Developer: Final Confirmation of Bitcoin Transactions Now Takes More Than a Week Due to Mining Centralisation

PANews, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr has raised concerns about the finality of Bitcoin transactions, stating that the widely-accepted six-block confirmation rule no longer applies, according to Cryptoslate. According to him, transaction finalisation now takes more than a week, raising questions about Bitcoin's ability to resist censorship.Dashjr argues that due to the increasing centralisation of Bitcoin's mining pools, the traditional standard no longer applies. He explained that he tried to update the six-block confirmation target in Bitcoin Knots, an alternative to Bitcoin Core. However, his calculations show that due to Antpool's significant share of the network's hash rate, it now takes more than 800 blocks to achieve 95 per cent security - the equivalent of about 5.5 days.

Antpool controls about 16.67 per cent of Bitcoin's total hash rate, trailing Foundry USA's 33.12 per cent, according to HashRate Index. Other major mining pools include F2Pool (8.87%), MARA Pool (6.06%), and SecPool (5.19%). However, Dashjr disputes these figures, claiming that several mining pools such as Braiins and ViaBTC act as proxies for Antpool, giving it more influence. He also pointed out that many miners operate under centralised mining pools, unwittingly contributing to potential network restructuring. Industry experts have expressed similar concerns, warning that the growing dominance of a handful of mining pools puts Bitcoin at risk of potential censorship or even a 51 per cent attack.Bob Burnett, chief executive of Barefoot Mining, said that if a single entity controls a large portion of the network's hash rate, it could manipulate the blockchain by restructuring transactions.

At the same time, not everyone agrees that the problem is as serious as Dashjr suggests. daniel Roberts, co-founder of Iris Energy Ltd, downplayed these concerns, arguing that bitcoin's design allows it to self-regulate over time. roberts added: ‘bitcoin may not be perfect and we should continue to try to improve it, but these kinds of problems are usually self-correcting or intentional by design.’