Dayan: Ethereum storage pricing creates a tragedy of the commons
Phil Dayan · a16z Podcast | Voting, Security, and Governance in Blockchains and Cryptonetworks · Feb 26, 2019 · at 37:02
Phil Dayan, researcher at Cornell Tech, analyzes economic externalities in Ethereum's state storage model during a discussion on crypto commodities on the a16z Podcast.
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“So the fact that the miners get payment for storage when the miners actually don't need to store the whole state, and it's the full nodes that, that bear the cost. So this sort of asymmetry between who's bearing the cost, like where the externality is, and like who's actually profiting is super important to study. It leads to a sort of tragedy of the commons in the worst case where the miners are happy to take payment for as much storage as you want because they don't have to store it and they don't care. As long as they don't break the whole network, they'll, they'll happily push out as many full nodes as they can.”
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