Sonisphere

• Increased attention has been given recently to the worry that miner revenue from Bitcoin will not be sufficient to provide adequate security in the future, post block subsidy.
• This mainly stems from the concern that the transaction fee portion of the miner rewards will not be raised enough to make up for the loss of the block subsidy, resulting in decreased security for the Bitcoin network.
• My view is that most who are worried about this are misunderstanding Bitcoin’s long-term game theory, incentive mechanisms, scalability and adoption potential.

As Bitcoin continues to grow in popularity and usage, the concern around its future security budget has been receiving increased attention. This is mainly due to the worry that miner revenue will not be enough to offer adequate security in the future, post block subsidy. Bitcoin miners are an essential part of the network, as they are responsible for proposing blocks of transactions which nodes then verify, accept and update to the Bitcoin ledger. To do this, they use intense computing power to complete the proof-of-work consensus algorithm, and win the right to propose the new block. As a reward for this service, the winning miner receives a block reward, which is composed of two components: the block subsidy and the transaction fees.

Currently, the block subsidy is the main portion of the miner rewards, as it is the amount of new Bitcoin minted in each block (currently 6.25 Bitcoin). This subsidy is cut in half about every four years with the halving. The fear is that the transaction fee portion of the miner rewards will not be raised enough to make up for the loss of the block subsidy, resulting in decreased security for the Bitcoin network and an increased likelihood in attacks as miners are no longer incentivized to participate.

However, I believe that most of the people who are worried about this issue are misunderstanding Bitcoin’s long-term game theory, incentive mechanisms, scalability and adoption potential. It is important to have open discussions and debates around this topic, and not simply shrug it off as a non-issue. There are advocates who are attempting to create solutions that are designed to increase the security of the Bitcoin network, even after the block subsidy is reduced.

For example, a proposal has been made to implement a “fee market”, which would offer incentives to miners in the form of higher fees for processing transactions. This could help to ensure that miners remain incentivized to process transactions even after the block subsidy is cut in half. Additionally, there are also solutions based on scaling that could help to reduce the cost of processing transactions and increase the overall security of the network.

Ultimately, these topics should be discussed openly and in a manner that allows for a thorough understanding of the potential implications for Bitcoin’s security budget. Bitcoin miners play an essential role in ensuring the safety and security of the network, and it is important to ensure that they are adequately incentivized to do so. With the right solutions in place, there is reason to believe that the security budget of Bitcoin will be more than sufficient, even post block subsidy.

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