Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Purely off-chain coin colouring

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Feb 2023 08:06:32 -0500

On Sat, Feb 04, 2023 at 08:38:54PM +1000, Anthony Towns via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> I think for bitcoin's blockspace, we ideally only want the first of
> these to be true. We want small blocks because that makes it cheap to
> verify bitcoin, which reduces the need to trust third parties and aids in
> decentralisation. But we don't want blockspace to be especially valuable,
> as that makes it expensive to use bitcoin, which then limits who can
> use it.

We certainly do want blockspace to be valuable, as transaction fees have to
both be in constant demand, and rise enough to replace the inflation subsidy if
Bitcoin is to remain secure in the future. In fact at the moment, the inflation
subsidy pays miners about 50x more than fees do. Ordinals and other publication
mechanisms are of course ways that we can drive consistent demand for block
space, keeping Bitcoin secure.

Are you arguing that we should change the inflation subsidy phase-out, eg by
introducing tail emission(1) or demurrage?

1) https://petertodd.org/2022/surprisingly-tail-emission-is-not-inflationary

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org