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 […]| Bitslog
(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 […]| Bitslog
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 […]| Bitslog
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 […]| Bitslog
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 […]| Bitslog
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 […]| Bitslog
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 […]| Bitslog
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…| Bitslog
Some time ago, I received an e-mail from my friend Timo Hanke. If you don’t know Timo, then you should, because he is, apart from a respected mathematician and Bitcoin enthusiast, an excellen…| Bitslog
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 processor…| Bitslog
Patoshi is the name I gave to the prominent miner that in 2009-2010 mined about 1.1M bitcoins, and that some people associate with Satoshi Nakamoto. Last time I wrote about Patoshi was in April, 20…| Bitslog
