Comment by copirate
2 months ago
No it's not a race, it's a lottery.
It would be like saying you've an edge if you start earlier at the roulette.
2 months ago
No it's not a race, it's a lottery.
It would be like saying you've an edge if you start earlier at the roulette.
I think you're confused.
In a lottery, the more tickets you buy, the higher your chances to have the winning number.
If we played with a roulette and said "the goal is to be the first to have a winning number at the roulette" and I could try 50 times before you started, obviously I would be more likely to win our game, wouldn't I?
> In a lottery, the more tickets you buy, the higher your chances to have the winning number.
Yes, and it's exactly the same in bitcoin with the hashing power. Each hash is a ticket.
> If we played with a roulette and said "the goal is to be the first to have a winning number at the roulette" and I can try 50 times before you start, obviously I am more likely to win our game, am I not?
In bitcoin the goal is not to be the first. The goal is to find a winning hash that's on a chain that will not be abandoned. As soon as a new block is propagated you start mining on the new head. It doesn't change anything that you previously worked on another chain. The time spent on the previous chain is not wasted, unless finding a block wouldn't have got you the reward.
There is a kind of a race if 2 blocks are found simultaneously. But that's not really what this discussion is about, and in this case the outcome depends mostly on network connectivity.
It is precisely what this discussion is about. From the article:
> The key idea behind this strategy, called Selfish Mining, is for a pool to keep its discovered blocks private, thereby intentionally forking the chain. The honest nodes continue to mine on the public chain, while the pool mines on its own private branch. If the pool discovers more blocks, it develops a longer lead on the public chain, and continues to keep these new blocks private. When the public branch approaches the pool's private branch in length, the selfish miners reveal blocks from their private chain to the public.
> In bitcoin the goal is not to be the first. The goal is to find a winning hash that's on a chain that will not be abandoned.
The goal is to be the first (or very close to the first), because it makes it much more likely that your chain will not be abandoned. If you wait 2 days before you reveal your block, obviously it will be abandoned...
2 replies →
...it's not a race, it's a lottery.
Yes, but everyone else is still buying tickets for yesterday's jackpot, while you're busy accumulating them for tomorrow's.
But yesterday's jackpot is still running, here. If you find a block on the public chain while the other miner kept their block secret, your block becomes the main chain. If they publish their block after you, both blocks compete for the head, but it's usually the first published one that wins.