Topic: Please run a full node - page 9. (Read 6680 times)

No Satoshi actually envisioned that we would reach a stage where only big companies would be hosting nodes. We already see a scenario where only

people with fast internet and lots of disk space are capable of running FULL nodes. It takes a lot of bandwidth too, so you will have to take that into

consideration, if you want to run a FULL node. All of this can become pretty expensive, if you are living in some 3rd world country with expensive data

packages and slow internet.  

nooo
the MAJORITY of orphans happen now because of propogation delay....
 because pools are no longer risking changing the rules to make orphans happen for other reasons..

but if pools were to change the rules they would get orphaned

These orphans have nothing to do with full nodes.  They have to do with the propagation delay of blocks amongst mining pools.
In other words, if, say, an orphaned block appears on average once or twice a week, say about every 400 blocks, it means that it takes on average 600 seconds / 400 blocks = 1.5 seconds for mined blocks to propagate to all miner pools
(rough estimation).

It means that within 1.5 seconds, a miner pool has received a valid block, has verified it, and starts mining a new block on top of it.  So one out of 400 times, a pool has found, by coincidence, a competing block, before realizing that a competitor was faster.

(BTW, this also indicates why miners are most probably directly connected: they could never have such a low orphaning rate if the 1MB blocks propagated through the P2P network: the delays between sending a block and having all other miners stop their work and start mining on top of yours would be too long, and would cause much more orphaning).

but then pools see that all the merchants cant see their rewards for BCDE..
the users waiting on transactions cannot see BCDE

and pools have to wait until Z4 before they can even spend B...

so way way way before z4 (z4=going through the alphabet 4times(100 block confirm maturity)) occurs just to spend B.. pools realise they better make blocks according to rule A otherwise they have wasted half a day building b-zb-zb-zb-z that would be unspendable.

this is why instead of having orphans of 100 blocks deep where pools realise they cant spend their funds..
they only at most regularly have orphans of 1 block deep. because:
they know its foolish to keep mining b-z 4times.
they know its foolish to keep mining b-z 4times HOPING the delay would force 6000 nodes to download and waste a week re-syncing to new B rules.

pools only move to B rules if the nodes accept it, which pools find out about alot sooner than 6 hours+ when its time to spend.
pools can usually find out within a few minutes if their block is 'good' for the majority

some pools realise in 3 seconds

Well, the first thing one should realize is that in block chain land, *everything* is decided by an interaction between two classes of entities in the eco system:
- the "chain builders" on one hand
- the "users" on the other hand: the users are the people that are willing to OFFER VALUE FOR TOKENS.

In most cases, the chain builders get "rewards" for building the chain in the form of tokens on the chain they are building.  So in the end, the chain builders usually want to convert those tokens to value, by dumping them on the "users", who, for several reasons, desire to possess tokens on the chain at hand ; so to a certain extend, chain builders are sensitive to the willingness of users to pay for their chain.  On the other hand, users need the chain builders to be able to use the tokens they acquired, and to be able to sell them.

This is about the fundamental relationship between the entities in the crypto eco system.

So who's the boss ?  As we saw, both users and chain builders need one another: chain builders need users to buy their tokens ; users need chain builders to transact their tokens.  

As such:
a) users are the boss, because they are free not to buy chain builder's tokens
b) chain builders are the boss, because they can fix the rules by which users can access their possessions

So new buyers are the boss of the chain builders because they pay them, or not, and chain builders are the boss over stake holders because they give them access to their stake, or not.  But new buyers become stake holders.

As usual in such an eco-system, those that are more divided, are less powerful than those that are in agreement.

The most important point is however, this:
If chain builders are divided, then several chains can be built.   If chain builders are in agreement, then only one single chain is built.

If there is only one chain out there, and nobody else is building a chain, then the only option is to accept that chain as the ruling chain, or to leave the system (not buy any coins, and sell one's coins according to the requirements of the chain builders).  As such, chain builders in agreement have total technical control over all of the rules of the system, but they still need to seduce buyers.

So the only way to "attack" chain builders that are in agreement, apart from leaving the system, is:

a) to divide them or
b) to build other chains "oneself".

a) means: to give better terms to those going in your direction, than to what they are agreeing upon ; but most of the time, you would like them to have WORSE terms (lower fees, say) and less power.  So that's not going to work.

b) build another chain yourself remains.

This could be done in two ways:
a) change the PoW algorithm, making the miner's installations useless
b) change to a PoS style algorithm

In both cases, however, you are making a competing chain with the original one, and the question is: how will the users vote with their money ?  Users have equal amounts of coins on both chains, and will try to "dump" the chain of which they expect not to win, and will try to keep their coins on the chain that they expect to win in the market.  --> if you make a mistake, you lose all of your stake !

And this is where things get nasty.  How do you know that most users will prefer the new chain, and not stick to the old chain, or think that most users will stick to the old chain ?

After all, chances are that the old chain is considered "true bitcoin" (nothing changes !) and the new chain an alt coin.  It can even be that, if this is successful, did one open the flood gates, because what stops yet another entity from proposing YET ANOTHER "other chain" ?  Once you've successfully forked off, why not fork off N more times ?

It could work.  With ETH, it sort of worked.  The old chain, ETC, lived on, but an economic majority + devs went to the new chain (maybe also because the name was, remarkably, put on the new chain).  But ETH didn't have a "first mover brand name".

So, until one decides to divide the miners, or have the miners agree on a change, the option of making a totally new chain with another PoW or PoS, is going to be a most risky operation without any guarantee.

Agree with you. We need more 'real' mining nodes to make BTC more secure. Seems we have average 6-7K daily nodes. But mining still dominate by China even they only have 200-300 nodes.

there are other towers.. you are just seeing it from the mid-endgame... you have not seen it from the start-midgame.

EG your only seeing the end result. you have not played out the scenarios from beginning to end

the reason there is now only one tower is because the diverse pools and nodes have learned their lessons. so you dont really see much drama of the different towers.
but now and again find out that they still have lessons to learn (orphans happen weekly)

Yeah that is what I was implying. We need more new miners that aren't controlled by the same small group of people. New people buying mining hardware would indeed help spread the hashing power out which would help make the network stronger and less centralized into the power of these farms that are controlled by few people. However, as I was saying this would require a significant investment and likely wouldn't be profitable which is why there aren't many people willing to setup miners just to help the network grow stronger and less centralized.

If you are mining I think this is very convenient for you but if you are a non miner and just want a stronger network and because you just have a spare machine that doesn't really have in use there is a limited number of nodes to connect, and Running a Bitcoin full node comes with certain costs and can expose you to certain risks. and Some Internet plans will charge an additional amount for any excess upload bandwidth used that isn’t included in the plan.

Is there anything we can do to fight this monopoly? My understanding is that changing the structure of the Bitcoin network needs a hard fork, and a hard fork needs hashing power. Or we are just fu**ed? Is this the biggest flaw in Nakamoto's vision?

But PCs need to be pretty configurable and online continuously! Full node mode is very secure because it is certainly not fraudulent. But it is not convenient with small traders

=> but it is exactly like that.

(because there is no OTHER tower)

All of the arguments that "nodes do matter" have the logical fallacy of taking the "intended way the network SHOULD work" as the "actually technically resulting technical operation".

This is the fallacy that is similar to:
- you've build a rocket to go to the moon with propellers, but propellers don't work in space !
- Of course propellers work in space !
- No, they don't.  They need air to function and in space, there is no air.
- But propellers obviously work in space, because we designed a rocket to go to the moon, and it has propellers !  Hence, propellers work in space, Q.E.D.

The argument here is that "because nodes SHOULD (that is: "we desire that", like we desire that our rocket flies to the moon) keep the miners in check, well, nodes ARE keeping the miners in check".

They don't.  I'll show you:


=> my desire


That block doesn't get set in stone because a majority of nodes copy it.  It will get set in stone if the following miner pools DECIDE TO MINE on top of it.  And they don't need the network to get their block ; they get it from the miner pool that mined it.  Directly.  Because they are in a hurry.  They don't WAIT for the P2P network to "approve it", because they would be wasting their time and hash rate in the mean time.


==> the only way a block becomes accepted, locked and immutable is because other miners mine their blocks on top of it.  Whether remote nodes download it or not, doesn't matter in this case.


==> what "orphaning effect" ?  Orphaning occurs when OTHER MINERS decide to mine upon ANOTHER block than the orphaned block.  If miners decided to mine upon block A, with blocks B, C, D and E, there simply isn't any other set of blocks around that a P2P node could "prefer".  Suppose that a majority of P2P nodes decides to "orphan" block B.  But the miners have been building blocks C, D and E on top of B.  What happens ?

Well, these nodes stop.  They stop at block A.  And they can't find any other block that pleases them.  B wasn't according to their taste.  But there's NO OTHER BLOCK around that is built upon A.  Nobody has ever made a block on top of A with a higher PoW than the chain B,C,D,E.  In fact, nobody ever made a block on top of A.

So what is the difference between our full node "not accepting" block B, and our full node just being switched off ?
What's the "orphan effect" of switching off your full node ?


No.  They are people that don't confuse "desires" with logical consequences.  If miners don't make another block than block B, you can chose between accepting block B, whatever miners did with it, or stop your node.  What else can you do, with your full node that doesn't like block B ?

Let us take a very simple example.  Let us assume that the miners, collectively, decide to make bigger blocks.  From block B onward, they make blocks of 1.2 MB.  All miners agree (to show you that it are the MINERS that decide).  They build a chain in which block B is 1.2 MB.  Nobody builds a chain with an alternative B block of only 1 MB.
99% of nodes refuse.  They don't accept a block of 1 MB.  But miners happily continue building blocks.  What now ?


But there is no "majority rule" of nodes.  The reason why Satoshi introduced vote per hashrate, was exactly to nullify every effect of "majority of nodes".  As miner pools are directly connected between themselves (for reasons of not wasting hash rate), they don't need the P2P network to get a block from another miner.

So all non-mining nodes can do, is copy the one and unique chain that miners make.  If they like it, they keep it ; if they don't like it, they stop.

ok here is me being unbiased

NODES DO MATTER:

bitcoin is a symbiotic relationship.
pools collate the tx data in a certain format.

the node network judge which block of data is a valid format of collated data and keeps that block if everything is valid/approved.

other nodes then see that a node has a new 'height' and requests that new accepted block. and as a snowball effect if the majority of the nodes have the same consensus rules, that block gets shared to the majority and that block gets set in stone.

by nodes holding a block and then pools building ontop of the most approved/valid previous block a single chain of good, valid accepted data becomes locked in and immutable.

if pools build upon blocks that are not majority accepted, they can find their newest attempt rejected because of the orphaning effect.

anyone shouting non-mining nodes do not matter, are only saying so because they dont want 'the opposition' gaining majority.

the problem with this is if both sides of the 'opposition' were to turn off their non mining nodes, then the only nodes of majority left are the miners nodes which then makes the mining nodes have more control because they become the majority.

for network safety sake dont let the 20 pools have the 'majority' otherwise they then control the network.

yes some will argue ' but if there are non-mining nodes setting rule A but pools want rule B it makes it harder/impossible for rule B to become law' well thats the point.

rule B should only become law if the community want rule B as a combined majority. it prevents pools changing the rules at a whim, it makes devs and pools actually fall inline and only change the rules if the new rules are good for the community as a majority.

this does not mean everyone should run 20+ nodes it just means dont let the decisions of rule changes become centralised

---

tl:dr;
its not just a mining game of who builds the biggest tower of blocks the fastest wins. where everyone then copies(like sheep) the fastest built tower..
its actually jenga.
who has the most stable and accepted highest tower of blocks without holes or risks of toppling over wins.
and its the node majority that get to poke holes in the tower until there is only one tower of strong immutable blocks that wont topple over

I think this is a cause of the alt coin rise.  To hedge against bitcoin monopoly risk, now that it has a very centralized power structure.

Until we get some competition for the big Asic manufacturers and get more hardware into people's hands, we are fk'ed. These mining giants are just growing bigger by the day, and they use our money to do it. We buy obsolete hardware from them and we pay them more fees when the Blockchain is spammed and they mine more efficiently with the help of ASICBOOST and cheaper electricity.

Bend over and take it from behind or get someone to compete with them. ^grrrrrrr^

this can't be helped, unless there is that algo change that we were talking abaout few week ago, and even then i think chinese would control gpu miner if we were to return back to our roots

i bet they have the majority of hash in altcoin too with gpu mining, still it's true that more casual mining wuld be possible without asic, which is good for decentralization

Blasphemer



Our God Jihan Wu the eternal is good and trusting only he can confirm all transactions only he is strong and moral enough to uphold the bitcoin.

Why wouldn't he ?  You're being his proxy server, taking some load off his infrastructure, so of course he likes you to be his proxy server full node.

People are finally getting that, as Satoshi said already in 2008, "only people trying to make new coins need to run full nodes", and that full nodes that do not mine have almost no utility.  In fact, they have one, important, utility, and that is for its owner: 
1) the owner can verify for himself whether the miners have decided to change the protocol or not
2) the owner has extra privacy and security, because he doesn't need to rely on a third party full node to verify his transactions, and the transactions he sends out could come from just any light wallet connected to his node, so he has "plausible deniability" for his transaction.