Risks of Mining Pool Centralization | Jimmy Song, Center of Hash E008

Jimmy Song, author of Programming Bitcoin, discusses the importance of more miners participating directly in the peer-to-peer network and the risks of bitcoin mining pool centralization, including how centralization in mining pools could enable censorship of bitcoin transactions and how it might also enable changes to the network’s rules that would otherwise be far more difficult, ranging from scenarios that cover mempool policy (e.g. OP Return filter) as well as consensus changes, in both softfork and hardfork scenarios.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
jimmy thanks for doing this topic of the day is mining centralization but before we get there

(00:10):
i want to quiz you just went down the street to cooper's got brisket i want you to guess
what the current price of brisket per pound is at cooper's it's downtown prime location
austin which obviously oh yeah obviously um

(00:31):
um
very popular around here i'm gonna guess 32.99
39.50 what yeah do you have any recollection we've been going to cooper's for a long time
around bit devs do you have any recollection of the earliest price you would have remembered

(00:52):
at Cooper's. Well, Cooper's didn't open until like five years ago.
No, it's been at least 2018. Okay. So seven years ago, something like that. Yeah. But, um,
I want to say like 2299 was maybe like the earliest I can remember.
The lowest I saw when I started going there more frequently when I started Unchained,

(01:16):
which would have been 2018, 1799.
Yeah.
I remember when I first moved to Austin, I went to Rudy's.
I think it was like 629 or something.
Yeah.
This was 2012.
It's just amazing.
I've triggered a number of people carrying the torch on safe's ribeye as an inflation index.

(01:41):
and I'm conditioned to the increase in prices.
And even at Cooper's, I think I went and I saw it at $33 or $34,
but there was something about that $39.50.
And I know that I've seen it, you know,
back in time at the same location, $17.99, more than a hundred percent.

(02:03):
Well, you know, in Bitcoin terms, that's actually quite cheap now,
like compared to that.
I saw a tweet that you put out about something that you were looking to purchase, seeing that it was some amount more expensive and then realized that it was cheaper in Bitcoin terms.
And it is true that that brisket is still cheaper in Bitcoin terms.

(02:25):
Way cheaper.
The dollar inflation still hits.
It does.
Still hits.
It does.
Start paying attention, freaks.
But all right, on to the real topic of the day, mining centralization.
And specifically, we're going to get into pool, mining pool centralization.

(02:48):
Explain in your words the relationship between Bitcoin miners and mining pools, just to set some context.
Right. So the reason why pools exist in the first place is because you want variance reduction.
If you have a tiny amount of hash rate, you have whatever hash rate you have divided by the global hash rate percentage chance of finding the next block.

(03:14):
It's obviously not going to be very much.
And instead of waiting for the one jackpot hit, if you will, you can pull all of your resources and split it equally.
That's what a mining pool is supposed to be.
Unfortunately, the first design of mining pool stuff uses something called Stratum V1.

(03:39):
And this is where the mining pool tells everybody, hey, here's the block you have to mine, including this output address that goes to the pool and will do the splitting up afterwards.
And that means that the pool essentially acts as the block template constructor.
and in fact for any member of the pool they don't have to run a node at all they just have to

(04:03):
take the template modify it in whatever way to roll the nonce or whatever and just
hash until they find the block right or find really what they do is they find shares and
submit those shares and if the pool if they find a block then it gets spread equally that's the

(04:24):
idea behind pools. And that's how it's more or less executed. But, you know, one of the things
that makes it kind of bad is that the pool operator gets to decide what goes into each block.
And that means that there's a centralized block production industrial complex, if you will.

(04:47):
There's only maybe 15 pools that have something like 95% of the hash rate that are running
stratum v1.
I think Brain's pool, they run stratum v2.
Ocean obviously runs datum.

(05:07):
And then there's like CK solo pool, and they make it so that you can mine solo and decide
on your template yourself.
But they take up, I believe, less than 5%.
So 95% of hash rate essentially is controlled by like 16 pool operators.

(05:29):
And we know that some of them have like economic, you know, interest in the other.
So it's probably more like 10 at the most, right?
Like entities.
Yeah.
And so you mentioned that like most Bitcoin miners, if they're working with a centralized
pool are not running their own node they don't have to no um and that when they

(05:53):
are performing work say on site where they're consuming power and running the bitcoin hashing
algorithm they're basically their their primary communication channel is back through the pool
they they send the pool all of their work and then not only does their work go back through the pool

(06:14):
and the pool does the accounting of how much work all the miners participating in their pool do,
but then the money goes directly to the pool and then-
They have to get paid out.
And the pools pay out the miners.
Right. It's a big trust relationship, honestly, because every hasher, right?

(06:36):
We shouldn't call these people that are participating in a pool,
not really running their own nodes or constructing blocks.
like any, uh, an actual miner, they're not really mining as much as they are hashing.
The mining pools are mining because they're constructing their own blocks. Um, but that's,
they, they have to have, um, this big trust relationship because the pool does the payout.

(07:00):
Right. Um, and you know, they, I, I believe I used to mine a long time ago and I, I was like,
okay, how do I even verify that this is the amount that I'm owed? Or like, how do you,
know because they need to figure out how many shares you submitted and so on and basically share
is like something that doesn't quite meet the proof of work but is very still very difficult

(07:25):
that you can prove hey I did this much work and so the pool pays based on that that is uh it's kind
of like it's a big trust relationship it's a bit of a mess because of that yeah and then also just
for context before we discuss the consequences of centralization provide your view of the context

(07:50):
of the function that the miners are providing to the aggregate network yeah they're making it so
that it's very hard to go backwards right the blockchain is adding blocks and not going backwards
In order to subvert any transaction that's included in a block, then you not only have to do at least the equivalent amount of work, proof of work wise, but if there are blocks on top of it, you have to do the proof of work of all those blocks as well.

(08:26):
So it ends up being a security measure to not quite finalize a transaction, but make it very difficult to reverse it.
Right. Like nothing is ever final in theory. You could, if you had like, uh, you know, if you were
God, for example, you can, you can make like transit, uh, like blocks all the way going back

(08:51):
to the Genesis blockchain, uh, Genesis block and just, you know, like, uh, wipe out everything,
uh, at least according to the rules of the software. Um, but you know, that's, uh, but you
get very good like assurance of finality based on proof of work rather than you know somebody's
trust me bro assurances or something like that yeah and two i think it was two episodes ago

(09:16):
pierre and i did a deep dive on the difficulty adjustment and difficulty target and we asked
or not we estimated but the the number that we were working on was that there was approximately
20 gigawatts of power securing the bitcoin network somewhere probably between 20 and 25 gigawatts but
that on average it would require 20 to 25 gigawatts of power running probabilistically to

(09:40):
solve the next block in 10 minutes and that in order to effectively undo history or undo
potential transactions that were already settled it would require that much power just you know
it would be possible probabilistically for someone to do less work just based on luck but on average

(10:00):
it would be that much work 10 minutes just to rewrite the past block and then if you were
talking about undoing two blocks to your point of nothing's technically final but practically
speaking the more work that's being done the more work is required to undo a previously valid
transaction and that it's a principal function to ensuring transaction finality in the bitcoin

(10:23):
Yeah. And it makes it a lot harder. Everything else in sort of like the fiat world is based on, okay, well, we're going to say this is final by convention or something like that. This actually requires energy. And that sort of component is very unique and gives it sort of like a solidness that almost nothing else financial really has.

(10:51):
yeah and that is something that i want to talk about as well this this dynamic of
and you drew the distinction between hashing versus mining but that the participants that
are actually doing the work are the hashers or the miners the mining pools themselves are not

(11:12):
the ones that are actually consuming energy but they're this principal point of centralization
that hash rate is fairly well distributed,
but then everything centralizes
at the point of creating blocks
or putting the set of transactions together
that are going to be proposed,
say in the next block to the network,

(11:33):
as well as managing all the payouts.
And you talked a little bit about the number of pools
that represent different percentages
based on when I look at it,
boundary represents about 30 percent antpool is 14 but there's a number of other pools
that are working off of the same templates as antpool when you add up what people believe those

(11:58):
proxies to be boundary and amp pool are 55 the top five are 70 and then the top six
or seven are 90% of the network.
What do you see as the principal risks
of specifically mining pool centralization

(12:19):
to the Bitcoin network?
Well, if you have block construction
outsourced to only a few entities,
then they can do cartel-like behavior.
They can do all sorts of things, right?
Like they can just say, for example, if they had, I don't know, 95% or something like that,

(12:45):
they could literally extort the network if they wanted to.
They could just say, hey, if you want a transaction, you have to pay us $500 per transaction.
We're not going to include anything else.
And that could be cartel-like behavior, right?
And they could enforce it if they sort of agree with it.
Are there problems with cartels and like defections and so on?

(13:06):
But that's something that they could do.
And, you know, not only that, but, you know, they can let in whatever transaction that they want and not what, you know, like what the rest of the network is trying to get in and so on.
They couldn't, I mean, if in any point of centralization, you can sort of restrict things in ways that aren't optimal for the network to grow and so on.

(13:40):
So say those like five or six entities decide at some point we don't like lightning.
It's taking away a lot of our fees.
So any lightning transaction, we're just going to filter.
Right.
And that's a scenario that could happen, in which case, like, they're hoping that if people can't use Lightning or open channels with Lightning and so on, then people have to come on chain, which would increase the fees and increase their revenue, something like that.

(14:14):
There's a couple different scenarios there.
And let's talk about it on either side.
Let's say there's a scenario where a cartel of miners got together and said, there's going to be 22 million Bitcoin.
What happens and why is that unrealistic?
Yeah, that's unrealistic because that would require hard work.

(14:37):
So that...
But just walk through those dynamics.
Right, right.
So say they want to do that, then they would have to change their software.
in which case, you know, they, I don't know what the emission schedule would be.
If it the same as Bitcoin up until a certain point then it stay more or less unchanged right Like until the point at which the emission schedule changes So currently the emission schedule is 3 every 10 minutes If they start saying okay instead of 3

(15:09):
we're going to make it five, right? For, for right now, then it would be an immediate hard fork,
at which point they're not hashing Bitcoin anymore. They're hashing Bitcoin miner or whatever
it is. And there would be two versions of the blockchain and they would, they would never come
back together because they're it's a hard fork it they're very very different and uh and it would

(15:32):
probably uh slow down the bitcoin network quite a bit because a lot of hashing power effectively
has left but that means that um you know the difficulty adjustment after a month or two would
probably you know make it so that you know the transactions go through in a reasonable time again
or more mining comes online like uh you know equipment that has been like mothballed somewhere

(15:58):
maybe comes online and you get hash rate that way um but ultimately you just have two separate
tokens right it would and it would be effectively the same as the 2017 yeah yeah you would it would
feel like an airdrop yeah everyone has the same amount of bitcoin a and minor forked bitcoin b

(16:22):
and people that and then the market would determine which one they'd rather want to hold
and then the hash rate would logically follow because of economic pressure eventually yeah
Yeah.
But then you also brought up the scenario of censorship.

(16:43):
And there might be one version of censorship in terms of not validating, say, Bitcoin from, let's just say, an OFAC-sanctioned address.
Yeah, that's a more salient one, yeah.
And there's two different scenarios.
There's ones where they just won't mine it.

(17:04):
and if enough of the cartel is together and agreed the transaction just doesn't get mined
but then if there's a scenario where they hard-coded something into their software to say
any bitcoin from this address is actually invalid talk about the differences between those two

(17:26):
different scenarios because like one would create a fork versus one would just basically try to
carding you off from the network yeah uh so if they if they just never mind the transactions that
are from olfax sanctions list then that wouldn't really affect the network that much other than for
the person that has that address obviously um like blocks would still be valid to every node and so on

(17:52):
um if you suddenly said you know transactions from this are uh this address are now invalid
then someone as long as that such a transaction shows up on the network you would have an instant
hard fork because the software that says this is invalid would would deny that block and the

(18:16):
software that says it is valid would continue to you know build on it now that that would be
weird because in a in a sense i think that would be a soft work because it's a tightening of the
rules. So in that case, like the mining cartel would actually have the advantage in the sense that

(18:37):
if they did that, said, okay, transactions from these 17 addresses are invalid,
it would be a tightening of the rules. And if they ever overtake,
you know, the chain that had the transaction from that address in it, then all of the other

(19:00):
nodes that have built on it,
you have wipeout risk basically,
because if the chain is longer with the miners,
then everybody else would have to take it,
but it's not the reverse.
It would be a soft work.
I'm envisioning this here,
although even that I expect to be unlikely
would be someone like the US government saying,

(19:21):
hey, here's this set of lists
that we deem to be enemies of the state.
more than just filtering the transactions
if you were to mine
these transactions then
you are going to be
or if it's in your blockchain then we're going to

(19:42):
be liable
even if somebody else mined it then you couldn't mine on top
of it if your software
said anything from this
address is invalid
that
Do you think that that's a realistic scenario?
I suppose it's possible.

(20:02):
And who knows what bureaucrats think of.
But I mean, it's a way to pressure a centralized entity.
And the thing is, when a centralized entity exists, then you can sort of choke it and bend it to your will, which is sort of the scenario you're more broadly describing.

(20:24):
And then maybe talk about it or in a scenario where it exists today,
where say six or seven miners control 90% of the hash rate versus a more
distributed set of circumstances,
why it would or why it would or would not be more likely to be successful if it

(20:49):
were attempted.
Yeah.
So if you,
if you do it with like six or seven miners,
pretty easy,
right?
you go to them and like give them, you know, whatever legal notice or whatever,
and their lawyers get involved and they stop mining or whatever.
It's a lot more like, that's a lot more likely to be successful
than if you had like a thousand miners distributed all over the world.

(21:12):
You have no idea where they are, who they are, why, you know,
what equipment they use or where, like, how are you even going to serve them?
Like, okay, you're not allowed to do this or whatever.
And even if you've deemed that they're enemies of the state or whatever,
how are you even going to find out where they are and all that?

(21:35):
So it becomes sort of like that nightmare scenario that we talk about in Bitcoin.
What happens if the government bans Bitcoin?
Like, yeah, what would happen?
I'm not entirely sure, but I think a lot of the mining would be outside of the jurisdiction that banned it.

(21:58):
And, yeah, like it's a lot harder, obviously, when it's decentralized than when it's centralized.
what are so then what about a scenario where it wasn't something as clearly obvious like
increasing the fixed supply of from 21 million to something greater in that

(22:21):
creating a hard fork but some other change to the network that
maybe discuss like a scenario where it's a soft fork,
but not something that's like as overt.
Cause like in the,
in the scenario where they change the fixed supply,

(22:42):
that's obviously so core to the economic incentives of the network that the
network splits in two and everyone that holds Bitcoin on either chain ultimately
would decide very quickly what's valuable and what's not, but what are other potential scenarios
that are maybe not as overt that you think about in terms of just the risks of changes to the rules?

(23:09):
Yeah. Good question. Um, I think the one you laid out about like the old fact list,
maybe that one's too obvious, but, um, I, I'm going to reverse sort of like the child porn thing
that's being discussed online about what happens with that.
What if the government says, okay, well, if it's in the blockchain,

(23:32):
then it's illegal or something like that.
And anyone who mines it is going to be deemed in possession or something.
Then you kind of have the reverse scenario where every miner
is going to avoid that, like the plague.
And they might actually adopt like knots or something just so they can avoid that legal liability or something like that.

(23:58):
Well, I mean, it seemingly gets into that scenario of do you filter or if it was something like that, it would seem like it would potentially need to be hard coded.
And the only defense of that is hash rate distribution where it's not credible.
and if it's not credible then it's less likely to be attempted um but maybe you also draw the

(24:24):
distinction between because it is current to the debate and i don't want to go super deep into
opportun and have this just become a conversation about the opportun filter but discuss the the
difference between non-consensus or like maybe three vectors non-consensus rule like a relay

(24:47):
policy a consensus rule that creates a hard fork versus a consensus rule that creates a software
we talked about one scenario that would create a software being more restrictive but just talk like
maybe talk about each one of those and how they're different in relation to each other and then where
you know what might or might not be an area of greater or less risk yeah so consensus rules

(25:13):
there there's a bunch of them but the main ones that you know are like the fact that
you have a 21 million limit that's the result of the emission schedule which is having every four
years right that and that's specific to the coinbase transaction there are specific rules about

(25:33):
how the coinbase transaction needs to look and so on that have been encoded into Bitcoin since the
beginning. And there's a lot of consensus rules, including the block size limit and number of
signature operations and things like that. There's, you know, like different opcodes and what they do.

(25:56):
A lot of them did nothing, but they were changed so that it would be backwards compatible and so on.
So there's a whole bunch of things that every node checks for consensus validity.
And it has to pass all of those for a block to be considered valid.
And for a block to be considered valid, every transaction within the block has to be considered valid as well.

(26:21):
And within each transaction, every opcode and everything has to resolve a particular way.
Otherwise, it's considered valid.
And if you have an invalid transaction or, you know, invalid input signature or invalid anything, basically the entire block is invalid.
So that's the consensus rule.

(26:44):
And if you tighten the consensus rules just a little bit, that's called a soft work.
And if you loosen the consensus rules, like with the block size increase in 2017, that would have been loosening because there was a consensus rule that said blocks have to be one megabyte.

(27:05):
And, you know, people, particularly businesses that didn't really want to write all this segue code, you know, let's just make it into two.
But then that would have been a hard fork because every node that thinks that one megabyte is the limit is going to reject anything bigger than that.
So that's what a hard fork is.

(27:26):
A soft fork would be like shrinking it, right?
Because if it's 500,000 bytes, then that's still under a megabyte.
And actually that was like a proposal for a long time because we weren't developing a feed market or whatever.
so those those are two examples and originally if i'm just to use that as an example originally

(27:48):
there was not a cap or was there there there wasn't and then uh i believe satoshi put it in
there as a way to um like uh prevent trolling because at the time like bitcoin was just so cheap
so you could like potentially create these really really large blocks and like just kind of ruin

(28:11):
Bitcoin, like a four gigabyte block or something like that. Right. And yeah, decided to put it in
there as sort of like an anti denial of service measure. And so, and I think, you know, in my view
that having on that point, like having some fixed space, not just on a denial of service, but

(28:34):
it ensures that in concert with the fixed supply that there's scarcity of block space which
should ensure the integrity of the system to have a
e-market to actually pay bitcoin miners after the 21 million supply cap is exhausted or issue

(28:54):
and schedule but to hone in on the example of okay there's a one megabyte block in 2017
certain participants in the network including miners proposed a two megabyte block in that
scenario everyone that was looking at the rules saying a block cannot be larger than one megabytes

(29:14):
would have instantly invalidated any block that was greater and that is what we call what's
referred to as a hard fork a split in the network but in a scenario where someone using the other
example you provided said hey we're going to propose a set of rules that say everything
it's only valid if it's over if it's under half a megabyte

(29:39):
if everybody else continues to mine one megabyte blocks is that would be invalid to the software
but it more restrictive so it doesn immediately create a fork it could create a It could if you if you had somebody mind a 750 byte block then it would be valid on one and invalid on the other

(30:07):
That's where a fork happens.
So just talk about some of those incentives in terms of likelihood
because of, you know, it would seem that it's difficult to affect a hard fork
because you'd immediately fork off the network.
But with a soft fork, even there would generally need to be wide consensus because of the possibility that someone continues to mine on the old set of rules and what those consequences would be.

(30:36):
Yeah. So in a hard fork, you know, you just sort of go your separate ways, right? You never merge back or anything like that. With a soft fork, you have this weird possibility where one side has the advantage. If they're ever longer than the other, then the other side kind of has to take it.
So the way that works is that people running the old software might have a transaction that's valid to them, but is invalid to the new set of rules.

(31:09):
That would cause a fork.
but if uh if at any time the new set of rules the length the total amount of work proof of work done
on it is greater than the total amount of proof of work done on the other chain on the old chain
then the old chain just takes the all the blocks of the new chain right it's what you call a wipe

(31:34):
out where all the blocks that you constructed just go away.
Right.
And this is why whenever you have a software, you want a big majority on the new side so
that you don't get wipeouts like that, which would be like from a user experience standpoint,

(31:56):
like a nightmare.
because you think you've, you know,
deposited some amount of Bitcoin to Kraken or something,
and then, you know, it gets wiped out.
It basically reverts back to the address
that it was previously in.
Yeah.
You don't necessarily lose Bitcoin,
but it could have significant consequences

(32:17):
for anyone that's doing real commerce.
Yeah, yeah.
It would just, it would be a long,
you you would basically going be going backwards in the blockchain and then going up like another
path and it would be and those scenarios like um i know the developers spend a lot of time like just
trying to figure out what to do in those situations because they're uh rare but they're very very

(32:43):
disruptive so try to avoid them as much as we can and then you know i want to come back to the
soft work idea in terms of a change of consensus rules, but then talk about it in relation to
something like a relay policy that's outside of the consensus rules.

(33:04):
Yeah. So relay policy is, uh, is really about the peer to peer network. And the way Satoshi
designed it is that transactions go from node to node and whoever happens to be the miner,
You know, they, they construct a block based on these transactions that are sort of gossiped onto the network.
And what I mean by gossip is everyone tells everybody about everything that they know.

(33:29):
That if you do that for absolutely everything, then you kind of get some bad scenarios.
You get denial of service factor.
So if you have enormous transactions, right, that are constantly coming in and they're, say, like, you know, very low fees or something like that, they can kind of take down your node because you're, you know, it's filling up your memory and so on and your mempool.

(33:55):
so you know relay policy tends to be different than the consensus rules and a little more
restrictive because there are valid transactions but a lot of them like you don't know what they
mean right like that will explain that valid based on consent the consensus rules but but you don't

(34:15):
so right now for example there's a version field in transaction uh there are i believe three
versions that are allowed right now. I think one is version one is what it began with. Version two
is if you're using check sequence verify, which I think was introduced like, I don't know,
seven or eight years ago. So I forget exactly. And then version three is more recent. I think it's

(34:39):
something to do with mempool policy, but it's like some, some, some, there are three versions
that are valid or that are, uh, that are known right by everybody. Um, version four could be
valid at some point. I like could mean something at some point, but it's still perfectly valid as
a transaction. But if you don't know what it means, it's like, okay, this is probably a mistake.

(35:03):
You just sort of like, don't relay it. Um, even if it's a valid transaction, um, there are lots
of things like that. Like, uh, there, there's something called the taproot annex and it's a
field that's there so that, you know, upgrades can happen on the taproot script, for example.
But it's not supposed to be used. So the relay policy says, okay, if there is a taproot annex,

(35:30):
we don't know what it means yet, right? So don't, don't relay it, right? In which case it doesn't
get relayed, but it's valid to put stuff into there. And there have been transactions bind with
a taproot annex in it. And lots of, lots of little things like that, where as a node, you,

(35:50):
when you're relaying stuff, you kind of want to know what the transaction means before you relay it.
And yeah, if, if it doesn't make sense to you, then like why waste the bandwidth and uploading,
you know, uploading it to other nodes and so on. So that, that's kind of the idea of the relay
policy is that you want to know about stuff but there are things that are legal in the blockchain

(36:17):
but that you don't valid yeah that that are technically legal but isn't necessarily like
something that you want it's like um it's a lot like the distinction between legality and morality
sometimes right like where you know something is technically legal but it's like morally dubious
right like um like as a node sometimes you want to just like filter for those things because you

(36:44):
you can have transactions with all kinds of stuff in it that uh that are technically legal but like
that would are you when you say legal you're talking about valid based on consensus rules
right right so like having a uh transaction version that's four or greater right like
the versions are there so that you can hint to um you know the software hey this is what's in it

(37:12):
but a lot of that hasn't been like invented yet right like uh like version two didn't exist
until check sequence verify and it was there so that you know there would be a clear distinction
between version one and version two it's like version two there's a code path that says okay
And now you got to go check the sequence field and figure out the relative time lock for this for this transaction.

(37:37):
And version one is like you don't have to worry about the sequence field.
Right. So you don't have to go through all of this logic.
That's that was like a flag or something like that.
And that that's very useful for the software.
And if it's sort of creating, uh, you know, it's adding meaning to something that doesn't exist yet, then, you know, it's just kind of polluting the, um, the blockchain with like bad meaning, if that makes sense.

(38:09):
Right. It's, uh, um, how can I put this? It's kind of like a, like a spelling error or something
like that. That's, that, that's how I would consider it almost. And it's like, okay, yeah,
don't like, it's either a mistake or somebody doing something malicious. So it's not really
worth relaying something like that. And so, and I think that's one of the areas where,

(38:32):
when it comes to specifically the relay policy,
which is every node in the network
is deciding what they want to relay and not.
And that there's a distinction
between consensus valid transactions
and a node deciding,

(38:54):
and that could be an individual or a business,
deciding what they do
and don't want to broadcast to every one of their peers
that they're connected to
based on all the transactions that they're seeing
on some rules-based.
When it comes to mining centralization
and pool centralization specifically,

(39:21):
if in the scenario where,
say, the sixth or seventh largest pool,
because what's currently being proposed
without, again, getting too into the substance of the debate,
increasing the op return limit, using the example of the day,
if the largest six or seven pools decide that this is something that they want,

(39:41):
can they effectively force that onto the network?
And then what are the consequences of it?
Yeah, I think they kind of can, right?
And that's kind of the point that Libre Relay was making,
is that as long as they get the transactions themselves,
they can mine them.

(40:03):
And LibreRelay is like a node
that specifically connects to these miners
and sends them the large op return transactions.
And if they put it into a block
and it's legal or valid,
then everyone else takes them.
And then that's it.

(40:24):
the problem here is that because of minor centralization you have these known nodes
that are constructing the block so there aren't that many probably like 16 like i said
nodes that if you reach probably any one of them or a good number of them then you're going to get

(40:46):
that transaction mind, like, you know, if it has enough fees and so on, then, uh, then
they put it into a block and everyone sort of has to follow it.
Right.
That's, that's the main, um, main thing that they could do.
Uh, but if you had a distributed, um, mining system, then you don't know where all the

(41:10):
miners are and you're forced to rely on the P2P network to do the distribution.
that still doesn't take very much for these transactions to go out to everybody right if
there's something called the percolation threshold and that's based on like how many connections each
node makes to other other nodes but i think the average number of nodes are the number of

(41:36):
connections that a node has is something like 10 in which case the percolation threshold i think
it's 10%. So if more than 10% of the network relays a particular type of transaction, then it's going
to be known by everybody pretty much. And that, that graph is pretty steep right around 10%. So
it's like almost zero at like 9% and then like almost certain by like 12%, something like that.

(42:02):
So that, that's just how the math works out with network stuff and gossip protocols and stuff like
that. So, you know, and, you know, Peter Todd, I think has figured out ways to connect Libre relay
nodes to other Libre relay nodes to make sure that the percolation happens a lot more reliably.

(42:26):
In which case I think you need even less. So it'll get to a lot of stuff, even with a small number,
But the bigger thing is that each miner decides what to actually put in.
And some of them may be economically motivated, right?
Like this is sort of the argument that a lot of core people have been saying is that, oh, you know, if they can make five more cents, they'll totally do it.

(42:53):
Well, I mean, that's not exactly taking in all the costs.
We were talking before the show about the cost to a NOTS miner, right?
Like if you're running NOTS and mining, the risk that you have is that it takes longer

(43:14):
for a previous block to get to you because you don't have those transactions in there
yet, right?
And this is what a lot of core devs are saying is like compact relay is broken.
Yeah, well, compact relay depends on you having some of those transactions for the next block already in your mempool.
And if you don't have them, then you have to now take time to go and get them.

(43:35):
So if a block has a bunch of transactions that you don't have in your mempool, then it takes you longer, which means that, say, you have like a three-second delay.
That's like half a percent of the entire time that you could be mining, right?
Like, uh, like given like a 10 minute block, that's like half a percent of 10 minutes.

(43:57):
So, uh, you know, you, you, you'd be sort of like losing money, but like, it's kind of
a double-edged sword.
It also hurts the miner that mine that block, because if the compact block relay is kind
of broken for them, then whenever they mine that block, then there's orphan risk for them

(44:18):
Because in those, you know, in the extra time that it takes for the block to propagate, then other miners might find the block, in which case now you're in a race and you might, you might lose.
So there's, the way I would describe that particular dynamic is it's what's called a costly punishment.

(44:41):
I'm punishing myself as a way to punish you, right?
Like, and if you're not taking in some of this stuff, then I'm giving you a little bit
of orphan risk, but I'm also giving myself a little bit of orphan risk.
And it like kind of a game of chicken almost Right So that one thing as it relates to the relay policy And part of what I trying to frame is the distinction between the relay policy and consensus And I want to come back to consensus to talk about some of the implications

(45:10):
One of my primary issues with the way that this specific change is being proposed is the recognition that functionally six or seven nodes in the network, the large mining pools, can determine what's best for the network.

(45:34):
which if
say you took that six or seven
mining pools that represent
90% of the hash rate
and you said there's a hundred
mining pools and they all have 1%
of the hash rate and
if 90%
of
90 out of 100 rather than

(45:55):
7 out of 7 all decided that
something was best there'd be a greater
assurance that
there really was consensus
over
well it wouldn't be consensus but
not consensus rules but a rough consensus of the relay policy
and that
part of the way that I see Bitcoin's value

(46:15):
is that it's purpose built
to be difficult to change
it should be difficult to change the relay policy
or at least what the
rough consensus of the network is it should be even harder
to change consensus rules which it is
but that basically the centralization creates a scenario where um and changing the the relay

(46:45):
policy could create a scenario where either just the six or seven largest blocks or sorry miners
mining pools get to decide but then what precedent it sets for the future of how changes get made
and so i think like there's a scenario where hey if it's if it's six or seven mining pools that

(47:07):
control 90 do they just have to functionally bring everyone along because if it was more
distributed someone might propose a change and if it wasn't adopted it would create risk for all
miners and then they would regravitate around there being a rough consensus and relay policy
which to me seems to be lost a lot in in this specific conversation is they're actually valued

(47:28):
to the network of there being rough consensus and relay policy to reduce risk.
Yeah.
I mean, it would of course be nice if, you know, every node behaved the same way or something
like that, because then it would, it would make stuff like compact block relay much easier.
But I think more than sort of like miners doing that, I think the bigger risk is actually

(47:53):
coders doing that, developers doing that.
where they get to decide things for the network.
Miners, for the most part, I think we saw in 2017,
they just want to know what the rest of the network wants,
and then they kind of do it and make the most money they can within those limits.

(48:18):
And, you know, I put out a tweet a while back.
I think they would fold like cheap chairs if there was any sort of like orphan risk or anything, right?
like for their business.
They're all kind of fragile anyway.
They're almost all fiat businesses
taking out way too many loans
or issuing bonds or something like that
and needing to pay stuff off.

(48:41):
The bigger risk, I think,
comes from the developers
where if they get to set this relay policy
against the wishes of a lot of plebs, right?
A lot of users.
then can they do that with a soft work, right?
A contentious one.

(49:03):
Yeah, and I think that that's actually where I want to go.
Before we get there,
because I want to discuss that scenario specifically,
is I just want to talk about a scenario
where say 90% of miners,
because in this scenario,
the developers, they're just proposing a new relay policy.
Miners still have to run it.

(49:24):
And in this context,
node runners they might not want to relay transactions but they're going to accept
the transactions as valid and that the stakeholders most of consequence in this debate are miners
because are they going to propagate the transactions and are they going to mine the

(49:48):
transactions and so the developers are just proposing a rule but again in that scenario
where if there were 100 different miners,
each with 1%,
part of what I think about is,
would they even propose it?
Because it would be harder to game theory
what 100 interests might decide
and they're more likely being 40% going one way,

(50:12):
60% going another,
and it's creating propagation issues in a real way.
Because my understanding of that is,
if you've seen a transaction and you store it,
but you don't pass it on,
it's actually very quick
if you see a valid block to validate it.
That the real issue is
if you've never seen the transaction

(50:32):
and you don't have it stored somewhere
on your node, even if you haven't.
Then you have to go ask somebody.
Yeah, then you have to go ask somebody
and that's the scenario where there can be
some delay.
Some delay.
And it's also what then will cause
there to be gravitation
around a rough consensus and relay policy
because it's not in the interest really
of any miners
to have their blocks potentially be orphaned.

(50:54):
Right.
And that's the, you know, costly punishment aspect of it
is that like a lot of people are like,
oh, you know, it's completely useless to run knots or whatever.
But if you're a miner that's running knots,
even if it's a small amount,
you're adding just a little bit of orphan risk

(51:18):
to the miners that are mining spam.
Right. So that that's.
But is that true if they're in the minority versus if they're in the majority?
Yeah. I mean, you're still hurting them. Right. Because even if you have one percent of the hash rate, you might still find something.
Like that's that's always a risk. Even if it's a very tiny risk, it's still a risk.

(51:39):
And it's a risk to yourself, too, because it takes longer for your blocks to propagate.
Right. That's why I call it a costly punishment. You're punishing yourself, but you're also punishing everybody else.
that, uh, the miner that created that block, which is why, like, you know, the, the sort of
line that I've heard over and over again is, oh yeah, it's completely useless to run knots. What

(51:59):
are you doing? Right. Like you're, you're not really changing anything. Well, actually, if you're
even running like a little bid X at home, right, you're mining. And if you're, you know, doing it
in a decentralized way or whatever, you're kind of at least making it a little bit more risky for
a big miner to include transactions that you haven't seen because they might get orphaned.

(52:27):
And I mean, I don't think any of them really act until they actually are orphaned and the
probabilities are small enough where, you know, it might not happen for quite a while.
but once it does then they're gonna be like okay we just lost like four million dollars right like
what are we gonna do because four hundred thousand or yeah whatever the you know current block thing

(52:47):
is uh yeah four hundred thousand like why why uh why take that risk let's just uh do that um so
in a way it's uh i think game theoretically like useful um to sort of even punish yourself even a
even if it's, uh, if there's like very little probability of succeeding, uh, like collectively

(53:13):
it ends up actually starting to matter. Yeah. And I think, you know, coming back to
what's, I think of greatest consequence here is that, or at least in my framing and thinking is
that I wouldn't expect even in this scenario, say the seven largest mining pools that represent

(53:35):
90% to adopt a new version of Bitcoin core that they think would hurt the
network.
Their interests is aligned.
And I even wouldn't think that the Bitcoin core developers are proposing a
rule that they think would harm the network.
I generally,
you know,
my own opinions,
I generally view that they think that it's the best interest network.

(53:58):
Where I still see a concern though,
is when there's a shockingly few number of people,
there's always,
like in my view,
There's always risk to change because there's an unknown.
There's an unknown of what incentives are opened up.
And the fiat world is 200 times larger than the Bitcoin world.
There's a lot of fiat incentives that are unpredictable.

(54:21):
And that so long as there's great distribution and decentralization in decision making,
if there's overwhelming adoption of something that's proposed,
even as something which I think is discounted in terms of the relay policy
because it's not a consensus rule,
those smaller number of actors might be making a decision

(54:43):
that they think is in their own interest and the best interest of the network
that actually could have unintended consequences.
And if there were more participants participating in that rough consensus,
even if something like a relay policy,
there would be a greater insurance if it was overwhelming that it actually
made sense.

(55:06):
Now let's take it to another one of my concerns,
which you raised is if this sets a precedent on the relay,
but then something similar happens with a contentious software.
Like if you could lay out, you brought that scenario up.

(55:26):
So lay out something tangible and how that might play out.
Yeah.
So the thing that really bothers me about this particular op return thing, I don't think
that change is all that big of a deal.
We still have like the block size limit and stuff like that to limit spam.
So ultimately it's going to get priced out by economic transactions in the end anyway.

(55:50):
I mean, maybe in between we suffer a little because blocks are a little bloated or something,
But ultimately, I think it's a problem that solves itself.
So I'm not too concerned about the actual change itself.
What I am concerned about is the process, which currently is, hey, we're the developers.

(56:12):
And we're going to, even though there's a whole bunch of people in the community that don't like this change, we're going to go ahead with it anyway.
and there have been several sort of like justifications for that one is hey if you don't
like it just go run some other client and then as soon as you start running another client hey

(56:33):
that client is so stupid you shouldn't you shouldn't run it right like that's yeah it's
like kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth and that's that's to me like a very fiat
political tactic of hey uh if you don't like it then don't do it but not like that right like it's
it's just kind of closing off all doors because we're the technical experts. It's, um, which is,

(56:55):
you know, basically how they push the VAX among other things. Uh, so I, uh, I don't like the
tactics that are being used to do that. And I don't like that. They basically push this change
through, um, more or less forcefully without, without really listening to community feedback,

(57:16):
which suggests to me that this may happen again.
Right.
And just on that point,
which is if you say,
hey, if you don't like it,
because that's the idea.
It's like, hey, developers are just posing code.
There's no auto updates in Bitcoin,
certainly not in Bitcoin core.
So anybody who runs it
would have to voluntarily be opting into it.

(57:38):
If you said something along the lines of,
hey, if you don't like it,
run a different version of the software.
but at the same time you're thinking there's not a credible another version of the software
then you're not it's not a genuine yeah i mean you're you're making a power play right like that's

(57:59):
and that's what i think the whole thing has felt like for pretty much everyone like it's like one
of the things about a lot of coders is that they're not entirely socially aware and they think
they're hiding their motivations when it's like crystal clear to everybody like they're they're
forcing this change right like they they they think they're in the right and they think they
know better than everybody else and they are basically making it so that it's going in whether

(58:25):
you like it or not um and like that that kind of attitude is just like completely against the
you know ethos of bitcoin right like it's it's supposed to be a community project it's it's a
it's a consensus system. You're supposed to, you know, listen to other people and stuff. And
instead what we're getting is, Oh, everyone that disagrees is like just an influencer or whatever,

(58:50):
or, uh, you know, you guys are so stupid. It's, it can still go in to blocks and so on. And,
you know, it, it, the, the attitude is, is one that inevitably leads to some form of
authoritarianism. And I think it might show up in a soft,
a contentious software.

(59:11):
Let's go there. But that made me think of one last question.
Do you think that
if mining was more distributed,
whether their calculus on changing the relay policy would be different?
so if we had a lot of different um

(59:36):
minors i think their arguments would be very different i don't know if their um attitude
necessarily would be or their um calculation around that would be because the the main
arguments that they've been giving is well you know filters don't work it just gets into blocks
anyway, and, and things of that nature.

(59:57):
Um, that wouldn't be the case if you had lots of miners, cause the P2P network is
where the blocks would be coming from and not these five or six players and a lot of the assumptions
or a lot of their arguments depend on these six you know largely centralized mining pool players

(01:00:18):
you know staying that way forever right like because yeah filters don't work when you have
like six players that are creating all of the blocks in in the in the like sort of peer-to-peer
transmission sense. There are other ways in which filters work, which I won't get into, but like

(01:00:38):
those are the types of arguments that they're making is based on the current situation. I think
it would be different kinds of arguments, but they would still be sort of digging in their heels on
this. Where I was specifically going is just like their calculus as to whether or not
or handicapping of whether the changes would be adopted by miners,

(01:01:04):
that if there were more of them and they were more distributed,
then they couldn't look at party A, B, C, D, E, F, the six and say, you know,
I'm not, and I'm not suggesting that they, you know,
went to discuss it with the mining pools, but just, even if you didn't,
if you could handicap what six or seven large mining pools might do verse,

(01:01:25):
there's a hundred and you don't know who they are.
And what if only 40% adopt versus if 60% didn't, is this proposed change still a good proposed change?
Yeah.
Whether that would change their calculus.
I mean, I think they would, if only 40%, say, of the miners, like, adopted it, then your argument that it makes for a more accurate mempool for fees would no longer apply, right?

(01:01:54):
because that depends on the you running the same software as the miners and if only 40 percent of
them are doing it then you're only going to be accurate 40 percent of the time and there'd be
propagation issues yeah and that's that so those kinds of arguments like the arguments again would
be pretty different i think but they seem pretty determined on this and i i've never seen the core

(01:02:18):
devs quite like this before and i've been i've been in this space space for a very long time
like the the way in which they they're so violently suppressing dissent right is just
it's been absolutely shocking to me just like you know i i saw a core developer say you know

(01:02:41):
the reason why we're so like all in on this is because we think we like you know we've already
taken a lot of the hits let's just go all the way or something like that which is like really you're
just going to keep going because you you you're sort of in a in for a penny in for a pound fallacy
like we've already fought for this long why why not just go all the way now right like i don't know

(01:03:03):
it just seems like a very um it the character of this particular fight is very different than
anything else I've seen in Bitcoin before.
Yeah.
Well,
and you've been a lot around for a lot longer than I have.
I was around for the 2017 hard fork,

(01:03:28):
but a lot of that was not being driven.
Or at least the side that was hard forking was not being driven by
quarter developers.
They were on the conservative side.
and then taproot was a very long process there was there was you know i think criticisms around
activation activation yeah um but i at least from my seat

(01:03:54):
there there was widespread like i i don't i don't remember any individual voices of people
that i knew that were like adamantly against something and it might have been but just saying
that like this does seem like a shift
in one of the precedents that set,
which they've actively put out there

(01:04:16):
is that if there's consensus amongst core developers,
which in this sense,
there's Luke on one side
and maybe one or two others,
but by and large,
there is consensus amongst core developers
that they've basically said

(01:04:37):
the precedent is
if there's consensus amongst us,
then we have an obligation
to do what we think is best
regardless of the users of the network.
There's contention.
Play that out
if it's a change to the consensus rules.
Because I would expect
they would say that would be different.

(01:04:58):
But if there was consensus
amongst core developers
or contributors
that some software made sense,
then talk about it in relation specifically
to mining centralization.
If there's six or seven mining pools
that control 90% of the hash rate,
and they agree,

(01:05:20):
can functionally record developers by writing code,
which again, users of the network have to adopt.
No one's putting a gun to their head.
is it a lot easier than it would seem to potentially in a more restrictive way,
but also restrictive is a loose term of it opens up surface areas.

(01:05:43):
From a transaction perspective, it's restricted.
Is it more easily possible to change the rules than it otherwise should be?
i i mean you're asking me to speculate on like what might happen should apply the same
circumstance to a consortia software yeah i i i'm i'm trying to think about it and i think it's kind

(01:06:09):
of an open question right now can the developers and miners team up together and screw over the
users i don't know it's possible um let's just play through a scenario okay there's a
software proposal
the
six mining pools that represent 90%
of the hash rate
support it

(01:06:30):
but a lot of users
in the network and potentially
some
cohort of the 10% of the miners
that don't support it
or assume that 10% don't what plays
out in that world
so in that case I think it gets
say
so assuming that the core devs are sort of aligned on this change and they go to the miners 90% of

(01:06:57):
the miners agree with them and i don't want to say they go to the miners they put software out
and the six largest mining pools take it okay um i think it comes down to the users right like uh
and it's whether they they adopt it or not and this is where it gets kind of tricky because a lot of

(01:07:18):
users trust the devs right now Although I think some of that is breaking down not too many of them trust the miners i don think that i think that 2017 more or less killed that but there is a
scenario in which something like that happens and then um i don't know like maybe there's an

(01:07:44):
alternate implementation maybe it's not something like that and they uh they don't agree with it
and at that point like maybe there's like two incompatible soft forks or something like that
which ends up being a hard fork but yeah but there but so like in that scenario i mean there's two

(01:08:08):
scenarios a new version of bitcoin is before that has a soft fork and if there's 90 of miners that
support and say 10 that do not and they mine an invalid transaction it would create a hard fork

(01:08:30):
which one well which one if they mine an invalid transaction then it's still sort of uh
they'd be they would invalidate you but then like it can get overtaken so this is where like the
game theory gets a little bit complex uh because if you can get overtaken and wiped out at any time

(01:08:51):
you're going to want some protection against that now traditionally what forks have done
is they purposefully make it so that it's going to no longer be a software,
but a hard fork so that they can't get wiped out. Right. Cause you don't,
you don't want the chain to roll back a hundred blocks or something. So,
um, right. And when I said, when I meant mine and invalid block,
I meant like mine a block that would be invalid. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:09:15):
But then you can get overtaken if it's longer. Right. So that, that's the,
that's my point. So there's, there's a,
there's a real risk to the minority so that it would,
But there are things that the minority can do.
So you can do sort of like an incompatible soft work or something like that.
I haven't thought through this yet, but.
I mean, like users of the software could write code that says, hey, anything that looks like that is not valid.

(01:09:39):
Or something like that.
So that what ends up with is like two soft works that are sort of mutually incompatible.
And like everything before just takes like the longer chain, but like nothing wipes out the other, something like that, which would be a very weird scenario.
I haven't really analyzed that particular one, but that's something that that's a potential way in which the minority might deal with it.

(01:10:03):
They might even just hard fork.
I don't know.
I think in my mind, the most realistic scenario is,
and what concerns me about this precedent,
is that a contentious software meets all the same criteria.
And even if someone says that it would be different
if it was a consensus rule,

(01:10:24):
is that if you could handicap
what the six or seven largest mining pools would do,
if you set the precedent that if there's consensus amongst core developers,
then you have an obligation as a steward to push that change,

(01:10:45):
and the change would go through.
Because the six or seven largest mining pools would,
if they fall, I'm saying in the scenario that they do,
and then the minority, there's major risk to hard forking.
And as users of the network, you might not know, right?
But there's a lot of risks associated with that.
And the most likely scenario is it's not going to create immediate catastrophic risk to Bitcoin.

(01:11:10):
It's more of one of those things that's death by a thousand cuts and more realistically,
potentially by, you know, 10 cuts that cause some change that might not singularly distort incentives.
But if you add up a number of changes together.
There are too many moving parts, though.
So like the miners would not agree to do that if they saw the possibility that like there could be a minority with like an economic majority or something.

(01:11:37):
So what would probably happen in a scenario like that before it gets to that would be some sort of futures market.
OK, there's this this part that wants to do that.
If they ever hard fork, then you get.
But you know that there would be a hard fork.
Right. But but like you can make a futures market that that's on that.
Right. And you can you can trade those and maybe deposit some Bitcoin and bet on it.

(01:12:01):
That's what happened with with like 2017 and so on.
And miners would look at that and say, OK, well, here's here's this side and how much it's like, you know, say it's like 9010.
But when they look at the price of the futures market, it's like the other way.
It's like 2080 or something like that.

(01:12:22):
then they're going to be like well it makes no economic sense to go mine on this chain that
the core devs are proposing we're going to have to go with this so yeah it's one thing if there's
two different proposals like it's one thing in in 2017 where you knew like whatever was being
proposed would result in a hard fork versus if you don't know whether someone would do something
well so that this is where like the game theory continues right like because that possibility is

(01:12:49):
there then somebody might propose something to consolidate the opposition in which case you have
like two incompatible softworks or something and the softwork that has more hash rate in it kind of
wins and or is not hash rate in it more economic um majority in it yeah agree in the scenario where

(01:13:10):
there is a hard fork then no but like the minority at that at the point where they know that they're
minority is motivated then to create that scenario so that they can win right because you you if you
have 90 hash rate and 10 hash rate you're going to lose but if you can influence the 90 by creating

(01:13:32):
this scenario then that's what you're going to do because that's the only way you can win as a 10
right and in my view it's like the reality is that you're not like 10 because you don't know
what any other economic actors are going to do.
Well, this is why futures markets
will probably pop up for that reason.
And then like, you just need a proposal.
And then once you have a rallying point,

(01:13:53):
then people will be like, okay, well,
let's start betting on this and so on.
But then let me put it another way.
There's never been a soft fork.
I guess there's never been a contention of soft fork,
but there's also never been,
when there has been a soft fork,
there's never been a hard fork.
Out of it, yeah.
You know, and so it's like, it would be an unknown territory.

(01:14:15):
Well, I mean, you know, Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork off of it, but yeah.
Right, but that was, like the proposal was always,
increase the block size, everyone knew that it was a hard fork.
Now, I want to depart there in this kind of last segment
that I want to talk about is,
one of the other consequences in this circumstance is that it's very much,

(01:14:38):
you know, one, I don't, one of my other problems is,
I don think that there was ever an open debate or interest in a debate There was a decision made and didn really matter what another side perspective was There was a decision made
One of the most important constituencies in the discussion around the relay

(01:15:01):
policy specifically,
the changes to it is the mining constituency and they're largely absent from
the debate.
um save and accept you can assume what marathon does because they have their
um slipstream and you can know what you know a pool like luxor does because they're luxor but um

(01:15:21):
the those are all the pools
all of this seems to be in the disinterest of the miners themselves they're coming back to the very
beginning which is the miners that are not participating directly in consensus are largely

(01:15:42):
devoid of a of not just a voice they they don't have control of their hash rate you know someone
else is making their decision and there's always the idea that oh you can switch pools but
functionally speaking what do you think the the consequences are of so few miners

(01:16:03):
actually participating directly in consensus
as well as in what versions of Bitcoin they run
that includes things like the relay policy
that sit outside of consensus.
Yeah, the consequences are that
they're sort of mercenaries, right?
They're like hash rate for sale.

(01:16:23):
And yeah, it's unfortunate
because it would be better
if they were all sort of individually making decisions
and cared about the network.
It's a little bit of a fiat artifact.
A lot of these miners got into it because they, um, they happen to have, uh, some cheap
energy and, um, you know, contacts with the mining equipment at manufacturers or something

(01:16:48):
like that.
Uh, I, I, I think what will happen is that there will be more user level mining, um,
to decentralize it a little more.
It's already happening with stuff like bid X.
obviously at a tiny, tiny, minuscule scale.
But more of that, I think, is in the interest of a lot of users.

(01:17:11):
And once you get that, then you don't have mining centralization anymore.
And we don't have to talk about all of the problems that they cause
because there are so few people that make the decisions.
It's not necessarily that they're bad people.
It's just that you don't, you want like the entire ethos of a decentralized system is that, you know, you don't have central controllers, authoritarians.

(01:17:41):
And unfortunately we have that in this.
And something that I think everybody wants is decentralized mining, including all the devs and everybody on both sides, I think.
which is why a lot of the mining, um, voices like not really in this because both sides are claiming

(01:18:01):
that, um, ultimately what they want will decentralize mining. Right. It's kind of like
two sides talking to each other and the miners are just like, Hey guys, I mean, they're not because
they're generally not part of the conversation. No, no, they're not. Uh, and, uh, yeah, I mean,
they've been cut off since 2017 from a lot of this stuff. It's, it's kind of a very strange thing,

(01:18:22):
but i mean it is one thing that i also think about which because most of them you know
small to mid-sized miners which i would say like small but they are a dedicated mining business
not somebody you know running a bid axe or you know just home mining with a single asa like

(01:18:42):
mining's their business but they're a small miner to someone that might be a mid-sized miner running
10 megawatts of power which is a lot of power there's nothing small amount of but relative to
the rise of the world small that they they might be aware that there's a debate about something
changing as it relates to relay policy and that might have a certain consequence but they have no

(01:19:07):
idea the substance yeah you know and because they're removed from it via the pool it's almost
as if i don't say it's not their problem but it's it's something that they don't realize that they
need to have a more active participant or to be in a more active participant in because it's their

(01:19:27):
hash rate you know and then that leads to the question of i would wonder i doubt that riot
that has nearly probably a gigawatt of power online securing the bitcoin network is is opinionated
And then, uh, and then my question to you would be like, there might be disinterest between a miner and a pool, but if the miners aren't really engaged, you know, the pool isn't seemingly, you know, incentivized to do something in the disinterest with their miners, but if they're not actively participating in consensus, how do they?

(01:20:05):
Yeah, the problem actually comes back to fiat money because a lot of these hashers are fiat funded.
And the way fiat money works is that it makes big things grow bigger.
So mining is a margin business.
It's you get the marginal energy that like the power plant can't sell to at higher rates and you get you get sort of like the leftovers.

(01:20:34):
So there's a ceiling to the amount of energy that's available in any one location.
So there's a natural limit to the scale that you can have in any one place because you're just getting the leftover energy from everywhere.
But the way fiat money works is that they want to fund the bigger things.

(01:20:55):
And so you can almost always get money printed out of nothing as loans to grow bigger, which is what a lot of these mining conglomerates have done.
They've grown bigger.
So I suspect most of them, like a lot of the big ones, probably don't even make money on a lot of that stuff.
They build it out just because they can get the...
Well, I knew Marathon mines Bitcoin at a loss just based on their financial statements, which doesn't make any sense.

(01:21:19):
But that's a fiat consequence, right?
Like because they can get these loans, they can sell their shares into the market or something and basically just keep making it look like they're getting bigger.
It's kind of a big Ponzi scheme in a sense.
But that's something that they can do.
And that means that they don't have to care that much about all of the stuff that's going on in Bitcoin because it's not really a profit motive.

(01:21:48):
If they were profit motivated,
a lot of them should be on like ocean, right?
Like you don't have off-band payments and stuff like that.
Where if you're a hasher,
you don't see any off-band payments, right?
Like if I pay and pool to get a transaction in,
like off right With a credit card or something I think via BTC used to have one of those i don know if they still do then like none of the hashers see that money right i mean i think

(01:22:17):
that in theory some might some pools might say we we we set this into the uh fixed pay per share
however they do their calculations point is it's a black box and and you don't know and that so many
of them are addicted to the fixed payout that that that's what they're there for i just you know

(01:22:38):
my my i guess my last question is what do you think causes it to change that gets more miners
engaged and actively being direct participants in the network and i'm not even saying you know
every miner has to run their own node,
but, and I'm not also saying actively participating

(01:23:01):
in whatever the debate is in the day on Twitter,
but not just being reserved to the corner of the world
that they're hashing and actually being
a more active participant in consensus.
Do you think it, like, I don't even know
what the parallel to a Mt. Gox scenario would be,
or it might just be maybe on your line of thinking,

(01:23:23):
as there become fewer miners that are fiat minded
that actually understand Bitcoin
and the conversion of energy to Bitcoin
versus energy to Bitcoin to fiat,
that that naturally brings along with it
the incentives to engage in consensus
and to participate.
Yeah, it's easier for a big company to go get loans

(01:23:45):
than it is to like make more profit.
If these hashers were more focused on profit
then I think all the problems solve themselves.
I really believe that market forces would force them
into a more decentralized and active participation
in this whole thing.

(01:24:06):
The way they're doing things now
is that they get a lot of their income
from fiat money printing in some ways
through loans and so on.
So they don't have to care.
And that's, in a sense,
like once the fiat system collapses,
This mining will be fixing itself, but of course that's going to take a while.

(01:24:26):
For now, it's functionally out of sight, out of mind, and it's almost like, well, I don't have to worry about this because the pool's going to make the decision.
But at a certain point, people with large interests realize that, you know, large financial interests realize that they have an actual stake in interest in informing what changes get made and why, both as it might relate to a future software.

(01:24:51):
or something like a relay policy because the end of the economic incentive
doesn't really exist just to defer because it can either be your,
in your purview and,
and,
and do something actively or not.
And in the scenario where you're actually procuring all this energy and

(01:25:12):
hashing,
what's the benefit to not,
you know?
So it might be a long,
you know,
death of fiat or it might be a quick death of fiat but people i do agree with you that the
figuring out the bitcoin side of it and the cutting off of the fiat spigot is likely a natural
decentralizing force and um that and bitcoin are stepping up i think i like i mean

(01:25:36):
i run a bit x at home right so in a sense i'm i'm mining at least a little bit
even though it's like maybe five shares a day yeah you're on like 13 cents power yeah and it's like
But, you know, we haven't really optimized mining very much, right?
Like, you can heat lots of things and produce other goods where even paying 13 cents per kilowatt hour, like, might make sense if you can use the waste.

(01:26:07):
Like, you do some other process where you can convert that to profit and then the little bit extra you can use for mining or something like that.
And like that, those scenarios are where entrepreneurs can come in and really like make a difference.
But yeah, we kind of live in a fiat world where-

(01:26:29):
Bob Burnett told me that he's mining off of cow waste.
So, you know, like that's, there is innovation happening out there.
I'm also going to have Tyler Stevens on, who's working on a lot of not only home mining, but specifically the capturing of heat.
Yeah, yeah.
I think there's a lot of potential along those lines.

(01:26:50):
And maybe it becomes really more centralized as more innovations come in and those things.
Like if you can, I don't know, heat your water heater or something with mining equipment, maybe that makes the economics work.
I don't really know.
Or there's maybe some other technology that comes in that makes it so that you can generate energy at home.

(01:27:12):
Maybe we can have modular nuclear power plants at home and you don't need electricity lines and use all the excess energy for that.
The future is very difficult to figure out.
Well, yeah, I did see, I have bigger questions about large amounts of solar on the grid,

(01:27:32):
but scenarios where people are putting solar panels on their house and
there's restrictions on what they can put back into the grid.
And they have three times the amount of power that their home actually needs.
It's essentially excess.
So I definitely see that there's a,
there's a large surface area for innovation and that should help decentralize

(01:27:54):
it.
The reality of the scenario is today,
the level of centralization
in my mind, and I just want to see if you agree with this,
it makes it easier to change Bitcoin when it otherwise should be harder
on a relative perspective.
And that more miners
will inevitably figure out

(01:28:15):
that it's not in their own incentive
to essentially outsource decisions about
what rules are followed versus not.
And that should hopefully drive decentralization as well,
which will help make the network harder to change,
but not just for its own sake,
but to ensure that if changes are made,
that there's overwhelming support.

(01:28:35):
Yeah, I certainly hope so.
It's weird though.
I didn't think about it the way you just said it,
that a lot of the Bitcoin mining centralization
is actually like energy centralization,
energy production centralization
and all of these fiat things
that sort of infect our industry.

(01:28:56):
Yeah.
Well, no one miner is going to solve it,
but in the end, everything's good for Bitcoin.
Yeah.
Hope so.
Only because people are not complacent.
You know, you got to be high agency.
Well, thanks for the discussion.

(01:29:17):
Appreciate you coming down to the commons
slash Bitcoin Park.
and we'll do another one sometime soon.
Sounds good.
All right.
Appreciate it, Jimmy.
Yeah.