Second Look at Weak Blocks

[AntoineP]

Nice! It would address concerns regarding slower block propagations in the presence of diverging relay policies on the network, and it’s neat we can just reuse compact blocks instead of rolling out an IBLT or something.

@instagibbs

“Forcible insertion” of transactions that are incentive-compatible but violate anti-DoS rules? (e.g., “pinning replacement”)

Assuming you refer to this excerpt from the linked email:

and naturally resolve all current issues inherent in package relay and rbf rules. It also resolves the recent minimum relay questions, as relay is no longer a concern for unmined transactions.

There are other solutions to this, like weak blocks (miners get to relay partial PoW solutuon of say 10% of the difficulty to the network; and nodes which receive such a weak block can “forcibly” insert its transaction to their mempool, as there is evidence it’s actually being worked on, while still being DoS resistant because partial PoW is still PoW).

I don’t think this addresses pinning concerns. If a miner is already working on a template which includes your transaction, you’re not getting pinned anymore.

However, and this also relates to the other bonus use-case, it can be used as pinning detection. You can detect your transaction is not getting included in any of the miners’ templates whereas you attached a next-block fee.