Author: email at yancy.lol 2022-10-16 19:03:51
Published on: 2022-10-16T19:03:51+00:00
The Bitcoin white paper discusses the proof-of-work system and its role in determining representation in majority decision making. It explains how a one-CPU-one-vote system is necessary to prevent subversion by those who can allocate many IPs, and how the honest chain will outpace any competing chains if controlled by a majority of CPU power from honest nodes. However, there are multiple behaviors that can be described as honest, and economically rational or optimizing is not necessarily rational. The NoRBF crowd wants to rely on an honest majority assumption where the honest behavior is not doing replacement if not requested, but it's unclear if this assumption can ensure the safety of 0conf given potential race conditions in the mempool. Satoshi claimed that for Bitcoin to function properly, a majority of honest nodes is required, but honesty isn't precisely defined. Honesty, according to Rubin, means following a pre-specified rule, rational or not. It seems that the RBF controversy stems from developers aspiring to make the honest behavior also be the rational behavior, which could weaken assumptions without compromising the behaviors users expect the network to have. Overall, it might be nice to more tightly document what bitcoins assumptions are in practice and what those assumptions do in terms of properties of Bitcoin, as well as pathways to weakening the assumptions without compromising the behaviors users expect the network to have. A last reflection is that Bitcoin is specified with an honest majority assumption, but also has a rational dishonest minority assumption over both endogenous and exogenous costs.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T01:54:01.273466+00:00