Author: Martin Stolze 2017-03-29 12:51:47
Published on: 2017-03-29T12:51:47+00:00
The discussion is about the concept of "miners as service providers" and providing additional choice to those who are disenfranchised by hash-power centralization. The idea is to have miners listen to the network rather than soliciting transactions directly from users, which can contravene a critical value-add of the peer-to-peer network. There are two proposed ways of providing this service: 1) by creating segregated mempools where an authenticated third-party manages the access to pending transactions destined for a specific set of miners, and 2) by creating transactions where the mining fee is in one way or another, an output to an address owned by the preferred miner(s). However, there are terrible pitfalls with both methods that need attention before they become urgent. Bitcoin end-users want to support specific miners based on their political positions, consensus ideology, physical location and other reasons. Certain miners will become preferred by users whether the Bitcoin developer community facilitates it or not. In the future, some people would like to be able to verify their transactions through green blocks that are generated locally by their neighbor through excess capacity of solar panels or by an NGO pool that promotes solar deployment around the equator. The recent language used in opinions by the ECB and drafts by the EU suggests that they are assembling the artillery, and commercial interest must have a way to transact on somewhat regulated space. The author, AJ West, created a proof-of-concept project called Preferred Miner, which is designed to spur discussion on the issue of "miners as service providers". The main attitude currently is that people would like to 'support' miners who signal for the features they care about. Trusting a lot of people, including the 3rd party and the pools to work in your users' interest is one of the pitfalls of creating segregated mempools. The other method requires larger transactions, and a directory of mining pools' receiving addresses for outputs must be maintained. Then, it is necessary to hope that the miner will be set up to scoop in the transaction knowing it's got a fee for them.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T22:20:22.245535+00:00