Full RBF

[BlackHatCoiner]

What would be the odds of a mining pool trying to replace the mined block and take the puzzle money for themselves?

Foundry USA currently has access to approximately 28% of the hashrate. This means that it has 39% probability to successfully rewrite the entire previous block and mine another one on a row. Therefore, they have two choices.

• Either continue honestly, with 28% chance of mining the next block and earning 3.125 BTC, or
• Gamble the hashpower of 2 blocks, with 39% chance of success, earning about 10 BTC.

Theoretically, it's worth the gamble, even though I haven't worked on the exact math behind it. However, in practice, destroying reputation like that is a suicide.

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[vjudeu]

Theoretically, it's worth the gamble, even though I haven't worked on the exact math behind it.

It is possible to publicly announce SHA-256 of the public key, and get it deeply confirmed, and announced everywhere. Then, if any mining pool will try to overwrite a valid block, there will be a strong, publicly-verifiable evidence, that they did it.

Because the solver can announce for example "OP_RIPEMD160 62e907b15cbf27d5425399ebf6f0fb50ebb88f18 OP_EQUALVERIFY <solverPubKey> OP_CHECKSIG", and get it deeply confirmed, without trusting anyone, and without touching the puzzle. And then, everyone can see, if the reward from the puzzle was first moved into "solverPubKey" or not.

[LoyceV]

Foundry USA currently has access to approximately 28% of the hashrate. This means that it has 39% probability to successfully rewrite the entire previous block and mine another one on a row.

Somehow this probability is always larger than I'd expect intuitively. Your answer seems to be correct:

(image source: learnmeabitcoin.com)

It is possible to publicly announce SHA-256 of the public key, and get it deeply confirmed, and announced everywhere. Then, if any mining pool will try to overwrite a valid block, there will be a strong, publicly-verifiable evidence, that they did it.

Because the solver can announce for example "OP_RIPEMD160 62e907b15cbf27d5425399ebf6f0fb50ebb88f18 OP_EQUALVERIFY <solverPubKey> OP_CHECKSIG", and get it deeply confirmed, without trusting anyone, and without touching the puzzle. And then, everyone can see, if the reward from the puzzle was first moved into "solverPubKey" or not.

Being the first to solve the puzzle is meaningless if someone else beats you to getting their transaction confirmed. Someone else could have solved the puzzle between the time you took to create this transaction, and broadcast the real one.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Somehow this probability is always larger than I'd expect intuitively.

Remember that if Foundry turned evil, it'd "migrate" its hashrate elsewhere. Therefore, the network would have less hashrate without noticing.

It become even larger if you skip the "mine another block on a row". Foundry has 58% chance to re-write an alternative chain by simply re-writing the most recently mined block (1-conf). However, most of the nodes will have already accepted another chain, and probably most pools will be mining on that other chain. Therefore, they won't accomplish anything by rewriting the previous block. They need to rewrite the previous and mine one on top, so that everyone accepts this chain.  

[DaveF]

Somehow this probability is always larger than I'd expect intuitively.

Remember that if Foundry turned evil, it'd "migrate" its hashrate elsewhere. Therefore, the network would have less hashrate without noticing.

It become even larger if you skip the "mine another block on a row". Foundry has 58% chance to re-write an alternative chain by simply re-writing the most recently mined block (1-conf). However, most of the nodes will have already accepted another chain, and probably most pools will be mining on that other chain. Therefore, they won't accomplish anything by rewriting the previous block. They need to rewrite the previous and mine one on top, so that everyone accepts this chain.  

And then what. Would other pools just stand there and take it or would they put a filter in that looks for foundry in the Coinbase tag and invalidate those blocks.
AntPool and Via and F2 would crush Foundry out of existence if they really tried that.
People would be screaming on both sides about it, but if any pool ever tried it would not last long.

-Dave

[LoyceV]

AntPool and Via and F2 would crush Foundry out of existence if they really tried that.
People would be screaming on both sides about it

I'm not sure yet on which side I'd be screaming. On the one hand, replacing a valid block for profit is bad, but on the other hand, ignoring the longest chain to keep mining a shorter chain is also bad. I'm not sure yet which is the worst.

[BlackHatCoiner]

And then what. Would other pools just stand there and take it or would they put a filter in that looks for foundry in the Coinbase tag and invalidate those blocks.

Practically speaking, they wouldn't have done this beforehand, so when Foundry mines two blocks on a row and creates a longer chain, their full node software would automatically switch to that. At least, I'm not aware of a mining pool which has altered their node software for that particular case; makes no sense.

AntPool and Via and F2 would crush Foundry out of existence if they really tried that.

Followed by their reputation. No sane miner would mine on a pool that wants to crush other mining pools out of revenge.

On the one hand, replacing a valid block for profit is bad, but on the other hand, ignoring the longest chain to keep mining a shorter chain is also bad. I'm not sure yet which is the worst.

Ignoring the longest chain for the sake of ethics is one of the most destructive ideas. Bitcoin is based in a game theory, and it shall be based in this forever.