Posts from June 2014

Bitcoin and Voting Power

bitcoin security ghash 51% voting June 19, 2014 at 05:56 PM Emin Gün Sirer
This is a quick blog post to dispel a common Bitcoin misconception/myth involving voting power.

How to Disincentivize Large Bitcoin Mining Pools

bitcoin security mining pools 51% June 18, 2014 at 02:03 PM Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer
We outline a small change to the Bitcoin mining protocol that rules out big, public mining pools. It preserves the current investment in Bitcoin by both existing users and by existing miners. It presents a fix to GHash's recent 51% excursion.

Concurrency Improvements in HyperLevelDB

hyperleveldb leveldb June 18, 2014 at 11:00 AM Robert Escriva and Emin Gün Sirer
LevelDB is a popular data back end and in use at Google, Facebook, and many startups. In this article we discuss some concurrency improvements we've made to LevelDB as part of the HyperLevelDB project.

How A Mining Monopoly Can Attack Bitcoin

bitcoin security mining pools 51% June 16, 2014 at 02:35 PM Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer
There seems to be a lot of confusion over the kinds of attacks that a Bitcoin mining monopoly can engage in. We clarify the space of attacks available to a Bitcoin mining monopoly.

It's Time For a Hard Bitcoin Fork

bitcoin security ghash 51% June 13, 2014 at 02:05 PM Ittay Eyal and Emin Gün Sirer
A Bitcoin mining pool, called GHash and operated by an anonymous entity called CEX.io, just reached 51% of total network mining power today. Bitcoin is no longer decentralized. This note describes what we should do about it.