<div dir="ltr"><div>Two very valid and important points. Thank you for making these observations Peter.<br><br></div>p.<br><br><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 7:26 PM, Peter Todd <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pete@petertodd.org" target="_blank">pete@petertodd.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span class="">On Mon, Jun 01, 2015 at 06:42:05PM +0800, Pindar Wong wrote:<br>
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 6:13 PM, Mike Hearn <<a href="mailto:mike@plan99.net">mike@plan99.net</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> > Whilst it would be nice if miners in China can carry on forever regardless<br>
> > of their internet situation, nobody has any inherent "right" to mine if<br>
> > they can't do the job - if miners in China can't get the trivial amounts of<br>
> > bandwidth required through their firewall and end up being outcompeted then<br>
> > OK, too bad, we'll have to carry on without them.<br>
> ><br>
><br>
> I'd rather think of mining as a responsibility than a right per se, but<br>
> you're right in so far as it's competitive and self-correcting.<br>
<br>
</span>It's important to remember that the service Bitcoin miners are providing<br>
us is *not* transaction validation, but rather decentralization.<br>
Validation is something every full node does already; there's no<br>
shortage of it. What's tricky is designing a Bitcoin protocol that<br>
creates the appropriate incentives for mining to remain decentralized,<br>
so we get good value for the large amount of money being sent to miners.<br>
<br>
I've often likened this task to building a robot to go to the grocery<br>
store to buy milk for you. If that robot doesn't have a nose, before<br>
long store owners are going to realise it can't tell the difference<br>
between unspoilt and spoilt milk, and you're going to get ripped off<br>
paying for a bunch of spoiled milk.<br>
<br>
Designing a Bitcoin protocol where we expect "competition" to result in<br>
smaller miners in more geographically decentralized places to get<br>
outcompeted by larger miners who are more geographically centralized<br>
gets us bad value for our money. Sure it's "self-correcting", but not in<br>
a way that we want.<br>
<span class=""><br>
> > But I'm not sure why it should be a big deal. They can always run a node<br>
> > on a server in Taiwan and connect the hardware to it via a VPN or so.<br>
> ><br>
> ><br>
> Let's agree to disagree on this point.<br>
<br>
</span>Note how that VPN, and likely VPS it's connected too, immediately adds<br>
another one or two points of failure to the whole system. Not only does<br>
this decrease reliability, it also decreases security by making attacks<br>
significantly easier - VPS security is orders of magnitude worse than<br>
the security of physical hardware.<br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
'peter'[:-1]@<a href="http://petertodd.org" target="_blank">petertodd.org</a><br>
00000000000000000e187b95a9159d04a3586dd4cbc068be88a3eafcb5b885f9<br>
</font></span></blockquote></div><br></div></div>