Author: Pindar Wong 2015-06-01 12:19:12
Published on: 2015-06-01T12:19:12+00:00
The discussion involves how to design a Bitcoin protocol that maintains decentralization by creating appropriate incentives for mining. Peter Todd emphasizes that the service Bitcoin miners provide is not transaction validation, but rather decentralization. He likens the task to building a robot to go to the grocery store to buy milk without a nose. Similarly, if smaller and more geographically decentralized miners get outcompeted by larger and more geographically centralized miners, it results in bad value for money. Mike Hearn suggests that miners in China can always run a node on a server in Taiwan and connect the hardware via VPN, but Todd disagrees as this immediately adds another one or two points of failure to the system, decreasing reliability and security.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T21:49:05.273083+00:00