Author: Peter Todd 2014-04-21 04:06:27
Published on: 2014-04-21T04:06:27+00:00
The issue of small miners being disadvantaged due to the time it takes to validate a block and update their UTXO sets was discussed in a PGP signed message. It was suggested that smaller miners could mine on top of block headers without including any transactions or doing any validation, but this would be harmful to the security of Bitcoin.A post-graduate economist named Jonathan Levin wrote a paper on the incentives of mining and pointed out that the marginal cost for miners does not come from validating signatures and including them in blocks, but from the increased probability of orphaned blocks due to slower propagation. He also found that propagation delays result in increasing returns to higher shares of hashing power, and it may be in the interest of large pools to publish large blocks to increase orphan rates for small miners and those who have not invested in sufficient bandwidth/connectivity.In another discussion about units of account, the word "bit" was suggested as a culturally-neutral term, but it was noted that it sounds like slang for phallus in French and means "louse" in Turkish. The idea of using "credits" as a unit of account was also proposed, which some believed had a desirable futuristic connotation.In an email thread discussing potential units of account for Bitcoin, Oliver Egginger suggests that no term for smaller units has been established yet and that this is not a problem. Justin A suggests the term "ubit", pronounced "YOU-bit", to represent 1e-6 bitcoin. The discussion also touches on the importance of culturally neutral terms and avoiding references to cultural elements in naming conventions.Throughout the thread, there are several links to download a free O'Reilly book, "Graph Databases", as well as information about building an enterprise intranet with eXo Platform software.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T20:27:25.813675+00:00