**LOTTA CAPSTYPINGS***
Happy Saturday!
Just to be clear, you seem to be stating that a future where transaction fees being $100, $1000 or even more per on-chain tx is a distinct possibility?
That as a possibility is implicit in my thoughts, I'd say, yes.
OK, so here's the relevant followup question. When average tx fees are $1000, what is the typical profile of a person willing to run a non-mining validator? Let's start simple on this - how many tx per year might the average such person make?
I like where you are going.
But since the requirement for validating nodes is kept low it would continue to be in EVERYONE's best interest to run one. Even if I am not directly writing data to the block chain I would benefit by monitoring those who do. In fact monitoring the whale moves of banks, governments, and retired WO members would be of great sport and interest. Not just for security, but for knowledge. I used to think the Whale Alert accounts on twitter were a novelty, but they are actually an indicator.
People ran Seti@Home even though they got no green stamps from Martians for doing it, and same thing with the folding app for the genome. And I would say validating one of the most important ledgers on the planet would command MUCH greater incentive. Bitcoin is for enemies after all.
And as layer 2 is currently being built out people who run lightning nodes are STRONGLY incentivized to run a corresponding Bitcoin node. I think as second+ layer solutions are developed we will see more and more interest in that among a much wider group than the hobbyists (like me) who do now.
On top of that I think we will see mining hardware possibly become commoditised. As energy production changes BITCOIN is poised to soak up a lot of spotlight. This will most likely decentralize even MINING nodes. People with solar energy systems may be able to choose to sell excess energy to the grid, or instead use it on commodity ASIC hardware to produce Bitcoin. And by that time the price of energy will be at least joined at the hip with BTC production if not outright dictated by it.
What do you think?
Well, I know several people that run non-mining validators. I am not aware of a single one that regularly run reports upon the chain data in order to uncover trends and such. I mean, other than the commercial (e.g. blockchain.info) or avocational (e.g. WhaleCalls) operators. Maybe I'm just living a cloistered life, but I don't believe that such data mining is something that the typical non-mining validator does. Accordingly, I really don't think that it is realistic for such hobby to cause many to run non-mining validators regardless of computing infrastructure demands.
What I think is that it is unrealistic to expect anyone that does zero, one, or even a handful of txs a year to have an incentive to go through the effort of running a non-mining validator. I think that forcing people off-chain for their txs due to cost will limit the population of Bitcoiners that would even consider such.
You say it is in everyone's interest to run a non-mining validator. I really can't disagree with you there, with the caveat that 'everyone' is really 'every user of Bitcoin'. And that that interest is countermanded by the time, toil, and treasure demands. I just don't think the tradeoff is worth it for the average Bitcoin user.
Yet even today, when the demands are quite small, and there is still a pretty significant percentage of
Bitcoiners among Bitcoin users, vanishingly few run non-mining validators. And while I don't have figures in front of me, I don't think the count of peers is growing at all, let along at the apparent rate of new entrants into the ecosystem.
I also think Lightning is a non-starter. It was gonna be ready 'in two weeks'* four years ago. Yet today, there is more Bitcoin using Ethereum as L2 than Lightning. Maybe the complexity that is foisted upon the user can be lessened somehow, but last I looked, it was still just an inscrutable mess. Unless it gets a massive UX upgrade, I really can't see it being used by other than niche hobbyists and custodial middlemen.
*OK, in 18 months five years ago.
I would like to see mining power disseminated further as well. Though I don't expect such, Sure, maybe cheap hashers can be spread all around. But hashers as a general rule don't decide what goes into the blocks they are trying to solve. Those decisions lay in a small number of pool operators.
Oh well, that's my two bits.