Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Addressing rapid changes in mining power

From: Andy Parkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:30:58 +0000

On 2011 November 23 Wednesday, Jorge Timón wrote:
> 2011/11/23, Andy Parkins <[email-masked]>:
> > Let's abandon the idea of a target difficulty.  Instead, every node just
> > 
>  > generates the most difficulty block it can.  Simultaneously, every node
>  > is listening for "the most difficult block generated before time T";
>  > with T being
>  > picked to be the block generation rate (10 minutes).
> 
> A miner could try to obtain more difficulty out of time and cheat its
> reported datetime (T).

Just as with the current system.

The defence is that on receipt of a block, its timestamp is checked against 
the node's own clock and averaged network clock.  Blocks out of that band are 
rejected.

Andy
-- 
Dr Andy Parkins
[email-masked]