[Bitcoin-development] Difficulty adjustment / time issues

[Aidan Thornton]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 3:45 PM, Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Modify the getwork code to build on the second-from-tip block if the
> first-on-tip block is on the discouraged list.
>
> Assuming a majority of pools/miners adopt the "discourage blocks with
> stale timestamps" rule, that should squash any incentive for cartels
> to try to start playing with difficulty-- you would have to have 50+%
> power to start, or you risk producing mostly orphan blocks.
Of course, if only a small percentage of mining power adopts this
scheme, everyone that does so will presumably be harming themselves by
doing so since they're essentially increasing the odds that the next
block they mine will become invalid...