The Bitcoin Attack You Haven't Heard About

PortlandHODL explains Bitcoin's most dangerous vulnerability: poison blocks. These malicious blocks can freeze nodes for 11+ hours on Raspberry Pi devices and 25 minutes on enterprise hardware, creating profitable attack opportunities for miners while exposing how relay policy acts as an accidental guardian of the network.

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Notes:

• Poison Blocks (denial of service)

• Raspberry Pi validation: 11 hours for poison blocks

• Enterprise hardware: 25 minutes validation time  

• Attack gives 20% effective hash rate boost

• Fix exists in Great Consensus Cleanup

• Bitcoin fees currently under $1

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

00:53 Real threats to Bitcoin

04:55 How is block made?

11:46 Nodes & DOS blocks

20:03 Making DOS blocks

29:33 Arch Network

30:05 Miners & DOS blocks

36:46 Attack response time

40:47 Fixing the problem

43:25 Why not fixed yet?

54:12 Client diversity

1:01:11 Other good soft forks

1:05:12 Are you worried?

1:10:03 "Deep Thoughts" by Portland HODL

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