What is #DigiShield?
DigiShield is a real-time difficulty adjustment algorithm introduced by #DigiByte in February 2014. It dynamically adjusts the mining difficulty after every block (approximately every 15 seconds) to ensure consistent block times.
Purpose
- Prevents large miners or mining pools from exploiting sudden drops in network hash rate, which could allow them to mine blocks too quickly and destabilize the network.
- Maintains DigiByte’s target block time of 15 seconds, ensuring fast transaction confirmations.
- Protects against attacks, such as 51% attacks, by rapidly increasing difficulty if a surge in hash power is detected.
How It Works
- DigiShield monitors the time taken to mine each block and adjusts the difficulty based on recent block times.
- If blocks are mined too quickly (e.g., due to a sudden influx of hash power), the difficulty increases. If blocks are too slow (e.g., miners leave the network), the difficulty decreases.
- This adjustment is more responsive than Bitcoin’s difficulty adjustment, which recalculates every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks), making $DGB less vulnerable to hash rate fluctuations.
Impact
- Enhances network stability and security by preventing “difficulty lag” exploited in other blockchains (e.g., early 51% attacks on single-algorithm chains).
- Adopted by other cryptocurrencies, including Dogecoin, Zcash, and Vertcoin, due to its effectiveness.
Significance
DigiShield was a pioneering innovation in 2014, addressing a key weakness in proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains by enabling rapid difficulty adjustments.