[Bitcoin-ml] Alternative difficulty algorithm for Bitcoin Cash

[Blockfreight™ | Julian Smith]

FWIW - Jumping in here:

Tom, counterfactual here is also true - that is: EDA seeds the 'let's not
mine for a few of days to drop difficulty, then pile in once it drops'
mindset.

Arguably, Satoshi got the human phycology of time preference right.

That is.... the prisoner's dilemma of non-mining and collusion --- or how
long (how many days) can you stare down across the poker table and not-mine
while guessing the other party's action.

EDA withholding period is so trivially short - that the incentive is to
'just wait and see' rather than act on and out of 'fear of missing out' is
too fluid.

I'm personally in favor of sunsetting EDA to return the system design to
original Nakamoto consensus (given the fork adjustment is remedied).

Also as a footnote (sidenote) - disregard AB's prompts to you to bring
SegWith to Bitcoin Cash - there's a solid Bitcoin audience here (in cash)
that isn't receptive to it anyway.

If infrastructure and mining power is to be directed to this Cash Chain -
more stable and long-term cadence at the protocol level is desirable IMO.

Julian Smith, CEO
Blockfreight, Inc.

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 7:27 PM, Tom Zander via bitcoin-ml <
bitcoin-ml at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Hi Neil,
>
> can you provide us with a rationale (why is this change needed) and a goals
> (which variables are you optimizing for) section?
>
> Why I ask is because of something I brought up before on this list was a
> problem with deadalnix's proposal: It focused purely on optimizing
> difficulty.
> This goal was ignoring the bigger picture of stability of mining earnings.
>
> In short, it removes the certainty of a minimum amount of profit per energy
> consumption a miner can expect for a 2 week period.
> We need to balance those concerns out, something that the original
> algorithm
> does very well.
>
> Can you comment on how well your work balances those concerns?
>
> Last, could you, or anyone else, provide an actual written specification of
> the new algo? Will be useful for those that don’t read code.
>
> Thanks for this!
>
> On Sunday, 1 October 2017 11:17:09 CEST Neil via bitcoin-ml wrote:
> > I have uploaded a proposal for a Bitcoin Cash difficulty adjustment
> > algorithm
>
> --
> Tom Zander
> Blog: https://zander.github.io
> Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel
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>
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