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From: Alex Mizrahi <alex.mizrahi@gmail.com>
To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 14:52:59 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAE28kUQ87jWhq1p6RK1eKEuEP1ERxN_P2SS0=YsFEGAqRyMPLA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANEZrP2uVT_UqJbzyQcEbiS78T68Jj2cH7OGXv5QtYiCwArDdA@mail.gmail.com>

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> Miners are *not* incentivised to earn the most money in the next block
> possible. They are incentivised to maximise their return on investment.
>

This would be right if you assume that all Bitcoin miners act as a single
entity. In that case it is true that that entity's goal is to maximize
overall ROI.

But each miner makes decisions on his own. Are you familiar with a concept
of Nash equilibrium, prisoner's dilemma, etc?

The fact that nobody is using this kind of a behavior right now doesn't
mean that we can rely on it.

For example, Peercoin was horribly broken in 6 months after its release
(e.g. people reported that they are able to generate 50 consecutive blocks
simply by bringing a cold wallet online) and yet nobody bothered to exploit
it, and it managed to acquire non-negligible "market cap".

So we have an empiric evidence that proof-of-stake miners are motivated to
keep network secure. So, maybe, we should switch to proof-of-stake, if it
was demonstrated that it is secure?

There are good reasons to not switch to proof-of-stake. Particularly, the
kind which is used in Peercoin is not game-theoretically sound. So even if
it works right now, it can fail in a big way once attackers will really get
around to it. An attack requires significant knowledge, effort and,
possibly, capital, so it might be only feasible on a certain scale.

So, well, anyway, suppose Peter Todd is the only person interested in
maintaining replace-by-fee patches right now, and you can talk him into
abandoning them.
OK, perhaps zero-confirmation payments will be de-facto secure for a couple
of years. And thus a lot of merchants will rely on zero-confirmation
payments protected by nothing but a belief in honest miners, as it is damn
convenient.

But, let's say, 5 years from now, some faction of miners who own
soon-to-be-obsolete equipment will decide to boost their profits with a
replace-by-fee pool and a corresponding wallet. They can market it as "1 of
10 hamburgers are free" if they have 10% of the total hashpower.

So would you take a responsibility for pushing the approach which isn't
game-theoretically sound?

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-02-12 12:53 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 79+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-02-12  6:47 [Bitcoin-development] replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4 Peter Todd
2015-02-12  7:23 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12  7:45   ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12  8:27     ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12  8:49       ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12  9:01         ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-15 20:51       ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-12  8:16   ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 11:58 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 12:23   ` Natanael
2015-02-12 12:49     ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 13:02       ` Natanael
2015-02-12 13:44         ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 14:36           ` Natanael
2015-02-12 14:53             ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 15:20               ` Natanael
2015-02-12 15:30                 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 13:36       ` Oleg Andreev
2015-02-12 12:52   ` Alex Mizrahi [this message]
2015-02-12 13:18     ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 13:45       ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 13:52         ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 14:04       ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 14:16         ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 14:25           ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 23:08             ` Tom Harding
2015-02-12 14:32       ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 15:15         ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 15:32           ` Natanael
2015-02-12 15:42             ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 15:54               ` Natanael
2015-02-12 16:57           ` Btc Drak
2015-02-12 17:24             ` Oleg Andreev
2015-02-12 18:11               ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 18:37                 ` Allen Piscitello
2015-02-12 19:15                   ` Alan Reiner
2015-02-12 19:34                     ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 19:45                       ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12 19:49                         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 19:47                       ` Allen Piscitello
2015-02-12 19:52                         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 20:02                           ` Natanael
2015-02-12 20:36                           ` Allen Piscitello
2015-02-14 14:47                             ` Ross Nicoll
2015-02-12 20:06                     ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12 19:49       ` Gregory Maxwell
2015-02-12 20:18         ` Peter Todd
2015-02-13 11:34         ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 12:54   ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 14:42   ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 15:27   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-02-15 21:25     ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-15 21:40       ` Adam Gibson
2015-02-19  8:56         ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-21 19:09           ` Jorge Timón
2015-02-21 20:30             ` Mark Friedenbach
2015-02-21 22:47               ` Jeff Garzik
2015-02-22  1:15                 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22  3:25                 ` Jorge Timón
2015-02-22  4:06                   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-02-22 11:41                     ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-22 12:06                       ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-22 13:41                         ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-22 13:53                           ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 23:29                             ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-24  1:11                               ` Jeff Garzik
2015-03-01 17:59                         ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-03-01 19:05                           ` Neil Fincham
2015-03-01 17:44                 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-12 16:15   ` Lawrence Nahum
2015-02-12 18:14 ` Tom Harding
2015-02-12 21:40 ` Josh Lehan
2015-02-22 16:36 ` Tom Harding
2015-02-22 17:12   ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 19:25     ` Tom Harding
2015-02-22 21:50       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-04  4:36 ` [Bitcoin-development] New release of replace-by-fee for Bitcoin Core v0.10.1 Peter Todd
2015-05-05  2:23   ` Kevin Greene
2015-05-23 18:26   ` [Bitcoin-development] Replace-by-fee v0.10.2 - Serious DoS attack fixed! - Also novel variants of existing attacks w/ Bitcoin XT and Android Bitcoin Wallet Peter Todd

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