@Bestie 7 August 2020 more from that month

ASERT proposal as new DAA Confirmed In November's BCH Upgrade

About a month ago, @jtoomim made an update proposing the use of ASERT as DAA in the upcoming upgrade, https://read.cash/@jtoomim/bch-upgrade-proposal-use-asert-as-the-new-daa-1d875696 He went further to stating some flaws about the current Difficulty Adjustment Algorithm (DAA) - cw-144 It increases average transaction confirmation times by a factor of about 2x if 90% of the hashrate behaves in a rational manner; It causes the chain to stall completely if 100% of the hashrate behaves in a rational manner; It allows for some really nasty selfish mining attacks. Selfish mining attacks cause block reorgs, and reduce public confidence in the block chain, and make double-spend attacks more feasible; It punishes miners for being loyal to BCH; It punishes small solo miners who do not have the technological sophistication to automate hashrate switching strategies; and It allows for malicious strategies in which a miner can intentionally amplify the oscillations and pro-switching incentives, either by switching their hashrate themselves in a pumped fashion, or by manipulating the timestamps of the blocks they mine. The confirmation to this proposal was made known recently, On August 6 by Amaury Séchet, stating the implementation of aserti3–2d (ASERT) algorithm in replacement of cw-144 on the Bitcoin ABC node. https://medium.com/bitcoin-abc/bitcoin-abcs-plan-for-the-november-2020-upgrade-65fb84c4348f So, with the acceptance of this proposal and further implementing it on the November 12 upgrade, BCH tends to experience the list below quoted from @jtoomim It would be stable, and not prone to oscillations; It would keep confirmation times low; It would keep incentives for miners to perform hashrate shenanigans low; It would keep incentives for miners to perform timestamp manipulation shenanigans low; It should keep incentives for miners to perform selfish mining shenanigans low; Because of **#3**, **#4**, and **#5**, honest mining strategies with steady hashrate should get near-optimal income; https://read.cash/search?q=%233 https://read.cash/search?q=%234 https://read.cash/search?q=%235 The chain would recover quickly after sudden changes in hashrate and/or exchange rate; The average block interval would be kept close to the target (e.g. 600 seconds); The algorithm would be mathematically simple and elegant; The algorithm would be easily understood and analyzed; The algorithm would be easy to implement elegantly and simply; and The algorithm would have few or no edge and corner cases.