Oddbean

This. And 95% of what's currently getting added to the bitcoin blockchain is arbitrary data. Hard to convince anyone this is the "best money ever invented" if the system can so easily being spammed to not process any money transactions anymore...

You're barking up the wrong tree, dawg. Fees solve spam, what solves mining centralization? This is most pressing question today for bitcoin's survival. You may come to a more balanced view of on-chain fee storms if you study the history of inflationary episodes. It's not specifically a bitcoin problem, it is human nature. This tendency is driven by economic conditions that arise from decades of excessive money printing. This too shall pass. https://history.com/news/roaring-twenties-scams-ponzi-wall-street

What tree am I barking at? i 100% agree with Matt. To your point: fees don't "solve" spam. They simply price out certain transactions, and it's just an (unproven) assumption that it would hit the spam ones. if spam pays more than monetary transactions, then these would becomes the ones priced out.

Voskuil's old take on this should always be borne in mind (with a little of my spin): The strong natural tendency of bitcoin mining, in a vacuum, is towards centralization. However, since Bitcoin is a threat to the state, the natural tendency of the state is to attack Bitcoin's functioning, which is only really possible if there *is* centralization. This leads to a possibility of a kind of oscillation, *perhaps* around an equilibrium: very centralized mining gets attacked, then it becomes more fragmented and decentralization, and then it loops. It is not unreasonable to say that this already happened in China last decade. nostr:nevent1qqsf8rjf9aep8jqmdh62tazanxzzg5gcqegyr2r03fdm9809ffta6sqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygpa9eg4pp5elx8s727mu7j9keeudpl7vss0geku99kepwgg65w4jspsgqqqqqqsdw7qw5

yet bitcoin mining has been basically completely centralized for a decade and bitcoiners don’t lift a finger in defense? The only way the “oscillation” happens is if there’s some pressure for mining to decentralize in response and that has to come from somewhere.

well but you'd have to define what you mean by 'completely centralized'? 40% or 50% one pool for example? i don't think that's 'completely', but anyway: even if we agree on an unambiguous definition, how do we measure it? maybe we successfully measure it and then they get cleverer about hiding it (which arguably already happened, as you have outlined). If we go by transaction censorship, this seems to be relatively new (last few years?), and it's not a great way of measuring either ... re: 'has to come from somewhere', yeah. my point was that as it stands, that comes from nation states. to have it come from "the bitcoin community" (which doesn't really exist) seems kinda hard, especially now that bitcoin is a lot bigger than a decade ago. I don't see it as 'this is all fine', just I think the potential 'oscillation' dynamic is probably pretty important.

40% on one pool and 70% across two where miners don’t have any real third option if they want reasonable stable payouts I’d definitely call “completely” :). Still my broader point stands I think, I don’t buy the “oscillation” argument unless something actually pushes back, which I just don’t see happening? I’m sitting here screaming and everyone’s just shrugging…

The pressure needs to be put on the large public miners to set an example. I think this is the most effective way, and the best way to do this is not via nostr, but via twitter and news sites where the readership and engagement is still much larger. Marathon copped a lot of flak on Twitter when they began mining only OFAC compliant blocks, and they quickly changed. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theblock.co/amp/linked/106865/marathon-ofac-bitcoin-mining-pool-taproot I have requested on multiple occasions comment from Riot Platforms and Pierre Rochard regarding their stance on mining pool centralisation but am yet to receive a response. I don't know if that's because they don't see it as an issue, or they are just trying to to protect their profits, but in my opinion it's not a good luck for a company that many look to for leadership in the industry.

I took Matt's advice and tried out Stratum v2 on Testnet and mined a block. It's not that difficult! Certainly the big corporate miners should be able to figure it out. https://bitcoinlizard.net/nostr/mined.png nostr:nevent1qqsf8rjf9aep8jqmdh62tazanxzzg5gcqegyr2r03fdm9809ffta6sqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygpa9eg4pp5elx8s727mu7j9keeudpl7vss0geku99kepwgg65w4jspsgqqqqqqsdw7qw5

I ran a #Bitcoin Core testnet node on my main beefy desktop machine and then the required rust applications as documented on the Stratum protocol website. I used an s9 but that was taking too long to find a block so I pointed an s19 at it for a bit and found 2 blocks in 30 minutes or so. https://stratumprotocol.org/