Author: S kang 2022-10-21 13:17:07
Published on: 2022-10-21T13:17:07+00:00
In a recent discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Jeremy Rubin pointed out that economic rationality can sometimes lead to breaking the "social contract" set earlier in history. This can lead to the hijacking of the network as development and mining may follow the economic rational path of supporting whatever the blockchains winning in the market are doing. This can result in giving up the peer-to-peer payment system, which goes against the original vision of Satoshi Nakamoto's social contract. Yancy agreed with this point, stating that relying on economically rational rules that aren't likely to change is the easiest way to avoid Bitcoin being a system that arbitrarily changes rules. He mentioned that the Nash Equilibrium could be used as a basis for this approach. However, Peter Todd argued that relying solely on economic rationality may not be enough, as it could mislead less-technical readers into thinking our understanding of Bitcoin is still based on early, incorrect, understanding. He also pointed out that relying on zeroconf is harmful to Bitcoin and that people trying to do that have repeatedly taken big losses when their risk mitigations turned out to not work. While there may be disagreements over the best course of action, it is important to steelman and provide strong cases for why our actions might be wrong and ensure that justifications are well-justified and communicated clearly to all participants in a global value network.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T01:51:33.036578+00:00