Quote from: TierNolan on May 02, 2016, 05:52:29 PM

If miners could broadcast near misses, then the network should quickly converge on one of the 2 blocks, when there is a tie. Even if some miners don't broadcast, the ones that do would give faster convergence.

I don't quiet understand it. Do you mean the network can handle a tie?

Quote from: TierNolan on May 02, 2016, 05:52:29 PM

For deterministic mining, you could use something like

weight_block_n = [sum(all blocks in the tie) + hash_block_n] mod Target

Pick the block with the most weight.

This makes it so that a miner can't determine if they will win a tie, in advance of the 2nd block being found. This keeps the incentive to broadcast as quickly as possible.

When two chains are the same length, with a high probability that they have the same "sum(all blocks in the tie)".

So, according to your formula "weight_block_n = [sum(all blocks in the tie) + hash_block_n] mod Target", the critical part seems to come from the hash value of the head of a chain (i.e. block_n in your formula).

Although an adversary can not know the competing block's hash value, but he can know the one he owns. If the hash value of his block is very large, the probability that other blocks' hash can exceed it is low. According to your formula, the adversary has an advantage if two chains are competing.

On the contrary, if the adversary's hash_block_n is small, it seems the adversary has little incentive to broadcast. I don't understand how the speed to broadcast a block can affect the result.