Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 19552. (Read 26609792 times)

So Bitcoin's security depends on the dev team spotting and educating the malefactors? But if the intent is to harm Bitcoin (statist gubermint thugs, Saurian Bankster Jewesses, etc.), wouldn't they laugh at the devs' friendly advice?
What would the outcome have been, had the miscreant ignored devs' advice & said "lolno, putting up moar nodes, don't cost us shit"?

Coin



Explanation

Yes, devs and people who actually understand bitcoin corrected the company and educated the errors in their ways. Simply deploying hundreds of nodes without active users securing them with economic interests isn't extremely dangerous in itself because wallets still check for the longest PoW chain and not just the rules from the corresponding nodes. It is dangerous in a sense that those nodes could falsely give the impression that our ecosystem was more decentralized and it could introduce some potential non-consensus bugs but any nodes that were compromised and didn't follow the consensus rules would simply be an ignored alt.


You aren't realizing that full nodes validate both the longest PoW chain and if the valid rules are being followed. What you are describing is the creation of an alt , which is fine and has no direct impact on bitcoin. Nodes that don't have economic interests behind them are of little value. Not all nodes are equal!

Here is an analogy to consider:

What is worth more: 5 large fortune 500 companies and their userbase that enjoys their products and services or 100 shell companies with no capital, no products, and no users? What happens in an ecosystem when these 100 shell companies are introduced to a location and the general public chooses to ignore them because they don't like their product?

You keep implying a link between "economic majority" and "nodes."  Not obvious to me.
Nodes could be created & run (at minimal expense) by actors hodling no bitcoin; many (most) hodlers don't run nodes, so?

Good points

So how should have the network reacted to the boldface above, in its self-interest? Did it do so?
If yes, why was boldface dangerous?
If not, why not?

You should read the Andromeda Bitcoinian Catastrophe. Its about a crypto that cost 400~$. When iy enters bubble mode goes to 4000, then moon, after that, solar system, and finally, Andromeda. Bears and precious metals get utterly REKT in the odisea. You may like it

I said the exact opposite.... but to answer your insinuation: the answer is in understanding the fundementals of bitcoin -

Full nodes check for the --- The longest valid PoW chain, so a "51% attack" would need to be carried out along side a Sybil attack.

If a majority of the economic majority or nodes broke away from the majority of the hash power than they better quickly switch PoW algo's as they would indeed be susceptible to a 51% attack.


Here is an example of a backup plan devs have if miners ever go rogue or do something stupid-

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/41aocn/httpsbitcoinorgenbitcoincorecapacityincreases_why/cz0z9ym
https://github.com/luke-jr/bitcoin/commit/8d3a84c242598ef3cdc733e99dddebfecdad84a6

Keccak with a Nf15 appears extremely ASIC resistant.
***Clarification***  This is just an prepared idea and not a plan. The core devs obviously are prepared for the worst case scenarios like miners being compromised or doing something idiotic like raising the 21 million limit. Luckily most mining pools are intelligent and have our best interests in mind like most of the developers and these drastic steps likely will never be needed.

 

No. He suggests that a naive attack that succeeds to only create a majority in the least capital intensive of the three areas (nodes, mining, capital/economic majority) in isolation is doomed to fail -- due to a reaction of the rest of the network out of pure self-interest.

Are you suggesting that Bitcoin's security hinges on people's good faith (to not deploy "hundreds of nodes with multiple amazon Ec2 instances without users actively securing them and using them")?!

You are generally a troll and "cunt" that I ignore but I will make an exception because this appears to be a valid question :

What is of importance is the economic majority that backs those nodes. A node is only as secure and useful to the network insomuch as it has unique and active users behind such nodes. Thus nodes that are in control of exchanges/merchants/processors/Wallets are typically more important than regular nodes and nodes without active users can be malicious.

Case in point -  A certain btc company recently decided to assist the community with a PR stunt by deploying hundreds of nodes with multiple amazon Ec2 instances without users actively securing them and using them. This type of deployment hurts the bitcoin ecosystem and makes it less decentralized.

Another way to understand the power dynamic is what good or mined coins from 75% of the mining community if the other 75% of the economic majority doesn't except them in their stores, exchanges , or in person. Their currency would suddenly become worthless in a short while.

Nice try Hearn, but you haven't got the power to stop this train.

i have cold storage coins for that... at least for me, buying at 400 - 500 to HODL would be a position that relies on bitcoin to go up.. i don't like that position, i prefer a position that doesnt matter which way they go i will win .. anything could happen.. i still think bitfinex is a weakened link in the bitcoin chain.. proceed with caution .

It all depends on if the 2 implementations follow the same consensus rules. There can only be one set of consensus rules per chain and as soon as an implementation has active code that is following different consensus rules a fork occurs and alt created because all nodes no longer consider those tx's as valid.

The miners are ultimately at the mercy of the nodes and economic majority.

So it should be possible to break Bitcoin's consensus mechanism via node creation? Aren't nodes ridiculously cheap to set up?
Walk me through what you mean by boldface above, what are the potential outcomes?

Technically all that is needed for a hard fork is 51% of sustained hashing power, any number above that is completely arbitrary, but does change the social contract a bit IMHO... when devs choose 75% of the last 1k blocks to execute a countdown for deployment it is more democratic in nature where a majority can coerce or ostracize a minority. Selecting a higher threshold of 95% is much more anarchistic in nature where one needs near complete consensus before the consensus rules are changed in a hardfork.

What I find troubling is I keep hearing many misinformed users who are under the impression that the miners decide on consensus rules when in fact it is the nodes that vote on consensus rules.

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.

I think you'd have to work hard to do it. Though I think the party line from Core is to push Segwit as if it is an actual block size increase so that might count.

LOL!

for sure buddy. for sure.