Author: praxeology_guy 2017-03-28 07:02:35
Published on: 2017-03-28T07:02:35+00:00
Martin is discussing the concept of authority in regards to the Block Space Authority, specifically focusing on miners. He notes that authority typically arises from violence/dominance, respected property claims, divine inspiration, or voluntary delegation, but miners do not fit into any of these categories. Instead, their policy is dictated by market demand and they create block candidates as a service. The users are the ones dictating to the miners how much work they should perform on each coin. Miners compete against each other until there is only slim profit, adjusting their capacity accordingly. Therefore, miners do not have any real authority unless it is due to unfounded/insecure reasons such as divine inspiration or respect. Martin believes that using miner signaling to determine when/whether SegWit is activated was a mistake since it gave the impression that miners have authority. Instead, he recommends using his proposed BitcoinUpdateBoard or having bitcoin core include more entities such as specific miners and exchanges in their table. He concludes by saying that since there is already consensus that SegWit is good, it should be scheduled for activation in the future where market participants have a reasonable time to prepare.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T22:20:01.332568+00:00