Validating (a.k.a. verifying) also means checking that it isn't a double-spend, that the funds exist (either via UXTO or account balance).
Agreed. This is not very compute intensive, though, compared to PoW.
That is why I said the problem is more acute for Ethereum and verifying long running scripts. That has been one of my main points about why Ethereum can't scale (at least not decentralized).
Also realize even in the case of Bitcoin eventually scaling can outrun the costs of PoW, especially as block reward declines to 0 and assuming block size is allowed to increase so that transaction fees don't skyrocket.
Of course Bitcoin is already broken, because the
Chinese mining cartel controls 65% of the hashrate and they lied about the Great Firewall of China being a problem[1] because they really want to veto block size increases so they can maximize their profits via
spiraling transactions fees which I predicted in 2013. And remember my point that on the next block reward halving (this year I think) then the lowest cost miners will survive and the marginal miners will lose profitability and thus China's 65% share will increase significantly. I also believe Chinese miners are operating with near 0 cost electricity with a "wink and a handshake" charging the electricity cost to the collective society.
| [1] | We know they are lying because they can put a pool abroad and send only a block hash across the GFW thus bandwidth is not an issue. They are clearly lying! |
In a partitioned design, only the full nodes (a.k.a. validators) for each partition would validate and propagate the transactions for that partition. So yes you are correct to imply that partitioning means the P2P network is partitioned also (because otherwise DDoS spam amplication attacks would be plausible if peers relay that which they do not verify).
I think all that should have been clear just by thinking about the only way partitioning can work. I am just wondering why you can't deduce these sort of things and instead need to ask?
Note that validators can be computing a PoW block based on a hash of their partition and a hash of all the other partitions. Don't forget the power of Merkel trees.
My point is that validators don't lie without the entire network lying.
That applies within partitions as well.
But that underlined wasn't the problem. Did you forget the point about the Nash equilibrium and all validators needing to trust that the validators from other partition didn't lie.