Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-23 Thread Peter Todd
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 01:30:28AM +, Jonathan Levin wrote: CC'ing bitcoin-research - may be more appropriate to move the discussion there as this discussion is delving into future scenarios. > Hi all, > > I am a post-graduate economist writing a paper on the incentives of mining. > Even th

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-22 Thread Tom Harding
Jonathan - These are a few things I've been wishing for recent data on: - 95th percentile transaction propagation time vs. fees/kb, vs. total fees - Count of blocks bypassing well-propagated transactions vs. fees/kb, vs. total fees - Signed-double-spend confirmation probability vs. broadca

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Jonathan Levin
Thank you for your thoughts. > The earlier, larger block A will only become stale if *two* blocks are > found in the extra time it takes for block A to propagate the network. > That is a substantially different risk, and probably a negligible > concern to most miners. I really like Mark’s sugges

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Mike Hearn
Pieter tried it already. If the two nodes views of each others mempools are not exactly in alignment it ends up being slower than just sending the data immediately and redundantly. On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 6:38 PM, Mark Friedenbach wrote: > Yes, it certainly can be improved in this way. You can

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Mark Friedenbach
Yes, it certainly can be improved in this way. You can even extend the idea to distribute partial proofs of work (block headers + Merkle lists which represent significant but not sufficient work), and 'prime' your memory pools with the transactions contained within. This is, btw, basically what p2

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Paul Lyon
jonathan.le...@sant.ox.ac.uk > CC: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net > Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation > > That wasn't what I was saying. Right now the primacy of a block is > determined by the time at which the `block` message is re

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Mark Friedenbach
That wasn't what I was saying. Right now the primacy of a block is determined by the time at which the `block` message is received, which is delays due to both the time it takes to transmit the block data and the time it takes to validate. Headers-first, on the other hand, has the option of basing

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Alan Reiner
On 04/21/2014 11:40 AM, Ashley Holman wrote: > On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Peter Todd > wrote: > > That is mistaken: you can't mine on top of just a block header, > leaving small miners disadvantaged as they are earning no profit > while they wait for th

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Ashley Holman
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Peter Todd wrote: > > That is mistaken: you can't mine on top of just a block header, leaving > small miners disadvantaged as they are earning no profit while they wait > for the information to validate the block and update their UTXO sets. This > results in the sa

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Jorge Timón
I'm not convinced that headers first will result in miners hashing on top of the block with more work without knowing if it's valid yet instead of just keep hashing on top of the longest known-to-be-valid chain. Both options are risky for the miner in some way, and I guess the probability of someon

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-21 Thread Tier Nolan
On Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:06 AM, Peter Todd wrote: > Of course, in reality smaller miners can just mine on top of block headers > and include no transactions and do no validation, but that is extremely > harmful to the security of Bitcoin. > I don't think it reduces security much. It is extreme

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-20 Thread Daniel Lidstrom
> Of course, in reality smaller miners can just mine on top of block headers > and include no transactions and do no validation, but that is extremely > harmful to the security of Bitcoin. If it's only during the few seconds that it takes to to verify the block, then would this really be that big

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-20 Thread Peter Todd
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA256 That is mistaken: you can't mine on top of just a block header, leaving small miners disadvantaged as they are earning no profit while they wait for the information to validate the block and update their UTXO sets. This results in the same problem

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Economics of information propagation

2014-04-20 Thread Mark Friedenbach
As soon as we switch to headers first - which will be soon - there will be no difference in propagation time no matter how large the block is. Only 80 bites will be required to propagate the block header which establishes priority for when the block is fully validated. On Apr 20, 2014 6:56 PM, "Jon