Lauda1) Logically the devs should have very little power over the direction of BItcoin, and the users (as a whole) should have a lot of power over the direction of Bitcoin
I concur. However, when deciding between proposals developers should have more 'power' (because let's face it, the average human is pretty stupid/ignorant). I hope that you understand what I mean by this.
I wonde actually in which type of country you live in. A democracy it surely isn't or you are the type that thinks "the guys at the top will do the right thing, they probably know better than me". Which lets me ask what kind of government you would chose.
Core fans always tell everyone that bitcoin is no democracy, well, it should. It has proven way too often that democracy is the best choice of governments. Even though our current democratic countries only have a homeopatic democracy. The democracy is so thin that it is practically not existing anymore. What is it worth when the citicens (demo-cracy = ruling of the citicens) has the right to make a single choice once every couple of years and the rest of the time they have to delegate their voice to others?
Anyway... you surely should have realized that most bitcoiners are not the kind of subservient and obedient citizens you might be.
arcticlava and sturleThe elephant in the room is the fact that 75% of all mining is currently controlled by just 4 pools: F2Pool, AntPool, BTCCPool, and BitFury.
So a small number of large mining pools can dictate by consensus among themselves which version is used to mine, and therefore which version is carried forward. The devs, merchants, users, and investors have little to say in this. The pools are only answerable to their clients, who can only vote with their feet and move to another pool. Bottom line: the large mining pools will do what is in their best interest to maintain the status quo and market share.
No, miners have no word in this. It is what users use and merchants accept that matters. If those pools decide to use a different consensus, they will just mine invalid blocks, and invalid coins. The miners can choose to ignore blocks produced by other miners, of course, but stick to the consensus rules. This is called a 51% attack, and is a real danger.
These miners are pools too. So the question is what happens when the miners that mine on that pool direct their hashpower elsewhere, if they can? Would that have an effect?
I agree that the users have the power at the end. Though I fear most users are ignorant and would simply use whatever client they get handed out with an update.
Miners mining worthless blocks... well, that would only be true if the price of the bitcoins on that chain is falling down. That only happens by selling. Who will sell? Will the rich guys on one side sell their coins on the other side to bring the chain down? Or the other way? Worthless is only that is not wanted anymore.
QuantusThe Chines government could easy take over the mining pools inside China and force them to mine empty blocks, they could also force this Jihan Wu to release long winded statements to help direct Bitcoin development in a direction of their choosing. *adjusts tin foil hat* Jihan Wu is ripe for manipulation. If he has not already been turned into a puppet he will be.
I think if the chinese government probably would simply take them out of the game. That would be not a big problem since the only harm that could do would be bigger timeframes between confirmations. It would be a hassle for up to two weeks minimum. The remaining miners would still earn the same that they earned before the pools were taken out. Though with the next diff update they would earn alot more than before. It would mean a new goldrush with miners prices rising very high.
It could not harm bitcoin at all. Only maybe some other forms of attack might be.
If they actually would force them to mine empty blocks then this reminds me of something. Wasn't there a rule of some kind that asic producers would implement a slightly different form of calculation into their miners? That was a precaution in case the algo had to be changed to keep some asics out of the game. I think at the asic goldrush times there was something like that. I'm not sure who dealt with that. The core devs probably.
So it might be possible to keep miners from these producers out.