Oddbean new post about login | logout Miners can 'evict' vanity sidechains and make room for useful sidechains. Only sidechains which are useful to the network will survive.
What’s the mechanism for miners to evict a vanity drivechain?
They steal the hash escrow (BIP 300), or distribute the hash escrow to a better L2 of their choosing, and going forward honor the other L2's hash escrow updates.
Just like the Wisconsin Republicans are hoping to impeach a judge they don’t like before even before hearing a case. Political nuclear options often become acceptable when they shouldn’t be.
There's nothing political about this. Its objective commitment of electrons. Anyone can commit their own electrons to the process. No need for popular opinion. No need for endorsement of a political party. No need to even tell anyone you're participating. Its just math and physics. Idk what you're getting on about.
It’s 100% political among the miners. If there are situations in which it’s appropriate to steal a lockbox, the process will be controversial, hence political.
You do realize that is exactly what Bitcoin consensus is, right? If miners choose to collude to ignore a block and mine their own block to claim rewards (or TX priority or whatever) for themselves, they can. They'll need 51% hashrate, but they absolutely can. If you think that's political, then you do not understand consensus or p2p systems. Same for hash escrows. If miners want to collude to evict a sidechain, they can. It'll take 50% hash rate, but they can. Its called consensus. So, even if it was political, it would be exactly Bitcoin's current politics with no change. But... its not political. For that, I'll refer you to the definition: https://image.nostr.build/36b6df379962bba3275432996d5b4d9ff0bfb752e927ca3cae2854fe14b937ad.jpg
How is the UTXO set (or equivalent) of the side chain handled if it is overwritten?
Well in this scenario, miners have decided to steal from the 'shitcoin' sidechain to make room for a 'good' sidechain. The 'shitcoin' ledger would become valueless, and shitcoin holders would be out of pocket. That is the point though. If a vanity/shitcoin takes one of the drivechain slots, it risks getting evicted and liquidated by Bitcoin, if miners (and indirectly the users) have decided the shitcoin didn't deserve that space. So, sidechains must necessarily be 'good' for Bitcoin, or the sidechain will be sent packing. Want to start a side chain? Think long and hard about how it will synergize with Bitcoin. Put your idea into public and make sure it gets broad community support (e.g. BIP) before trying to deploy it. If you do those things, you'll have a good idea if Bitcoin will evict+liquidate your sidechain or not.
I think we can do better. Surely there is a more graceful way to wind down a drive chain. Assuming long term all drive chain slots get filled, there needs to be a way for low performing chains to drop off without rugging.
