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[–] phoxy [OP] 2 points (+2|-0) Edited

He doesn't spend much time on consequences of design choices but isn't there a flaw promoting centralization built in?

  1. Mining gets harder as time goes on; so average people have no ability to contribute to mining. The biggest miners get the most blocks and transaction fees, and get more hardware and more power. Centralization of mining power.

  2. Since mining power is destined to centralize or be dominated by few players, these few powerful miners have the ability to extort the coin network for transaction fees, especially because of the limited transaction rate (2400/10 minutes). High transaction fees means even more money funneled to the few powerful miners solidifying their place at the top.

There is no competition for transaction fees that will cause them to lower. New players can enter but only if they have millions or billions of dollars to buy mining hardware. And because the difficulty increases, the smallest miners are continually pushed out of profitability. I.e. bitcoin facilitates rich miners getting richer while excluding poor people from earning transaction fees.

Shouldn't a cryptocurrency's mining be competitive for even small players, so everyone has an equal shot at earning money by transaction fees?

Shouldn't a global cryptocurrency be able to handle millions of transactions per second?