With an enormous annual inflation rate at the beginning, stakeholders
were able to survive such a harsh for them phase only because of the
system's expansion where "numbers go up" (e.g., almost no one from
outside Turkey would like to buy and just hold the turkish lira).
Now we are in a completely different situation, without such room as
before because we are approaching the saturation of the system (and
"Change the code, not the climate" action assures us of it).
Unfortunately, noone can predict everything decades ahead, and the
system is designed in a way (incorrectly, no need to sugarcoat it) that
with each halving, we shift from one extreme (edge case) to the opposite
(from infinite inflation to zero inflation). We move along this axis
without any control, without any feedback. If anything is controversial
here, it's this fact. And that means: favoritism of one group over
another, with clear conflict of interest.
It's a truism to say that stakeholders want transacting users to pay for
Bitcoin's security, and transacting users want stakeholders to pay for
Bitcoin's security. And this has been the case for many years - yes, as
active users, we were all free-riders, paying almost nothing for
transactions, with terawatt-hours annually dedicated to the system's
operation.
And there's really no better evidence for what I've written above than
the storm that erupted due to high fees caused by Ordinals - even here,
even with ideas to censor the paid transactions...
I have to agree with Peter Todd: "21 million is a stupid meme." ;)
Yes, it's a harmful, silly meme that has turned everything upside down...
Because we realize that "Houston, we have a problem..." - but by
promoting this meme, we've created a situation where more controversial
is not the problem itself, but talking about it...
Overtaxed active users will not pay endlessly for the entire network's
security, including "free lunches" for passive free-riders - that's as
clear as crystal.
And it's impossible to build a healthy second layer if the first layer
isn't healthy.
By the way, the first layer may become doubly unhealthy at some point
due to the threat from quantum computers.
A hard fork to save Bitcoin from a future quantum threat will be
instantly accepted, without any discussion.
And this might be the only chance to fix both issues at once.
If we introduce a change involving delay of the halving by another 4
years, but only in case of a 4-years long network regression, we finally
have a free market with an unpredictable variable where passive users
won't become free riders. The new and old code will be perfectly
compatible with each other until such a critical event occurs.
And this is a critical event with no doubt, because a 4-year network
regression caused by an earlier halving, doomed yet by every next
halving - is a slippery slope, it's the end of the Store-of-Value story
(as I demonstrated you above with the fate of rai stones), and
unfortunately, probably the end of Bitcoin (at least in the form we've
been dreaming of all along...)
W dniu 07.11.2023 o 09:58, vju...@gazeta.pl pisze:
> Imagine a system that tries to maintain a constant level of
difficulty and reacts flexibly to changes in difficulty, by modulating
the block reward level accordingly (using negative feedback).
This is exactly what I did, when experimenting with LN-based mining. CPU
power was too low to get a full block reward out of that. But getting
single millisatoshis from a channel partner? This is possible, and I
started designing my model from that assumption. Also, because channel
partner usually don't want to explicitly pay, I created it in a form of
"LN transaction fee discount". Which means, a CPU miner just received
cheaper LN transactions through the channel partner, instead of getting
paid explicitly. Which also caused better network connectivity, because
then you have an upper bound for your mining (it won't be cheaper LN
transaction than for free). Which means, if you mine so many shares,
that you have free LN transactions, then you have to sell them, or open
another channel, and then instead of having "one channel with free
transactions", you have many.
> The free market is more important than finite supply.
I would say, the backward compatibility is more important than increased
(no matter if still constant or not) supply. Which means, you can
"increase" the supply, just by introducing millisatoshis on-chain. Or
add any "tail supply", or anything like that, what was discussed in the
past. The only thing that matters is: can you make it compatible with
the current system? Hard-fork will be instantly rejected, without any
discussion. Soft-fork will be stopped at best, exactly in the same way,
how other soft-fork proposals were stopped, when achieving consensus was
hard, and the topic was controversial. So, what is left? Of course
no-forks and second layers. This is the only way, that is wide-open
today, and which requires no support from the community. And that's why
Ordinals are so strong: because they are a no-fork. Better or worse
designed, it doesn't matter, but still a no-fork. Which means, they
exist in the wild, no matter if you like them or not.
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