Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Making AsicBoost irrelevant

From: Gregory Maxwell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 May 2016 22:58:48 +0000

On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 10:42 PM, Timo Hanke via bitcoin-dev
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> This is what I meant. If existing hardware gets forked-out it will
> inevitably lead to the creation of an altcoin. Simply because the hardware
> exists and can't be used for anything else both chains will survive. I was
> only comparing the situation to a contentious hardfork that does not fork
> out any hardware. If the latter one is suspected to lead to the permanent
> existence of two chains then a hardfork that forks out hardware is even more
> likely to do so (I claim it's guaranteed).

There are already many altcoins out there, we could not prevent that
even if we wanted to. New ones are created all the time.

A 20% inherent advantage, in perfect competition, is likely to lead to
an eventual monopoly of mining if monopoly patent right prohibit
competitions-- if mining profits go are under the level of that
enhancement everyone without it would be operating at a loss.

Preserving a vulnerability that will ultimately harm the system's
decentralization for just the betterment of some miners does not seem
like a rational decision for the users of Bitcoin-- no more than it
would reasonable to add a rule that all blocks must be signed by a
particular private key.

As an altcoin the "asicboost" altcoin would be one of the least
interesting altcoins ever created... after all, no other altcoin has
ever been created that required licensing in order to mine.

I don't know if forking it out is the best move here and now, but I'm
happy some people are thinking carefully about what it would take to
do that.