Author: Jorge Timón 2015-07-29 18:00:10
Published on: 2015-07-29T18:00:10+00:00
In a Bitcoin-dev discussion, Eric Lombrozo stated that most miners trust mining pool operators to validate blocks for them, and some of the biggest pools have been blatantly cutting corners. While this may temporarily save money for the pools, it puts into question one of the fundamental assumptions behind the network security model. However, actually validating blocks is the equilibrium strategy, but with the current incentives where negligible fees exist, including transactions is not worth it for the miners. A future where fees are not a completely negligible part of the total reward would cause miners to re-calculate their estimations and realize that mining empty blocks would not be profitable. Moreover, only subsidy and no fees create other incentive problems, not just SPV mining. But some people think that scaring some users away because they have to pay fees is worse than perpetuating big incentive problems that could break the system. Additionally, short term convenience for users is more important than figuring out the long term viability of the system once the seigniorage spent on the miner's subsidy goes away. The pattern seems clear to be: decentralization and long term viability don't matter too much to some people. For some, short term market cap seems to be the most important priority, and everything else is secondary.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T04:05:51.426512+00:00