There seems to be two main lines of criticism about drivechain, MEV and “miners can steal. ” I’m working on the MEV (still thinking through it) but here I’ll discuss the latter concern, which I think isn’t given the nuance it deserves. It’s not a dichotomy that can be determined by an experiment determining if miners will steal or not, it’s a question of how power can be abused.

In summary, the idea of hashrate escrow gives miners a type of explicit governance over a potentially significant part of the ecosystem. If drivechains are successful, there are many paths leading directly to traditional power brokering that most Bitcoiners are trying to steer clear of. Drivechain could provide new stepping stones toward miner collusion or enmeshment with the traditional financial system.