Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut
by option_greek on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:23PM
(#15953307)
I don't think a transaction would just become valid if a miner (who mined a block) signs it. Each participating node will independently verify the chain for signatures of transactions before it accepts the latest block. So a miner who mines a block with invalid block will just waste his efforts on it. The chain length is used a proxy to find out a valid chain only when two competing chains have valid blocks throughout but have different lengths.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut
by empath75 on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:59PM
(#15953645)
Depends on how much the hashrate changed: http://bitcoinandtheblockchain.blogspot.com/2017/08/chain-de...
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut
by wyldfire on Monday December 18, 2017 @01:13PM
(#15953773)
You are correct, this seems like a defect that should be addressed.
Re:Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage with Smooth CME Debut
by jes5199 on Monday December 18, 2017 @01:18PM
(#15953830)
it depends on what you mean by "invalid transactions". If you mine a block that doesn't follow the rules, the rest of the network will just ignore it, and so you've wasted your computation.
However, if China or some other government compelled miners to sign invalid transactions, this would have a big impact. This is a weakness of proof-of-work secured coins (note that they also have many strengths that proof-of-stake coins lack).
EDIT: I was unclear what I meant by "this is a weakness of PoW" -- the energy signature of concentrated mining operations make them easy for governments to find.