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From: Tom Harding <tomh@thinlink.com>
Message-ID: <55E8900F.4050007@thinlink.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 2015 11:23:11 -0700
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] block size - pay with difficulty
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On 9/2/2015 9:05 PM, Jeff Garzik via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Schemes proposing to pay with difficulty / hashpower to change block 
> size should be avoided.  The miners incentive has always been fairly 
> straightforward - it is rational to deploy new hashpower as soon as 
> you can get it online.  Introducing the concepts of (a) requiring 
> out-of-band collusion to change block size and/or (b) requiring miners 
> to have idle hashpower on hand to change block size are both 
> unrealistic and potentially corrosive.  That potentially makes the 
> block size - and therefore fee market - too close, too sensitive to 
> the wild vagaries of the mining chip market.
>
> Pay-to-future-miner has neutral, forward looking incentives worth 
> researching.
>

Another market dependency is even more direct.

Blocksize that can be bought with either difficulty or bitcoin has 
incentives whose strength (though not direction) is subject to the 
exchange rate.  Hence those incentives are subject to the whims of fiat 
holders, who can push the exchange rate around.