Message-ID: <55531E19.3090503@electrum.org>
Date: Wed, 13 May 2015 11:49:13 +0200
From: Thomas Voegtlin <thomasv@electrum.org>
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To: Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen@gmail.com>, 
	Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
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Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Long-term mining incentives
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Le 12/05/2015 18:10, Gavin Andresen a =C3=A9crit :
> Added back the list, I didn't mean to reply privately:
>=20
> Fair enough, I'll try to find time in the next month or three to write =
up
> four plausible future scenarios for how mining incentives might work:
>=20
> 1) Fee-supported with very large blocks containing lots of tiny-fee
> transactions
> 2) Proof-of-idle supported (I wish Tadge Dryja would publish his
> proof-of-idle idea....)
> 3) Fees purely as transaction-spam-prevention measure, chain security v=
ia
> alternative consensus algorithm (in this scenario there is very little
> mining).
> 4) Fee supported with small blocks containing high-fee transactions mov=
ing
> coins to/from sidechains.
>=20
> Would that be helpful, or do you have some reason for thinking that we
> should pick just one and focus all of our efforts on making that one
> scenario happen?
>=20
> I always think it is better, when possible, not to "bet on one horse."
>=20

Sorry if I did not make myself clear. It is not about betting on one
single horse, or about making one particular scenario happen. It is not
about predicting whether something else will replace PoW in the future,
and I am in no way asking you to focus your efforts in one particular
direction at the expenses of others. Various directions will be explored
by various people, and that's great.

I am talking about what we know today. I would like an answer to the
following question: Do we have a reason to believe that Bitcoin can work
in the long run, without involving technologies that have not been
invented yet? Is there a single scenario that we know could work?

Exotic and unproven technologies are not an answer to that question. The
reference scenario should be as boring as possible, and as verifiable as
possible. I am not asking what you think is the most likely to happen,
but what is the most likely to work, given the knowledge we have today.

If I was asking: "Can we send humans to the moon by 2100?", I guess your
answer would be: "Yes we can, because it has been done in the past with
chemical rockets, and we know how to build them". You would probably not
use a space elevator in your answer.

The reason I am asking that is, there seems to be no consensus among
core developers on how Bitcoin can work without miner subsidy. How it
*will* work is another question.