Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2022 09:29:47 +1000
From: Anthony Towns <aj@erisian.com.au>
To: Bram Cohen <bram@chia.net>,
 Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Message-ID: <20220711232947.GC20899@erisian.com.au>
References: <CAHUJnBDYDbgr3C158o7c6_XXdG+kqJruFo=od_RmPFk_GS0udw@mail.gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Security problems with relying on transaction
 fees for security
Precedence: list

On Mon, Jul 11, 2022 at 11:12:52AM -0700, Bram Cohen via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> If transaction fees came in at an even rate over time all at the exact same
> level then they work fine for security, acting similarly to fixed block
> rewards. Unfortunately that isn't how it works in the real world.

That just becomes a market design question. There's been some trivial
effort put into that for bitcoin (ie, getting people to actually chooses
fees based on the weight of their transaction, and having weight be the
sole limiting factor for miners), but not a lot, and there's evidence
both from previous times in Bitcoin's history and from altcoin's that
the market can support higher fees.

Should we work on that today, though? It doesn't seem smart to me:
the subsidy is already quite substantial ($6.5 billion USD per year at
current prices) so raising fees to 10% of block reward would transfer
another $650M USD from bitcoin users to miners (or ASIC manfucturers
and electricity producers) each year, achieving what? Refuting some FUD?

Cheers,
aj