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From: =?UTF-8?B?Sm9yZ2UgVGltw7Nu?= <jtimon@jtimon.cc>
Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2022 13:18:11 +0100
Message-ID: <CABm2gDrgCdsYjWow9cGt8T7pFrwXFpKtntP5h7o7OMiDnCtzHQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: Billy Tetrud <billy.tetrud@gmail.com>, 
 Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Speedy Trial
Precedence: list

On Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 7:34 PM Billy Tetrud via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> >  If I find out I'm in the economic minority then I have little choice b=
ut to either accept the existence of the new rules or sell my Bitcoin
>
> I do worry about what I have called a "dumb majority soft fork". This is =
where, say, mainstream adoption has happened, some crisis of some magnitude=
 happens that convinces a lot of people something needs to change now. Let'=
s say it's another congestion period where fees spike for months. Getting i=
nto and out of lighting is hard and maybe even the security of lightning's =
security model is called into question because it would either take too lon=
g to get a transaction on chain or be too expensive. Panicy people might on=
ce again think something like "let's increase the block size to 1GB, then w=
e'll never have this problem again". This could happen in a segwit-like sof=
t fork.

I guess this is a better explained example for a hypothetical "evil
fork" that may sound more concrete and plausible to some people than
my own, which isn't that different. Thanks.

> In a future where Bitcoin is the dominant world currency, it might not be=
 unrealistic to imagine that an economic majority might not understand why =
such a thing would be so dangerous, or think the risk is low enough to be w=
orth it. At that point, we in the economic minority would need a plan to ha=
rd fork away. One wouldn't necessarily need to sell all their majority fork=
 Bitcoin, but they could.
>
> That minority fork would of course need some mining power. How much? I do=
n't know, but we should think about how small of a minority chain we could =
imagine might be worth saving. Is 5% enough? 1%? How long would the chain s=
tall if hash power dropped to 1%?

In perfect competition the mining power costs per chain tends to equal
the rewards offered by that chain, both in subsidy and transaction
fees.
For example, if chain A gets a reward 10 times as valuable as chain
B's reward, then one should expect it to get 10 times more hashrate
too.
Of course, perfect competition is just a theoretical concept though.