Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:31:41 +0000
To: Mike Brooks <m@ib.tc>,
 Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
From: ZmnSCPxj <ZmnSCPxj@protonmail.com>
Reply-To: ZmnSCPxj <ZmnSCPxj@protonmail.com>
Message-ID: <5RgK7X_rcpeMbdOdFxKiWkzg6dVcjD0uF_KI8Wt2w7WCBd7dB552EZuRqNQiBbgF4dGBcojwE9GzdWdJeCNmaAlYGYDMAyz6yzSl2QmLC98=@protonmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALFqKjQP75TdaDeop-bxpcW5PHpmG4RwW-MDjUFGrqUy=xNdoQ@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPaMHfTSqyDDBfmdM=z-FtLRTUxed2pNmoOFx-t2w0MyZ_mgCg@mail.gmail.com>
 <CACAqsqOSBrdUo4VTUsG68dSDpfZfVOXvnMK5nqmvuhxRCC0gjQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <CALFqKjQP75TdaDeop-bxpcW5PHpmG4RwW-MDjUFGrqUy=xNdoQ@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Cc: Mike Brooks <f@in.st.capital>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Floating-Point Nakamoto Consensus
Precedence: list


>=C2=A0 At this point very little is stopping us from speeding up block cre=
ation times. PoS networks are proving that conformations can be a minute or=
 less - why not allow for a block formation time that is 6 or 12 times fast=
er than the current target and have 1/6th (or 1/12th) of the subsidy to kee=
p an identical inflation target.

What?

That is surprising information to me.

My understanding is that speeding up block creation times is highly risky d=
ue to increasing the tendency to "race" in mining.

The average time to propagate to all miners should be negligible to the ave=
rage inter-block time.
Efforts like compact blocks and FIBRE already work at the very edges of our=
 capability to keep the propagation time negligible.

Indeed, looking forward, part of my plans for Earth-based civilization invo=
lves sending out hapless humans into space and forcing them to survive ther=
e, thus the inter-block time may need to be *increased* in consideration of=
 interplanetary communications times, otherwise Bitcoin would dangerously c=
entralize around Earth, potentially leading to the Universal Century and aw=
esome giant robot battles.

(Hmmm, on the one hand, centralizing around Earth is dangerous, on the othe=
r hand, giant robots, hmmm)

"PoS" networks mean nothing, as most of them are not global in the scale th=
at Bitcoin is, and all of them have a very different block discovery model =
from proof-of-work.
In particular, I believe there is no "racing" involved in most PoS schemes =
in practice.

>
> =E2=80=A6 The really interesting part is the doors that this patch opens.=
 Bitcoin is the best network, we have the most miners and we as developers =
have the opportunity to build an even better system - all with incremental =
soft-forks - which is so exciting.

Changing inter-block times is not possible as a softfork, unless you are pl=
anning to (ab)use the timewarp bug, which I believe was proposed by maaku7 =
before.
My understanding is that the preferred approach would be to close the timew=
arp bug, in which case increasing the block rate would not be doable as a s=
oftfork anymore.

Regards,
ZmnSCPxj