Post
Topic
Board Speculation (Altcoins)
Re: [XMR] Monero Speculation
by
tifozi
on 15/01/2016, 03:41:01 UTC
Mike Hearn has an interesting new article on some of the failures of Bitcoin...

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7

He makes some very valid points and he is of course right about the negative impacts of the 1 MB blocksize. He is also correct in saying the "bloat" is not the issue, in fact the small blocksize in Bitcoin may have led to the massive concentration of the Bitcoin hash rate in China effectively allowing the Government of China to control Bitcoin. On the other hand I do not agree at all with the criticism of people such as Gregory Maxwell, who I must say has also made many very valid points on the matter of scaling Bitcoin. The simple reality is that the Bytecoin solution of adaptive blocksize limits without a tail emission is also a prescription for disaster.

The problem with Bitcoin is that nobody has found and it may well be impossible to find a way to develop a fee market, in the, absence of a block subsidy, that does not over time converge to one of two undesirable results: Fixed blocksize and infinite fees or infinite blocksize and zero fees. Mike Hearn has made a very persuasive argument as to why a fixed blocksize and infinite fees is such an undesirable outcome; however I am sure that Gregory Maxwell can make an equally persuasive argument as to why an infinite blocksize and zero fees is an equally undesirable outcome.

Maybe the real reason why there has not been a solution to Bitcoin blocksize debate is that a solution may in fact not be possible, if one keeps the 21,000,000 maximum number of XBT limit in place, rather than because of the personalities involved.

So in all of this where does Monero stand? Well Monero is the highest capitalization coin that has solved this problem in a pure proof of work coin. My philosophy on this is that when one takes care of the long term the short term will take care of itself. On the other hand focus on the short term and expect grief over the long term. Monero has taken care of the long term, unfortunately Bitcoin and for that matter most other crypto currencies have not.

Excellent insight. The problem of hash concentration could still be something that needs to be smartly tackled. Otherwise XMR has got some pretty solid design for a crypto currency. I am a big believer in PoW but hash concentration is a potential problem (down the road)

On the markets, seeing some minor positive action even at this hour for a change.