Thank you to everyone for your acknowledgement of my paper--it is satisfying to see something you've worked hard on begin to make an impact in the discussion! Like I said earlier, it was really just a formalization of some of the ideas we've been discussing here over the past months.
I'm very happy with how the paper was received. Between public and private comments (and Peter Todd calling it pseudo science) several aspects of the paper were challenged, and now I'm further convinced that the model and results are both useful and valid. I think the most accurate criticism of the paper was that I should have spent more effort discussing the inter/intra communication issues (the "you don't orphan you're own block" point).1 Hopefully, I'll have time to work on this in the fall.
I exchanged emails with Greg Maxwell over several aspects of the paper that he questioned. One point he did make, that I admit is valid but do not personally see as an issue, is that the most profitable "configuration" according to the results from the paper is a single "super pool" made up of ALL the network's hashing power (which would be centralizing). This would minimize the propagation impedance. While I agree that this is true, it seems like just another way of looking at the 51% problem. We already know that if one entity controls a huge amount of hash power they can do nasty things and gain certain advantages. But it would be nice to find a way to explain why this shouldn't happen with more rigour than the "game theory" or "anti-fragile" fallback positions
The experiment with the $10 bounties produced a mixed result. On the one hand, I think it got people who normally wouldn't read such a paper more involved in the discussion, but on the other hand (like brg444 pointed out) it may have made the thread less readable. I ended up paying out $90 to catch several small errors. The error I was most pleased to catch was Noosterdam's "innumerate" versus "enumerate." I think I've been using these words interchangeably my entire life but they actually mean very different things!
1Note that the math is valid nonetheless, as this just affects the propagation delay which was accounted for in the model.
I can't think of any economic disincentives against centralizing, independent of the block size issue and propagation. You always get economies of scale (e.g., you produce one mask for every new ASIC, but that mask let's you order 10 thousand or 10 million chips depending on your budget/scale... lots of other examples too like data center staff come to mind).
EXCEPT, the game theory arguments. The bitcoins you mine are likely to be worth less simply because people won't like the idea of you having all of the control. Even if people didn't mind that you had 100% control, they would certainly mind if you abused your power.
Am I missing something? I can't think of a single way to design a system where it is economically advantageous to move away from centralization (where we are intentionally neglecting the possibility that bitcoins might be worth more in a more decentralized environment).