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aeternum 8 hours ago

I looked into it and the currently leading proposal: Hourglass v2 is pretty clever. Once 'Hourglass' is enabled, the rate at which legacy (P2PK) coins can be spent is (proposed to be) capped at 1btc / block. Thus they will not be burned, but the rate at which they can be stolen/compromised will be limited such that the economic impact is at most about 1/3 the block reward.

This gives holders of those old addresses the maximum amount of time to move their coins to more modern addresses and still the ability to move some coins after the deadline. If legacy keys are compromised in bulk, IE access to sufficiently powerful quantum computing is rapid and widespread, then there will be high competition via the existing txn fee bidding process for that 1btc/block slot. Thus most of the value of the will be captured by the txn fee and go to the miners, effectively boosting the mining reward by ~1/3.

dodobirdlord 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Doesn’t this effectively still destroy all legacy wallets? Once the throttling limit goes into effect, it will be impossible for holders of legacy wallets to transfer their bitcoin without paying ~1 bitcoin per bitcoin they want to move. Doesn’t this amount to the same thing as abolishing all legacy wallets plus increasing the mining reward with extra steps?

aeternum 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Not necessarily, we could reach a point where theoretically it is possible to crack elliptic curve but still prohibitively expensive except for nation states. At that point or near that point, miners would likely agree to engage the throttle.

Presumably the vast majority who had their key would move the coins before the throttling takes effect so in the event of a 'slow takeoff' quantum scenario where quantum computing is expensive or nation states don't want to divulge the capability there could be no demand for the 1btc slot. If a lucky individual forgot about their coins (likely an early 50btc block), it only takes them ~8hrs to transfer at the normal txn fee.

Only those with access to legacy coins can compete for that slot.

The main advantage is it delays the transfer to the mining reward to the last possible moment, IE the trigger for the transfer to the mining reward likely only happens if there is sufficient contention for that 1btc slot because legacy wallets are getting cracked.