From: Alex Mizrahi <alex.mizrahi@gmail•com>
To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2015 14:52:59 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAE28kUQ87jWhq1p6RK1eKEuEP1ERxN_P2SS0=YsFEGAqRyMPLA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANEZrP2uVT_UqJbzyQcEbiS78T68Jj2cH7OGXv5QtYiCwArDdA@mail.gmail.com>
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> Miners are *not* incentivised to earn the most money in the next block
> possible. They are incentivised to maximise their return on investment.
>
This would be right if you assume that all Bitcoin miners act as a single
entity. In that case it is true that that entity's goal is to maximize
overall ROI.
But each miner makes decisions on his own. Are you familiar with a concept
of Nash equilibrium, prisoner's dilemma, etc?
The fact that nobody is using this kind of a behavior right now doesn't
mean that we can rely on it.
For example, Peercoin was horribly broken in 6 months after its release
(e.g. people reported that they are able to generate 50 consecutive blocks
simply by bringing a cold wallet online) and yet nobody bothered to exploit
it, and it managed to acquire non-negligible "market cap".
So we have an empiric evidence that proof-of-stake miners are motivated to
keep network secure. So, maybe, we should switch to proof-of-stake, if it
was demonstrated that it is secure?
There are good reasons to not switch to proof-of-stake. Particularly, the
kind which is used in Peercoin is not game-theoretically sound. So even if
it works right now, it can fail in a big way once attackers will really get
around to it. An attack requires significant knowledge, effort and,
possibly, capital, so it might be only feasible on a certain scale.
So, well, anyway, suppose Peter Todd is the only person interested in
maintaining replace-by-fee patches right now, and you can talk him into
abandoning them.
OK, perhaps zero-confirmation payments will be de-facto secure for a couple
of years. And thus a lot of merchants will rely on zero-confirmation
payments protected by nothing but a belief in honest miners, as it is damn
convenient.
But, let's say, 5 years from now, some faction of miners who own
soon-to-be-obsolete equipment will decide to boost their profits with a
replace-by-fee pool and a corresponding wallet. They can market it as "1 of
10 hamburgers are free" if they have 10% of the total hashpower.
So would you take a responsibility for pushing the approach which isn't
game-theoretically sound?
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2015-02-12 12:53 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 79+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2015-02-12 6:47 Peter Todd
2015-02-12 7:23 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 7:45 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12 8:27 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 8:49 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12 9:01 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-15 20:51 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-12 8:16 ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 11:58 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 12:23 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 12:49 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 13:02 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 13:44 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 14:36 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 14:53 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 15:20 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 15:30 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 13:36 ` Oleg Andreev
2015-02-12 12:52 ` Alex Mizrahi [this message]
2015-02-12 13:18 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 13:45 ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 13:52 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 14:04 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 14:16 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 14:25 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 23:08 ` Tom Harding
2015-02-12 14:32 ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 15:15 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 15:32 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 15:42 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 15:54 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 16:57 ` Btc Drak
2015-02-12 17:24 ` Oleg Andreev
2015-02-12 18:11 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 18:37 ` Allen Piscitello
2015-02-12 19:15 ` Alan Reiner
2015-02-12 19:34 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 19:45 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12 19:49 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 19:47 ` Allen Piscitello
2015-02-12 19:52 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-02-12 20:02 ` Natanael
2015-02-12 20:36 ` Allen Piscitello
2015-02-14 14:47 ` Ross Nicoll
2015-02-12 20:06 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-12 19:49 ` Gregory Maxwell
2015-02-12 20:18 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-13 11:34 ` Mike Hearn
2015-02-12 12:54 ` Tamas Blummer
2015-02-12 14:42 ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-02-12 15:27 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-02-15 21:25 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-15 21:40 ` Adam Gibson
2015-02-19 8:56 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-21 19:09 ` Jorge Timón
2015-02-21 20:30 ` Mark Friedenbach
2015-02-21 22:47 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-02-22 1:15 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 3:25 ` Jorge Timón
2015-02-22 4:06 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-02-22 11:41 ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-22 12:06 ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-22 13:41 ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-22 13:53 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 23:29 ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-02-24 1:11 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-03-01 17:59 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-03-01 19:05 ` Neil Fincham
2015-03-01 17:44 ` Troy Benjegerdes
2015-02-12 16:15 ` Lawrence Nahum
2015-02-12 18:14 ` Tom Harding
2015-02-12 21:40 ` Josh Lehan
2015-02-22 16:36 ` Tom Harding
2015-02-22 17:12 ` Peter Todd
2015-02-22 19:25 ` Tom Harding
2015-02-22 21:50 ` Peter Todd
2015-05-04 4:36 ` [Bitcoin-development] New release of replace-by-fee for Bitcoin Core v0.10.1 Peter Todd
2015-05-05 2:23 ` Kevin Greene
2015-05-23 18:26 ` [Bitcoin-development] Replace-by-fee v0.10.2 - Serious DoS attack fixed! - Also novel variants of existing attacks w/ Bitcoin XT and Android Bitcoin Wallet Peter Todd
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