Some miners at OCEAN have began making use of the Coin Age Precedence algorithm throughout block template building utilizing DATUM. Initially, Bitcoin Core initially chosen transactions to incorporate in blocks primarily based on what they’d seen first of their mempool. This logic was ultimately changed by prioritizing older cash, i.e. that had been sitting round unspent longer, over different cash. This was ultimately solely utilized to a small portion of the blockspace, after which ultimately finished away with completely across the time of Segwit. It’s nonetheless maintained in Bitcoin Knots.
I can solely speculate as to the motives of the miners doing this, however given OCEAN’s rhetoric I can guess that it has one thing to do with prioritizing “financial” transactions over others. Even when not, even whether it is purely to assist small worth UTXO house owners, it’s nonetheless each bit as irrational.
You’ll be able to partition blockspace as a miner nonetheless you need, and prioritize ordering of transactions nonetheless you would like inside these partitions, however it doesn’t change the truth that blockspace is a fungible good being valued on an open market. If standards aside from the feerate are used to determine which transactions to incorporate, you’ll go away cash on the desk. The one scenario the place that may not be true is one the place these standards had been 1:1 equivalent to deciding primarily based on feerate, which might be a meaningless standards.
Making a subsection of blockspace chosen for by different standards in the end accomplishes two issues: 1) leaving cash on the desk as a miner, as definitionally any significant non-feerate standards leads to gathering much less charges, and a couple of) create a bucket of blockspace submitted to aggressive “fee” pressures in response to no matter totally different standards is used, with none of that stress creating direct income will increase for miners utilizing this new standards.
The brand new subsection of blockspace doesn’t in the end cut back charge stress, it merely leaves them making much less cash and customers making the most of this new transaction choice standards subjected to totally different aggressive pressures miners don’t instantly profit from.
You’ll be able to’t cover from the truth that blockspace is a fungible good priced on the open market. You’ll be able to settle for that, or you’ll be able to lose cash. The one various is to futilely attempt to censor lessons of transactions you don’t like, and when you occur to succeed, you destroy a core property of Bitcoin within the course of.
Mining staying decentralized, extensively distributed with many small operators, is important for Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. It’s a disgrace to see indicators like this of such smaller miners being economically irrational, on condition that it has enormous implications for his or her success long run.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are completely the writer’s and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
