Hypothetically, would the US government pay miners in China to mine empty blocks?
Discussion
If we assume that a pool is going to do what’s best for themselves, they could operate a mining operation exclusively to mine empty blocks if paid enough by a bad actor. Hypothetically.
Valid transactions cannot be stopped from being added to the timechain.
Even if you control 75% of the hash rate, all you will do is bid up the price of transaction fees. Someone will always be there to take the fee.
Good point, but there has to be some upper limit to the fees most people are willing to pay. I wonder if that's higher than a government can pay to offset.
If transactions become that slow and expensive because so few blocks that contain transactions are mined, it could effectively make the network useless.