Socialist fee schemes

Question

If in low inflation future network assured contracts become common and in case they rose to a status of most important source of network computing power, wouldn't then make sense to soft fork increased fees for larger and older utxos, as this could be a sort of standardizing reward contribution?

In other words, will Bitcoin need to demand richest's contributions, or will be enough just to ask for them?

If you are answering "it will be enough just to ask for them", isn't that equivalent to say Bitcoin's survival depends crucially on "their enemies" (if there is such a thing) not becoming important participants (and we are not currently avoiding such thing, or are we), as those participants could be lazy about voluntarily paying high fees?

Answer 1

Bitcoin cannot depend on altruism to survive, its success is contingent on network incentives aligning with what is needed to keep the network operational. So I think it is not really worth considering that as an option. You could perhaps argue that NACs are incentive-driven, in that the user is incentivized to see the network that they store their value in maintain an acceptable level of security, but the prudent individual is going to find a financial instrument that gives them the best guarantees for the cheapest price. From my understanding of them, it isn't clear that depending on altruistic NAC payments constitutes a low-cost and incentive-aligned method of maintaining security.

I also doubt that any soft fork that enforces asymmetric fees based on UTXO age/value would ever be widely accepted/adopted (consider: soft fork adoption at least somewhat depends on an 'economic majority' adopting the change, so would you expect large holders to adopt a fee-policy that disproportionately affects them?).

Anyways, it isn't clear that there is a problem in the first place. The Bitcoin network is self-balancing, there is no 'minimum required hashpower' to keep it functioning. Less hashpower perhaps inspires less confidence in the network's security, and thus the network will be seen as less valuable, but it will continue to function nonetheless. Perhaps the chain tip will be less stable than it is now, but as long as the incentives continue to work, the user can have an increasing amount of confidence in the finality of a confirmed payment as each new block comes to pass.

Answer 2

If in low inflation future network assured contracts become common and in case they rose to a status of most important source of network computing power, wouldn't then make sense to soft fork increased fees for larger and older utxos, as this could be a sort of standardizing reward contribution?

I don't think this if condition will become true. I don't see people paying fees with such contracts.

Bitcoin needs fees in long term this was clear from day 1. Even mentioned by Satoshi. How much fees is enough for the network is a difficult question to answer. If miners don't find it profitable they will stop mining, hash rate will drop and Bitcoin will continue to work.

Are fees a concern? Yes but there are few things which market and users will figure out on their own in next few years. Whether we like it or not, BTC is mainly used to hold expecting its value in terms of USD to increase over time right now. This does not increase demand for block space and fee market mostly depends on market cycles.

One positive thing that we have is number of transactions per day being almost same in last few years and increase in segwit percentage. Segwit transactions pay less fees.