public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace•org>
To: Adam Back <adam@cypherspace•org>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Răspuns: Personal opinion on the fee market from a worried local trader
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:05:35 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CALqxMTGqJDX7KHb0yE+b+PLx4qoEEu31520KXxjSYRvYqBYRYg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CALqxMTHEknuwPW-uG3W9Fv1sQC54ud3zk4aLQaFGTTjAt7ghfA@mail.gmail.com>

btw the fact that mining is (or can be) anonymous also makes oligopoly
or cartel behaviour likely unstable.  Miners can break ranks and
process transactions others wish to block, or with lower fees than a
cartel would like to charge, without detection.

Anonymous mining is a feature and helps ensure policy neutrality.

This is all overlaid by the 51% attack - if a coherent cartel arose
that could maintain 51% and had enough mutual self-interest to make
that stable, they could attack miners bypassing their cartel policies,
by orphaning their blocks.  This is partly why mining decentralisation
is important.  Also that is an overt act which is very detectable and
could lead to technical counter-measures by the users, who are in
ultimately in control of the protocol.  So there is some game theory
suggesting it would be inadvisable for miners to be overt in cartel
attacks.  Non overt attacks cant prevent anonymous under cutting of
cartel desired fee minimums.

Adam

On 29 July 2015 at 21:00, Adam Back <adam@cypherspace•org> wrote:
> On 29 July 2015 at 20:41, Ryan Butler via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> Does an unlimited blocksize imply the lack of a fee market?  Isn't every
>> miner able to set their minimum accepted fee or transaction acceptance
>> algorithm?
>
> The assumption is that wont work because any miner can break ranks and
> do so profitably, so to expect otherwise is to expect oligopoly
> behaviour which is the sort of antithesis of a decentralised mining
> system.  It's in fact a similar argument as to why decentralisation of
> mining provides policy neutrality: some miner somewhere with some
> hashrate will process your transaction even if some other miners are
> by policy deciding not to mine it.  It is also similar reason why free
> transactions are processed today - policies vary and this is good for
> ensuring many types of transaction get processed.
>
> Adam


  reply	other threads:[~2015-07-30  4:05 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <CADZB0_ZgDMhVgCUh2PTAPDL7k_W8QGt_HLYdkwv_qQ5xEMn8HA@mail.gmail.com>
2015-07-29 14:09 ` Vali Zero
2015-07-29 17:47   ` Raystonn .
2015-07-29 22:54     ` s7r
2015-07-30  3:41       ` Ryan Butler
2015-07-30  4:00         ` Adam Back
2015-07-30  4:05           ` Adam Back [this message]
2015-07-30  4:48           ` Ryan Butler
2015-07-30 13:14             ` Tom Harding
2015-07-30 14:25               ` Dave Hudson
2015-07-30 14:57                 ` Tom Harding
2015-07-30 18:14               ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-30 18:16                 ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-30 20:53                 ` Tom Harding
2015-07-31  1:21                   ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-31  1:29                     ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-31  9:56                     ` Thomas Zander
2015-07-31 12:32                       ` Oleg Andreev
2015-07-31 15:24                         ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-30 12:45           ` Ivan Brightly
2015-07-30  4:07         ` Jean-Paul Kogelman
2015-07-30  9:52       ` odinn

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=CALqxMTGqJDX7KHb0yE+b+PLx4qoEEu31520KXxjSYRvYqBYRYg@mail.gmail.com \
    --to=adam@cypherspace$(echo .)org \
    --cc=bitcoin-dev@lists$(echo .)linuxfoundation.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox