I’ve been thinking about this for a while - and figured I should weigh in with some thoughts.
We obviously have 4-5 years to implement something - but certainly need to start thinking about it now - since it may not be a quick solution.
The problem we are going to have - is at current market prices for Firo - the tail emission of 1 Firo/block may not be enough to sustain any kind of secure infrastructure. With some (good) luck we may see a large increase in Firo’s price over the next year or two, and this may allow for more options to be achievable.
Comments on Reuben’s post:
a) Merged mining
I’ve been a miner for almost 7 years - and looked at mining merged mined coins a few times - but never did - because the main coins usually needed a lot of processing power (usually an ASIC or large GPUs), and the secondary coin (which is usually the one I was really interested in) was thought of by the miners as an ‘also-ran’ - basically a throw-away coin that was not important - to be dumped at whatever price they could get for on an exchange. This would not be a very desirable position to place Firo.
I don’t think Dogecoin is a good example of merged mining working - since the only reason why Dogecoin is doing so well is because of Elon Musk’s endorsement, and Tesla accepting Dogecoin as their only crypto payment option. (We really need to get ‘Uncle Elon’ to adopt Firo as well … hehehe).
b) Komodo notarization route (this is what Piratechain uses)
Really not a fan of PirateChain - but that being said - I took a look at Komodo’s notarization process - and if the Firo tail emission block reward is only 1 Firo I don’t see how anyone would want to run a notary node, even if the number of nodes are limited and elected like Komodo’s are. Why would this be all that different than the nodes we have now - and it would restrict who could receive the block rewards to only a few nodes - and would also increase the risk of censorship to the coin. (targeting 50 notarization nodes is a lot easier to do than trying to attack/shutdown 1000, 2000, 3000 world wide distributed nodes).
Finding a way of increasing work and potential income sources for the existing MasterNodes would make more sense. MasterNodes would continue to receive a share of the block reward (even after tail emissions kick in) but could also receive additional rewards for providing other services (yet to be determined what they will be - but something like distributed communications or some kind of DEX order-book hosting, or some other form of distributed computing services - we need to get creative here somehow).
c) Pure PoW with a max reorg length
We have such a secure network with PoW + MNs - and why would we want to go back and risk 51% attacks again. Pure PoW really is NOT secure - even with limits on reorg lengths - when the attack happens - the damage is done.
d) Proof of Stake
Pure Proof of Stake still runs the risk of 51% attacks if an individual or group of people control 51% of the total Staked coins. Not all coins in circulation are staked. Anyone wanting to cause harm to the blockchain at times may not need all that much staked Firo to get control.
Additional thoughts:
The miners will currently settle into the new 5% of the current block reward = 0.3125 Firo/block. When tail emissions kick in, if mining rewards are kept at 0.3125, this will leave 0.6875 Firo for whatever other infrastructure is being used to secure the Firo network (let’s say MasterNodes). Prorating the current number of nodes (~4000) and current rewards (3.125 before increase) and assuming a similar take-up profile after tail emissions kick-in (0.6875 Firo/block) in theory will only leave about 880 nodes instead of the current ~4000 nodes running. Reuben has indicated that this number of nodes on the network would likely not be sufficient to secure the network safely (and I would agree). We have no idea what the future will have in store for the price of Firo; however, if the price of Firo were to say double (which is certainly possible, or even better) then - in theory - the number of nodes that people will want to host could be in the range to sufficiently secure the Firo network even with such a small tail emission.
Instead of merged mining maybe as an alternative we could see if ‘merged noding’ would work (yes - I just made up that term - I don’t like it - but you get the point). Have Firo master nodes also work on securing other networks and receive rewards for that network as well - just a thought (Firo would be the primary coin - NOT the ‘also-ran’).
My gut feel is - that we need to find a way to continue to use the current technology (PoW mining + Master Nodes) to secure the Firo network after tail emissions begin.
This would continue to provide Censorship resistance, be Easy to implement, and will Maintain fast finality. The only issue will be how to ensure security of the Firo network with only tail emissions (I hate to say it - but making tail emissions 2 Firo/block may be enough to provide incentive to run enough nodes - especially if the price of Firo increases).
We still have some time to come up with something to make this all work. I still like the idea of evolving Firo’s eco-system into something that allows additional services to be performed by the Master Nodes and having those nodes earn additional service fees in addition to the node’s share of the tail emissions. It would have to be enough to give incentive to run enough nodes to properly secure the Firo network. We need to get creative - but still retain Firo’s vision of providing the best privacy preserving cryptocurrency and ecosystem available.