Topic: Who maintains the post-mining Bitcoin network and why? (Read 5839 times)

That is why fee is there. It's purpose is to fund anyone who is maintains network after every coin has been mined.

I am sure the Bitcoin Foundation will put aside a small amount of money for mining, in case the block reward is not sufficient to attract sufficient number of miners.

I think a better way of saying this would be there will not always be block subsidies.

The block subsidy is the bitcoin that is "created" every time a new block is found, currently at the rate of 25 BTC per newly found block. Block rewards make up both the block subsidy and the TX fees (the difference between the total inputs and the total outputs of all transactions included in a block).

In the event that block rewards were to stop (for example if no one is using bitcoin anymore) then mining is all but certain to all but stop

Transaction processing?

Transaction confirming?

Block solving?

Ledger security?

Consensus forming contribution?

^^^ yeah, this is why I try to refer to the process as "hashing" instead of "mining". Is there a better term?

It is a misnomer to say post-mining Bitcoin.  There will always be mining (although not always Block rewards).

True enough.
Mining will become the price of vigilance in the land of freedom.
Some will be willing to pay more to be extra sure, others less, some wouldn't even bother.

It's also important that 51% attack vector remains open.
Yes, freedom can be attacked, that's how we know we have it.

Honestly I think the incentive will be security.

If you want your money to be secure, by ensuring that the network is secure, then you'll set up a little ASIC to solo-hash somewhere in your home.

Because the little ASIC is essentially your bank.

Sure, it may be 100 watts and cost you X$ / year, but nothings ever free.

Time for someone to build the first solar powered all in one weatherproof wifi hashbox.

(sorry if this was mentioned in the above, TL;DR)

Thanks to all participants in this interesting discussion. I have written a wrap-up article, comments welcome: Post-Mining Bitcoin – Collapse or Sustainable Growth? https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/post-mining-bitcoin-collapse-sustainable-growth/

Regarding 51% attack. It is utterly important to have such a possibility, as it is the only way for economy in general to take control over the system back from the rogue entity. If control cannot be challenged, there would be no competition for it. End of story.

We can consider mining (in the long run) as an automatic built-in tax on the rich. You simply cannot sit on your money and watch how your competitors gain more and more share of control. At some point they will be in position to not allow transactions from your addresses and can tax you any way they wish. The assertion is that large amounts of money can be tracked on the blockchain and the whole thing remains quite transparent in the future, which I believe it should. It is possible that competition for control will be so strong that literally all participants will be doing it at a loss. This will keep everyone busy and bring balance to the world.

While it doesn't add a lot to the conversation, I want to say kudos for getting this right.  So many people are concerned that they can't eat their cake when they have it instead of realizing that they can eat it, but will no longer have it.  However, and I mean no offense, but the fact that you understand how cake works makes me wonder why you are having such a hard time with bitcoin blockchain generation.  It doesn't seem like the word mining is confusing you, but it isn't obvious what is, either.

ETA:  If you research my posting history, you will see plenty of confusion.  This is easy for me to forget, but posting makes me think a lot more than reading does.  Perhaps, if you truly are confused, and based on your last posted concern, you should look into how to "cancel" a transaction that is "stuck".  I say this because you presumably know that a transaction cannot be cancelled, but may not know that it can be forgotten.  So if you understand that it can be forgotten, it makes it easier to understand that in order for someone to even attempt to hold it hostage, they would have to remind everyone else it exists, and they would have no good way to prevent everyone else from mining it.

I'll take this one-sided discussion a bit further and say this: short of a "51%"  attack, which there is a lot of FUD about, but realistically, even though it is theoretically possible to perform such an attack with much less than 50% of "hashing power," to make it practicable in the preventing all other blocks/transactions sense, it would take a lot more than 50% of "hashing power" or a lot of losses on a lot of attempts.  The general argument here is that this isn't a realistic concern given that people don't tend to like to take on investments outside of spy movies where you have criminal masterminds with seemingly unlimited money to spend on crazy schemes to get even more money or take over the world.

ETA2: I have a negative view on society as a whole, and could definitely see counterarguments to this 51% argument considering the amount of money spent on lobbying to screw over consumers by large corporations (that can also be read as depositors by large banks), but that goes way outside the scope of your original question, to which the answer was a very simple "miners" and "for the fees".

You used a lot of words, but they didn't really make any sense the way you put them together.

You do realize that EVERY block includes 25 BTC right now, right?

You do realize that, more than 120 years from now when the block subsidy is over and the only block reward is the transaction fees, it will still be a race to "find" a random block, right?

At the moment, the block reward consists of a block subsidy (25 BTC) plus the sum of all transaction fees from all transactions included in the block. Approximately every 4 years (exactly every 210,000 blocks), the subsidy is cut in half.  Eventually (around the year 2140) it will be reduced from 0.00000001 per block to 0 per block.  Meanwhile as bitcoin gains popularity, and the transaction volume increases, an ever larger percentage of the block reward is from the transaction fees.  There will come a time (long before the block subsidy is eliminated) that the transaction fees will typically be larger than the block subsidy.

I agree as a miner I would rather receive transaction fees for every block I mine rather than the hope of 1 block out of a possible 1000 i mine holding 25 coins. Even if the fee is small the more you mine the more you get this would create an even larger demand for people to want more and faster hardware.

Right now the race is to find a random block, once all coins are released the race will be to solve as many blocks as you possibly can in a day.


I think it will be more profitable in the future to mine BTC than it is now.

As the block reward drops and the market cap rises, mining will become more of a competition for control than it is for profit today. It is a scheme where rich would need to compete with each other, possibly at a loss, in order to maintain a share of control, so that their accounts don't get frozen. This prevents rich getting richer without engaging in a fair competition with risks of losing.

Bitcoin separates money and control, so that competition for both is ensured and never stops. I believe forum's logo is not accidental, as it symbolizes the balance point between the two, and yes Bitcoin is a very simple machine.

in the future, the Peta hash of bitcoin is nothing ... specially in 140 years.

And again:
That is just not how mining works. Everything a miner can do, is not accepting a transaction. They can not steal your BTC.

Well, that makes it easy to blackmail others and grab their money. Say good-bye to the 100 BTC that were sent to you yesterday, or send 50 BTC to me first.


Yes, that's the question I am asking. How could we adjust the incentives if it turns out that they are not properly balanced?

Pooling resources doesn't allow miners to "grab others' money".  It only allows them to choose which transaction get confirmed.  Large operators will have a large financial investment in their operation.  It would be counter productive to damage the reputation of the bitcoin confirmation process as they wouldn't be able to earn enough to cover their costs.  Additionally any large merchant that chooses to accept bitcoin will have a direct financial interest in its stability.  This incentive is likely to result in large merchants setting up their own mining operations (perhaps even mining at a slight loss) to protect their interests.

Bitcoin is an experiment.  It is very difficult (impossible?) to predict what will happen in a decade or two when the subsidy gets small.  We can anly let the experiment play out and see if the incentives are properly balanced, and adjust them in the future if necessary.


Legendary would be a good description.  He was a mediocre programmer that happened to come up with a really good idea on how to handle distributed consensus.  Any amazing intelligence or wisdom assigned to him beyond that is nothing but stories.

Supply and demand. The fee will always be about the lowest amount that can sustain the network. If the fee is "high" then someone will come in and process transactions more cheaply. If the fees are to "low" then a transaction may not get processed.
This system will always out compete a for profit business because they have many more mouths to feed. Bitcoin is not free because the world is not free. The bitcoin protocol is cheaper because it eliminates middle men and opens up competition that anyone can participate in.    

OMG Apple has 100%-ed the iPhone market, what's to prevent them from selling you a solid, inanimate, lump of plastic and telling you it's an iPhone?

I mean they are in 100% control of what an iPhone is, they could make it anything!

Yah well, they'd be out of business next week.

According to the worriers or FUD rakers, this is a rock solid guaranteed to profit scenario and sound business plan for anyone that goes over 50% of bitcoin hashpower.