Choosing a lower block reward?

[Peter Lambert]

I was wondering today, can a miner choose to take a lower block reward?  The current block reward is 50 bitcoins. Could  a miner, for whatever reason, choose to give himself some number lower than 50 bitcoins, or would that block be rejected by the network?

How would that affect the total number of bitcoins? Would those coins just be lost forever, and the total number of generated coins be lowered by that amount, or would those coins be available for a future miner to claim?

Is there any situation where a miner would want to generate a number of coins less than the current block reward?

[Jack of Diamonds]

The amount halves after 230,000 blocks have been generated.

[SmokeAndMirrors]

Is there any situation where a miner would want to generate a number of coins less than the current block reward?

No. That is simply a retarded question. Like asking, if you won the lottery, would you burn half of the winnings?

[Pieter Wuille]

I was wondering today, can a miner choose to take a lower block reward?  The current block reward is 50 bitcoins. Could  a miner, for whatever reason, choose to give himself some number lower than 50 bitcoins, or would that block be rejected by the network?

Yes, that is possible, and the block will be accepted.

How would that affect the total number of bitcoins? Would those coins just be lost forever, and the total number of generated coins be lowered by that amount, or would those coins be available for a future miner to claim?

They're lost forever.

Is there any situation where a miner would want to generate a number of coins less than the current block reward?

No.

[ctoon6]

maby he wants to price to go up, in which case generating only 10coins for a while would really move it up, but i do not think that a client would accept said block.

[Pieter Wuille]

maby he wants to price to go up, in which case generating only 10coins for a while would really move it up, but i do not think that a client would accept said block.

That's a reason for wanting the whole world to decrease their mining income, but those who do will only be screwing themselves.

[elggawf]

maby he wants to price to go up, in which case generating only 10coins for a while would really move it up, but i do not think that a client would accept said block.

If I'm not mistaken, the rules only say that the reward can't be above the per-block reward at the present position on the curve. In fact, I believe there's been at least one block with less than 50BTC reward in it, and it was accepted just fine.

[bitplane]

No. That is simply a retarded question. Like asking, if you won the lottery, would you burn half of the winnings?

No, it's like asking "if you won the lottery, *could* you, *in theory* burn half of your winnings?"

I personally thought it was an interesting question, and that if any post in this thread is retarded it's your (non-)answer.

[ribuck]

If I'm not mistaken, the rules only say that the reward can't be above the per-block reward at the present position on the curve. In fact, I believe there's been at least one block with less than 50BTC reward in it, and it was accepted just fine.

Yes, but what if you are mistaken?

I'd be interested to see a pointer to the code in the client that checks the coinbase reward, if anyone is able to post it. I'd also be interested to see the block number of the legendary block with less than 50BTC reward in it.

[edit: The wiki has a Protocol Rules page which is consistent with what elggawf said: "when the transaction is accepted into the memory pool, an additional check is made to ensure that the coinbase value does not exceed the transaction fees plus the expected BTC value (50BTC as of this writing)" ]

[twobitcoins]

I'd be interested to see a pointer to the code in the client that checks the coinbase reward, if anyone is able to post it.

Code:

bool CBlock::ConnectBlock(CTxDB& txdb, CBlockIndex* pindex)
{
    ...
    if (vtx[0].GetValueOut() > GetBlockValue(pindex->nHeight, nFees))
        return false;
    ...
}

[Alex Beckenham]

In fact, I believe there's been at least one block with less than 50BTC reward in it, and it was accepted just fine.

Yep, someone decided to burn 10 nBTC but accidentally burned an extra 10 mBTC along with it.

[cunicula]

Related Question: If the block creation reward is specified as greater than 50 BTC, is rejection of that block handled by the bitcoin client or by the mining process? Basically what I want to know is this, if the majority of hashing power accepts this block will the block still be rejected by the client?

[Sukrim]

Related Question: If the block creation reward is specified as greater than 50 BTC, is rejection of that block handled by the bitcoin client or by the mining process? Basically what I want to know is this, if the majority of hashing power accepts this block will the block still be rejected by the client?

The "wrong" block + all blocks following (building upon) it will be rejected by your client at least.

Should a lot of miners then still build on that wrong block, difficulty would fall down as a result after some time.

There is no way to force a block in the chain that pays out too much.

[supersonic3974]

Is there any situation where a miner would want to generate a number of coins less than the current block reward?

No. That is simply a retarded question. Like asking, if you won the lottery, would you burn half of the winnings?

Lol, you don't have to.  The federal government will do that for you. 

[elggawf]

The "wrong" block + all blocks following (building upon) it will be rejected by your client at least.

Yeah, the rules are checked by every client all the time. That's what takes so long to download the blockchain on the first run - your client is going through and checking each link in the chain to ensure it's playing by the rules. Any change in these rules is only going to fork the chain - if you can convince the majority of the world to use the modified blockchain, well then the "original" players lose I guess.

That's what's meant by that Bitcoin is democratic monetary policy - it's not just the miners that decide anything (though they do have sway over what transactions are included in what blocks and when), the entire network must agree on the rules and any changes are simply disregarded as invalid.

[gmaxwell]

I was wondering today, can a miner choose to take a lower block reward?  The current block reward is 50 bitcoins. Could  a miner, for whatever reason, choose to give himself some number lower than 50 bitcoins, or would that block be rejected by the network?

How would that affect the total number of bitcoins? Would those coins just be lost forever, and the total number of generated coins be lowered by that amount, or would those coins be available for a future miner to claim?

Is there any situation where a miner would want to generate a number of coins less than the current block reward?

Yes, a tribute to Satoshi:  http://blockexplorer.com/block/0000000000004c78956f8643262f3622acf22486b120421f893c0553702ba7b5

[ribuck]

Thank you, twobitcoins and gmaxwell, for the pointing to the actual code and the actual block. Much better than speculation!