Author: Adam Back 2015-06-23 19:42:37
Published on: 2015-06-23T19:42:37+00:00
The interests of miners and users in Bitcoin are not directly aligned, as miners profit from fees while users want security, decentralization, and low fees. There is also the issue of miner competition and game theory to consider. Proposals such as Jeff's BIP, Greg Maxwell's flexcap, and Gavin's proposal need to be analyzed for how they would hold up under attack scenarios and whether they prioritize user interests or miner game theory. One concern is whether a group of close-knit miners might try to create big blocks that disadvantage other miners, or whether miners will keep blocks small to extract switching-cost fees from users. Jeff's proposal has a cost-free miner vote for cap increase with a threshold, but it is vulnerable to an advantaged minority forcing the block to stay small to extract switching-cost fees from users. The robustness of proposals needs to be evaluated based on their ability to enforce user interests vs. miner game-theory attacks or collusion scenarios. Lastly, the issue of ramping up storage and bandwidth before transitioning to 8MB blocks is important to consider, as well as avoiding outright replacing existing test data in favor of adding spam transactions on top of existing transactions.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T00:44:37.121396+00:00