Satoshi Nakamoto (2008) invented a new kind of economic system that does not need the support of government or rule of law. Trust and security instead arise from a combination of cryptography and economic incentives, all in a completely anonymous and decentralized system. This paper shows that Nakamoto’s novel form of trust, while undeniably ingenious, is deeply economically limited. The core argument is three equations. A zero-profits condition on the quantity of honest blockchain “trust support” (work, stake, etc.) and an incentive compatibility condition on the system’s security against majority attack (the Achilles’ heel of all forms of permissionless consensus) together imply an equilibrium constraint, which says that the “flow” cost of blockchain trust has to be large at all times relative to the benefits of attacking the system. This is extremely expensive relative to traditional forms of trust, and moreover scales linearly with the value of attack. In scenarios that represent Nakamoto trust becoming a more significant part of the global financial system, the cost of trust would exceed global GDP. Nakamoto trust would become more attractive if an attacker lost the stock value of their capital in addition to paying the flow cost of attack, but this requires either collapse of the system (hardly reassuring) or external support from rule of law. The key difference between Nakamoto trust and traditional trust grounded in rule of law and complementary sources, such as reputations, relationships, and collateral, is economies of scale: society or a firm pays a fixed cost to enjoy trust over a large quantity of economic activity at low or zero marginal cost.

中文翻译：

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大规模信任：加密货币和区块链的经济极限


中本聪 （2008） 发明了一种不需要政府或法治支持的新型经济体系。相反，信任和安全来自密码学和经济激励的结合，所有这些都在一个完全匿名和去中心化的系统中。本文表明，中本聪的新型信任形式虽然无疑是巧妙的，但在经济上却受到了极大的限制。核心论点是三个方程。诚实的区块链“信任支持”（工作、权益等）数量的零利润条件和系统抵御多数攻击的安全性的激励兼容性条件（所有形式的无许可共识的致命弱点）共同意味着均衡约束，即相对于攻击系统的好处，区块链信任的“流动”成本必须始终很大。相对于传统形式的信任，这非常昂贵，而且与攻击的价值呈线性关系。在代表中本聪信任成为全球金融体系中更重要的一部分的情况下，信任成本将超过全球 GDP。如果攻击者除了支付攻击的流量成本外，还损失了其资本的股票价值，那么 Nakamoto 信任将变得更具吸引力，但这需要系统崩溃（很难让人放心）或法治的外部支持。中本聪信托与传统信托之间的主要区别在于规模经济：社会或公司支付固定成本，以低或零边际成本享受对大量经济活动的信任。