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217 sats \ 5 replies \ @Scoresby OP 7 May \ parent \ on: Mitigating Undercutting Attacks: Mining and Tx Fee Behavior - Claire Bao bitcoin bitcoin_Mining

I don't like the idea of confiscating anyone's coins for any reason.

No matter how chaotic the potential reorgs might get, it seems like all miners have an incentive to eventually move on because otherwise they're just burning their money. So I could see this sort of reorg battle playing out for a little while, but I imagine after a few days or weeks, it starts to be too expensive to keep bothering with such attempts.

I wonder if I am missing something though? Is it possible that having such a large pile of bitcoin that could be fought over might truly distort miner incentives?

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106 sats \ 4 replies \ @optimism 7 May
Is it possible that having such a large pile of bitcoin that could be fought over might truly distort miner incentives?

Yes it can. But - as you imply - it will be a race to the bottom as hashing isn't free. At one point, the cost will outweigh the rewards. And this will happen faster when NgD happens properly (as it should.)

All confiscation implies is that you're willing to break with a thing from the whitepaper:

A payee can verify the signatures to verify the chain of ownership

If something gets confiscated without a signature, then how is the chain of ownership verified?

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73 sats \ 3 replies \ @Scoresby OP 7 May

I'd say it's a new chain with a genesis block at whichever point the confiscation happened.

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127 sats \ 2 replies \ @optimism 7 May

That's usually what happens here. Remember though: exactly this scenario played out on Ethereum, and the non-fork without confiscation did not catch up to the hardfork. So it's not a given that the "moral" chain will be the most successful one.

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94 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby OP 7 May

Good point. I hadn't checked out the price of ethereum classic lately. ~$9 a coin.

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106 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 7 May

The fiat price is simply a reflection of the fact that the number of people that are willing to stick to principles over profits and not staying where the masses are is not only small to begin with, but shrinking over time.

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