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Say I want to implement a rewarding scheme that spreads the reward of a block over its own miner and the miners that build on top of it. Is it possible?

More concretely, say each of my blocks bring 10 BTC(Coinbase+Tx fee). Let's say a miner mines a block. I'd like him to receive only 5 BTC. Whenever someone else mines on top of his block, I'd like him to receive the remaining 5 BTC.

Can one create a cryptocurrency like this by adjusting the generation tx and ensure no one can steal others reward?

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  • What do you believe would be achieved by doing this? What is your objective? Jan 4, 2018 at 21:27
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    Discouraging block dropping. See: dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2978408
    – SpiderRico
    Jan 4, 2018 at 22:05
  • I don't believe this would disincentivize Undercutting attacks as they are described in the paper. If this became a protocol rule, all subsequent blocks, no matter what fork or chain they were built on, would have the 5 BTC reward from the previous block, but would also lose 5 BTC to the next block built on it. The effect cancels itself out leaving an effective 10 BTC reward for finding a block. A solution to Undercutting attacks would be to encourage miners not to fill their blocks with transactions with the highest fees, but to leave some high fee transactions for the next block. Jan 6, 2018 at 15:45
  • @MatthewStannard This is merely a sketch of an idea. I was just curious whether this is theoretically possible or not.
    – SpiderRico
    Jan 7, 2018 at 19:10

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Can one create a cryptocurrency like this by adjusting the generation tx and ensure no one can steal others reward?

You can implement whatever consensus rules you like if you create your own altcoin :)

Unfortunately the thing which makes this difficult / impossible in bitcoin is the fact that coinbase transactions only mature after 100 blocks are mined on top. So while it would be nice in theory to include an extra 5 BTC output from your coinbase transaction that the miner of the next block could spend, it would not be valid, because the coinbase would not be mature. From what I can think, it would only be possible to do this safely to let the miner 100 blocks later claim the coins. That would still provide an incentive, especially if most/all blocks did this, then each new block would usually get 5 BTC from the block 100 blocks behind it.

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