5 ms·
The title is a little sensationalist. While the majority of wallets do only have SPV security, and such wallets were vulnerable to double spending during the re
by Adlai 11y ago
The title is a little sensationalist. While the majority of wallets do only have SPV security, and such wallets were vulnerable to double spending during the recent fork event. The fork is over, so the wallets are no more vulnerable now than they were before (this vulnerability is not new).
I hope this incident has convinced other miners that the ~1% profit boost from "SPV Mining" is not worth the fork risk that it enables, although apparently one of the pools (Discus Fish aka F2Pool) has already been warned against SPV Mining in the past. Let's hope that coins lost through this fork event is the sterner warning they needed.
- joosters 11y agoDoesn't seem sensationalist to me. As you say, the majority of wallets were vulnerable. The only problem is that the warning is far too late to protect anyone. I doubt any potential F2Pool miner loss is enough to persuade them to not do SPV mining. Just look at how many blocks they've mined overall and consider how much extra they've earned over time thanks to this 1% boost...
- Adlai 11y agoIt's sensationalist to suggest this vulnerability is anything new. The warning is late, indeed... I'd suggest putting it in the Terms of Service of every SPV wallet, but then even fewer people would read it. Maybe a better approach would be a popup each time the wallet blindly trusts a new merkle root?
- maaku 11y agoThe wallets are still vulnerable to future forks of the same nature. It is not a 1% profit boost. It is a ~1% revenue boost, and mining is a very thin profit margin business. 1% revenue can be 10-20% profit. Furthermore, that gives an edge over the competition which doesn't use the patch which may be enough to shut them out.