Author: Billy Tetrud 2021-12-20 17:18:44
Published on: 2021-12-20T17:18:44+00:00
The Bitcoin-dev mailing list recently hosted a discussion on various proposals related to Bitcoin mining pools. The original post suggested a design for a pool hedging mechanism based on time windows and reward functions. This proposal allows the pooling of resources to hedge against fee rates and hashrate increases, and it can be customized in many ways. The author argues that the proposed design can reduce chain space usage, enable non-custodial split pooling, and use payment channels to speed up payments.However, several participants raised concerns regarding the feasibility and security of the proposed design. One participant argued that the design does not solve the fundamental problem of block rewards being unspendable for a while. Another participant cautioned against introducing dangerous games that miners could play. Some participants suggested that the proposal is too complex and lacks a clear use case. One participant asked the author to pick one problem for which the proposed design is the best solution.In response to these concerns, various proposals were put forward to increase payout regularity and reduce the on-chain footprint of mining pools. One suggestion was to create a separate blockchain with superblocks that would store only block headers instead of transactions. These superblocks could be created using merge mining or a signing scheme. However, concerns about the number of block headers stored per superblock were raised, and it was suggested that a limit be imposed to prevent an excessive amount of block headers.Another proposal involved using weak blocks in combination with a separate ephemeral blockchain to determine what blocks should be part of a particular block's payout. Although this idea was not fully developed, it was suggested that a separate network of solo miners could publish weak blocks to a public network, allowing nice miners to pay out rewards proportionally. The benefits of these proposals include increased payout regularity and a lower on-chain footprint through combined payouts from multiple pools.It was noted that these proposals do not eliminate the need for mining pools, but they can lower the viable size of mining pools. One concern raised was the safety of throwing block rewards into a channel and being able to spend them immediately, as block rewards are unspendable for 100 blocks due to consensus rules. Overall, the discussion demonstrates the ongoing debate among Bitcoin developers about how to improve mining pools' efficiency and security. While some participants are skeptical of new proposals, others see potential benefits in exploring different designs and techniques.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T03:30:44.535489+00:00