the block subsidy isn't what secures bitcoin, the fees are. Attackers get the subsidy too.
Discussion
Don’t they also get the fees? Or at least a bulk of them minus the fees from the txns they censor?
When people think about network security, they think about the likelihood that a transaction they made to someone for goods and services delivered or money exchanged won’t be rolled back. The overall hash rate (proxy for real-world energy and capital that has to be deployed) is what provides this security. Monetary incentives (subsidy + fees) in addition to sovereignty (miners wanting their own transactions to be confirmed) is what provides this wall of security (opportunity cost/proof of work).
As mining becomes more integrated with energy production, especially with power plants in remote areas or ones that produce excess energy, the bar to continue to mine will be lower and lower. Meaning energy companies won’t rely on the block reward for their profitability and instead will choose to continue to mine even if the reward is low because it beats 0 if they don’t utilize the excess energy.
That’s how I think about it anyway. Network security fud exists as an excuse to introduce changes to bitty imo
the attack that matters in bitcoin is censorship. The physical and capital costs of a sustained reorg is infeasible, even for nation States.
The real risk is censorship, and if hostile miners do not mine transactions, they don't collect the fees.
if the attack is mining transactions to collect fees, they are not hostile, because that is what miners do.
Agreed.
Realistically, a small amount of transactions would be censored per block. I don’t think loss of those fees would protect against or disincentivize censorship. I mean, look at Ocean and Ordinals. The risk is block template creation getting centralized, not so much fees.