From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from hemlock.osuosl.org (smtp2.osuosl.org [140.211.166.133]) by lists.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 37DBCC0051 for ; Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by hemlock.osuosl.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26BA085B97 for ; Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:54 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at osuosl.org Received: from hemlock.osuosl.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (.osuosl.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id hGepX2gknAQc for ; Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:52 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: domain auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from mail-40135.protonmail.ch (mail-40135.protonmail.ch [185.70.40.135]) by hemlock.osuosl.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 2AC2785B29 for ; Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:51 +0000 (UTC) Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:41 +0000 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=protonmail.com; s=protonmail; t=1601447508; bh=S9V1K4zC9T9aPwWVb6WcjNaRFWEl7WXBtF5wHUixfvA=; h=Date:To:From:Cc:Reply-To:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:From; b=u9YRHx5Xt9xbNTOwZ0YK+bDJSn5k1GE2gVmG6qK5rf41paYcYDYWGNYg4O0j44ZU/ 9xtKEVdQYMf8xxC6CWyiO3kPbfXi85/XfvJ+t/m+eNjxta2Z8lMe+E5GO34f4/USN3 wY9wRQ+QFGIE3XJy8YonbCHdMsqj4m1GSu8Jgfkg= To: Mike Brooks , Bitcoin Protocol Discussion From: ZmnSCPxj Reply-To: ZmnSCPxj Message-ID: <5RgK7X_rcpeMbdOdFxKiWkzg6dVcjD0uF_KI8Wt2w7WCBd7dB552EZuRqNQiBbgF4dGBcojwE9GzdWdJeCNmaAlYGYDMAyz6yzSl2QmLC98=@protonmail.com> In-Reply-To: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: Mike Brooks Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Floating-Point Nakamoto Consensus X-BeenThere: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.15 Precedence: list List-Id: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:54 -0000 >=C2=A0 At this point very little is stopping us from speeding up block cre= ation times. PoS networks are proving that conformations can be a minute or= less - why not allow for a block formation time that is 6 or 12 times fast= er than the current target and have 1/6th (or 1/12th) of the subsidy to kee= p an identical inflation target. What? That is surprising information to me. My understanding is that speeding up block creation times is highly risky d= ue to increasing the tendency to "race" in mining. The average time to propagate to all miners should be negligible to the ave= rage inter-block time. Efforts like compact blocks and FIBRE already work at the very edges of our= capability to keep the propagation time negligible. Indeed, looking forward, part of my plans for Earth-based civilization invo= lves sending out hapless humans into space and forcing them to survive ther= e, thus the inter-block time may need to be *increased* in consideration of= interplanetary communications times, otherwise Bitcoin would dangerously c= entralize around Earth, potentially leading to the Universal Century and aw= esome giant robot battles. (Hmmm, on the one hand, centralizing around Earth is dangerous, on the othe= r hand, giant robots, hmmm) "PoS" networks mean nothing, as most of them are not global in the scale th= at Bitcoin is, and all of them have a very different block discovery model = from proof-of-work. In particular, I believe there is no "racing" involved in most PoS schemes = in practice. > > =E2=80=A6 The really interesting part is the doors that this patch opens.= Bitcoin is the best network, we have the most miners and we as developers = have the opportunity to build an even better system - all with incremental = soft-forks - which is so exciting. Changing inter-block times is not possible as a softfork, unless you are pl= anning to (ab)use the timewarp bug, which I believe was proposed by maaku7 = before. My understanding is that the preferred approach would be to close the timew= arp bug, in which case increasing the block rate would not be doable as a s= oftfork anymore. Regards, ZmnSCPxj