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When miners can't produce coins anymore, will there still be enough honest people contributing compute to secure the transactions? Right now the deflation make

When miners can't produce coins anymore, will there still be enough honest people contributing compute to secure the transactions? Right now the deflation makes it very worthwhile for a miner to participate. Wouldn't transaction costs need to be quite high? Would anyone use a system where one pays 10% for every transaction to be hashed?

wcoenen 15y ago
The network rules are such that the difficulty is adjusted to keep block production to approximately 1 block per 10 minutes. If miners drop out, the difficulty is reduced.
- tzs 15y ago
  That doesn't help with what the GP is talking about, as by design there cannot be more than 21 million bitcoins.
  - wcoenen 15y ago
    Miners provide a crucial service: they generate a sequential log of transaction blocks. Consensus is reached by accepting the block chain which represents the most work. Miners are rewarded for that work in two ways: transaction fees (chosen by those doing the transactions) and "mined bitcoin". The question here was "what if the mined bitcoin becomes negligible" (which will happen as we approach 21 million bitcoin). The worry is that the transaction fees will become too high or the miners will all stop mining, and the block chain gneration will stop. As I said, this is not a problem because the block difficulty will automatically re-adjust.
    - sfgfdhgfdshdhhd 15y ago
      Wouldn't that reduce security? When only 1% of current miners contribute would it be possible for someone with control over a huge GPU cluster or botnet be able to attack the system?
      - wcoenen 15y ago
        If the attacker could amass more computing power than the remaining miners, then yes. He could reverse his own recent transactions, and suppress new transactions by others by ignoring them when generating blocks.
woodall 15y ago
The guy who started bitcoin, Satoshi, is said to have mined >1.5 million; back when difficulty was ~1.

wcoenen 15y ago

The network rules are such that the difficulty is adjusted to keep block production to approximately 1 block per 10 minutes. If miners drop out, the difficulty is reduced.

tzs 15y ago
That doesn't help with what the GP is talking about, as by design there cannot be more than 21 million bitcoins.
- wcoenen 15y ago
  Miners provide a crucial service: they generate a sequential log of transaction blocks. Consensus is reached by accepting the block chain which represents the most work. Miners are rewarded for that work in two ways: transaction fees (chosen by those doing the transactions) and "mined bitcoin". The question here was "what if the mined bitcoin becomes negligible" (which will happen as we approach 21 million bitcoin). The worry is that the transaction fees will become too high or the miners will all stop mining, and the block chain gneration will stop. As I said, this is not a problem because the block difficulty will automatically re-adjust.
  - sfgfdhgfdshdhhd 15y ago
    Wouldn't that reduce security? When only 1% of current miners contribute would it be possible for someone with control over a huge GPU cluster or botnet be able to attack the system?
    - wcoenen 15y ago
      If the attacker could amass more computing power than the remaining miners, then yes. He could reverse his own recent transactions, and suppress new transactions by others by ignoring them when generating blocks.

woodall 15y ago

The guy who started bitcoin, Satoshi, is said to have mined >1.5 million; back when difficulty was ~1.