21 sats \ 22 replies \ @tolot 10 May \ on: Bitcoin for a multi-planetary civilization science
This is an interesting reading about this topic: https://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/posts/bitcoin-interplanetary-frontier
That is not to say that Bitcoin could not be used far from Earth. On the contrary, confirmation time simply becomes part of transaction planning, and second-layer solutions fill in the gap for payments.
I think I disagree with him being able to hand wave away this as not a problem. If the miners (that I could run) or at least be on my planet are not able to confirm and propagate transactions then it is essentially a permissioned system. Earth miners could easily censor transactions coming from Mars and no individual miner on Mars could do anything about it
reply
Mars will start its own chain: https://unchained.com/bitcoin-astronomy/the-law-of-hash-horizons
reply
I don't think this is a reasonable approach to the problem. In this model there is a massive avenue for attacks to occur against "Muskcoin" while the hashrate is small. Additionally, with the manufacturing head start that Earth has over Mars, Earth would be able to over produce Asics for Muskcoin and the hash-center of Muskcoin would likely also be on earth not solving anything.
reply
So everyone just uses Bitcoin?
reply
I think its reasonable to consider lengthening the average block time to give Mars miners a fair chance of being within the hash horizon. I think it's the least combative option even though it does include a hard fork. Especially as the use of main chain adapts in the future I would expect it to be reasonable to allow blocks every ~30-40min to allow miners on Mars to have a fair chance
reply
I don't understand the scenario here. Does Earth have an adversarial relationship with Mars or is it cooperative? Why would Earth miners censor Martian transactions if they are paying the fee?
reply
The point is that they could. It would be a permissioned network on Mars completely at the whim of Earth.
I don't see why Earth <=> Mars relations would end up any different than how the relationships of countries on earth work, sometimes good, sometimes bad.
reply
But by that logic it's a permissioned network at the at the whim of Earth miners now as well. Yet they mine my transactions without even checking if I'm an Earthling, just because I pay the going rate.
He mentions testing the network pre-genesis against earth hash-bombs. But part of the beauty of Bitcoin is it's release schedule, combined with it's growth in popularity.
reply