[Lightning-dev] Proof-of-work vs fees (was; Re: A proposal for up-front payments)

[ZmnSCPxj]

Good morning Orfeas,

The thread is now off-topic, thus I changed the subject.

> > This can be made "the same" by any of the following methods:
> >
> > -   Burning the up-front fees.
>
> This would impose a hard maximum of 21 * 10^6 * 10^8 global lifetime hops, and a much lower practical one. PoW OTOH doesn't impose such limits. Hence different dynamics.

Granted, but do note that we can trivially "move the decimal".
Perhaps not "trivially" but it is possible to do so, thus still the same overall dynamics.

>
> > -   Locking the up-front fees for a time, then reverting them to the original sender.
>
> This means that I can burst-spam today, wait until unlock, repeat. If the PoW scheme somehow enforces fresh PoWs (e.g. by needing (nonce || recent block hash) as proof), I can't do this attack.

But in order for PoW to actively limit spam, the PoW target must be high enough that you can burst-spam today, wait until you get your *next* passes-the-threshold PoW, repeat.
The difference is that PoW has more variance, but that variance itself can limit non-spam usage (in much the same way that too high an up-front locktime would also limit non-spam usage).

I do not think you can get better than this, given the physics of this universe.
Money represents the allocation of available energy (by the simple mechanism of purchasing energy using money; the invisible hand is really the mechanism which directs energy towards the production of goods that are demanded), and PoW is a proof that somebody allocated available energy for the production of the PoW.
I do not know what argument you would consider "formal enough" but that is the only argument I have, and I find it sufficient.

Would this be enough?

We postulate that there is an amount of energy E, whose consumption produces a proof-of-work we can present on network, and that this required amount of consumed energy E is sufficient to deter spam.
The proof-of-work attesting to this energy E can be bought in a sufficiently mature market, using money, and thus this amount of energy E has some equivalent market price of money M, the spending of which is sufficient to deter spam.
If spending amount M was not sufficient to deter spam, or equivalently if M is too cheap to deter spam, then spammers will spend M to get E to drive proof-of-work instead of deriving their proof-of-work directly, increasing demand for energy until the market price of E becomes M' such that M' is sufficiently high enough to deter spam.

Or in simpler terms: with a stable enough monetary system and market, you can buy PoW, thus PoW and fees are equivalent.

Regards,
ZmnSCPxj