Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Block solving slowdown

From: ZmnSCPxj <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2020 02:06:32 +0000

Good morning Andrew,

Another thing I did not consider is how miners will actually behave under this ruleset.

Miners are the direct beneficiaries of any increased inflation rate voted in.

Miners are also ultimately the ones who decide which transactions get added into blocks, or put another way, which UTXOs are deleted and which UTXOs are created.

Thus, miners are likely to accept attempts to delete UTXOs that vote for lower inflation rates and create UTXOs that vote for higher inflation rates, and reject attempts to delete UTXOs that vote for higher inflation rates and create UTXOs that vote for lower inflation rates.

Thus, miners will end up strongly controlling the inflation rate of the coin.

Even worse, since the inflation gives increased coins to miners, more and more of the value of the coin, with which you vote for, will be in the hands of miners, who can then vote directly instead of censoring votes they dislike.

The entire point of Bitcoin having a fixed inflation rate schedule (that is ultimately disinflationary) is to avoid the moral hazard of having the beneficiaries of higher inflation rates also be the ones who decide what the inflation rate will be.

Regards,
ZmnSCPxj