I’d been struggling to properly grok scheduling and how the blockspace market could work. This and the earlier posts [1] [2] were very helpful.
They coalesced my understanding and I think I’ve had my light bulb moment, the cloud/AWS analogy helped cement it.
I have a few thoughts / questions, apologies if this comes across as too scatter-brained:
- I love the concept of mid-term auctions but wonder then what the point is of parathreads? If a parathread is a short term “spin up” ephemeral parachain and a user can purchase the same effect through a mid-term auction - what’s the difference?
- You talk about the existing bulk blockspace auctions being the “seeding” market for execution cores/regions and that those can then be “resold” at will by parachain owners to form the mid-term market. What about the execution cores that are to be allocated to parathreads, how will they interface with this?
- The market concept reminds me of ethereum gas tokens where users “purchased” gas by exploiting the gas refund mechanism of ethereum. This led to a market in gas/blockspace which has echoes of this. However, I’m conscious that was ultimately removed from Ethereum and considered harmful. Are there any market force parallels here that we should be wary of? E.g. is it desirable for blockspace hoarders to come along and buy up swathes of future space or would that be an afront? You could argue they become market makers, but it feels a bit icky.
- This thread seems to suggest that mid-term auctions would actually be “bought” as opposed to the lease mechanism currently in place for bulk auctions. Would this be in DOT or is it the region holders prerogative as to what they sell them for?
- If the execution cores for parathreads end up within this mid-term auction space, is there an opportunity to “burn” the DOT they generate and counter some of Polkadot’s inflationary rewards?
- If the most successful parachains become the primary purchasers of blockspace initially to sustain their level of growth, do we risk a “winner takes all” dynamic where Polkadot gravitates towards serving a majority parachain which operates most of the execution cores at any given time and prices new projects out of the market?
Really looking forward to seeing this develop. It does feel like a break from the mould and creation of something new. Like you say… “the most effective blockspace producer in the world.”