From my limited knowledge in the space, and I've taken opinions of people I
respect that are far more knowledgeable than me.
I don't know of any data of what happens at the point where the coinbase drops
to below the fees on any chain. I don't think there has been one where that has
happened. Perhaps there is a chain out there where it is fee's only? Perhaps
that can provide insight.
Opinion: I think as bitcoin's capabilities grow, demand for it will as well.
There are a lot of efforts to increase the amount of transactions that can fit
into a block. I think the combination of limited block space and a reduced
amount of bitcoin's entering the market is the right combination for the system
to self sustain. I'm looking forward to seeing the result!
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------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, March 1st, 2023 at 12:18 PM, Giuseppe B via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm relatively new here so what I'm proposing could have already been
> discussed, or may be flawed or inapplicable. I apologize for that.
>
> I was picturing a situation where block rewards are almost zero, and the base
> layer is mainly used as a settlement layer for relatively few large
> transactions, since the majority of smaller ones goes through LN.
>
> In such a case it may very well be that even if transaction amounts are very
> consistent, transaction fees end up being very small since there is enough
> space for everyone in a block. Users wouldn't mind paying higher fees as they
> know that that would increase the network security, however nobody wants to
> be the only one doing that. Miners would of course like being paid more. So
> everyone involved would prefer higher fees but they just stay low because
> that's the only rational individual choice.
>
> Therefore I was imagining the introduction of a new protocol rule, min_fees,
> that would work like this:
> - the miner that gets to mine a block appends a min_fee field to the block,
> specifying the minimum fees that need to be contained in the following block
> in order for it to be valid.
> - one can also mine an empty block and reset the min_fee, to avoid the chain
> getting stuck.
>
> min_fees could either represent the total fees of the following block, or the
> minimal fee for each single transaction, as a percentage of the value
> transacted. Both seem to have some merits and some potential drawbacks. Of
> course min_fees=0 would correspond to the current situation.
>
> It looks to me that this could have the potential to bring the equilibrium
> closer to a socially optimal one (as opposed to individually optimal), and to
> benefit the network security in the long term. Of course it's just a rough
> sketch and it would deserve a much deeper analysis. I was just interested in
> knowing if you think that the principle has some merit or if it's not even
> worth discussing it for some reason that I'm not considering.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Giuseppe.
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