Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2017 23:42:40 -0400
From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: David Vorick <david.vorick@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20170406034240.GA1603@savin.petertodd.org>
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Cc: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP proposal: Inhibiting a covert attack on the
 Bitcoin POW function
Precedence: list


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On Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 11:23:22PM -0400, David Vorick wrote:
> I urge everybody to realize how difficult something like this is going to
> be to pull off. We are literally talking about invalidating hardware (or =
at
> least the optimized bits). It's only going to succeed if everybody is
> conclusively on board. As you consider proposals, realize that anything
> which is not the simplest and least contentious is already dead.

One of the things going for us here is that Bitmain has been keeping ASICBO=
OST
=66rom their own customers - as far as we know they haven't been sharing it=
, and
thus they're the only ones you can actually use it.

So while we're pissing off Bitmain in disabling it, we wouldn't be affecting
anyone else.

Equally, mining is a zero-sum game: if no-one can use ASICBOOST, miners are=
 in
the same position as before. ASICBOOST is only relevant to miners like Bitm=
ain
who have access to it while other miners don't.

--=20
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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