Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Inquiry: Transaction Tiering

From: Tom Zander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2017 11:04:18 +0200

On Monday, 20 March 2017 21:12:36 CEST Martin Stolze via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Background: The current protocol enables two parties to transact
> freely, however, transaction processors (block generators) have the
> authority to discriminate participants arbitrarily.

Nag; they don’t have any authority.

> This is well known
> and it is widely accepted that transaction processors may take
> advantage of this with little recourse. It is the current consensus
> that the economic incentives in form of transaction fees are
> sufficient because the transaction processing authorities are assumed
> to be guided by the growth of Bitcoin and the pursuit of profit.

This is not the case, it misunderstands Bitcoin and specifically is 
misunderstands that Bitcoin is distributed and decentralized.

What you call “block generators” or “transaction processors” are in reality 
called miners and they don’t have any authority to mine or not mine certain 
transactions. All they have is a business incentive to mine or not mine a 
certain transaction.
This is a crucial distinction as that makes it a economical decision, not a 
political.

The massive distribution of miners creating blocks means that one miner is 
free to add his political agenda. They can choose to not mine any satoshi-
dice transactions, should they want. But they can’t stop other miners from 
mining those transactions anyway, and as such this is not a political move 
that has any effect whatsoever, at the end of the day it is just an 
economcal decision.

The rest of your email is based on this misconception as well, and therefore 
the above answers your question.
-- 
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel