https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4dkkku/incentivizing_decentralization_tick_tock_maybe_we/Just got back from a BitDevs Meetup. The topic was Decentralization.
http://www.meetup.com/BitDevsNYC/events/229692528/ At one point the discussion turned toward the perverse incentives for miners to centralize and/or withhold information and how this may get worse as technology gets better and the speed of light stays the same.
Soooooo … I started playing around in my head on the way back home …
Tick-Tock Proposal:
*Tick Block: Traditional Block
*Tock Block: Includes the traditional Block plus a Tock nonce and Reward transaction
*Tick Block: 1/16th difficulty and 60% of the Reward
*Tock Block: 100% difficulty and 40% of the Reward
If a miner were lucky enough to successfully mine a Tick Block, they would be incentivized to propagate that block immediately and as widely as possible. There would be no reason to hold back as the miner would risk losing out on the majority Reward to another miner.
The difference in difficulty would lead to quickly generated Tick Blocks which then have the whole length of the Tock Block mine to propagate.
Thus the network would have a higher tolerance for larger blocks and network topography gradients.
If a miner were to receive a Tick Block they could choose to:
*Mine the Tock: to get the Tock Reward
*Idle: If the Tock difficulty isn’t worth the reward
*Mine their own Tick: A miner would not be incentivized to do this as they would put themselves behind the pack
The successfully mined Tock Block would be small and propagate quickly as the hefty Tick Block on which it was based would already be propagated.
The split would not have to be 60/40. It could be more or less but the goal would be to give the Tick Miner an incentive to rapidly and properly propagate data through the network rather than withhold it for the purpose of generating an advantage.
It might make sense for the network auto rebalance the amount of reward based on the hash power dedicated to the Ticks relative to the Tocks.
It might make sense to allow the Tick miner to formally post an additional bounty for the Tock miner to collect.
We could also consider having auto adjusting (or equal) difficulties for the Tick vs. Tock. Regardless of how it is achieved The Tick should somehow be relatively cheaper in order to reward miners for propagating data.
I’m sure I glossed over some details but I think the gist is here. Am I missing something?
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Q:
The commercialised and highly effecient miner still has the highest chance of winning? How does that incentivize decentralization?
A:
Yes, they still have the highest chance of winning. But additionally, if they mine a block, they then have a head start in mining the next block in the time that it takes for the original block to propagate.
This could be because of network topography (great firewall) or possibly intentionally.
The idea is to incentivize the miner to publish information as fast as possible to lock down the big easy reward.
Secondarily, smaller miners would benefit in two ways:
*The big reward is an order of magnitude easier to mine
*They would be more likely to be mining on a valid block
