Author: Tejaswi Nadahalli 2020-07-02 12:39:35
Published on: 2020-07-02T12:39:35+00:00
In an email conversation, ZmnSCPxj proposes analyzing miners as a breeding group with various strategies and seeing which one gains more utilons and outbreeds other miners. They start with a population of four miners where 75% are non-myopic and 25% are myopic. If there exists a timelocked bribe, the non-myopic miner will have to sacrifice the Alice fee minus whatever lesser transaction fee it can replace in its block. However, even if the Alice transaction is delayed, the myopic miner still has its 25% chance to confirm the Bob transaction and earn the increased bribe that Bob offers. The non-myopic miners do not impose any loss on myopic miners, but the myopic miner is able to impose costs on their non-myopic competitors. Thus, the myopic miner is expected to earn more than 25% of subsidies and fees than non-myopic miners in such a mixed environment. The myopic miner, being able to earn more, is able to increase its progeny faster than non-myopic miners, eventually dominating over the breeding population and driving non-myopic miners to near-extinction. Miners work for themselves alone in a highly competitive environment, so each miner cannot be sure that every other miner will use the non-myopic strategy. In the context of Lightning, both Alice and Bob need to have fidelity bonds, which triples the already bad channel-lockin cost. Using this model, non-myopic miners can only maintain hold over the blockchain if all miners agree to use non-myopic strategy, forming a cartel or monopoly, which is detrimental to customers of the monopoly.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T02:36:06.166730+00:00