Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Re: Can crypto-transaction networks function without a built-in currency?
by
d'aniel
on 02/02/2014, 22:48:40 UTC
Thanks for your reply.

For (1) you could do merged-mining, as it costs practically nothing extra to miners.  But then you have to be careful to keep interests aligned - the new chain can't be competing with Bitcoin, and should in fact be seen as complementing it in some not insignificant way.
Okay, I think I understand, but with merged-mining the new chain would still have a currency of its own that functions as a reward for miners, no?
No.  Remember: it costs practically nothing extra to merged mine the new chain, so the incentive to mine doesn't have to be very large - complementing (and not competing with) Bitcoin in some not insignificant way could suffice.

Quote
Quote
(2) could be addressed using identities that have a cost to create, and can be blacklisted if they are abusive.
Yes, good point. Who would blacklist them though in a decentralized network?


If one of your peers is being abusive, you would blacklist it.  Notice though that a single identity gives you the ability to abuse every node once - ideally you want it so that abusing one node gets you on every node's blacklist.  Distributing cryptographic proofs of bad behaviour might a way to achieve this.