# Can Game Theory Secure Scaling? **URL:** \ **Category:** Protocol Design\ **Created:** [April 13, 2024, 5:13pm UTC](https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/can-game-theory-secure-scaling/797 "2024-04-13T17:13:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 7
**Author:** ![harding](https://delvingbitcoin.org/user_avatar/delvingbitcoin.org/harding/32/925_2.png) [@harding](https://delvingbitcoin.org/u/harding)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2024, 3:13pm UTC](https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/can-game-theory-secure-scaling/797/7 "2024-04-17T15:13:15Z")
This item seems unaddressed in your document: > Risk that the counterparty is also a huge individual miner and can steal some funds (in case of receiver) or even all the funds (in case of UTXO owner/initial sender) In general, I think it’s worth comparing this to LN-Symmetry (eltoo). In that protocol, the worst case for an honest party is that they’ll lose transaction fees putting the latest state onchain,\[1\] which can be a very small percentage of a high-value channel. In your proposal, an honest party will lose a significant fraction of their funds in order to penalize a dishonest party. - For the receiver Bob, that means he may only accept such a UTXO from Alice under a discount compared to cheaper-to-enforce mechanisms, e.g. Alice\_BTC will be worth less than regular onchain BTC. - For the spender Alice, that means she may only be interested in offering such a UTXO if she can earn a risk premium on it above the market rate for other less-risky investments. If either or both of those values significantly diverge from 0%, it’s unlikely that there will be a market match. LN works well because the expected loss to an honest party is small, so neither side is requesting a premium or a discount. I’m not sure a system with a high risk of loss can work as well, unless everyone can be absolutely sure that the game theory nearly perfectly predicts that no one will defect from the cooperative strategy. * * * 1. Assuming mining remains uncensored. If there’s enough collusion between miners to censor transactions, then a miner colluding with an malicious counterparty can confirm an old state. --- _[View the full topic](https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/can-game-theory-secure-scaling/797)._