do nodes come into the 51% attack? The canonical chain is the longest chain. Is ...
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1answer
61 views

How are malicious forks resolved?

I understand that forks are resolved by opting in for the eventual longest chain, preferring the chain with the longest POW. But everything I read on this suggests it's just random chance or that the ...
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1answer
56 views

Preventing secretly mined chains

In order to prevent attackers from secretly mining chains (which they could later publish to perform double-spending attacks), would it be possible to require some information to be included in the ...
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1answer
53 views

Why does the value range of outputs need to be restricted?

In the 'tx messages' section for protocol rules we have Each output value, as well as the total, must be in legal money range For each input, if the referenced output does not exist (e.g. never ...
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1answer
24 views

How does the blockchain prevent transaction based on outdated note

This question borders along the line of cryptography and distributed systems, but I guess I have a strong chance of getting an answer if asked here. So here goes: I understand that the blockchain is ...
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0answers
33 views

how is bitcoin network protect itself from malicious nodes? [duplicate]

Can someone explain how does Bitcoin network protect itself from malicious nodes? Lets say someone creates bitcoin core clone and they manipulate it to their need. For example could someone change ...
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1answer
102 views

Can cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin be turned into a censored payment system under that would be financial regulation framework creating soft forks? [closed]

It s well known mining pools as well as hashing power is centralized in countries where electricity is cheap and using mining farms rather belonging to at least medium sized companies than single hand ...
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2answers
593 views

How does the BTC protocol guarantee that a "main" blockchain emerges?

I'm reading up on the bitcoin/blockchain technology. Usually, the part about proof of work and how to create a block is well explained. However, what is never explained is how/why the communication of ...
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2answers
268 views

Will the 1MB block size increase in the future?

The current Bitcoin block size is 1MB and is generated every 10 minutes, therefore 7 transactions per second. If the use of Bitcoin increase in the future, is the 7 transactions per second going to be ...
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1answer
109 views

How does the blockchain know if its block hashes have been tampered?

I'm dealing with some problems to finally understand how implicit consensus works and I've come across with one question. Suppose the following: A malicious miner proposes the following block to be ...
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1answer
84 views

What is the difference between Consensus and Distributed Consensus?

This is more of a clarification than as a question. Since I didn't have the rep to post a comment in this question, I'm putting this itself as a question. Sources I've referred till now: A ...
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2answers
54 views

How is difficulty enforced in the bitcoin blockchain? [duplicate]

Is it through some sort of voluntary acceptance by miners or is it hardcoded into the bitcoin blockchain to not accept a block which doesn't achieve a given difficulty level?
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2answers
2k views

How do Bitcoin devs make sure that their modifications do not affect the consensus rules or the running network protocol?

I understand that Bitcoin consensus rules are enforced by every single node individually. However, most people run the default version of Bitcoin Core, which makes the implementations done by Bitcoin ...
4
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2answers
239 views

what if the timelock is in the past?

I just started learning about bitcoin scripting and wonder: what if the timelock in CLTV is in the past? what if the timelock in nLocktime is equal to 500.000?
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0answers
20 views

In blockchain, if no new members join the network can we prove that there will not be anymore forks before a certain point in history?

I would like to know if we can allow new members to join with the promise that they will not attempt to create a new fork however hard it may prove to be, before a certain point in history. To this ...
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1answer
58 views

Should a node follow the longest chain, or the chain with most work while syncing?

I'm reading mixed things online - some saying to follow the longest chain, and some say to follow the chain with the most work. But I'm not convinced of the former. If the node follows the longest ...
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1answer
147 views

CVE-2012-2459 , possible code and performance improvement, is my logic correct?

ok so, in my effort to create a fullnode from scratch both for learning purpose and need (not a topic for discussion, thanks), I was looking at the code that check Merkle Root to not be vulnerable to ...
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0answers
16 views

Why do we need 2F prepare certificates instead of just F+1 in PBFT?

I started reading PBFT and I could not understand: why do we need 2F prepare certificates? The client needs only F + 1 replies, not 2F, so why can't the same rule be applicable in the prepare phase of ...
3
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0answers
143 views

UTXO snapshots and history pruning

Is there a research, BIP proposal or simple discussion about possible improvement on the size required to run a full node and a way to shrink/prune the history of bitcoin and have fast sync? Let me ...
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1answer
85 views

What will happen when a collision in SHA256 be found?

Would the protocol migrate to another Hash Algorithm inmediatly? What would be the next? SHA3 or BLAKE 2?
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1answer
91 views

Some miners set the nVersion field of the block header to 0x8000004. What were they signalling for? Was this an error?

Some miners set the nVersion field of the block header to 0x8000004. What were they signalling for? Is this an error? I have been through a lot of the BIP documentations, but cannot seem to find any ...
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1answer
55 views

What was the first BIP9 block? Block 370,434 (0x20000007) or Block 398,364 (0x30000000)?

Block 370,434 (00100000000000000000000000000111) and (0x20000007) Yes: BIP9 says set top 3 bits to 001. No: BIP101 explicitly says set first, second, third and 30th bits to 1. No: No mention of BIP9 ...
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0answers
22 views

Which major/noteworthy BIPs, Soft-Forks and Hard Forks have there been since the Summer of 2017 (after SegWit/Bitcoin Cash)?

There are many lists of major forks however most of them end after SegWit. The full list of BIPs is extensive. Which noteworthy BIPs, Soft Forks and Hard Forks have there been since SegWit and Bitcoin ...
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1answer
51 views

How were miners supposed to signal support for BIP148?

Under BIP141 (SegWit), you could signal support by setting nVersion bit 1 equal to 1. BIP9 counted: 20000002 100000000000000000000000000010 20000012 100000000000000000000000010010 30000007 ...
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3answers
115 views

Vulnerability of Bitcoin Network

Hi all I was wondering if I am doin a wrong assumption here: Let's assume a dezentralized peer to peer network and the bitcoin protocol. If a full node changes a transaction within a block and then ...
4
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1answer
447 views

Who decides the block reward in Bitcoin?

I know that when a miner mines a block, he will be rewarded with some bitcoins. But who decides how much bitcoin he will get? If it is decided by all the miners (as they are the ones verifying ...
4
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1answer
179 views

BIP34, BIP66 and BIP65 should have been enforced at unique block heights. Why do different sources claim different block heights for enforcement?

Inconsistent Consensus/Activation of BIPs BIP34 Activated Block Height 227,835 (BitMEX Reference) Activated Block Height 227,930 (Bitcoin Developer Reference) Activated Block Height 227,931 (...
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0answers
40 views

When did BIP16 pass the 550/1000 threshold?

BIP16 says on 01 Feb 2012, if more than 550 out of the previous 1000 blocks include "/P2SH/" in the coinbase, then BIP16 will activate on 15 Feb 2012 (Source). BIP16 was later revised. On 15 Mar 2012,...
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1answer
49 views

How a transaction is permanently accepted by the blockchain?

If a miner A creates a block containing a transaction A and a miner B creates a block NOT containing the transaction A about at the same time, then some of the other miners will first receive the ...
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1answer
58 views

Can the forked be unforked?

So: BTC, BCH, BTG and BSV all trade at different prices/values. All have forked off from BTC and have different development teams, theories, practices, technology, etc. I noticed that when you look ...
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1answer
51 views

What are the script size limitations according to consensus rules and are they enforced on TestNet?

I'm trying to figure out the limitations that scripts have regarding their size, limits that would make a script invalid (ignoring standardness). According to this question and also these lines of ...
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1answer
301 views

How do miners communicate in Bitcoin/ Decentralized Network?

1.)If there is no central authority maintaining database how miners differentiate among other miners. 2.)Do they have there own database which have details(Mac/IP address) of neighbouring miners . 3....
2
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1answer
96 views

What is the benefit of having a fixed target block interval?

By design Bitcoin targets a block interval of 10 minutes. How does the blockchain benefit from maintaining a bounded block time?
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1answer
46 views

why bip 34 uses two step on MASF(Miner Activated Soft Fork)?

in bip 34, which change to bitcoin version 1 -> 2, uses two step for network's consensus. step 1. check if 750 of the last 1000 blocks are version 2 or greater. step 2. check if 950 of the last ...
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1answer
48 views

Mining process in a blockchain

Let's consider a blockchain. They mining nodes are listening to transactions and every one is building is own block. Due to latency and other issues, every miner is probably building a different block,...
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1answer
159 views

When exactly do the transactions get validated?

I have some gaps in my understanding to the life cycle of the transaction that I want someone to help me fill them specially with the validation. What I understand about the life cycle with my ...
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1answer
94 views

Was it always required for the Coinbase transaction to be the first transaction in a block?

The user tempo mentioned on another topic: "At least in the early protocol versions it was possible to put the coinbase transaction not on the top of the outputs." I have never heard about this ...
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2answers
723 views

Can a blockchain's transactions be reversed?

Blockchains are often described as 'immutable' (meaning the history cannot be rewritten after the fact), but is this really true? How easy is it to change the history? I have read about the Ethereum ...

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