right and if 75% of miners went to some fork probably 99.9% would come join them shortly after and then who cares about anything else?
[snipity snip]
The Vote is = The longest
valid PoW chain, with an emphasis on valid and only nodes deciding what is and isn't valid.
The miners can hash all they want on an invalid chain , but they won't be necessarily following the nodes or economic majority. This matters because when you look at how the hardforks are rolled out they are not polling the nodes but miners for an rough and indirect means of determining node support. There very well could be a dangerous situation where 75% of miners decide to fork , but over 75% of nodes and the economic consensus decides not to which would be very dangerous. This is why I recommend that all hardforks have at least 95% consensus of blocks within the last 1k to activate a countdown. Luckily Bitcoin classic still has time to change their minds from 75% to 95% as they have yet to release code.
What,
exactly, are the nodes going to accept as valid
except what the miners create? They (miners) crack the puzzle, then put the block together and publish it - the others then build on this.. Nodes then follow the longest one.
What you are saying makes no sense.
Sighhh..... ok, I will try one last time to explain a very simple concept.
There are at least 4 choices that can be made in the event of a hardfork between competing chains -
1) Quickly move over to the longest chain with the most hashing power out of security fears
2) Stay on their chain with less hashing power and hope the other chain doesn't become hostile and conduct a 51% attack. Notice there are now two chains , each with equal length , and each following the same principle of the logest valid PoW chain. One simply has more hashing power over the other, which can quickly and dynamically adjust as miners move back and forth between chains or one group ramps up ASICs that use their consensus code.
3) Nodes can choose to give up the PoW algo altogether and fork off with one of many PoS / or hybrid algos.
4) Nodes can choose another PoW algo and make the existing miners irrelevant to themselves.(There is already code in place ready for this if needed).
Ultimately it is the nodes controlled by the exchanges / merchants / processors / wallets / and large bag holders (or economic majority) that control the fate of the value of the coin as they can all make a decision to make all the miners obsolete in a moments notice if they so chose to. All that hashing power is merely a very expensive liability if the economic majority doesn't support their version of the consensus rules and taking a 75% miner vote on and assumed direction of the economic majority doesn't necessarily dictate if that reflects upon the opinions and will of the true economic majority. This is why bitcoin classic and core is reflecting and amassing a list of signatures from wallets, exchanges, merchants , users, ect ...
What is intresting to also restate is that single large whales can have a dramatic impact upon which coins succeeds as there are multiple attacks or ways they can support their own implementation to consider, so one should consider the risk and value of some really early bagholders(luckily Hearn sold his btc already in chunks)
Its a fatal misapprehension to believe that any actor in Bitcoin has your best interests in mind. Bitcoin works because everyone can work to their own advantage. Its been designed that these interests naturally self align without any central coordinating function.
There is no invisible hand here - and devs have no business guiding anyone.
I have repeatedly stated that we should design a system to anticipate the worst attacks , even from the core devs themselves... The core devs themselves have been specifically working on this to make bitcoin more modular to support multiple implementations. Have you not been following libbitcoinconsensus?
