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The cost of securing the network doesn't really mirror the transaction volume. The effort is the same irrespective of the number of transactions in a block. It

by 0xA21F 12y ago

The cost of securing the network doesn't really mirror the transaction volume. The effort is the same irrespective of the number of transactions in a block. It's actually a lot cheaper to attack the network than you are stating, almost all mining uses Stratum which has been successfully redirected using BGP route hijacking in the past. It has no methods of authentication and does no way of integrity checking what it is mining against. A simple "mistake" in routing could have all of a countries hash power redirected to a malicious actor. You don't need power, datacenter or miners, a $5 wrench applied to the right head would do the trick just fine.

danbruc 12y ago
The cost of securing the network doesn't really mirror the transaction volume. The effort is the same irrespective of the number of transactions in a block. They don't have to be proportional but you want them to be. You neither want to transfer billions of Dollars only protected by mining hardware and energy worth a couple thousand Dollars, nor do you want to protect transfers worth a million Dollars with mining hardware and energy worth billions of Dollars.
- 0xA21F 12y ago
  It's hard to quantify what is secure and what is not. Actually working out what the incentives are for the system is surprisingly tricky, miners have all sorts of different motivations that conflict even when they would appear to be highly illogical on paper. Miners today include transactions with zero fees, where in a naive model of the network they probably wouldn't. The justification is often that it's financially sensible for them to do this because it inspires confidence in the system, making the price higher, which in turn makes their income higher. The lack of possibility for a pricing feedback loop makes this all a little tricky too, as the system can't make any changes based on external influences.

by 0xA21F 12y ago

danbruc 12y ago

The cost of securing the network doesn't really mirror the transaction volume. The effort is the same irrespective of the number of transactions in a block. They don't have to be proportional but you want them to be. You neither want to transfer billions of Dollars only protected by mining hardware and energy worth a couple thousand Dollars, nor do you want to protect transfers worth a million Dollars with mining hardware and energy worth billions of Dollars.

0xA21F 12y ago
It's hard to quantify what is secure and what is not. Actually working out what the incentives are for the system is surprisingly tricky, miners have all sorts of different motivations that conflict even when they would appear to be highly illogical on paper. Miners today include transactions with zero fees, where in a naive model of the network they probably wouldn't. The justification is often that it's financially sensible for them to do this because it inspires confidence in the system, making the price higher, which in turn makes their income higher. The lack of possibility for a pricing feedback loop makes this all a little tricky too, as the system can't make any changes based on external influences.