Bitcoin Dev Archive Topics

Time warp, timestamps and the consensus cleanup

Old mistakes in the block rules that have never been fixed: the time warp attack on the difficulty adjustment, 64-byte transactions, duplicate coinbases and the 2106 timestamp overflow. The Great Consensus Cleanup (BIP 54) gathers the fixes into one soft fork.

57 threads and 559 messages, 13 Sep 2011 to 2 Oct 2026.

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BIPs

Bitcoin Optech

The threads, in order

Listed by the date of each thread's first message.

2011 1 thread

13 Sep 2011
Difficulty adjustment / time issues Gavin Andresen
19 messages

2012 1 thread

6 Jul 2012
BIP 34: Block v2, Height in Coinbase Jeff Garzik
8 messages

2013 3 threads

8 May 2013
32 vs 64-bit timestamp fields Addy Yeow
13 messages
22 Jul 2013
Standard for private keys with birth timestamp Pieter Wuille
2 messages
19 Nov 2013
Disentangling Crypto-Coin Mining: Timestamping, Proof-of-Publication, and Validation Peter Todd
1 message

2015 6 threads

20 Jun 2015
Motivation and deployment of consensus rules changes ([soft/hard]forks) Jorge Timón
8 messages
29 Jul 2015
Consensus fork activation thresholds: Block.nTime vs median time vs block.nHeight Jorge Timón
5 messages
18 Aug 2015
BIP: Using Median time-past as endpoint for locktime calculations Thomas Kerin
6 messages
21 Aug 2015
Consensus based block size retargeting algorithm (draft) Btc Drak
26 messages
1 Nov 2015
BIP 113: Median time-past is a HARDfork, not a softfork! Luke Dashjr
3 messages
18 Dec 2015
The increase of max block size should be determined by block height instead of block time Wang Chun
10 messages

2016 7 threads

29 Jan 2016
Best (block nr % 2016) for hard fork activation? Jannes Faber
4 messages
9 Feb 2016
A roadmap to a better header format and bigger block size Johnson Lau
4 messages
24 Feb 2016
Multi-Stage Merge-Mine Headers Hard-Fork BIP James Hilliard
3 messages
2 Mar 2016
Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm Luke Dashjr
31 messages
2 Aug 2016
ScalingBitcoin 2015: Retarget - Call For Proposals Now Open Pindar Wong
2 messages
18 Sep 2016
Interpreting nTime for the purpose of Bitcoin-attested timestamps Peter Todd
5 messages
17 Nov 2016
BIP30 and BIP34 interaction (was Re: [BIP Proposal] Buried Deployments) Jorge Timón
19 messages

2017 4 threads

18 Mar 2017
Malice Reactive Proof of Work Additions (MR POWA): Protecting Bitcoin from malicious miners John Hardy
15 messages
5 Jul 2017
The Nuclear Option: BIP148 + MR POWA John Hardy
3 messages
9 Oct 2017
New difficulty algorithm needed for SegWit2x fork? (reformatted text) Scott Roberts
10 messages
11 Oct 2017
New difficulty algorithm part 2 Scott Roberts
6 messages

2018 4 threads

29 Jan 2018
How accurate are the Bitcoin timestamps? Neiman
8 messages
19 Feb 2018
Some thoughts on removing timestamps in PoW Tao Effect
6 messages
20 Aug 2018
Getting around to fixing the timewarp attack. Gregory Maxwell
5 messages
3 Dec 2018
How much is too much time between difficulty changes? Dave Scotese
2 messages

2019 4 threads

25 Feb 2019
Vulnerability relating to 64-byte transactions in Bitcoin Core 0.13 branch Suhas Daftuar
1 message
6 Mar 2019
Mailing list downtime, archive, and its future Bryan Bishop
1 message
6 Mar 2019
BIP Proposal: The Great Consensus Cleanup Matt Corallo
29 messages
4 Oct 2019
Chain width expansion Braydon Fuller
17 messages

2020 1 thread

19 Sep 2020
Suggestion: Solve year 2106 problem by taking timestamps mod 2^32 yanmaani
2 messages

2021 3 threads

17 Feb 2021
Yesterday's Taproot activation meeting on lockinontimeout (LOT) Michael Folkson
42 messages
27 Feb 2021
Taproot activation facts on lockinontimeout (LOT) Michael Folkson
1 message
13 Oct 2021
Year 2038 problem and year 2106 chain halting vjudeu
15 messages

2022 2 threads

16 Sep 2022
bitcoin-inquistion: evaluating soft forks on signet Anthony Towns
15 messages
11 Oct 2022
Relaxing minimum non-witness transaction size policy restriction Greg Sanders
6 messages

2023 2 threads

1 Feb 2023
Debate: 64 bytes in OP_RETURN VS taproot OP_FALSE OP_IF OP_PUSH Christopher Allen
34 messages
30 Jul 2023
Concrete MATT opcodes Salvatore Ingala
12 messages

2024 6 threads

16 Jan 2024
BitBlend Proposal for 2106 BitBlend2106
1 message
24 Mar 2024
Great Consensus Cleanup Revival Antoine Poinsot
33 messages
9 Apr 2024
Timewarp Attacks and Long-Term Timelocked Script Paths Antoine Riard
1 message
25 Aug 2024
Timewarp fix, Mining software and Clocks Antoine Riard
1 message
22 Nov 2024
Prevent future duplicate coinbase transactions as part of Consensus Cleanup Antoine Poinsot
1 message
19 Dec 2024
Double Exponential Hash Rate Growth and Difficulty Adjustment Anders
3 messages

2025 7 threads

5 Feb 2025
Update on the Great Consensus Cleanup Revival Antoine Poinsot
15 messages
26 Mar 2025
Consensus Cleanup BIP draft Antoine Poinsot
16 messages
27 Apr 2025
The Tragic Tale of BIP30 Ruben Somsen
13 messages
21 Oct 2025
BIP54 implementation and test vectors Antoine Poinsot
4 messages
8 Dec 2025
Year 2106 Timestamp Overflow - Proposal for uint64 Migration אושר חיים גליק
6 messages
14 Dec 2025
Does GCC preclude a soft fork to handle timestamp overflow? Josh Doman
8 messages
30 Dec 2025
Addressing remaining points on BIP 54 Antoine Poinsot
15 messages

2026 6 threads

9 Feb 2026
Bip54: add sequence, timestamp (and version) to GBT Sjors Provoost
4 messages
13 Feb 2026
BIP 54 active on Bitcoin Inquisition Antoine Poinsot
5 messages
15 Apr 2026
Hornet Update: A declarative executable specification of Bitcoin consensus rules Toby Sharp
7 messages
1 May 2026
64-Byte Transactions and Potential Legitimate Uses Jeremy Rubin
8 messages
1 Jun 2026
Prohibit Merkle Internal Node Preimages That Encode Minimal 64-Byte Transactions Jeremy Rubin
18 messages
2 Oct 2026
Getting BIP54 past the finish line Antoine Riard
1 message