Bitcoin block contains a timestamp header.
I acknowledge the protocol rules around playing with the timestamp, including:
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Validity of block creation that must be no more than 2 hours relative to nodes, and not less than the median timestamp of the latest 11 blocks.
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Mining difficulty header adjustment every 2 weeks (indirectly, since it’s calculated by block height).
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Halving mechanism every 4 years (indirectly, since it’s calculated by block height).
But why doesn’t the Bitcoin protocol also include rules for old hodlers who own most Bitcoin to reduce centralization?
Suppose that Bitcoin becomes widely accepted as a payment method. By de facto, the old hodlers who own most Bitcoin technically act as a bank—even though their wealthy is reduced eventually (how long?) and even though there’s no way to create more Bitcoin supply.
I mean, they indirectly act as a bank because of Bitcoin’s deflationary nature, where every good and service would be offered at the lowest price possible in the future. It’s possible that in a future where every member of society needs at least one sats to buy a house, where one sats becomes extremely hard to get.
If only the Bitcoin protocol handled this issue—where whales with older UTXO must spend their UTXOs so that miners get incentives based on timestamp header. Otherwise, a small percentage of those UTXOs could be deterministically selected by a hash function to be shared into random people’s wallets (passive poor wallet) that have less than a certain threshold and greater than a certain threshold—but not to be shared with empty wallets (we can assume empty wallets have no owner).
I think this can be done by using the timestamp header. But changing the protocol requires a hard fork (CMIIW).
There is a challenge, such as a Sybil attack, where whales could create many wallets to avoid the rule until avoiding the criteria as a whale. But remember, this is not practical—higher inputs in a transaction require higher mining fees. Again, at least the whale’s wealth has been forcefully shared with other people (miner).
This rule is only applied to UTXOs above a certain threshold, which objectively targets whales, not mediocrer. So, it’s safe for mediocre people using BTC as fair currency.
Actually, there is no need hard fork, this can be done in higher layer.
The idea is checking the UTXOs timestamp. If old enough by the consensus, then it will considered as worthless UTXO even though the quantity is high in lower level.
