How Can a Manipulated Timestamp Affect the Difficulty Adjustment?

A miner could potentially manipulate the timestamp to artificially shorten the recorded time it took to mine the previous 2,016 blocks. This would cause the difficulty algorithm to incorrectly increase the difficulty too much, making mining harder for everyone else, which is an attack vector.

However, the MTP rule prevents extreme manipulation.

What Is the Maximum Acceptable Deviation for a Block Timestamp?
What Specific Formula Is Used to Calculate the Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Adjustment?
How Is a Change in Bitcoin’s Difficulty Calculated and Implemented?
Why Is the 2,016 Block Interval Important for Network Stability?
Explain the ‘Difficulty Adjustment’ Mechanism in Bitcoin Mining
How Often Does Bitcoin’s Difficulty Adjustment Occur and Why?
How Often Do Typical PoW Networks like Bitcoin Adjust Their Mining Difficulty?
Why Must the Block Timestamp Be within a Certain Range of the Network Time?

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