A Better Proof-of-Work Fork Choice Rule

ePrint Report: A Better Proof-of-Work Fork Choice Rule

Karl Kreder, Shreekara Shastry, Apostolos Tzinas, Sriram Vishwanath, Dionysis Zindros

We propose a modification to the fork choice rule of proof-of-work blockchains. Instead of choosing the heaviest chain, we choose the chain with the most intrinsic work. The intrinsic work of a block is roughly the number of zeroes at the front of its hash. This modification allows us to safely decrease the confirmations required, yielding a $28.5\%$ improvement in confirmation delay …

block blockchains eprint report fork modification proof report work