How much does it cost to destroy Bitcoin? (Part 2)
In the previous post on this subject I tried to explain why the cost to destroy Bitcoin is greater than the security budget, but I did not get into how much greater it may be. A key factor is how much does it cost to use additional signals along with proof-of-work to coordinate between honest miners (not as an alternative consensus mechanism for the Bitcoin network!) and determine what is the most valuable chain tip. Proponents of the security budget argument depict anything other than proof-of-work as heresy, going as far as to warn about the expected destruction of Bitcoin if the use of such signals is ever needed.
The first thing honest miners will do in the event of a censorship attack is to compare their orphaned blocks —and block templates— with those that became part of the heaviest chain, trying to determine what was the cause of the orphaning.