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[EN] The Book of Satoshi by Phil Champagne (beta)
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  • The Book of Satoshi : The Collected Writings of Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto by Phil Champagne
  • About the Cover Picture
  • Acknowledgements
  • Who This Book is Intended For
  • Foreword
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. How and Why Bitcoin Works
  • 3. The First Post on Crypto Mailing List
  • 4. Scalability Concerns
  • 5. The 51% Attack
  • 6. About Centrally Controlled Networks Versus Peer-to-Peer Networks
  • 7. Satoshi on the Initial Inflation Rate of 35%
  • 8. About Transactions
  • 9. On the Orphan Blocks
  • 10. About Synchronization of Transactions
  • 11. Satoshi Discusses Transaction Fees
  • 12. On Confirmation and Block Time
  • 13. The Byzantine General's Problem
  • 14. On Block Time, an Automated Test, and the Libertarian Viewpoint
  • 15. More on Double Spend, Proof-of-Work and Transaction Fees
  • 16. On Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Denial of Service Attacks, and Confirmation
  • 17. More in the Transaction Pool, Networking Broadcast, and Coding Details
  • 18. First Release of Bitcoin
  • 19. On the Purpose For Which Bitcoin Could Be Used First
  • 20. "Proof-of-Work" Tokens and Spammers
  • 21. Bitcoin Announced on P2P Foundation
  • 22. On Decentralization as Key to Success
  • 23. On the Subject of Money Supply
  • 24. Release of Bitcoin Vo.1.3
  • 25. On Timestamping Documents
  • 26. Bitcointalk Forum Welcome Message
  • 27. On Bitcoin Maturation
  • 28. How Anonymous Are Bitcoins?
  • 29. A Few Questions Answered By Satoshi
  • 30. On "Natural Deflation"
  • 31. Bitcoin Version 0.2 is Here!
  • 32. Recommendation on Ways to Do a Payment for An Order
  • 33. On the Proof-of-Work Difficulty
  • 34. On the Bitcoin Limit and Profitability of Nodes
  • 35. On the Possibility of Bitcoin Address Collisions
  • 36. QR Code
  • 37. Bitcoin Icon/Logo
  • 38. GPL License Versus MIT License
  • 39. On Money Transfer Regulations
  • 40. On the Possibility of a Cryptographic Weakness
  • 41. On a Variety of Transaction Types
  • 42. First Bitcoin Faucet
  • 43. Bitcoin 0.3 Released!
  • 44. On The Segmentation or "Internet Kill Switch"
  • 45. On Cornering the Market
  • 46. On Scalability and Lightweight Clients
  • 47. On Fast Transaction Problems
  • 48. Wikipedia Article Entry on Bitcoin
  • 49. On the Possibility of Stealing Coins
  • 50. Major Flaw Discovered
  • 51. On Flood Attack Prevention
  • 52. Drainage of Bitcoin Faucet
  • 53. Transaction to IP Address Rather Than Bitcoin Address
  • 54. On Escrow and Multi-Signature Transactions
  • 55. On Bitcoin Mining as a Waste of Resources
  • 56. On an Alternate Type of Block Chain with Just Hash Records
  • 57. On the Higher Cost of Mining
  • 58. On the Development of an Alert System
  • 59. On the Definition of Money and Bitcoin
  • 60. On the Requirement of a Transaction Fee
  • 61. On Sites with CAPTCHA and Paypal Requirements
  • 62. On Short Messages in the Block Chain
  • 63. On Handling a Transaction Spam Flood Attack
  • 64. On Pool Mining Technicalities
  • 65. On WikiLeaks Using Bitcoin
  • 66. On a Distributed Domain Name Server
  • 67. On a PC World Article on Bitcoin and WikiLeaks Kicking the Hornet's Nest
  • 68. Satoshi's Last Forum Post: Release of Bitcoin 0.3-19
  • 69. Emails to Dustin Trammell
  • 70. Last Private Correspondence
  • 71. Bitcoin and Me (Hal Finney)
  • 72. Conclusion
  • Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System
  • Terms & Definitions
  • Index
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  • On the Orphan Blocks

9. On the Orphan Blocks

9

On the Orphan Blocks

AN “ORPHAN BLOCK” occurs when two miners satisfy the proof-of-work at approximately the same time. The two blocks created by the two miners are different since they may not contain all of the same Bitcoin transactions, in which case the transactions wherein the two “winning” miners transfer the block’s transaction fees to their accounts are also different. But only one of those two blocks will ultimately be added to the block chain, while the other will become an “orphan block”. Any transactions present in the orphan block but not included in the accepted block will be included in the next block for which miners are competing. For more details, see the explanation of orphan blocks in Chapter 2.

Re: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper

Satoshi Nakamoto Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:17:240800

James A. Donald wrote:

OK, suppose one node incorporates a bunch of transactions in its proof of work, all of them honest legitimate single spends and another node incorporates a different bunch of transactions in its proof of work, all of them equally honest legitimate single spends, and both proofs are generated at about the same time.

What happens then?

They both broadcast their blocks. All nodes receive them and keep both, but only work on the one they received first. We’ll suppose exactly half received one first, half the other.

In a short time, all the transactions will finish propagating so that everyone has the full set. The nodes working on each side willbe trying to add the transactions that are missing from their side. When the next proof-of-work is found, whichever previous block that node was working on, that branch becomes longer and the tie is broken. Whichever side it is, the new block will contain the other half of the transactions, so in either case, the branch will containall transactions. Even in the unlikely event that a split happened twice in a row, both sides of the second split would contain the full set of transactions anyway.

It’s not a problem if transactions have to wait one or a few extra cycles to get into a block.

Satoshi Nakamoto

The Cryptography Mailing List

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Last updated 12 months ago