Talk:Tragedy of the Commons

Forgive me if this is the wrong place for this, as I am not completely sure I have a full understanding of what is meant in every part of this article, but: as I understand it, as I read this, it says in the event that mining rewards become negligible and transaction fees are the only way to keep increasing amounts of coin, the transaction fees will be completely malleable to consumer demand, and as such the incentive for miners to participate becomes prohibitively small. Now but as this happens the difficulty is decreasing in response(is that right)? So but then that being the case blocks are found more easily and quickly generating positive interest and reward for mining; why is this certainly a positive feedback loop triggering a "Tragedy of the Commons?" Is it because this drives the system more quickly toward completion, all blocks signed--especially before the economy has a chance to scale (deflate appropriately for the increase in scarcity/decrease in liquidity)? If something like that is the case, it is unclear to me at least in the article. I mean with the 51% attacks it makes it sound as if because less miners have incentive to mine, it might compromise the majority of the overall hashrate and hence the manipulation of the ledger would be possible by dedicated bad actors. If the number of miners goes up in response to the decline in difficulty as I speculate why would this be possible? Sorry one more time if this is a significant misunderstanding of the concepts. If others' experiences are anything like my in consuming the article however, it could stand to gain from being a little clearer. Well, thanks for reading and hopefully for your contribution following. We all do appreciate you knowledgeable folks sharing the wealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tezcatlipoca (talk • contribs)