Author: Peter Todd 2015-05-07 02:16:44
Published on: 2015-05-07T02:16:44+00:00
In an email exchange on May 6, 2015, Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo discussed the possibility of miners applying their own patches to Bitcoin Core. He pointed out that when blocks become limited, there is an incentive for miners to change their behavior quickly. However, he also noted that the majority of hashpower is behind large miners who have little decentralization pressure. This could lead to a strong centralization pressure in the network if they interconnect in a private network and generate only maximum-size blocks. Corallo also mentioned that miners with the goal of finding more blocks than their competition have a perverse incentive to ensure their blocks do not get to more than 30% of the hashing power. The main thing holding them back from doing this is the high inflation subsidy. It is possible that with a limited block size, there won't be an opportunity to delay propagation by broadcasting larger blocks. However, this emphasizes the need to build systems where the worst case propagation time is very short relative to the block interval.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T19:41:51.347906+00:00