In a stark reminder about one of Bitcoin’s lingering immaturities, Bitcoin Core maintainer and mining pool co-founder Luke Dashjr calculated that Bitcoin transactions might need over 800 confirmations (5.5 days) to reach even 95% odds of finality.
In alarming contrast to most orientations that recommend a mere six blocks (one hour) for assurance that a transaction is irreversibly settled, this 800-block figure recalculates that to account for distrust in Bitmain.
In something of an open secret in the bitcoin mining space, Bitmain has maintained significant influence over the sector for years.
Bitmain’s templates for blocks of BTC transactions
Everybody knows Bitmain sits atop the bitcoin mining sector. The sprawling company, co-founded by billionaires Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan, including their affiliates and subsidiaries, makes the vast majority of physical machines like Antminers that crunch numbers for Bitcoin’s proof-of-work.
In addition, Bitmain operates corporate mining pools like Antpool.
Most importantly, the Bitmain/Antpool conglomerate has a long history of incentivizing work assignment via its extra-profitable block templates to miners who work for third-party pools like Poolin, BTC.com, and several others.
Through its well-capitalized influence across Bitcoin’s mining network, Dashjr suggests this conglomerate can exert control over approximately 48% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate.
Read more: New research suggests Bitcoin mining centralized around Bitmain
Because many ostensibly independent mining pools simply pass along Bitmain’s templated recommendations to their miners, Dashjr distrusts that any average transaction has irreversible finality until it receives over 800 blocks of confirmations.
Calculate your own level of distrust in Bitmain/Antpool
Dashjr arrived at his 800-block figure for 95% finality certainty by inputting his assumption of Bitmain/Antpool’s 48% control of hashrate into Gregory Maxwell’s archived “Attack Success” calculator.
If anyone has a different assumption of how much of Bitcoin’s hashrate Bitmain/Antpool controls, anyone may input a different decimal into that same tool to calculate their own number of blocks for settlement finality.
In the Bitcoin network, node operators and users can choose their own level of trust or distrust. The more block confirmations, the more secure a transaction is from double-spending or replacement. The fewer confirmations, the less secure it is.
In Dashjr’s view, a user should wait nearly six days to have more than 95% confidence that their bitcoin transaction is beyond the control of Bitmain.
The actual confidence interval could be far less or more than that timespan, however, depending on one’s view of Bitmain’s dominance and beneficence.
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