Author: Giuseppe B 2022-07-07 14:10:31
Published on: 2022-07-07T14:10:31+00:00
This context discusses the security budget of Bitcoin and the potential consequences of a security breach. The author expresses concern that it only takes a few million dollars to attack Bitcoin, rendering it unusable for a day, and suggests that it is only a matter of time before a hedge fund profits from such an attack. The context then introduces three options for paying for Bitcoin's security, including enormous block size increases, violating the 21 million coin limit, or having more than 50% of miner fee-revenues come from merged mining. The author believes merged mining is the best option and provides a link to an article discussing the idea.The context also mentions the possibility of reducing current and near-future mining rewards through a soft fork to increase the security budget in the event of insufficient funds. However, the author notes that miners may not agree to send some coinbase reward to "OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY OP_DROP OP_TRUE." Furthermore, the context discusses how the finite supply of Bitcoin is a main argument for its value, but that various forms of cryptographic security must also work together to make it useful. The author suggests that if breaking the 21 million cap is the only realistic way to pay for Bitcoin's security, it would be in the economic interest of users and holders to do so. They also note that there is zero feedback in the Bitcoin system between the optimum amount of security and what actually exists, and that figuring out how much security is needed will be an important project.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T21:22:51.096897+00:00