Author: Erik Aronesty 2022-07-14 09:57:41
Published on: 2022-07-14T09:57:41+00:00
The idea of burning all fees and keeping a block reward that will smooth out while keeping the 21 million coins limit has been discussed in the bitcoin-dev mailing list. However, this would require a hard fork as it goes against the rules of the coinbase transaction following the usual halving schedule. Instead, adding a rule that fees have to be sent to an anyone can spend output with a timelock might achieve a similar thing. This approach is highly inefficient as most of those outputs would be dust, but there might be a smarter way to do it. One suggestion is to send 0.01 BTC per block to timelocked outputs that will endlessly move until it wraps, which avoids the "tail supply attack." Even if it will be mandatory to timelock 0.01 BTC to the current block number plus 210,000, then it is still perfectly valid to move that amount endlessly, without taking it, just to resist this "tail supply attack." In terms of security, fees and miner rewards are not needed at all for long-term holders can invest in mining to secure the value of their stake. Although fees might be enough, large holders can burn a bit to make sure the hashrate stays high. This may be seen as a tax on the rich and unfair to smaller holders who are less likely to do it, but it's a minuscule tax even in the worst case. The emission curve of Bitcoin lasts over 100 years because its success state requires it to be entrenched globally. The shape of the emission curve matters for proper distribution, and Bitcoin appears much better than Monero and Ethereum. Only one coin has an expected (soft) emission time larger than Bitcoin's, and it's about an order of magnitude larger, at 50 years.
Updated on: 2023-06-15T22:47:40.750284+00:00