[hanniabu]

I don't see this as an issue. If the chain is important enough, it will continue on from usage. If it's not useful enough to keep alive, then why bother with keeping it alive as a mean of archiving it?

[mathgeek]

Because there's a certain critical mass during the descent where 51% attacks are possible, but coinholders still have value to lose.

[ethbro]

Part of the attraction and frustration of blockchains has been their obedience to the laws of mathematics.

The answer to the stage of a blockchain you mention would seem to be, "If the blockchain isn't distributed and scaled enough to be resistant to a 51% attack, is there really any value remaining in it?"

[jerguismi]

If 51% attacks begin emerging, the chain still functions. People just need to require more confirmations. Then you require so many confirmations that the 51% attacks aren't profitable any more.

This kind of chain might become very slow, but still have the same properties as blockchains do have.

Btw the same thing can be thought has having a block time of 1 min, where de facto standard is awaiting 10 confirmations, versus just having 10 minute blocks.

[sparkie]

At the point where 51% attacks are happening, it's fair that coinholders lose value. The alternative is that they are able to offload their bags onto some other greater fool who will lose the value instead.

[Pristina]

why does this have to be during the descent? 51% attacks are possible at value point.

[ben_w]

I think mathgeek is talking about descent in use not descent in price.

[tromp]

Indeed, [1] shows inherent issues with coins that rely purely on transaction fees for eventual security.

[1] On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward http://randomwalker.info/publications/mining_CCS.pdf

[tromp]

And more recently, [2], which curiously only considers abandoning PoW in order to deal with issues caused by dwindling block rewards.

[2] Beyond the doomsday economics of “proof-ofwork” in cryptocurrencies https://www.bis.org/publ/work765.pdf

[andy_ppp]

If the market were perfect the coin should become valueless if 51% attacks are happening?

[egypturnash]

Historical interest.

You wouldn't think today's newspaper is interesting, but to someone doing research, the newspaper of a hundred years ago is interesting.

You wouldn't think someone's Geocities site was interesting, but when that shut down, the Internet Archive spent a lot of energy saving what they could, and that's already interesting for someone researching what the Internet was like a mere twenty years ago.

Blockchains get sold as these wonderful systems for storing data and also coincidentally making money off of ICOs. If they're going to actually be used to store real, useful data, then even if there stops being am immediate use for it, future historians may find one.

[cortesoft]

If you just want an archive, you can simply download a copy of the blockchain and store it. You only need a network for updating a chain.

[la_fayette]

I totally agree, there is some historical importance to this whole blockchain hype. I remember the "ICO hype", where seemingly 1000s of ICO projects emerged out of the blue. All projects had websites, "whitepapers" and the like. There was a lot of attention, money and scams involved (at least from a personal perspective).

Nowadays many of these ICO projects are vanished: websites are down, "whitepapers" are gone, team members are in jail... Somebody in the future might want to reason about this phenomenon. As this was mostly an internet thing all data and information lived on the internet only. I think even today it might already be difficult to research about this, as lot of information is already gone.

[tromp]

Cryptocurrencies of interest leave long trails of discussion on bitcointalk.org and reddit, and project websites tend to leave traces on the internet archive.

[zitterbewegung]

A majority of coins either launch on networks like Ethereum or are a copy of Bitcoin. I do still realize that archiving old blockchains may still be important. I think archive.org would be a good place for that to happen.

[Cthulhu_]

You mention importance and usefulness, but TBH it's not about those, it's about economic value - that is, can miners earn money from crunching the numbers. I think once a cryptocurrency has dropped below feasibility, miners will abandon it for more profitable ones and open it up to a 51% attack.