Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Long-term mining incentives

From: Thomas Voegtlin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 May 2015 14:35:02 +0200

Thank you for your answer.

I agree that a lot of things will change, and I am not asking for a
prediction of technological developments; prediction is certainly
impossible. What I would like to have is some sort of reference scenario
for the future of Bitcoin. Something a bit like the Standard Model in
Physics. The reference scenario should not be a prediction of the
future, that's not the point. In fact, it will have to be updated
everytime technological evolutions or code changes render it obsolete.

However, the reference scenario should be a workable path through the
future, using today's technologies and today's knowlegde, and including
all planned code changes. It should be, as much as possible, amenable to
quantitative analysis. It could be used to justify controversial
decisions such as a hard fork.

Your proposal of a block size increase would be much stronger if it came
with such a scenario. It would show that you know where you are going.

Le 11/05/2015 19:29, Gavin Andresen a écrit :
> I think long-term the chain will not be secured purely by proof-of-work. I
> think when the Bitcoin network was tiny running solely on people's home
> computers proof-of-work was the right way to secure the chain, and the only
> fair way to both secure the chain and distribute the coins.
> 
> See https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/630d4a6c24ac6144482a  for some
> half-baked thoughts along those lines. I don't think proof-of-work is the
> last word in distributed consensus (I also don't think any alternatives are
> anywhere near ready to deploy, but they might be in ten years).
> 
> I also think it is premature to worry about what will happen in twenty or
> thirty years when the block subsidy is insignificant. A lot will happen in
> the next twenty years. I could spin a vision of what will secure the chain
> in twenty years, but I'd put a low probability on that vision actually
> turning out to be correct.
> 
> That is why I keep saying Bitcoin is an experiment. But I also believe that
> the incentives are correct, and there are a lot of very motivated, smart,
> hard-working people who will make it work. When you're talking about trying
> to predict what will happen decades from now, I think that is the best you
> can (honestly) do.
>