[Bitcoin-development] ASIC-proof mining

[Mike Hearn]

>
> Is it possible instead to allocate a portion of the reward to " a # of
> runner up(s)" even though the runner-up(s) block will be orphaned?
>

There's really no concept of a "runner up" because hashing is progress
free. It's unintuitive and often trips people up. There's no concept that
everyone is 95% of the way to finding a solution and then someone pips you
to the post. It's more like playing the lottery over and over again.
Doesn't matter how many times you did it before, the next time your chances
are the same.

A better concept is of rewarding "near miss" solutions which is what we
already do of course, via pools, which pay you for shares which don't quite
meet the difficulty target but almost do. So the question is how can we
implement pools which have this reward structure (which obviously works
well) without miners simultaneously giving up their right to block creation
either due to technical problems or sheer lazyness.
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