Bitcoin snippet bite
Digging deep, can we really bitcoin snippet bite that we give money to charity for selfless reasons? When you give the last bite of the chocolate bar to your partner, you feel kind and loving. When you bitcoin snippet bite money to the beggar on the street, you feel altruistic. When you pay into your bitcoin snippet bite fund, you feel sensible.
Being kind and practical and unselfish feels good. Which makes it, inherently, selfish. But not particularly rational. What has that got to do with bitcoin? Bitcoin is, as you probably knowa decentralized autonomous platform for transferring value.
The bitcoin snippet bite will have been proven a success if bitcoin manages to establish itself as a reliable alternative to fiat money. Of course there is. We want bitcoin to work because it will be a step towards a more independent financial system.
If we profit from our trading or make money on bitcoin snippet bite mining operation, so much the better. And many of us do focus on those potentially lucrative activities. But for most of us, the benefit is not directly economic. At bitcoin snippet bite not just yet. Mining is selfish in that the block validators rightfully expect to at least be able to cover their costs. Selfish mining is based on the desire to influence the production of blocks, and effectively control the blockchain.
Bitcoin is based on the resilience and fairness of decentralization. Selfish mining is a tactic, allowed in the current bitcoin protocol, that completely undermines those concepts. Now, one of two things will happen. Either the next block will also be processed by S how probable that is depends on how much computing power S hasin which case he now has a blockchain that is two blocks longer than the one that the rest of the network is looking at.
If bitcoin snippet bite happens, which one will the next processed block be added on to? It depends who processes it. That sum will almost always be greater than the probability that G processes the next block and adds it to the other chain.
S bitcoin snippet bite eventually end up with more processed blocks on the chain. If S is a mining pool, more miners will want to join him because of that success. And soon we will end up with a group that has an uncomfortable consolidation of power in a platform designed to be decentralized and fair. Selfish mining could also be used to facilitate double-spending attacks, which undermine reliability. So, he could bitcoin snippet bite something with bitcoins, and let G process that transaction.
G would add that block on to the latest block that it is aware of. S would continue to try to mine blocks to add on to its private chain, the one that it is bitcoin snippet bite secret. But G would add subsequent blocks on to the last one that it processed, because that is now the longest public chain. Including the one in which Bitcoin snippet bite purchased something with bitcoin.
They would be invalid because they are no longer part of the longest chain. S has the goods it purchased. But the payment for those goods is now invalid. There has been disagreement in the community over the realistically possible consequences of selfish mining. I believe that bitcoin snippet bite are right. However, as the authors have repeatedly pointed out, the likelihood that this scenario, if enacted, will lead to concentration of power is very, very serious.
Will the desire to see the system work, for both economic and ideological reasons, trump the desire to benefit from enhanced mining rewards?
Rational selfishness reduced to bitcoin snippet bite simplest form can be programmed into a computer, or a self-regulating protocol like bitcoin. Such-and-such is a good thing to do if it improves my value or the balance on my ledger. And rational selfishness no doubt forms an integral part of Artificial Intelligence research. We let emotions cloud even basic investment decisions.
We allow unspoken biases or loosely held convictions to affect our reasoning. And we are very bad at predicting what will make us happy. Wanting to participate in interesting projects, wanting to be part of something important, wanting to help change what needs changing — these are also selfish aims.
They will make us feel good, they will bitcoin snippet bite our lives meaning. This lack of rationality spills over into the world of bitcoin. Most of those who insisted back at the beginning many still do that it can never work, were letting their fear of fundamental change convince them that clinging on to old systems is the most intelligent option.
Most of those who jumped at the chance to try bitcoin did so because of an irrational hope that we had finally bitcoin snippet bite an alternative to centralized finance. We collectively really want it to work, and not just for economic gain. If miners were purely rational, yes, they would join a selfish mining pool. But that reasoning overlooks the fact that miners, too, want bitcoin to succeed.
They want to make money, yes. And they have not yet been taken advantage of. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, Bitcoin snippet bite know. Bitcoin snippet bite post was originally published on LinkedIn.
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