Thanks Mike.

Indeed, I am aware of current approach, which is why I was suggesting 
this as an alternative.
I haven't thought about it enough, and perhaps it was too radical a 
rethinking - just wanted to see what the smarter minds thought.

Thanks again.

-Randi

On 7/5/14, 4:43 AM, Mike Hearn wrote:
>
>     Is it possible instead to allocate a portion of the reward to " a # of
>     runner up(s)" even though the runner-up(s) block will be orphaned?
>
>
> There's really no concept of a "runner up" because hashing is progress 
> free. It's unintuitive and often trips people up. There's no concept 
> that everyone is 95% of the way to finding a solution and then someone 
> pips you to the post. It's more like playing the lottery over and over 
> again. Doesn't matter how many times you did it before, the next time 
> your chances are the same.
>
> A better concept is of rewarding "near miss" solutions which is what 
> we already do of course, via pools, which pay you for shares which 
> don't quite meet the difficulty target but almost do. So the question 
> is how can we implement pools which have this reward structure (which 
> obviously works well) without miners simultaneously giving up their 
> right to block creation either due to technical problems or sheer 
> lazyness.