The paper "On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward" by Carsten et al, suggests that as the Bitcoin block subsidy decreases relative to the transaction fees, there is a possibility that Bitcoin will experience "Mining gaps". This occurs when a substantial fraction of miners turn off their mining equipment for a short period immediately after a block is mined (when the mempool is smaller and when there is accordingly less of a reward for mining blocks), in order to save on electricity costs.

This question resolves to "YES" if the Bitcoin blockchain shows clear evidence of a at least 10% of the network hashrate using a Mining gap strategy before the first 365-day period where transaction fees make up at least 50% of total block rewards. Note that the argument for the presence of mining must consist entirely of analysis of chain data. An example of "clear evidence" might be a statistical analysis of inter-block times, showing that these times are not exponentially distributed (as we would expect if hashrate was constant) or showing a difference in inter-block times depending on the state of the mempool as extrapolated from fees in previous blocks.

Dec 20, 6:29pm: Will Bitcoin experience "mining gaps" before the first 365-day period where transaction fees have >1/2 of total block rewards? → Will Bitcoin experience "mining gaps" before the first 365-day period where transaction fees are >1/2 of total block rewards?