bitcoin-dev

A Free-Relay Attack Exploiting RBF Rule #6

A Free-Relay Attack Exploiting RBF Rule #6

Original Postby Peter Todd

Posted on: March 27, 2024 13:04 UTC

In a detailed inquiry about the practicality of implementing feerate ascending Lightning Network (LN) states, the complexities surrounding large mempool sizes and their implications on transaction relay and mining were discussed.

The hypothetical scenario where the mempool size reaches 1TB, surpassing the entire Bitcoin blocksize to date, was used to illustrate potential challenges including free relay attacks. This stems from the logistical impossibility of mining all broadcast transactions under such conditions. The concept of one-shot replace-by-fee-rate as opposed to pure replace-by-fee-rate mechanisms was proposed as a solution. This method, while still ensuring a form of proof-of-UTXO ownership similar to existing transaction replacement mechanisms, introduces a nuanced approach to how this proof is verified and utilized. For further details, Peter Todd's insights can be explored through his website.