📅 Original date posted:2015-07-30
📝 Original message: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 at cypherspace.org> wrote:
> On 29 July 2015 at 20:41, Ryan Butler via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev at 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
Adam Back [ARCHIVE] /
npub1ac…lswfj
2023-06-07 15:44:07
in reply to nevent1q…kdvt
Author Public Key
npub1ac86vemj7ce5z8jyxt39rna3tvwql6xd30ha3vxcd6esysp23d9qrlswfjPublished at
2023-06-07 15:44:07Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2015-07-30\n📝 Original message:btw the fact that mining is (or can be) anonymous also makes oligopoly\nor cartel behaviour likely unstable. Miners can break ranks and\nprocess transactions others wish to block, or with lower fees than a\ncartel would like to charge, without detection.\n\nAnonymous mining is a feature and helps ensure policy neutrality.\n\nThis is all overlaid by the 51% attack - if a coherent cartel arose\nthat could maintain 51% and had enough mutual self-interest to make\nthat stable, they could attack miners bypassing their cartel policies,\nby orphaning their blocks. This is partly why mining decentralisation\nis important. Also that is an overt act which is very detectable and\ncould lead to technical counter-measures by the users, who are in\nultimately in control of the protocol. So there is some game theory\nsuggesting it would be inadvisable for miners to be overt in cartel\nattacks. Non overt attacks cant prevent anonymous under cutting of\ncartel desired fee minimums.\n\nAdam\n\nOn 29 July 2015 at 21:00, Adam Back \u003cadam at cypherspace.org\u003e wrote:\n\u003e On 29 July 2015 at 20:41, Ryan Butler via bitcoin-dev\n\u003e \u003cbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\u003e\u003e Does an unlimited blocksize imply the lack of a fee market? Isn't every\n\u003e\u003e miner able to set their minimum accepted fee or transaction acceptance\n\u003e\u003e algorithm?\n\u003e\n\u003e The assumption is that wont work because any miner can break ranks and\n\u003e do so profitably, so to expect otherwise is to expect oligopoly\n\u003e behaviour which is the sort of antithesis of a decentralised mining\n\u003e system. It's in fact a similar argument as to why decentralisation of\n\u003e mining provides policy neutrality: some miner somewhere with some\n\u003e hashrate will process your transaction even if some other miners are\n\u003e by policy deciding not to mine it. It is also similar reason why free\n\u003e transactions are processed today - policies vary and this is good for\n\u003e ensuring many types of transaction get processed.\n\u003e\n\u003e Adam",
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