Some OCEAN miners have started using the Coin Age Priority algorithm when building the block model using DATUM. Initially, Bitcoin Core selected transactions to include in blocks based on what they saw first in their mempool. This logic was eventually replaced by giving priority to older coins, i.e. those that have remained unused for a longer time, over other coins. This was eventually applied to only a small portion of the block space, and then eventually eliminated completely around the Segwit period. It is still maintained in Bitcoin Knots.
I can only speculate on the motivations that drive miners to do this, but given OCEAN’s rhetoric I can imagine it has something to do with the prioritization of “financial” transactions over others. Even if it doesn’t, even if it’s purely to help holders of small-value UTXOs, it’s still just as irrational.
You can partition blockspace as a miner as you like and prioritize the order of transactions as you wish within those partitions, but that doesn’t change the fact that blockspace is a fungible asset valued on an open market. If you use criteria other than the fee to decide which transactions to include, you’ll be leaving money on the table. The only situation in which this would not be true is if those criteria were identical 1:1 to the tariff-based decision, which would be a meaningless criterion.
Creating a blockspace subsection selected based on other criteria ultimately accomplishes two things: 1) leaving money on the table as a miner, since by definition any meaningful no-fee criteria results in collecting fewer fees, and 2) creating a bucket of blockspace sent to competitive pressures on “fees” based on the different criteria used, without any of these pressures creating direct revenue increases for miners using these new criteria.
The new subsection of blockspace ultimately does not reduce the pressure on fees, but simply lets them earn less money and users take advantage of these new transaction selection criteria subject to several competitive pressures that miners do not directly benefit from.
You cannot hide the reality that blockspace is a fungible asset priced on the open market. You can accept it or you can lose money. The only alternative is to try in vain to censor classes of transactions you don’t like, and if you succeed, you destroy a fundamental property of Bitcoin in the process.
Maintaining decentralized mining, widely distributed with many small operators, is critical to Bitcoin’s censorship resistance. It’s a shame to see signs like this showing that such small miners are economically irrational, as it has huge implications for their long-term success.
This article is a Take. The opinions expressed are entirely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.