Merged mining (Part I)
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on November 22, 2022
Proof of work (PoW) is a fundamental part of Nakamoto Consensus. It has two functions: It is a Sybil resistance mechanism used to select block producers, and it also provides a baseline and always increasing cost for reverting the blockchain. That’s why it is said that PoW secures the Bitcoin blockchain. Merged mining is a technique […]
The Dark Side of Ethereum 1/64th CALL Gas Reduction
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on June 10, 2021
(this article was originally published in 2020 in the IOV Labs Research Publications. It is republished here with only minor updates to reflect new RSKIPs). In this article I argue that the 1/64 CALL gas reduction in EIP150 is problematic and I suggest Ethereum 2.0 implement the 1/64 CALL gas lock slightly differently as specified […]
2021
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on June 10, 2021
We’re crossing the middle of 2021. This year promises to be one of the most exciting years in crypto since I learnt about Bitcoin in 2012. Just yesterday, a country declared Bitcoin legal tender! Yet this year will probably be remembered as one of the saddest years in this decades because of Covid19. Yet Covid19 […]
Re-mining Patoshi Blocks for Dummies
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on September 3, 2020
In my previous article I discussed re-mining with a lot of technical details. A few days ago, a non-technical friend (yes, I have a few of those) asked me what was re-mining all about. I tried hard to find an analogy in the real world that compares to re-mining Bitcoin blocks. My first attempt to […]
The Patoshi Mining Machine
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on August 22, 2020
One of the topics that has been debated endlessly is what kind of hardware Satoshi used for mining. Some people argue he only needed a single computer using the latest generation of Intel processors available in 2009, using a CPU miner with SSE2-optimizations and multi-threading. Others argue that he had about 50 low-end networked computers. […]
An overwhelming task
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on August 23, 2019
By Sergio Lerner. Something amazing happened to me. I was leaving a meeting to enter another, disappointed for not being able to gather time to write and preparing for the adrenaline rush that I get when entering a meeting without any notion of the subject in question, when the secretary approached and warned me that […]
Armadillo: More Consensus Security for RSK
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on August 1, 2019
Last month I published an article on RSK Labs’s blog on how merge-mining works on the RSK sidechain. In this short article, I will deepen[1] the issue of the security of merge-mining RSK, and show how RSK’s security has increased after the last network upgrade. Now RSK merge-mining security could reach a level of security […]
The Return of the Deniers and the Revenge of Patoshi
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on April 16, 2019
Synopsis: In this article I will discuss what we know about the early Bitcoin blocks. Also I will present a new strong argument that a single miner mined 22k blocks. Finally I’ll introduce satoshiblocks.info, new website that shows a cool visualization of early blocks. The last time I wrote about Satoshi I thought it would be […]
Simple change to the Bitcoin MERKLEBLOCK command to protect from Leaf-Node weakness in Transaction Merkle Tree
Posted by SDLerner in Uncategorized on August 21, 2018
Recently a fix to the Bitcoin Merkle tree design weakness in the RSK’s bridge was built by making invalid SPV proofs whose internal hashes are valid Bitcoin transaction. While this solves the problem, it is by no means a “clean” solution: it creates false-negative cases (with very low probability) and it reduces verification efficiency. While […]
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