Topic: What’s consensus? (Read 293 times)

As is mentioned earlier, when Bitcoin is born, mankind entered a brand new civilization, which I named Bit Civilization. In my opinion, it's a higher civilization based on the idea of Bitcoin and will transform all aspects of human society, including but not limited to organization, family concept, tool, language, word, belief, law, system, city-state, country, assets, ethics, culture and art. The booming crypto world is the embryonic form of the future Bit Civilization.


As far as I'm concerned, substantially, human civilization is consensus, so is Bit Civilization, currency and value. Consensus constitutes value and value constitutes civilization.

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So what exactly is consensus? Consensus mechanism is one of the core concepts of Bitcoin, only when we fully understand consensus, can we be more clear about the value that Bitcoin brings to us.


As I see it, the simplest explanation of consensus is shared knowledge, view, understanding and goal, which will temporarily eliminate differences and ease contradictions, rendering collaboration possible.


Another meaning of consensus is agreement, or contract. Reaching a consensus is garnering a contract. In constant struggle, compromise appears frequently, and the process of compromising is the course of forming an agreement. Consensus is to fix the agreement in the form of opinions, concepts or laws. Major difference indicates big consensus while minor difference signifies small one. In the history of human civilization, most of the consensus was formed in compromise.


We live in an objective world where the stimulation of education, learning, media and other external factors is ceaselessly affecting our cognition and then forming our subjective mind. Cognition is the fruit of accepting the consensus that exists. Concepts such as organization, family concept, tool, language, word, belief, law, system, city-state, country, assets, ethics, culture, art and so forth are not innate, but shaped owing to numerous collisions and concessions in violence and argument. In many cases, things themselves have no concepts and values at all but endowed by the collective consciousness of mankind.


In the past 5000-year history, human civilization came into being on the basis of consensus reached through repeated violence and compromise. But when Bitcoin was born, everything changed. Before, human nature determines whether a consensus can be achieved, normally by violence, treaties, agreements, laws and other forms. However, Bitcoin gives technology and algorithms the access to forming consensus . The previous consensus can be changed and discarded at will. Yet the consensus of Bitcoin is founded on cryptography and mathematics, and that abides by the laws of mathematics sorely.


That is the consensus of Bit Civilization, whose cornerstone is algorithms and technology, transcending human nature in that it is not governed by people and it manages people with the help of algorithms. That's why I gave it that name, it is an advanced human civilization. Bitcoin is leading us from a low-level civilization to a high-level one. It may take one or five or even ten decades, but I believe it will come and no one can stop it.


This is my understanding of some basic concepts of consensus. What's your point?

OP's post is exactly why it's so easy to paint the crypto community as delusional.  Crypto hasn't transformed society and it's not going to in any of the ways OP is fantasizing about because it's not any of the things it's being presented as in that post.  And if you need it to be any or all of those things to see the actual utility of crypto, then you're going to live in an eternally unrealized fantasy world.

Further, the "consensus" concept in bitcoin is what has driven so much division because it requires so much compromise to reach consensus that large groups of people are unhappy.  Every time you see one of these major forks break off from bitcoin it's because a large group of people reject the "consensus" rules and change them the way they think is better.  The consensus aspect is highly overrated and your post doesn't reflect the reality of how divisive such a system has actually been.

[holy yikes]

Not exactly effective. Most of our world chases money, and neglects more important factors. I like the saying that we work to live, and not live to work. However, the reality is most people live to get money, and then they don't even enjoy it when they get it, because by the time they've amounted any sort of substantial earnings, they are on their death bed.

The system is designed to keep the poor, well poor, and contributing to the wealthy companies that pretty much rule the world. So, no the current money system makes no sense, yet people contribute to its survival every day.

Unless by effective you mean keeping those that control things rich, then yeah its pretty effective at that. However, what is clear is there are far more people unhappy with the current implementation of our concept of money, than there is supporters of it.

Blockchain technology creates an ecosystem based on decentralization, transparency, and vital consensus. Someone might argue that these are the three pillars of the entire blockchain edifice. Remove one, and the entire structure will weaken and fail.

The third pillar-consensus. Particularly interesting because it presents a strange dilemma: in the blockchain, there is no consensus without determinism, and there is no determinism without consensus.

Blockchain is deterministic because it must be so and cannot exist in any other way. This is how the whole thing works. In the blockchain environment, everyone can see the status of other people's network, so it is completely transparent, and there will be no criminals wantonly, because they will be noticed immediately. When the only thing shared is a transaction, new nodes can be added anytime and anywhere, and they will see the same status. This is why smart contracts must also be written in a deterministic way. Otherwise, consensus will never be reached.

Consensus was introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto, because Bitcoin removed the centralized decision making powers of governments and Banks.

Bitcoin actually manged to solve the Byzantine Generals Problem (Where the human element of trust and distrust was removed and replaced by technology) ===> "Proof-of-Work mechanism" 

The inputs are still from humans, but the decision making and consensus are done through a complex system of algorithm and math problems. This technology should be given a "Gold" medal for achieving something that has never been done before... but humans (governments and Banks) are still the problem, because they do not want a technology to replace their power. 

People sometimes mistakenly think of consensus as though it were something akin to democracy, or voting.  But there are some crucial distinctions between those concepts.  Voting is effectively an act of asking for permission.  Your government permit you a specific date and present you with some options to choose from.  Whatever the outcome of that vote, you are compelled to abide by it, even if you didn't like any of the options presented to you.  The only alternatives open to you if you disagree with the outcome are campaigning for reform, leaving the region, or resorting to civil unrest and overthrowing the government.  However, these all take considerable effort. 

With consensus, however, it's more of an opt-in.  People take part by choice.  The software you run enforces the protocol rules you are willing to adhere to.  You aren't asking permission from anyone, you are simply manifesting your will and enforcing rules.  The consensus mechanism will then match you with others who agree with those same rules and you will build a network together.  The larger the number of people in agreement, the stronger the network is and the more utility it generates.  There is nothing mandating you to stay if you ever decide you no longer agree with the rules everyone else is enforcing.  You can even take part in multiple networks, each with different rules.  Or even create one of your very own.  You are effectively free to do anything, providing you can find a sufficient number of participants to build a functioning network with. 

Consensus mechanisms of Blockchain are really hard to understand for ordinary people, as well a bit longer but nice post @RainbowKun.
You know not only Bitcoin but also Consensus mechanisms are used to computers. it is fault-tolerant, which means it can respond when changes occurred, and keep the changes as a record for the future. For Bitcoin, another name of the Consensus mechanism is PoW.

I hope your concept of consensus is the same between Bitcoin and the human world, but I think it is very difficult, it is difficult to compare them, consensus in Bitcoin depends on mathematics and technology and there can be no difference because there are clear and fixed mathematical laws that cannot be changed, but consensus in humans is different. Exactly because it depends on the diversity of concepts and minds in humans and it is difficult for human minds to meet on one concept for anything in this life.
For example, can there be human consensus on the fair distribution of wealth among the inhabitants of the Earth? Will the rich be satisfied with distributing their wealth equally to the poor? I doubt that this consensus will ever happen!!!

So what exactly is consensus? Consensus mechanism is one of the core concepts of Bitcoin, only when we fully understand consensus, can we be more clear about the value that Bitcoin brings to us.
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This is my understanding of some basic concepts of consensus. What's your point?

Not exactly effective. Most of our world chases money, and neglects more important factors. I like the saying that we work to live, and not live to work. However, the reality is most people live to get money, and then they don't even enjoy it when they get it, because by the time they've amounted any sort of substantial earnings, they are on their death bed.

The system is designed to keep the poor, well poor, and contributing to the wealthy companies that pretty much rule the world. So, no the current money system makes no sense, yet people contribute to its survival every day.

Unless by effective you mean keeping those that control things rich, then yeah its pretty effective at that. However, what is clear is there are far more people unhappy with the current implementation of our concept of money, than there is supporters of it.

It is unreasonable but it is effective and for how long it has been in our civilization, I think that we will have a hard time uprooting this system because it's coupled already with the global economy and global supply chain and what happens when we take away a keystone to those things, it will eventually collapse, it's a parasite that we can't remove.