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From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: Russell O'Connor <roconnor@blockstream.com>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Does Bitcoin require or have an honest majority or a rational one? (re rbf)
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 18:19:38 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <Y1HJeq5wsBVV64mS@petertodd.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAMZUoKkbDjeMKX3zsBpOKOS2cXQNbC+RDA=Zkxxy4r4xP2m2Yw@mail.gmail.com>

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On Tue, Oct 18, 2022 at 10:30:26AM -0400, Russell O'Connor via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> It is most certainly the case that one can construct situations where not
> mining on the tip is going to be the prefered strategy.  But even if that
> happens on occasion, it's not like the protocol immediately collapses,
> because mining off the tip is indistinguishable from being a high latency
> miner who simply didn't receive the most work block in time.  So it is more

I don't believe that's a good argument.

A sufficiently large high latency miner who doesn't receive the most work block
in time would cause huge disruptions to the network, potentially causing other
miners to be unprofitable. I even gave a talk on this a few years back, on how
if Bitcoin mining in space becomes profitable, it'll cause enormous problems
due to the slow speed of light.

> of a question of how rare does it need to be, and what can we do to reduce
> the chances of such situations arising (e.g. updating our mining policy to
> leave some transactions out based on current (and anticipated) mempool
> conditions, or (for a sufficiently capitalized miner) leave an explicit,
> ANYONECANSPEND transaction output as a tip for the next miner to build upon
> mined blocks.)

...at which point the large miners are likely to be significantly more
profitable than small miners, because they can collect more fees. That's a
disaster.

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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  parent reply	other threads:[~2022-10-20 22:19 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-10-16 17:35 [bitcoin-dev] Does Bitcoin require or have an honest majority or a rational one? (re rbf) Jeremy Rubin
2022-10-16 19:03 ` email
2022-10-17 19:10   ` Jeremy Rubin
2022-10-17 22:31     ` email
2022-10-18  3:34       ` Jeremy Rubin
2022-10-18 14:30         ` Russell O'Connor
2022-10-18 16:27           ` Jeremy Rubin
2022-10-18 17:33             ` Erik Aronesty
2022-10-18 18:57               ` email
2022-10-20 19:21             ` email
2022-10-20 22:19           ` Peter Todd [this message]
2022-10-17 15:51 ` Russell O'Connor
2022-10-17 19:02   ` Jeremy Rubin
2022-10-20 22:28 ` Peter Todd
2022-10-20 23:54   ` Jeremy Rubin
2022-10-21  0:26     ` Peter Todd
2022-10-21  8:47       ` email
2022-10-21 13:17         ` S kang

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