Author: Jeff Garzik 2015-09-03 14:31:31
Published on: 2015-09-03T14:31:31+00:00
In a discussion amongst Bitcoin developers, the topic of paying with difficulty for increasing block size was brought up. It was noted that paying with a higher difficulty requires either idle hashpower or risking losing an entire block's income to another miner who doesn't care about changing the block size. The potential loss in income does not economically compensate for the gains in block size increase. The discussion continued on to say that miners have more to lose by paying with difficulty than they gain unless there is collusion amongst the entire network with ~90% certainty. In such a case, the network can collectively agree to increase the block period until the globally desired block size is reached. However, pay-with-difficulty will either not get used or lead to radical short-term block size and fee volatility. Overall, the use of pay-with-difficulty is complex and difficult for all players to reason, and rational game theory suggests avoiding it even when the network desperately needs an upgrade.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T21:59:13.600433+00:00