Further commentary on transaction fee amount for full nodes vs miner tx fees

Author: jamesray1

EIPS/eip-Reward-full-nodes-and-clients.md

@@ -32,14 +32,14 @@ Something to consider is that the user agent fee could be used to bribe miners b
 
 One simple way to prevent bribing miners or miners attempting to validate the transaction in the blocks that they mine is to block miners receiving validation rewards for the blocks that they mine.
 
-The amount of computation to validate a transaction will be the same as a miner, since the transaction will need to be executed. Thus, if there would be transaction fees for validating full nodes and clients, and transactions need to be executed by validators just like miners have to, it makes sense to have them calculated in the same way as gas fees for miners. This would controversially increase the amount of transaction fees a lot, since there can be many validators for a transaction.
+The amount of computation to validate a transaction will be the same as a miner, since the transaction will need to be executed. Thus, if there would be transaction fees for validating full nodes and clients, and transactions need to be executed by validators just like miners have to, it makes sense to have them calculated in the same way as gas fees for miners. This would controversially increase the amount of transaction fees a lot, since there can be many validators for a transaction. In other words, it is controversial whether to provide the same amount of transaction fee for a full node validator as for a miner (which in one respect is fair, since the validator has to do the same amount of computation), or prevent transaction fees from rising much higher, and have a transaction fee for a full node as, say, the transaction fee for a miner, divided by the average number of full nodes validating a transaction. The latter option seems even more controversial (but is still better than the status quo), since while there would be more of an incentive to run a full node than there is now with no incentive, validators would be paid less for performing the same amount of computation.
+
+And as for the absolute amounts, this will require data analysis, but clearly a full node should receive much less than a miner for processing a transaction in a block, since there are many transactions in a block, and there are many confirmations of a block. Data analysis could involve calculating the average number of full nodes verifying transactions in a block. Macroeconomic analysis could entail the economic security benefit that full nodes provide to the network.
 
 Now, as to the ratio of rewards to the client vs the full node, as an initial guess I would suggest something like 99:1. Why such a big difference? Well, I would guess that clients spend roughly 99 times more time on developing and maintaining the client than a full node user spends running and maintaining a full node. During a week there might be several full-time people working on the client, but a full node might only spend half an hour (or less) initially setting it up, plus running it, plus electricity and internet costs. Full node operators probably don't need to upgrade their computer (and buying a mining rig isn't worth it with Casper PoS planning on being implemented soon).
 
 However, on further analysis, clients would also get the benefit of a large volume of rewards from every full node running the client, so to incentivise full node operation further, the ratio could change to say, 4:1, and of course could be adjusted with even further actual data analysis, rather than speculation.
 
-And as for the absolute amounts, this will require data analysis, but clearly a full node should receive much less than a miner for processing a transaction in a block, since there are many transactions in a block, and there are many confirmations of a block. Data analysis could involve calculating the average number of transactions in a block and the average number of full nodes verifying transactions in a block. Macroeconomic analysis could entail the economic security benefit that full nodes provide to the network.
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 Providing rewards to full node validators and to clients would increase the issuance. In order to maintain the issuance at current levels, this EIP could also reduce the mining reward (despite being reduced previously with the Byzantium release in October 2017 from 5 ETH to 3 ETH), but that would generate more controversy and discusssion.
 
 Another potential point of controversy with rewarding clients and full nodes is that the work previously done by them has not been paid for until now (except of course by the Ethereum Foundation or Parity VCs funding the work), so existing clients may say that this EIP gives an advantage to new entrants. However, this doesn't hold up well, because existing clients have the first mover advantage, with much development to create useful and well-used products.