It is not the case in practice that there exists no incentive to disrupt the
market for transaction confirmation. Statism is profitable, and a primary
source of revenue is seigniorage. Given Bitcoin's threat to that privilege, its
destruction presents a hefty incentive.
The security model of Bitcoin is not based on balancing power between miners
(those who confirm) and merchants (those who validate). It is based on these
parties defending their mutually-beneficial market from the state.
Neither technology nor incentives resolve this conflict. People must be willing
to defend their mines and their economic nodes. This requires personal risk.
The risk to each individual is mitigated by broad decentralization, but remains
nonetheless.
Even in a highly-decentralized system, overpowering taxpayer-funded disruption
of the confirmation market will require that merchants pay aggregate fees
exceeding the mining subsidy expended by the taxpayer to disrupt it. Who
prevails in that tug of war is unclear, but working on Bitcoin implies one
believes it is possible for individuals to do so.
e
> On Nov 7, 2017, at 21:04, Marc Bevand via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> What you describe is an example of a majority attack ("51% attack"). No
> technical mechanism in Bitcoin prevents this. However in practice, miners are
> not incentivized to perform this attack as it would destroy confidence in
> Bitcoin, and would ultimately impact their revenues.
>
> -Marc
>
>
>> On Mon, Nov 6, 2017, 22:32 Robert Taylor via bitcoin-dev
>> <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>> Forgive me if this has been asked elsewhere before, but I am trying to
>> understand a potential failure mode of Bitcoin mining.
>>
>> A majority of miners can decide which valid blocks extend the chain. But
>> what would happen if a majority of miners, in the form of a cartel decided
>> to validly orphan any blocks made by miners outside of their group? For
>> example, they could soft fork a new rule where the block number is signed by
>> set of keys known only to the cartel, and that signature placed in the
>> coinbase. Miners outside of the cartel would not be able to extend the chain.
>>
>> It would be immediately obvious but still valid under the consensus rules.
>> What are the disincentives for such behavior and what countermeasures could
>> be done to stop it and ensure mining remained permissionless? I think this
>> is a valid concern because while it may not be feasible for one actor to
>> gain a majority of hash alone, it is certainly possible with collusion.
>>
>> Robert
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