Topic: Is it good or bad that Core development is virtually controlled by one company? - page 3. (Read 8233 times)

And nodes figure into this how?
Well sure, they can create an altcoin, like any other altcoin. How does this effect miners & users with new nodes?
Mutual destruction, the paragon of maturity

Re. your edit:
What does that even mean? What determines what's less and what's more of a vote?
But you don't understand. THOSE NODES WILL BE THE MAJORITY. It's the "real" nodes that will be blacklisted & "ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered."

This was already answered. Full nodes can veto the miners at any given moment. All of the miners investments can instantly become expensive useless liabilities if the economic consensus of full nodes rejects the miners longest chain.

I will give you two possible scenario's of how this can occur-

1) In the unlikely event Classic convinces 75% of miners to HF, their are multiple extremely large investors* who have made commitments to dump their classic coins and keep their original coins.(remember a HF essentially doubles the money supply unless there is complete consensus). This high stakes form of attack would quickly devalue the chain with the most hashpower driving miners to the other chain or completely ruining both chains. Others may discount this due to the flawed assumption that this would only temporarily devalue the currency but in reality this attack can be ongoing and be conducted in a manner to create steady and persistent downward pressure on the majority hashpower chain.

2) Their are multiple technical solutions that can be implemented if a miner mis behaves where their double rounds of SHA256 hashing means less or nothing at all by the nodes.  Full nodes simply can change the consensus algo.


* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"


This was also just answered with a specific example. I will give you the benefit of the doubt one last time that you aren't deliberately trying to "blunder" the conversation. 100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet. If those 100 nodes deliberately break consensus by the owner, or are hacked to break consensus than all the damage they will be doing is misleading the community to how decentralized the ecosystem is(Unless a SPV wallet trusts them). Their vote will be ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered.

1. Investors dont 'vote'
2. exchanges dont 'vote'

Nodes competing to find blocks and then building upon them 'vote'.

[1] & [2] make choices on predetermined outcomes.

Yes, "A" nodes ignore etc. blocks they consider invalid (such as "B"), "B" nodes ignore blocks they consider invalid (such as "A"). As long as there is at least one of each (there is, non-SPV miners are also full nodes), everything's happening.

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

*Also explain this bit in the Bitcoin wiki:

Finally, if nodes are essential to Bitcoin security & are quite cheap to implement, what's preventing a malefactor from breaking Bitcoin by throwing up a bunch of misbehaving nodes (which "simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the [new] rules of the protocol (and ban the [old rule] peer(s) that sent them)."?

I believe Greg was making a distinction between a mining node and a non mining full node. Mining nodes do vote on what is valid or not, but don't have as much of a vote as a large investor or an exchange.


sgbett has been explained multiple times why he is wrong and how non-mining full nodes still have all the power but is making a nuanced argument that Full nodes who don't mine simply don't vote because developers defer votes to miners for soft forks and hard forks as a signal to accept a proposal or not. This is purely coincidental due to the limitations in approximating an accurate vote among economic full nodes and  because of this we are left with and interesting attack vector some have already committed to exploit during a hard fork.  

They simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the rules of the protocol (and ban the peer(s) that sent them). If the block isn't valid it does not exist any more than a litecoin or a namecoin block exists to the Bitcoin network.

Of course greg! Of course "it's physically impossible for them to break" the rules. Thats why you change the rules, and then allow the nodes ( in the white paper sense) to vote with their hashpower on what will constitute the fabled state of zen consensus. Isn't that they way its supposed to be? Dont nodes choose the rules?

Not really constrained, deeply or otherwise.

Well for one thing , economic Full nodes are what determine what is valid and what is not. The Majority of hashing power and longest chain don't mean much except a very expensive liability unless the nodes accept the coin.

Bitcoin consensus is determined by the longest valid PoW chain determined by economic nodes. This means that not all nodes are equal.... I.E... spinning up 1k full nodes on amazon ec2 has less of a vote than an individual running bitcoin core with 50 btc , which is less valuable than a node on an exchange. Nodes controlled by Payment processors are more valuable than individual nodes but still only represent a fraction of the payment processing (Coinbase/Bitpay constitute ~6% of txs combined by their own statements)

This distinction is very important to understand, and understanding this is critical to understanding the security implications of the Bitcoin network.

1) BTCC recently deployed 100 nodes with altruistic intentions because they didn't understand Bitcoins security model. Since All 100 nodes were controlled by them they are weakening the security of  bitcoin as their nodes can be used as a Sybil attack.

2) All votes are not equal and very large bagholders can quickly bring miners to their knees and force them to switch chains by dumping one of the 2 coins created during a fork on an exchange.

I was hoping someone would tell me.

Not a word in that link re. "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners""
Sill waiting, still confused.

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/44rx5k/psa_clearing_up_some_misconceptions_about_full/

Both deep AND fundamental misunderstanding? Whoa, that's some bad misunderstanding right there..
Care to set me straight & quickly list the ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners"?
Or are you talking about the Bitcoin ideal (how things should be), and not the actual mechanics of Bitcoin?
An example of non-mining nodes "deeply constrain[ing] miners," if possible, would also be nice.

but ... that ... is just untrue; it reflects a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of what Bitcoin is. The design of the bitcoin system deeply constrains miners-- and doing so is precisely how it creates economic incentives to keep them honest in the other ways it needs them to be.  Miners cannot mine except in conformance with the rules imposed by the users of the system: it's physically impossible for them to break them.

Hate to agree, but ... That.

I think its safe to say non-mining nodes *never* had any power. In the white paper the word 'node' was synonymous with the word 'miner'. It's only over time that this 'node/miner' separation has arisen.

Bitcoin is defined by hashrate, and the arguments (from all sides, me included heh) that something else *should* matter seem a bit petulant!

The industrialisation of mining has happened exactly as predicted. The mechanisms to keep the big guys check are still there. One of which I think is exactly what you describe the threat that they cannot do anything that would cause user's to abandon it.

Miner's and users are the yin and yang of the network. Developers and non-mining nodes grease the wheels but ultimately have no power.

The code's out of the bag so to speak. If the chinese miners decide they want 2MB, even if they don't use Classic, or BU, they could always just roll their own.

It's a matter of journalistic integrity. He has the right to not answer, I have the responsibility to ask the tough questions. Do you think I enjoy this?

Perhaps it might be bad, because they might work in their favor only. But it is more stable that way, so it cannot be altered by odd-thinking people.

That seems a bit harsh.

And I was so hoping we could discuss the following:


So just to be clear - do you maintain that block size increases are necessarily "Removing the rules against actions that the network protocol expressly forbids", and are therefore necessarily evil?


- Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html


For better or worse (I would say for worse), in this era of industrial mining, non-mining nodes have essentially zero power. Any viable mining operation has sufficient  resources to run a node of its own, and connect explicitly to other mining entities that share its philosophy. The only power outside of miners is the threat that users abandon the chain en masse.

No. All the above is noise. That's my point. The only signal is the emergent consensus of the network. The only vote that matters is the ultimate decision on who accepts what within a block. That majority will determine the longest chain. The longest chain, in turn, defines Bitcoin. Anything other than that is an unreliable 'measure' of power within the system.