Ethereum Consensus Protocol Flaw

[LiteCoinGuy]

Uncle Mining, an Ethereum Consensus Protocol Flaw

A year ago I was hired by Eth Dev Ltd through Coinspect to perform a security audit on the Ethereum design. One of our findings was that the uncle reward strategy in Ethereum was weird, and could lead to miners abusing the uncle rewards to almost triple the money supply.

https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2016/04/28/uncle-mining-an-ethereum-consensus-protocol-flaw/

[spartacusrex]

Very nice breakdown ltcguy..

..

Why not just not pay uncle blocks ? I assume the reason ETH is made out of thin air to pay the uncle miners is so that normal miners don't have to share their reward and therefore be incentivised not to include the uncles.

When you publish a block you do not know if it will be an uncle. You think it will be the next block on the main chain. Miners will include uncle blocks anyway as using GHOST their branch will be heavier and more lightly to become the main chain. They will not include uncles of rival chains. makes sense.

So, I don't see why you need to pay a reward for uncle blocks at all when it seems to complicate mining incentives unnecessarily ?   

[r0ach]