Author: Damian Gomez 2015-05-11 20:28:39
Published on: 2015-05-11T20:28:39+00:00
The email thread begins with a person apologizing for not citing sources in the discussion of implementing WinterNitz one-time signatures and a Byzantine consensus system in Bitcoin. The person argues that using the signature would provide a personal level of integrity to transactions, which would be evaluated by an intermediate proxy state. This evaluation loop would be a state where mining power and rewards would increase the level of integrity as provided by "brainers" who are signatories of transaction authenticity. Furthermore, program extranonces of x bits {72} would be added to have a double valid signature that other nodes would accept for a valid address from which to continuously receive transactions.In another email thread, Wladimir reminds the group that feature freeze and string freeze are coming up soon for Bitcoin core 0.11 planning. He urges people to let him know if their pull request is ready to be merged before the deadline. Thomas Voegtlin chimes in to discuss long-term mining incentives and how Bitcoin derives its current market value from the assumption that a steady-state regime will be reached in the future. Satoshi's paper suggests that this may be achieved through miner fees. Some people oppose raising the block size limit because they believe it would postpone a crucial reality check about the emergence of a working fee market. However, proponents of a block size increase argue that if the block size is not raised soon, Bitcoin will enter a new, unknown, and potentially harmful regime.The debate over block size increase for Bitcoin has been ongoing for a long time. There are concerns that increasing the block size will lead to centralization, security issues, and other technical problems. Proponents of the increase argue that it is necessary to maintain Bitcoin's viability in the face of increasing demand. However, there is a lack of clear vision regarding the steady-state regime of Bitcoin, and what incentives will exist for miners once the subsidy is gone. In addition, there are questions about how the network will look in the future, and whether fee pressure and delays will become a common occurrence.One proposal is to develop off-chain infrastructure first, such as the Lightning Network, to address these issues. It is also suggested that there is little evidence that a limited block capacity will lead to a functional fee market, able to sustain a steady state. The current lack of well-informed participants who make rational choices and accept the outcomes of their choices makes this scenario unlikely. For example, reducing the block rate instead of increasing the maximum block size can cause centralization, reduce the security of the network, and increase bandwidth requirements for SPV wallets.Meanwhile, when the Bitcoin network was tiny running solely on people's home computers, proof-of-work was the right way to secure the chain, and the only fair way to both secure the chain and distribute the coins. However, it is thought that long-term the chain will not be secured purely by proof-of-work. It is believed that proof-of-work is not the last word in distributed consensus, but alternatives are not yet ready to deploy. It is also suggested that it is premature to worry about what will happen in twenty or thirty years when the block subsidy is insignificant. A lot will happen in the next few years, and it is important to focus on immediate solutions to address current issues. Overall, a clear vision is needed for the future of Bitcoin, including steady-state regime and incentives for miners once the subsidy is gone. Gavin Andresen, one of the early developers of Bitcoin, believes that Bitcoin is an experiment. While he acknowledges that he can predict what will happen in 20 years, he believes that Bitcoin has the potential to succeed due to its incentives and the hard-working people behind it. He emphasizes that predicting what will happen decades from now is difficult, but he believes that the best anyone can do is be honest about their predictions. This statement was made on the Bitcoin-development mailing list.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T20:49:40.916875+00:00