Jihan Wu, co-founder of bitcoin mining equipment maker Bitmain, has rebutted a disputation made yesterday yesteryear Gregory Maxwell where he says that a “design oversight” inwards Bitcoin’s proof of move “has a potential laid upwards on which tin let an attacking miner to salve up-to 30% of their bring out energy costs.” Maxwell further stated: “Reverse applied scientific discipline of a mining ASIC from a major industry has revealed that it contains an undocumented, undisclosed mightiness to brand role of this attack.”
Emin Gün Sirer, Cornell Professor, has disputed this claim, saying that “there’s absolutely no independently confirmed evidence of ASICBOOST truly existence used on whatsoever chip.” Jihan Wu, Bitmain’s co-founder, has at nowadays confirmed AsicBoost is non existence used inwards production. He told CCN:
Bitmain has alone tested ASICboost on testnet too never used it on primary cyberspace inwards production. We likewise believe that those who bill us of using ASICBoost privately should render at nowadays evidence. ASICBoost is implemented, addition it is non used publicly, does non imply that it has been used inwards roughly rattling weird someone ways.
Maxwell farther stated that the optimization tin block “virtuous improvements,” yesteryear which he way Blockstream’s proposal of segregated witnesses.
In response, Jihan Wu said:
“Bitmain signed the HK understanding too nosotros back upwards SegWit equally long equally at that topographic point is a block size bump upwards difficult fork. So it cannot claim that Bitmain is against SegWit.”
The Hong Kong understanding was signed terminal twelvemonth where nearly all miners equally good equally Adam Back, Peter Todd, Matt Corallo, Luke-Jr too other developers agreed to merge segwit addition a 2MB hardfork. Segwit was delayed, but merged, the hardfork was never fifty-fifty publicly trace requested equally far equally it’s known.
A novel proposal was made ii days ago, extension blocks, which implements a modified version of segwit to let for the deployment of the Lightning Network spell likewise increasing on-chain capacity to 3MB amongst an upper outflow of 9MB.
Jihan Wu came out inwards favor of the proposal. CCN has learned that F2Pool likewise supports extension blocks. However, Blockstream appears to live on rattling much against it. The reasons are non clear, but a schism at nowadays appears to live on developing betwixt Blockstream too Lightning Network developers.
Maxwell’s disputation is in all likelihood an endeavour to divert attending from the extension blocks proposal or whatsoever efforts to accomplish a grand compromise on this never ending debate. However, Blockstream is at nowadays set to proof on their allegations.
If they are unable to render whatsoever evidence that AsicBoost is existence used inwards production, too therefore this seemingly PR exertion may in i lawsuit to a greater extent than backfire, but nosotros tin live on certain that their alleged troll army may continue repeating unfounded allegations equally facts. However, these latest developments exercise non bode good for a potential solution to the transaction capacity stalemate. Considering the answer of roughly to the extensions blocks proposals, many may at nowadays cause speculating that Blockstream truly does non desire whatsoever increase.
Indeed, Matt Corrallo, a old Blockstream employee, has said that 1MB forever is “not the cease of the world. People tin too exercise role Bitcoin today perfectly well, too many of the designs people convey for second-layer systems move cracking today (LN existence an exception, though it does withal work).” If that is indeed the case, it remains to live on seen whether other Bitcoin Core developers too supports continue standing yesteryear Blockstream when digital currencies, such equally ethereum too litecoin, continue seeing 50% cost increases inwards a day, spell bitcoin’s cost seemingly remains stagnant, amongst its marketplace portion dropping.
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