Topic: Question regarding the role of miners vs nodes in securing the network (Read 487 times)

Sorry if I seemed a troll to you. That wasn't my intense.

Obviously, by heaviest chain, I mean the chain with the heaviest workload, aka more computational work. As there is no excuse for your confused interpretation, given the clear context, I suppose you are showing signs of trolling  

I'd suggest reading a bit more and thinking a lot more, before posting.

But, no one talked about the heaviest chain. This implies that there's a chain with heavier blocks, weighting more gigabytes. What I said is the chain with the most work.

No, he doesn't. There isn't a timestamp checking when you send the chain. If your chain has more work it is the valid chain. One could generate 2016 blocks with a difficulty of all difficulties summed and be considered correct. Furthermore, I explained how you can fool the system's timestamps on blocks if you're the only miner in the network.

Again, if you're the only miner of the network, time can be defined by only one person instead of all's. You generate blocks within a supposed time difference of 10 minutes and retain the same difficulty in each period.

Except that they aren't beliefs. Bitcoin isn't a religion for no one to question. He provided some arguments based on facts.

Please stop being so ironic, you only humiliate yourself.

Although the two concepts, the Longest Chain Rule and the Heaviest Chain Rule are slightly different,  they have been used in the literature interchangeably without ending to too much confusion.

@Tangentc has a valid point about generating a shorter chain with heavier workload being infeasible because of timestamp requirements, though his point is valid just for long range re-org attempts. In the short-range case, such a counterintuitive scenario is feasible.

It'd be much better understood once it is put in the big picture:  generating fewer blocks in a large window of time inevitably causes lower difficulties to be set in the network and such a chain would carry a lower workload as long as it wants to remain shorter.

Again, I'd recommend sticking with the security role of miners vs full nodes, instead of practicing endless controversies on irrelevant issues.

Enjoy your day, the majority here are just too thick to understand anything anymore.
I leave you to enjoy your ignorance together with your false beliefs.

 

Ok, since you want to be pedantic (personally, I do prefer pedantry anyhow), let's try this again using your exact words.


It is not. To the average person, "Longest chain" generally implies largest quantity of blocks. Bitcoin nodes do not use quantity of blocks to determine which chain to follow.



It does not.  It is quite easy to create a chain with MANY more blocks, but much less total proof of work. If I purge all the blocks from the current blockchain EXCEPT the original "genesis block", and then immediately start mining a new chain with that same starting block, using today's modern ASICs I can produce thousands of valid blocks per minute. If I write code that sets the timestamp for each new block that I create 10 minutes later than the previous block, then the difficulty will remain low and I can continue this process completing a chain of 705,000 blocks in less than 8 hours. This will give me a chain that is "longer", but since those blocks are lower difficulty it will have "less work".  Clearly "longest chain" doesn't always have "more work".


This is simply a false statement.  The number of blocks is unimportant, only the total work.


This is also a false statement. Again, the number of blocks is unimportant.  IF SOMEONE HAD MORE HASHPOWER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED, then they could go back a few difficulty adjustments and start replacing blocks. Since they have more hashpower, they'll produce blocks faster than the rest of the world. Therefore, the time between 2,016 blocks will be less than it was in the current chain, and the difficulty will increase faster at the difficulty adjustments.  By the time they start to get close to the current chain with their replacement chain, they'll have more total work BEFORE they exceed the current blockheight. At that point, if they broadcast their chain, all nodes will abandon the chain they currently have and will accept this replacement chain as the valid chain, even though it is a block or two shorter.  You absolutely CAN have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain.


How fast you can catch up depends on how much more hashpower you have than the rest of the world combined.  If you have only 1% more than the rest of the world combined, then you are not going to catch up very fast.  If you have 10,000 times as much hashpower, then you can catch up quite a bit faster.




That is ABSOLUTELY what you said:


That is not what I said , reread my earlier posts til you get it.

I said nothing about a single block having more work than a 700,000+ chain of blocks.  I said that a shorter chain can have greater proof of work. In other words, a 699,999 block chain could have more work than a 700,000 block chain.



Perhaps. What's your source of information?  I suspect mine is more reliable.


3 blocks?  Nah. Regardless, no matter whether it was 3 blocks or 699,999 blocks, the problem is that it is prohibitively expensive to acquire and operate enough hashpower. This is why Bitcoin remains secure.


Except for access to enough hashpower.


ABSOLUTE NONSENSE.  Nodes don't know anything about what code other nodes are running.  They havee no way of knowing if the block that they receive was created by modified code or not. As long as the block itself passes all the validation checks, nodes are perfectly willing to accept blocks from a modified node program.  As a matter of fact, there are SEVERAL variations of node software out there (and several versions of each variation). They all produce blocks that are accepted by all other nodes.  As long as the timestamps that you create fit within the rules for a valid block, you can modify them as much as you like.

OK, It's getting pretty much derailed.

Back to OP's question, it is undisputable that Bitcoin mining scene is not in the best possible shape as a majority of participants who belong to the vast community of medium to small miners are alienated from the network and the blockchain, having no clue about what the actual blockchain's state is, period.
Arguments mentioning the ability of miners to migrate between pools (to fulfill their security role) are not solid enough. @pooya87 and @BlackHatCoiner are missing a critical point: The existential utility of a pool is the difficulty leverage it provides for small miners, hence small pools are not a real option for migration and miners are left with a handful of options to deal with the variance.

Although It is true for all PoW coins (not just bitcoin), it is not inherent to PoW, neither it is the only way variance could be handled even for winner-take-all model of PoW which Satoshi adopted first and others copied it, let's elaborate more:

Until recently, I believed that winner-take-all approach to PoW proposed and built into Bitcoin by Satoshi is such a fundamental mistake that leaves no chance for it (and its clone) to avoid centralization of mining and rise of pools. I'm now revising my perception of the problem and reaching to a somewhat more moderate conclusion, as it seems to be possible to improve the situation with pools without disrupting the whole thing.

For now, let's assume my idea is implemented and adopted by a majority of miners, just imagine it for a moment please, suppose we have hundreds of thousands of small miners across the globe with network hashrate share down to 10^^-7 (users who should wait like 2 centuries for hitting a block!), directly connected to the blockchain, generating/publishing their own blocks with a steady flow of daily and fair income, I know, I know, it is hard for you guys to imagine, you are "enchanted by pools" aren't you? But come on, I'll give you a kiss  .  Now you are awake, just imagine and answer me: In your "imaginary" pool-free bitcoin world, is network security understood the same as what you experience as an enchanted Bitcoiner now?

You must feel really superior.

---

If you're the only person in the network, then you can decide which timestamps you'll use between the blocks and increase or decrease the difficulty analogously. You can't achieve this if there are other miners too, because they'll mine fairly and outpace your blocks. Only if you owned the majority of the hash rate and did the whole work by yourself until you exceed them, you could replace your chain with theirs.

I wasn't talking about the wallet clients. I was talking about the Bitcoin clients.

🤡

That is not what I said , reread my earlier posts til you get it.

So in your confusion,
Someone could make 1 block with a greater proof of work today that the combined 701172 blocks that bitcoin currently has.

I can tell you, you're wrong, but it seems to be some cult mentality blocking logic from getting thru.

Tell you what, you and anyone that believes you, get together and overwrite all of bitcoin chains and do it in 3 blocks.  
LOL, BlackHatCoiner thinks he can modify the timestamps at will, so nothing is holding you back.  
* Anyone want to let him know that modifying the node program code and all of the other nodes would reject it, feel free,
he seems to have trouble believing me.*


FYI:
Until the block height reaches a near = height,
any wallet client will not check the proof of work verses the other chain.
At least that is the way it works in this reality, not sure about the fantasy world you guys seem to live in.

Can they? Perhaps, but it's VERY unlikely.

Reorgs happen all the time. Nobody is likely to notice a significant reorg that damages the integrity of Bitcoin until AFTER it has happened.


You are mistaken.  It is absolutely possible for a chain with less blocks to have more total proof of work. Under normal circumstances it would be unusual and you aren't likely to ever see it happen, but in a scenario where someone is attempting to attack the network, the only reason they wouldn't TRY to create a chain with more blocks and less work is because they know that the nodes will ignore it.

The actual, real, rules as implemented result in nodes following the largest total proof of work regardless of number of blocks.

If you're replying to someone, please make it clear which part of it you respond.

Alright, let's take the following scenario:

Bitcoin's chain: 700,000 blocks height and difficulty is very high.
Your chain: 650,000 blocks height with twice work of Bitcoin's chain.

You're the one who decides the timestamps between the blocks, so you could leave 20 minutes between each block. That would drop the difficulty by 50%. So now you've just made it easier to mine the rest 50,000 blocks. You could redo this in every period and you'll reach the 700,000 soon.

Nope ,  
block speed and difficulty settings would prevent that.
You're stuck at the same difficulty level for 2 weeks, so thinking you can catch up really fast is not possible.

FYI: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

But, a chain can be longer than the current one with less work. The difficulty is what determines the correct chain. Someone may choose to mine 1,000,000 empty blocks, but if they're all mined with a difficulty of 1, the chain will be rejected. So saying that the longest chain is the correct one refers more to the chain's height rather than its work.

You could mine the rest of the blocks with less difficulty and catch up really fast.

Because Longest chain is more accurate, since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

For any reorg to ever occur , the # of blocks (height) has to be greater and have more work. ie: longer chain with more work.
You can never have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain as the wallets will ignore any blocks not near equal in height with the current blockchain.
 

But, one of them can realize if they're trying to reorg it. One's enough to spear the news, isn't he?

Nope.  Miners just blindly hash the header.  They don't make any attempt to determine whether the "Previous Block" attribute has been used before or not.

But, the paper describes Satoshi's vision. You can't deny that what we're working on is someone's vision since the paper was written by them.

Why do you give so much emphasis to the whitepaper? The whitepaper also contains false definitions such as “the longest chain” instead of “the chain with the most work”.

I guess you wanted to mean it metaphorically. Even that way, it's wrong to state it. They aren't forced to work anywhere. They're free to choose another pool or create one themselves if they feel they have to. The pool owner isn't an oppressor. He can't threaten miners. The opposite; the miners can damage him by choosing to not work on his pool.

Wouldn't the miners realize it before it happens? They receive block headers and could understand if they're working on a block that was mined before.

They are absolutely different things. The white paper is 7.5 pages because of the elegance of the core idea, Einstein's paper which disrupted physics abruptly by representing the Special Relativity from scratch using lots of mathematical deductions and equations was like 20 pages long.
IMHO, it is not a good practice to put the paper aside and quote from the writer's chat and comment logs. It doesn't help after all.

BTW, giving space in a codebase for very large numbers is a common practice in software engineering and programming, doesn't imply the existence of a comprehensive and complete plan for dealing with scaling problems. It is just so easy to give extra space to variables for extreme conditions but doesn't help enough when the system goes through an actual one, it just keeps working, but how good?.

I don't think you know what "slavery" means.