Nostr Web Client

I agree that the subsidy provides a first runway for hashpower. Therefore, an attacker cannot simply spin up some hashpower themselves for the attack. OK.

However, I don't agree that this runway provides censorship resistance.

Public pressure might be helpful for now, but I doubt it will be enough long-term.

Even with spacially distributed energy availability and mining: What makes you so sure that nation states will not collaborate and push for censorship? (e.g. "sanctions") I am pretty sure they will some day. They will legally bind the miners to their will. Mining companies will comply, or they go out of business.

In the end, someone has to pay for the resistance. Either by directly mining the illegal/censored transactions or by paying a fee premium. In any case it's only possible with a sustained demand.

vnprc 5mo ago

I never said the subsidy provides censorship resistance. It clearly doesn't.

My thesis is that small scale private and privacy preserving mining is the only way to resist nation state control in the long term. Mining companies are a bootstrapping phase. They won't ever go away completely but if we don't transition to majority pleb mining then I don't see how bitcoin can achieve mass adoption. It will just be gold 2.0 and suffer the same fate as gold 1.0: state capture.

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Discussion

JuAnHu 5mo ago 💬 1

I see.

In the end both aspects are needed. Demand for censorship resistant transactions and private (or privacy preserving) mining.

vnprc 5mo ago

Yeah if you think about it gold was decentralized because anyone could go and take it out of the ground without permission. We need the same for bitcoin. This requires miner privacy.

Unlike gold, once we reach a steady state (no subsidy) new bitcoin will only come from people transacting with it. So that's an added requirement that gold doesn't have.