Bitcoin Magazine
Satoshi’s Exercise for the Reader
The Bitcoin whitepaper is clear about Bitcoin’s core feature: it is permissionless. Anyone in the world can pay anyone by joining the peer-to-peer network and broadcasting a transaction. Proof of Work consensus even empowers anybody to become a block producer, and means that the only way to reverse a payment is to overpower everyone else through hashpower.
But Proof of Work only defines how to choose a winner amongst competing chains; it does not help a node discover it. A 51% attack – or a 100% attack – is much easier if an attacker can prevent nodes from hearing about competing chains. The job of discovery belongs to the peer-to-peer module, which juggles many contradictory tasks: Find honest peers in a network where nodes constantly join and leave, but without authentication or reputation. Always be on the lookout for blocks and transactions, but don’t be surprised if most data is garbage. Be robust enough t
We współpracy z: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/print/satoshis-exercise-for-the-reader
