legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1521
Hahaha. Another clown that thinks *hashpower* defines the consensus rules. Explain to us all how that works. Does ___ PH hash = 21 million coin limit?
No. But nice try at reductio al stupido. Hashpower is a pretty good measure of economic resources.
LOL. Pretty good? How about all the wealth stored on the network? Miners cannot alone dictate the rules; they merely order transactions. Miners are meaningless on a dead network.
As are anybody else. Miners, nodes, users, … all adrift on a dead network. You’re not supporting your point that nodes determine consensus.
Actually, I did. In this example, miners who change the rules without node consensus are simply forked off the network. They can continue to build blocks on that dead network, but no one will accept payments on that chain as valid.
In this world where chicken littles are cluck-clucking about how expensive a 2MB node is to run, a mid-size miner can spin up any number of nodes.
How do you not understand that a miner (or Coinbase or Roger Ver) spinning up a bunch of nodes has
absolutely nothing to do with the software
users are running? How useful are miners communicating with themselves + a bunch of datacenter nodes with no economic activity behind them? Miners need people to sell their coins to..... so if you think they can ignore the network of users by spinning up nodes...... LOL.
I fail to detect a point here. Correct, miners spinning up nodes does not directly impact users. I was pointing how silly your claim was that
miners have to abide by what nodes want. Again, even if miners were somehow magically barred from spinning up their own nodes, nodes are powerless.
Nodes are only significant insofar as the economic activity they represent. 1000 nodes with no users transacting on them are insignificant--this is what "miners spinning up nodes" equates to. Miners need users and services to sell their coins to.
So again, miners can hard fork the rules and spin up thousands of nodes that enforce those rules, but
how do they force users to reinstall their software to recognize this network as valid?Consider the extreme example: 75% of miners quadruple the supply of coins to 84 million a la Litecoin with a hard fork. If those miners "spin up some nodes" that no users connect to, are those new coins spendable? Only amongst themselves--not among anyone who enforces the 21 million coin limit. This is true of any consensus rule, such as block size limit.
To such a miner, the cost of operating nodes is less than chickenfeed. For a mere two chicks. The non-mining nodes have cluck-all to do with consensus. But they do make the impotent feel good about their 'power'.
That's only true if they are merely concerned with communicating amongst themselves, as opposed to the network of users, who may have forked them off.
Yes, the network of users may have forked off the non-mining nodes. Agreed. You’re not supporting your point very well.
You seem very confused. How does the network of users fork off non-mining nodes? Non-mining nodes don't mine--so there is no block to fork. And if consensus rules are removed, the offending miners (e.g. >1MB block violation) are forked off, not the nodes on the original network. Users don't necessarily run a node; node software is the only mechanism by which rules are enforced (hence the only mechanism by which forks occur). So again..... miners can break the rules all they want, and they can spin up nodes to give the perception that a network exists. But you haven't proven the basic premise that these miners won't be mining on a dead network with no users.
The network of users may also fork off the miners. This is not in the interests of the miners. Which is why adhering to a single codebase is not important for maintaining consensus. Economic interest is what is important for maintaining consensus.
The bolded does not follow from its premise. To your example: if users are split 50-50 enforcing a 1MB rule, and miners are split 50-50 enforcing a 2MB rule--how the hell are they going to maintain a single ledger? If the 2MB chain becomes the longest chain at any point, the networks would split. How does this achieve "consensus?"
How about if 75% of users are enforcing a 1MB rule, and 75% of miners are enforcing a 2MB rule? Once the 2MB chain becomes the longest chain, the networks would split. How does this achieve "consensus?"
How's it going to work if 75% of miners fork to another network, and the majority of nodes do not follow? Miners don't make the rules. Nodes do.
Absolutely false. The only entities that control the rules
by which the miners operate are the miners themselves.
Uh, okay. That's not actually meaningful. I too can enforce rules that the rest of the network ignores. So what? Makes no difference to anyone.
Your logic suggests that miners can quadruple the 21 million coin supply, and that the network will simply accept those new coins. Of course they won't. The network of nodes will fork off the offending miners.
You wrongly believe this consensus mechanism is a result of the idea that "miners always act not only rationally but correctly, because economics." The reality is that the protocol rules written into the node software prevent the possibility.
They determine whether the blockchain is extended by any given block, and they determine whether or not economic transactions will be carried out upon that blockchain. The rules that any given node adheres to, OTOH, has essentially zero impact upon the network.
Nope. Miners have the power to order transactions. That is all. Again, apply your logic to the premise that miners could collude to quadruple the supply of bitcoins, and you will find that nodes have all the power over consensus rules. Those new "coins" are completely worthless and no node will accept them as valid payment.
Still pushing this disinformation that spinning up nodes forces the rest of the network to install some foreign software?
I never made any such claim.
Then if miners break consensus rules (e.g. quadrupling the 21 million coin supply), why would the network follow them? They wouldn't. Yet you claim that miners have power over the consensus rules. They don't.
Shame on you.
Shame on _you_ for attributing to me a false quote.
I didn't quote you there. I pointed out that you imply that miners can force users to install foreign software simply by virtue of mining invalid blocks. You continue to do so. If that is not your implication, I suggest that you do not understand what a hard fork entails.
if the miners build a chain with whatever rules they care to, and the transactionators keep transactionating upon that blockchain
Why would you assume that?
Because I would assume that miners would only build a chain adhering to rules that users would accept. It is against their economic interest to do otherwise.
in all their assumptions? What a dumb idea. Bitcoin depends on actors acting
.
It may be against their economic interests to fork the network. But they are working with incomplete information about user preferences, and they very well may be wrong.
No. Why don't you actually respond by applying this case to your own logic? You make all these baseless assumptions about what users would do (blindly follow 75% of miners who violate consensus rules) and yet you can't provide any evidence for it.
Let me refresh your memory. Upon receiving a transaction, a node has exactly two options to it:
lol just kidding Lauda.
