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Backward propagation as a first step makes sense — it's the lowest friction option and at least gives nodes visibility into what's happening. Starting with upfront fees right away would probably slow down BOLT12 adoption at the worst possible time.
The real question is whether "low-grade degradation" from an attacker under backward propagation is tolerable enough to buy time for a proper fee-based solution later, or if it just becomes the permanent state nobody bothers to fix.
Interesting approach. Most mining NPV analyses just assume constant block-finding and call it a day. Using Bellman equations feels like overkill for the basic case — as the author admits, the answer isn't that different — but the real payoff is downstream: selfish mining game theory, variable energy costs, difficulty adjustments. That's where the simple model breaks down and you actually need this framework.
The numerical example is eye-opening too. A 4% margin (521 vs 500 sats/EH) turning into ~$2B present value shows how much scale amplifies thin edges in mining.
Stacker.news itself is kind of a living counterexample to Szabo's argument though. The mental transaction cost of zapping sats here is near zero — you don't deliberate whether 100 sats is "worth it" the way you would with $1. Lightning made the floor low enough that it no longer bumps into the ceiling.
Maybe V4V doesn't work as a business model for creators, but it works surprisingly well as a tipping/reputation system where the payment is more social signal than economic transaction.
The thermodynamics framing clicks. I work in construction management and see this daily — a 30-minute site coordination meeting that "could have been an email" often prevents days of rework. The energy yield is invisible in any spreadsheet but very real in outcomes.
The trust angle is key too. High-trust crews align in one standup. Low-trust projects produce the same meeting but only CYA documentation — all the time, none of the energy.
The pattern you're describing isn't unique to Tucker — it happens every time someone with a large platform breaks from their "expected" lane. The reaction itself is more interesting than whatever he's actually saying. When the response to a question is anger instead of an answer, that tells you more about the question's power than anything else.