Let's hope we never experience a huge drop in hashing power, otherwise we'd have a similar problem like the one we already experienced back when ArtForz, for fun, redirected his rigs to the testnet. Once he stopped the remaining nodes where left with an incredibly high difficulty and the rebalancing would have taken months (2016 blocks at 3-4x the actual hashing power in the network would take 2 months to rebalance) and confirmations would be really slow.
It's hard to make promises but if my mining equipment survives that long I'll continue mining ^^
Topic: Why doesn't the block reward decrease continuously? - page 2. (Read 6513 times)
If fees are so low that almost all miners left. Then yes it will be easy...
But maybe Satoshi is in fact Hari Seldon, and he knew what the value of bitcoin would be over time. So he chose this particular staircaise curve instead of another one, so that the bounding limit is never reached ?
But why would fees get that low? Wouldn't the market kick in? As I see it, as fees diminish and miners stop mining, transactions take longer and longer. This incentivises people making transactions to pay a higher transaction fee, which in turn incentivises miners to start/resume mining. But maybe Satoshi is in fact Hari Seldon, and he knew what the value of bitcoin would be over time. So he chose this particular staircaise curve instead of another one, so that the bounding limit is never reached ?
If fees are so low that almost all miners left. Then yes it will be easy...
But maybe Satoshi is in fact Hari Seldon, and he knew what the value of bitcoin would be over time. So he chose this particular staircaise curve instead of another one, so that the bounding limit is never reached?
I'm waiting for next Satoshi Crisis...
But maybe Satoshi is in fact Hari Seldon, and he knew what the value of bitcoin would be over time. So he chose this particular staircaise curve instead of another one, so that the bounding limit is never reached?
I'm waiting for next Satoshi Crisis...
Wait, so when the reward reaches zero it will be infinitly easy to crack a new valid block?
So this would mean that the security of the network is somehow bounded by the ratio (base reward+fee)/target ?
So next question is... What will make the fee increase in the case too much miners leave and some attacks on the network succeed?
For now, the only answer I found is the one suggested in this thread by sunray: the creation of a new chain with adjusted difficulty.
This way, all the users of the new chain are forced to contribute equally (proportionally to their possessions) to the security of the network.
And I feel that the 21 MBTC limit is a lie somehow (bitcoin users might be forced to switch to a more secure chain).
This potential issue is not discussed in the FAQ and I think it is a very important one.
So next question is... What will make the fee increase in the case too much miners leave and some attacks on the network succeed?
For now, the only answer I found is the one suggested in this thread by sunray: the creation of a new chain with adjusted difficulty.
This way, all the users of the new chain are forced to contribute equally (proportionally to their possessions) to the security of the network.
And I feel that the 21 MBTC limit is a lie somehow (bitcoin users might be forced to switch to a more secure chain).
This potential issue is not discussed in the FAQ and I think it is a very important one.
Miners know that the decrease will be coming, and will factor that into their plans. Predictable events don't cause problems for markets.
nothing will really happen when the reward halves. Difficulty will drop, and in the end, it's the same $ generated.
Looking at GetNextWorkRequired() nothing seems to link difficulty with reward.
Or you mean half of the miners will just go away ?
nothing will really happen when the reward halves. Difficulty will drop, and in the end, it's the same $ generated.
Looking at GetNextWorkRequired() nothing seems to link difficulty with reward.
Or you mean half of the miners will just go away ?
nothing will really happen when the reward halves. Difficulty will drop, and in the end, it's the same $ generated.
Very good question.
Maybe the idea was not to scare people with exp(-t) curves?
But, yes discontinuities are quite worrisome.
Maybe the idea was not to scare people with exp(-t) curves?
But, yes discontinuities are quite worrisome.
The scariest moment for Bitcoin in the near-term future will be the first block reward decrease, namely from 50 BTC to 25 BTC some time toward the end of 2012. There's been plenty of speculation about how this will affect miners. It's conceivable that those who are dissatisfied with the reward decrease could attempt to fork the protocol and/or block chain at that point. I personally am not *too* worried about that, but still - it's a scary moment.
So I personally wish that Satoshi had instead implemented a *continuous* block reward decrease. With that approach, the reward will decrease ever-so-slightly with each successive block but still converge to 21 million. That would avoid potentially disruptive discontinuities. It's too late to change that now but, still, does anyone know why he chose a block reward function that looks like a staircase rather than a smooth curve?
So I personally wish that Satoshi had instead implemented a *continuous* block reward decrease. With that approach, the reward will decrease ever-so-slightly with each successive block but still converge to 21 million. That would avoid potentially disruptive discontinuities. It's too late to change that now but, still, does anyone know why he chose a block reward function that looks like a staircase rather than a smooth curve?
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