Author: Tom Harding 2015-06-30 00:21:35
Published on: 2015-06-30T00:21:35+00:00
The Bitcoin network is facing a significant centralization risk due to large payment providers considering extreme measures such as entering into legal contracts directly with large miners to ensure their transactions get mined. This move could result in a temptation to kick non-compliant miners off the network entirely with a 51% attack, which would lead to unintended consequences directly opposing decentralization.As the P2P network is turned into an unpredictable hodge-podge of relay policies, many more participants are expected to bypass the P2P network entirely. Nodes could provide incentives to their peers to relay "standard" transactions, which could lead to emergent usability benefits for the P2P network as a whole.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T01:41:45.253556+00:00