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All full validating nodes, mining or not, validate all the transactions and blocks in the network and check if they follow the rules, correct?

Then I assume that that my node is as good as a miner's node.

But why do some people believe that only the miners' nodes matter and are very quick to cite this?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dezb4dBUEAAtXYy?format=jpg

Is there a technicality in how the whitepaper is written?

Plus if the miners create the block and their nodes do the only validations that matter then what's the point?

I have been waiting for someone to ask this question since I have the same question, and I'm just a newbie who reluctant to start a new topic.

From what I read arguments against non-mining full node, as follows:

It doesn't make the network stronger. It's actually the opposite. A non-mining full node only acts as a "witness." It doesn't have the ability to put/discard transactions in the blockchain. Thus, it only delays sending transactions to the node that really matters.

Parties who against the non-mining full node often cite Satoshi's mail "Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.  A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node."

I really hope Bitcoin guru here can give me some lesson.

Source:
https://medium.com/@olivierjanss/why-non-mining-full-nodes-are-a-terrible-idea-ad3c49f7a7b6
https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

Yes, your node is useful, but no, it is not "as good as". The blockchain really only takes a step forward when a block is created. You cannot create blocks.

There's more to it than this but the basic reason people want to run their own node is trust. Your own node can validate all transactions. If you rely on other peoples nodes then you are putting trust in them to validate transactions on your behalf.

Technically, there was no such thing as a "non-mining node" when the whitepaper was written.  I suspect the CPU -> GPU -> ASIC arms race evolved far more quickly than Satoshi envisaged.  The original idea was that everyone running a full node would be mining and everyone else would be using SPV.  But, as with seemingly all economies, we had to go and invent the "middle class".  Thus, non-mining nodes came into being.

This is why some people proposed re-writing the whitepaper to make that distinction clearer.  Non-mining nodes are important because mining began to centralise at too rapid a pace.

Other than the mentioned point, nodes only accept transactions/blocks that follows the network rules and thus are essentially enforcers of it. If non-mining nodes doesn't exist, then everyone is assumed to be running a SPV client. SPV clients do not validate blocks and they assume that every transaction in a given block of the longest chain is valid. SPV clients connects to several nodes for this purpose. (Sybil) Attacks against are made more expensive with more nodes as a single honest node would make it extremely expensive. If there were no non-mining nodes at all, miners would have total control of the Blockchain. They can essentially work together and change the protocol rules of Bitcoin and its not what we want.

Let's not rely on whitepaper or Satoshi's idea since it was created long time ago under different condition. Things such as one-CPU-one-vote have too many obstacle to be realized even if Bitcoin only can be mined with CPU.

While it's true that "non-mining node" isn't as useful as as "mining node", "non-mining nodes" are required to verify many things such as :
1. Know which one is longest chain, it's really useful when chain-split occurred unintentionally. The example is Bitcoin-qt upgrade 0.8 in 2013.
2. Detect invalid transaction in block, since you can't detect it only from block header which SPV uses.
3. Know that other nodes/miners change their Bitcoin protocol intentionally.

But people should note that not every user should run full nodes, but user should be able to run full nodes if they want to without expensive/specialized hardware.

More info : https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ (https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/)


Theoretically you can create blocks, but only lack the amount of PoW needed.

This is one of the main arguments we all come across from those who feel there is no problem in any increase in block size. Moore's law being the other. The supporters of big blocks believe that there is no danger in relegating all mining and consensus power to specialized hardware manufacturers like Bitmain. The reason they cite is that miners have incentive to keep the structure intact and to not attack the chain. They assume that the miners or miner community have no reason to attack the chain completely neglecting the possibility of takeover and disruption by authoritarian governments or other political upheavals.

A non mining full node helps one to verify transactions as they accept only well-formed transactions that follow all the rules. Imagine a small merchant that decides to use a cryptocurrency for his business. Does he need to be a mining node? Not necessarily. On the other hand, does he need the ability to independently verify his transactions? Does he need to ensure that all incoming transactions follow the consensus rules as agreed by the code and there are no unknown changes made to it?? The answer to that would be yes. Both of these are things that only a full node can do. Now imagine thousands of these merchants and users running their own non-mining full nodes while a centralized only-mining entity decides to change the rules and propagate a chain with an increased reward. All those "users and merchants" reject those transactions. The changed transactions become part of the longest chain nonetheless because, well, mining nodes decide what appends on to the blockchain. But if those transactions are rejected by the merchants and users running non-mining full nodes, do they have any value, despite being part of the longest chain?? I don't think so. This is the only way to ensure that mining nodes stay in line even when they don't want to or are being forced not to.

Far too many problems in this world have happened because people are told that they should have no problem in relegating responsibility to a trusted organization. Take an example of any trusted authority in the world and you can find numerous examples where that power has been abused to suppress the common man. Tax authorities, Legislatures, Regulators in education, health and insurance, all of them have abused their power because "They are supposed to act as per the rules".

The whole point of bitcoin and being your own bank was to change this paradigm. Running a full node (mining/ non-mining) does ensure that.

I doubt that having a multitude of non-mining full nodes makes the network slower. If anything it makes the network more resilient and possibly less prone to orphaned blocks due to enabling multiple network paths to and between mining nodes.


Either way, I've looked through the medium post you are referring too, and I don't think their arguments hold quite up:


Running full nodes (or the discussion about the need for full nodes) does not prevent Bitcoin from scaling. Keeping blocks small is what enables people to run full nodes, which is necessary to keep the network censorship-resistant. (Cue the whole small blocks vs big blocks discussion all over again)

Other scaling solutions exist (eg. Lightning) that do not require pruning the network down to a handful of datacenters.

It is also worth noting that the network congestion didn't last, showing that increasing the block size now would have been too early. Also the drop of Bitcoin's dominance below 50% is more likely due to the growth of the cryptocurrency market in general, rather than people fleing from Bitcoin in earnest.



Being forced to connect "directly to a trusted mining full node" is exactly where Bitcoin would become permissioned. You now have a single node that you put your trust into and if they deny your transaction your shit out of luck.

Going through "a maze of 'non-mining full nodes'" that you don't need to trust is the only way to make sure your transaction actually gets propagated across the network and thus relayed to all -- or at least most -- miners. Not just that the ones that you "trust".

I also don't see how having the sender connect directly to mining nodes would make accepting 0-conf transactions safer for the recipient, as even within a network of mining nodes only, the recipient has no guarantee that all miners have received the same transaction. Worse, still, the recipient's "trusted mining node" may not even be aware of an ongoing double spend attack.



It does indeed make network upgrades harder. However I'd still argue that in the case of decentralized, immutable blockchains network upgrades shouldn't come too easy -- otherwise we'd just have auto-updating nodes, which is something that Core has explicitely decided against for fear of centralization.

The question of node updates aside, the drama of recent times was more a question of politics and self-governance, rather than technology.

Craig Wright[1] had documented that a new block propagates within roughly 1 second to something on the order of ~98% of the hashrate. But the 1000s of nodes in the remaining ~2% of the hashrate can see significant delays. Mining nodes prioritize their connectivity to nodes which generate block solutions, because being late on mining a new block solution costs money.

Thus non-mining nodes are essentially ignored by the consensus system of Nakamoto proof-of-work. That is why user activated fork is nonsense. The only way the non-mining users can overrule the miners is to change the proof-of-work hash of the system (which is centralization because voting and politics is centralized manipulation).

Your non-mining full node can enable you to objectively validate transactions (which is not possible in ANY proof-of-stake systems), but can't have any appreciable impact on the consensus.

[1] Yeah I know he makes mistakes and is irritating, but a few of his points are correct.

The time to propagate blocks is completely unrelated to this. How does taking more time for a block to reach a non-mining node matter? If that non-mining node rejects the block, and if enough non-mining nodes reject the block, then the miners are still on a fork that is not being used so their coins are effectively worthless. The block propagation time is completely irrelevant; the point is not to prevent mining nodes from seeing those blocks, rather it is so that miners who are using a different blockchain from the rest of the network (which occurs regardless of block propagation times) are mining useless coins. Block propagation time has nothing to do with consensus.

I believe it has been shown that most nodes are at most one or two hops from a miner. That and the fact that nearly all miners connect directly to each other reduce the value of non-mining nodes as part of the consensus protocol.

However, I feel that the reduced value in that role does not diminish the importance of a wallet's ability to validate the blocks and transactions it receives.

Of course it does. If a full validating node that is not a miner receives a non-valid transaction then it will not propagate it to the rest of the network.

Full validating nodes also assure censorship resistance and can give checks and balances to miners' nodes.


That is the road to centralization and that would be bad for Bitcoin.

That's my understanding.

So the deal is this.  Let's say your full node finds a flaw in bitcoin.  How would you get everyone to accept this?  Well what you do is you have to get your corrected ledger to be accepted by the network.  How do you do this?  You have to fork the current chain where it went wrong and replace it with another corrected chain, and the chain must be longer than the one you are replacing since that is the requirement the protocol sets for a ledger to be accepted.  

So in other words, you have to win blocks for your version of the correct ledger to be accepted by the network.  And to win blocks you must be mining.

You finding a flaw doesn't mean diddly in other words.  You have to put your money where your mouth is and that is by getting your ledger accepted by the network which requires winning blocks.

Also non mining full nodes make the network slower but more robust.  So it is positive in my opinion and you can also be assured you can send and receive bitcoin whenever and wherever you want.  With a SPV wallet you have to hope that other nodes even allow you to connect and sometimes they don't.

I think now I have a better understanding about this issue. The opposing parties of non-mining nodes have the underlying assumption (hypothetical) that miners will never cheat. Miners will never destroy their own investment, therefore users can trust mining nodes. That being said, efforts to validate transactions and detect invalid transactions in the blocks are just a waste of time since users can trust mining nodes.

Meanwhile, the supporting parties of non-mining nodes have the underlying assumption (hypothetical) that there is a probability of cheating and a possibility of takeover and disruption by authoritarian governments or other political upheavals.

I guess parties who against the non-mining nodes would have their "Oh Shit" moment when their hypothesis could be proven false.

It is worth noting that there's a difference between trusting mining nodes in general (ie. the network as a whole) and specific, individual nodes (ie. a directly connected trusted mining node). Being able to trust the network as a whole while not having to trust individual miners is why decentralization is so fundamental. If you have to rely on trusted individual miners you might as well stop using cryptocurrencies altogether.

mu enrico,

no that is not it at all.  Realists realize that non mining nodes are good for the node holder and network, but not by validating the network.  The point that those of us who don't idolize non mining nodes is we realize that they have no vote in the consensus of the blockchain and so if they found something wrong in the network, they would be powerless to change or fix it.  However miners do have the power to fix problems in the blockchain.

It’s the converse implication that matters and was the point being made. That is that non-mining nodes are irrelevant because they can’t insert themselves into the hashrate-weighted network to cause propagation delay between mining nodes.


Incorrect. Any delay for mining nodes on receiving a new block is some lost profit. The selfish mining attack exemplifies that delayed (withheld in that case) blocks matter for profit.

Your statement does not make non-mining nodes relevant. Nor does it refute the point that was being made, which is that non-mining nodes are irrelevant. What can they impact? They can’t even impact propagation delay.


That agrees with our point.

The statement does exactly that. You choose to keep ignoring the point being made on the technicality of "non-mining nodes cannot append onto the blockchain". Everyone knows that. Where do you think bitcoin derives it value from? Bitcoin does not derive its value from miners or the longest chain. It derives value from the usage and non-third party trust ensured by the PoW security that miners provide.

Non-mining full nodes are supposed to be run by 1.) Users 2.) Merchants/ Small businesses 3.) Exchanges. Those are the entities that give it value. Transactions rejected by such full nodes have no takers because they will appear invalid to the users, exchange & merchants . That is why miners will never dare mine a chain separate from that acceptable to the rest of the world, i.e. "Non-mining Full nodes".

On the other hand, if you leave only the miners to run full nodes while the rest of the world is supposed to assume they are honest, it changes everything. That is why it is stressed that you should be running a full node if you can afford to.

They also discounted the reality that mining has become more centralized over the years by the mining cartel. The "one CPU one vote" as Satoshi envisioned does not apply anymore.


But you do not have to. You can validate them yourself by running a full node.


That is too much but yes, it would be better for the users to validate transactions and check if they follow the rules. It is also good for maintaining decentralization.


It is false. Anyone should have that choice and ability to validate transactions and blocks, mining node or not. Anyone who convinces you "no" should be validated. Hahaha.

From @anonymint of course...

Will probably not reply to any misunderstandings or arguments spawned from this, because have too much work to do.



True and you’re correct to imply that makes the network more resilient. Bolsters for example in protecting against DDoS attacks, because there are more nodes that an attacker would have to take down in order to partition or otherwise impact the propagation of valid data on the P2P network. You’re correct that nodes don’t forward invalid data, because doing so would allow amplification attacks and generally break the contract of mutual protection.

But on the overriding theme it appears that you and @amishmanish are trying to use that as a strawman argument in order to making an incorrect argument for the relevance of non-mining nodes.

The non-mining nodes do this work for free to protect mining nodes. The mining nodes are the only ones being paid by the consensus system. If the non-mining nodes all disappeared, mining nodes would have to set up these perpherial nodes and pay for them. Because mining nodes must have a robust P2P network in order to insure their income stream. And mining nodes probably already do control many nodes for this reason. A mining farm does not put all its hashrate behind one node on the network, lol.

So really as I already explained in my prior two curt posts in this thread, I still maintain that non-mining nodes are irrelevant.

And for propagation of new block announcements, I reiterate again that it is a measured fact that the connections are hashrate-weighted and so the mining nodes make sure they have best connectivity to the hashrate that matters and non-mining nodes have no ability to delay or impact the propagation of new block announcements if for example they disagree with something such as a protocol change in a fork.

Censorship can never be objectively proven. You seem to not be aware of the inherent limitations of triangulation due to lack of perfect network synchronization (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4397403.0#msg39201160) that is a fundamental fact of physics in our universe.

Non-mining nodes do not matter at all w.r.t. to the consensus, as will be further discussed below.

I stated that running a non-mining full node provides an objective perspective on the chain. But validation of Nakamoto proof-of-work can be done offline. Propagation order doesn’t matter, so validation doesn’t need to be live.

---

I’m sorry that you force me to be argumentative. Perhaps you’re not aware of all the following points?

AFAICT, you’re again making strawman arguments.

If miners were to accept willy-nilly protocol errors (as opposed to rallying in unified hashrate around a fork of agreed protocol changes) such as minting more coinbase reward per block than allowed by the protocol, then incentives compatibility would be lost and the longest chain rule would be ambiguous because there would no longer be an exclusive incentive (i.e. no single contract) to mine on the longest chain. Miners can’t do this because they would destroy their income stream because the chain would fork off into dozens or more forks that never reconcile into a longest chain. Thus no one could spend. The consensus would not unambiguously progress forward. The only viable way for miners to fork the protocol, is by agreement of a majority of the hashrate. Period. The non-mining nodes are irrelevant. As for the politics, I discuss that below after a tangential paragraph...

Btw (and slightly off-topic), Nakamoto proof-of-work becomes incentives incompatible (https://gist.github.com/shelby3/e0c36e24344efba2d1f0d650cd94f1c7#file-public-preview-md) and will no longer converge on a longest chain when the transaction fees rise to become much larger than the block rewards. And Byzcoin is not a solution (https://gist.github.com/shelby3/e0c36e24344efba2d1f0d650cd94f1c7#dysfunctional-if-significant-transaction-revenue) to this insoluble dilemma. This is why proof-of-work must be run by an oligarchy of miners otherwise it will fall into tragedy-of-the-commons clusterfsck. This tragedy-of-the-commons is also caused by the insoluble problem that no choice for a block size (https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/sterling-re-anonymint-re-tenpoundsterling-re-anonymint-re-tenpoundsterling-re-anonymint-re-tenpoundsterling-re-anonymint-re-tenpoundsterling-re-anonymint-re-skypilot-re-themarkymark-steemit-creates-accounts-for-scammers-and-nobody-else-20180521t002925714z) (not even Monero’s adjustment algorithm with tail reward) can resolve the game theory errors in the design. Thus the only way Nakamoto proof-of-work will continue to be incentives compatible is with an oligarchy of mining running it and extracting the maximum transaction fees that the market can bear. This is why none of us will be transacting on-chain in the future when transaction fees are $50,000. These are facts. Review the cited links if you’re not aware of all the details.

So the bottom line is that proof-of-work was designed to become fully centralized (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4266048.40#msg39054129). See also the Decentralized section of @anonymint’s latest blog (https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@anonymint/scaling-decentralization-security-of-distributed-ledgers).

So your valid concern is that fully centralized mining could if not validated by users do some protocol errors. I never argued against this point. In my first post in this thread, I stated that running a non-mining full node provides an objective perspective on the chain. But validation of Nakamoto proof-of-work can be done offline. Propagation order doesn’t matter, so validation doesn’t need to be live.


I do not see where I ever ignored any valid point pertaining to this thread. You seem to be implying that a user activated hard fork could work. Incorrect. I already stated that the only way it can work is by changing the proof-of-work hash function. And note that changing the proof-of-work will make the security initially very low. If the miners decide to go rogue for whatever reason they decide to, then the non-mining nodes can’t do anything about it other than announce the protocol errors to the community.

If the community decides to abandon the chain and spend their tokens to some other chain, then the miners apparently would have a reason for wanting that outcome. Perhaps they shorted their own token, so they can buy it up cheap and then stop attacking and profit on the rebound in price. There are many possible externalities and (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.1260#msg39268309) none of us are omnscient enough to fully reason about all of them a priori. For example, if the 666 coincides with Bitcoin being the world reserve currency (https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@anonymint/re-anonymint-bitcoin-rises-because-land-is-becoming-worthless-20180519t120410615z), the world government run by the powers-that-be may not give a shit at the future juncture whether some nerds and their user activated hardfurk doesn’t agree with the global politics. For example if they debase the money supply functioning as a world central bank. Presumably at the future juncture they would have the political support to do what they want to do. The problem with your strawman theory of users uniting to defect from miner defection from ideals, is that as Vitalik had explained (https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/11/25/proof-stake-learned-love-weak-subjectivity/) that altriusm-prime is an undersupplied public good. IOW, that there’s no Schelling point by which users will rally around to fight the politics. Because always users have many selfish vested interests which outweigh a collective interest (https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/the-caveat-though-is-that-when-the-attacker-can-fork-the-vested-interests-of-some-of-the-users-9340dd037a61). This is why democracy is always fscked.

Do you really think you are smarter than the think-tanks of the Zionists who have employed armies of those with 160 IQs. Do you think they have not thought through many of the possibilities going forward? We have some smart guys on this forum. If they dig into the details as deep as @anonymint has, they might be humbled as he has been. We’re so self-important (https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/if-you-want-the-country-to-be-less-polarized-then-stop-writing-talking-and-thinking-about-b3dcd33c11f1). But we’re not! We will get our diapers changed by those powers-that-be who understand the game theory of political-economics, unless perhaps we wise up and stop pretending to ourselves that it’s so simple (https://medium.com/@shelby_78386/first-apparently-youre-not-aware-that-the-casper-slasher-design-work-appears-to-be-fundamentally-c2a72d18f5fa).

Devil in the details. Please open your mind and dig into.

Non-mining nodes might be viewed as irrelevant by the rest of the network but the relevance of running one should matter to you. It would also be in a Bitcoiner's self interest to do and validate his own transactions instead of relying for someone else to do them for you, which what SPV wallets do.

Maintaining censorship resistance and a sovereign asset system depends on it.


I do know how that matters, and not sure if this is a good counterargument, but BIP148 made the miners move in the direction of the community.


Are you saying that mining nodes can censor my transaction if I do it from my full node?

I will wait for amishmanish to reply, before doing it myself.

Plus Traxo, tell anonymint to reply himself. Thanks.

It is just a propaganda to make you doubt the tenacity of blockchain technology. If they can do that nobody is going to stop them. Just do it. Don't make false claims against distributed networks. We want action. Not empty promises and manifesto.

No. Your node validates transactions but you need a base to validate them on, and that base is the history of the longest chain. That's why in a double-spend attack the attacker prepeares a fake history, then she does her 1st spend and issues a fork of the history that doesn't include her own transaction. Your full node will see the fork and trust the longest chain, which comes in this case from the attacker who then can spend her coins again.


"One-CPU-one vote" in his paper, Satoshi did not expect miningpools to take over. Originally it was intended that every user of full nodes particiates in maintaining the Blockchain by giving some of her CPU-power to the network and earning a reward for it. Today we have a mining industry that has no interest in the coin what so ever as long as they make profit from it. They don't even have to use the coin at all for anything else but to sell the reward for their profit.

Other protocols like PoS are more close to Satoshi's orignial intend, where everyone who has a wallet open stakes a part of their coins to keep the Blockchain running and by attacking the Blockchain they risk losing their own investment they have in the coin.

sure, validation can be done offline, you can run a pruned full node with listen=0 and not accepting incoming connections, you are not givining a fk to the bitcoin network, but does not matter, you should run a full node to verify blocks for yourself. If you don't run a full node you are not using bitcoin! if you don't run a full node you are using a slow inefficent paypal with a nerd authentication system.

bullshit, if a miner try to steal segwit coins his block is invalid. No way they will be able to steal coins and produce a valid block. Segwit is here to stay and my full node(not miners) tell me what is it valid and what no.!
TRB don't understand softforks so it will make users think they can spend segwit or p2sh, but they can not. I don't care what miners do, I only care what my node tell me is valid or not.

9*16=144

my full node matter for me! so I can verify and not trust.!!!

correct, My node only broadcast my transactions, I don't care others :-D


You are wrong you told segwit will allow miners to steal bitcoins LOL, calling segwit a virus, rotfl, that's a FALSE bs. please stop spreading this propaganda bs.! It is false. there are only 12 known nodes running TRB, vs 85000 full nodes running bitcoin-core >0.15! TRB nodes can not really validate blocks, as they don't understand any softfork made since then.!

we are saying the same thing, your full node don't need to be online,
what is a full node? a full node is a software that verify all blocks. It can be pruned, it don't need to be always online, my full node is not always online, it came online when I ask for the longest chain.

to verify offline that is indeed the longest chain, you need a full node. An spv client can not verify the longest chain.

p2sh like segwit are equivalent to pay to anyone only for outaded nodes.

My node tell me if a block is valid or not, mining cartels can mine their altcoin as long as they want. it has no value for me.!

I will repeat if it is not clear, my node tell me what is valid and what is not. Miners trying to steal segwit will mine an invalid chain and my node will never consider their chain as valid because it is not, no mater how long their chain is, if it is invalid, is invalid.!
Your coins will be stolen only if you use an spv wallet trusting mining cartels.
I don't trust mining cartels, so I run a full node(it is not always online, most of the time it is offline).!!!!

Bitcoin means trust no one, I don't trust miners, I don't trust other full nodes, I will verify which is the longest valid chain and follow it.! if a chain is not valid for my node, it is an altcoin. I only trust that most people give a value to the same chain I'm following.
If people don't run a full node they can be cheated by mining cartels and give some value to a shitcoin pretenting to be bitcoin.

miners will mine the most profitable chain. An altcoin that steal segwit transactions will never be profitable to be mined, stolen coins will have no value on the market. So there is no booty, they can claim what they want, like what it is trying to do bitcoincash. Bitcoincash have little to no hashpower, less transaction than dogecoin, no one really use it, no one really want it, it is only a stupid pump and dump coin used to scam traders and investors with zero knowledge about physics.

Assuming that a 51% attack was successful. But when the network starts noticing that there's a "bad actor" in the network, won't the nodes start rejecting blocks from him?


But the problem with POS is distribution. I also believe that we are underestimating the role of burning energy to create scarce coins of value.

At any rate, time to move on. There are other long replies to read. Haha.

When the network realises the attack, then it would be too late. 51% attacks are essentially an attacker building their own private chain alongside the honest chain. When the time is ripe, they will release the chain and the history of the other chain would essentially be wiped clean.

Nodes can't reject blocks as they wish, unfortunately. They could invalidate the chain but it would have to be done manually and the client would probably have to be modified. The attack can continue after the release of the chain too, as long as they can sustain 51% of the hashrate.

the longest valid chain is valid. 51% attack cannot be stopped without an hardfork. We can only pray that 51% is not and will never be profitable on bitcoin. A successful 51% attack on bitcoin will provoke a panic sell and the attack will be stopped because it is no more profitable.
if the attack persist after the panic sell, bye bye cryptocurrencies. It was a funny experiment.

The "steal all the segwit" chain would be absolutely worthless. The markets will most likely be frozen before the bad actor can close their short positions. Even if the bad actor was fast, it is highly doubtful that the bad actor will be able to recoup his costs for this 10+ month chain reorganization he will be attempting, especially in this relatively illiquid market. Also, if the bad actor's intent was to absolutely destroy Bitcoin, that will not come to fruition either. I would see an emergency hardfork in the works. I really doubt any entity is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try and implement a "steal the segwit" 51% attack. Also, I doubt that the attacker is somehow going to make his chain plausible by trying to bribe people to accept it. How many billions is that going to cost?  :D

I also read that in case of a successful 51% attack, there is nothing a miner can do except censor a transaction. I have not studied the details but that is also relevant to the topic, or might be a good new topic. I am confused now. There's too many details to discuss.

Anonymint, give me time to digests your posts. Hahaha.

Plus I found this. Satoshi's "original vision" included non-mining nodes as a security measure. 8)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfIpjFUVMAAjdvd?format=jpg

Censorship resistance, I think, is built on the rational mining incentive, not users running full nodes. Miners are incentivized to publish any/all transactions they can based on fee priority, because of the block reward. That's what keeps them from censoring any given transaction -- fees.

The problem with SPV wallets (aside from privacy) is that users can't know if a payment they receive is valid. Whether a payment they send is censored by the mining network is a separate issue entirely.


Sure they can. A malicious group of miners just needs enough hash power to orphan any blocks that contain your transaction from the best chain.


I believe this is correct. Non-mining nodes don't really participate in the consensus process. They merely validate what miners do.

But the existence of validating non-mining nodes is a powerful check on miners, since a robust network of full nodes will reject attempts at dishonest mining that break consensus rules. "Reject" isn't even the right word; they'll be completely ignorant of the invalid forks because they are incompatible protocols. Major economic nodes like exchanges are especially relevant here, because they won't risk accepting invalid coins from miners, which presumably keeps miners in line.

If a miner breaks consensus with economically relevant nodes, his future block rewards may end up worthless. That's a strong incentive not to break consensus.


Many people predicted that would happen when Bcash forked. Instead, Bcash had to hard fork a second time because of slow block times.

Apparently, there wasn't enough incentive amongst miners to risk attacking Bitcoin. What makes you think that incentive will ever emerge?


For various reasons (like massive ventures with significant required infrastructure and high electricity costs), industrial miners are not anonymous. As Peter Todd points out (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7e04ov/why_has_there_been_no_selfish_mining_attack_on/dq1o110/), colluding and openly attacking the network could bring significant bad PR or even criminal charges.

Segwit transactions represent 1/3 of the network (https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/segwit-usage?orgId=1). You think when 1/3 of the network has their outputs stolen, that all users are just going to quietly eat the losses? They'll download the miners' client and start following the miners' chain? Why?

UASFs / hard forks to address such miner attacks may be extremely inefficient. However, it doesn't follow that most users will remain on a network where the majority of miners have participated in thefts of this magnitude against its users. And those "other miners" you mention? They need to weigh their long term rational interest in a healthy network against the short term incentive of "free money."

This brings me back to the rational mining incentive I mentioned earlier. In your scenario, that incentive has blatantly failed. There's no point in switching networks to follow the miner chain if there is apparently no reliable incentive to keep miners honest. If that's the case, Bitcoin's value should plummet and this whole conversation is moot. (And that's the overarching reason why miners will probably avoid ever engaging in the sort of attack, unless at the behest of a powerful nation-state)

Then it's a good thing we don't have Democracy in Bitcoin.  We have consensus, which is better.

Democracy is a sham, since all that really matters is lobbying and bribery.  Those with the money make the rules and the people merely vote for the puppets that dance along.  Bitcoin has a strong immunity to such corruption.  People aren't just casting a vote, they're actively participating.  And the chances of lobbying ever being an issue in Bitcoin are further reduced with every new participant.  UASF is a bit of a joke because some people believe that non-mining nodes inherently have more power or influence than mining ones.  Clearly that's wrong.  But at the same time, mining nodes don't have more power or influence than non-mining ones.  Neither would be able to make a secure chain without the other.



Another reason why the proposed UASF to activate SegWit would have been utterly moronic had they gone ahead, because they would be voluntarily sacrificing the security provided by the hashrate.  But, provided the network doesn't split in a mining-versus-non-mining-node style of confrontation, the miners, in turn, rely on the "security" of the economic majority.  Hence why the mining nodes don't hold more influence than the non-mining ones.  They need each other.  Consider seriously the implications of a successfully executed (yet poorly named) "51% attack" on Bitcoin.  SegWit user or not, few people are going to stick around if that sort of behaviour was deemed a normal occurrence.  You can't attack the network in that way without harming yourself financially.  You would be attacking the source of your own income.  Biting the very hand that feeds.  Not a smart move.

Crapcoins like BTG can probably limp on after an attack like that, since the "value proposition" (and I mean that in the very loosest sense of the words) is purely speculative.  The bagholders will simply brush that incident under the carpet and whistle nonchalantly, hoping some fresh-meat-to-the-grinder speculator will come along to take their place.  But Bitcoin isn't a crapcoin.  There's a difference between a speculator who is only here to make a buck, compared to those who are primarily involved because they appreciate the ethos and principles behind crypto.  Those users wouldn't deem that sort of attack admissible here.  They would rather accept a successful attack as a failure of the experiment, wash their hands of Bitcoin completely and build something new from the ground up.  

A 51% attack (can someone please think up a more accurate name?) on SegWit or Bitcoin is the end of Bitcoin.  All that would be left after that are the speculators.  The majority of people who run full nodes are not the speculators.  Those who contribute code are not the speculators.  The users who most actively transact over the network are not the speculators.  The ones who provide the real economic impetus that gives Bitcoin its top spot in the cryptoverse are not the speculators.  

The value proposition of Bitcoin is that the network is transparent, neutral and that everyone owns what they own, with no centralised power to block, reverse or otherwise tamper with any transaction.  If you jeapordise that in any way, lots of incredibly expensive mining hardware suddenly fails to make ROI by a significant margin and things start to go downhill very quickly for those who own that hardware.



So you can see why any collapse of that security would mean that Bitcoin loses its value.  You've just countered your own argument.  Well done.

And then the miners can transact amongst themselves.  Just them.  Alone.  If a successful attack occurred, who else would want to be on a network run by thieves?  Pyrrhic victory.  Devastating to the attacker.  As the block reward diminishes over time, miners will become more and more reliant on the transaction fees.  They need the other network participants for their efforts to remain fruitful.  Repeat yourself or don't, it doesn't matter.  You're still talking crap.  Miners are not the economic majority.  They don't provide the overwhelming transaction volume that will ultimately sustain the network.  Block rewards are finite.  Part of the design.  You should probably try to grasp at least a vague understanding of that before you attempt any further statements about how all this works.



Not all of the wealthy participants are miners.  If these users are stolen from, they won't store their wealth in Bitcoin anymore.  I can't understand why this point isn't glaringly obvious to you.  I fully understand the point you think you're making.  I'm just telling you that the premise is fundamentally flawed.  You're talking about a network where miners can steal what they want and there would be literally no consequences.  That somehow other network users would think that's just fine and dandy and continue transacting and storing their wealth in Bitcoin like nothing had happened.  That, in this bizarro-world of yours, rampant theft of property was totally okay and no one would care in the slightest.  It doesn't matter how tempting the "score" might be, theft will not be tolerated in Bitcoin.  Miners understand this.  Apparently you don't.

You've given some highly entertaining Chicken Little "sky is falling" tirades before, but even by your standards this is impressive.



Except that I clearly do fully grasp the fact that, in a theoretical 51% attack, SegWit balances are more vulnerable than non-SegWit balances.  It doesn't mean a 51% attack is more likely, though.  However profitable the attack might seem at first glance.  Unless miners have grown tired of accumulating usable coins that have value in the real world and would rather we left them to trade their completely worthless thief-tokens amongst themselves.  Tokens that would no longer be redeemable in the real world because, again, Bitcoin would be finished if a successful attack occurred.  No more top spot in the cryptoverse.  It would just be another generic cryptocurrency that merchants don't accept for their goods and services because it isn't secure.  They'd move on to something that was secure.  Whatever that "something" is will be the new #1 coin.  Chances are, the miners' hardware won't be very useful for that new coin everyone uses.  Again, a successful 51% attack on Bitcoin is a wholly Pyrrhic victory.  It destroys everything that gives Bitcoin its value.  No amount of telling us "but look how many bitcoins they could steal" is going to change the fact that it would seriously impact the value of those bitcoins.



Your position is logically untenable.  Bitcoin can't be the most secure network if miners are stealing money.  That's not the definition of secure.  Try looking the word up.  No amount of accusing people of failing to understand you (because you're so unbelievably pompous to think it impossible that other mere mortals might be on your level) will change the fact that your argument is flawed.  It's undeniable that the alignment of incentives is an integral part of the security.  Bitcoin was specifically designed to make it unprofitable to attack the network.  That's what makes it secure.  Miners won't steal the money because it would demonstrably prove Bitcoin is not secure, thus it would lose its value and the miners would be left holding some near-worthless tokens and some very expensive space-heaters.  That's not a win for them, that's shooting themselves in the foot head.  Financial suicide.

To summarise, if value is derived from security, you can't attack security without simultaneously attacking value.  Repeat whatever nonsense you want, you can't refute that.

I hope the wealthy are as monumentally ignorant as you are when they carry out this supposedly inevitable feat of pure magic that defies all conventional rationale.  Since, if they have a clue in their head, they aren't going to bother.  

I love how you keep saying "Schelling point" in an attempt to make yourself look more intelligent than you are (hint:  it's not working).  

Also "[50+%]" is still grossly inaccurate as it's possible to pull off with 49% or even less.  We'll add that to the growing list of things you've demonstrated you haven't "grokked" about Bitcoin.  Just call it a "hashpower attack" (or better yet, shut up completely until you can talk sense).



Yes, just like all the other times in the past when we've observed your flair for the dramatic.  All your other "end is nigh" prognostications were wrong too.  You've attempted at least a dozen other post-mortems while the patient is still alive and kicking.

but the basic reason people want to run their own node is trust. Your own node can validate all transactions. If you rely on other peoples nodes then you are putting trust in them to validate transactions on your behalf. ,,,

I found this blog by StopAndDecrypt, https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-miners-beware-invalid-blocks-need-not-apply-51c293ee278b

It says the same thing of what I have been thinking, that running full nodes do matter because they validate transactions and blocks and check that they are following the rules. The same in my thoughts of its importance with censorship resistance.

Anunymint, I will quote the "on topic" parts of the blog and leave it to you to reply.

You'll have to be more specific now that you've written about the Schelling point in every single post you've made in this thread.  Do you mean the first utterance under the Traxo alt?  Or one of the other multitude of uses?



LTC at $13, BCH for free from the fork.  Doing just fine, thanks.  Not sure what relevance that has.



You can't replace legitimate network traffic, actual real-world commercial activity, with miners running some extra nodes.  That's not where the utility or network effects come from.  Having access to specialised hardware doesn't magically maintain an economy all by itself.  The people who generally feel the need to have a "real-time objective view of the network" are the ones who contribute an above average proportion of that real-world commercial activity and they don't want to rely on others to know for certain that everything is valid.  Everyone paying a fee for their transaction is economically relevant.  The network won't survive over the long term if people aren't transacting.  It's likely that people and businesses running full nodes account for a large proportion of Bitcoin's fee-paying traffic.  You can't describe them as expendable or replaceable.  Bitcoin needs those users.  It needs more users if it really is to become a global reserve currency.  Which is why scaling is necessary.  

Think your game theory through to conclusion.  If the only people transacting on the network were people running specialised hardware, Bitcoin would have far less functionality and adoption than it currently has.  It would no longer be accepted by vendors if the network only had a small number of active participants who used it solely as a store of value.  It would no longer be accepted anywhere if people didn't believe it was secure because miners had stolen SegWit balances.  No one would even think of it as a store of value if we set the precedent that stealing balances was somehow okay merely because the wealthy would deem it morally acceptable and therefore that means everyone would agree.  That's beyond a stretch.

Again, you are advocating a system where theft is commonplace, but still somehow held value and utility.  No amount of theoretical manoeuvrings will ever make that a reality.  What other "global reserve currency" can you name that only circulates amongst people running specialised hardware?  There isn't one.  You can't have a reserve currency if no one believes it has any value.  No one would believe it has value if balances could be stolen or transactions could be tampered with due to hashrate attacks being viable.  Ergo, they aren't viable.  Because Pyrrhic victory.

If there were a UASF Bitcoin with no miners and just users, that would be a weak Bitcoin.  I'm pretty sure we agree on that point.  
If there were a SegWit-theft Bitcoin with no users and just miners, that would also be a weak Bitcoin.  Why can't you grasp that simple fact?

There's a balance of influence/control/power/call it what you will between devs, users and miners.  All three are needed keep Bitcoin strong.  You can't discard any of them without consequence.

Miners can't replace a proper organic array of full validating nodes, namely, nodes which are hosted by people all over the planet which never meet each other and have unknown agendas. A network with 10000 nodes run by 1 miner is weaker than 1000 nodes run by legit people all over the planet, making actual transactions, part of all the exchanges and services using said software etc.

If X miners collide to steal SegWit, im sure Y miners will find profit in not doing so out of the mere short sighted evil act of the SegWit booty (the Schelling point is not so clear to me here, thinking long term), the other will go for a PoW change if needed. So with the 95% of the community supporting the software behind SegWit (most people support Core like it or not, no one is forcing people to run Core software mostly) supporting that, with the developers supporting that, it will only need the approval of merchants and exchanges, and people means fees. At this point is dishonest miners vs everyone else, and I don't think nobody is going to support dishonest miners just like nobody would congratulate miners in how much of a good job they did on a regular 51% attack because it would damage their brand/status, people tend to ostracize these miners which is part of how Bitcoin works, so no one will list the attacked BTC chain as BTC and the current SegWit chain (with a PoW change if needed) will be known as BTC all over the world, with miners on attacked chain circlejerking alone and nobody transacting on it because there's no way in hell anyone is going to be on board with a 3-year rollback, this will set an example on how it's a bad idea to do that ever again even if theoretically possible. Just another outcome.

Annoymint is essentially saying that the miners can follow any rules they like, the users must follow their choice of consensus rules. Which isn't what's happening in reality of course, but it's a clever argument nonetheless.

Any comments on how your sudden reappearance in the Bitcoin world is coinciding with other general market FUD, Annoymint? Oh, and please tell us about the latest developments in your satanism-resistant cryptocurrency, I'm really, really interested :) What's new since when you started ? (we've been waiting to hear even a little news about your big plans since... what, 2013?)

And miners were signalling for NYA because...?  They clearly desired more blockspace for more fee-paying transactions.  Just about every single argument you've ever made on this board would only make sense if you don't live in reality.  You can't rationally argue that miners want a 1MB blocksize when we've seen demonstrably that they wanted larger blocksizes.  The fact they didn't get their first preference of the "2x" proposal is evidence enough that the non-mining nodes still hold ample economic sway over network governance.  We all saw it play out.  We got a compromise in the form of SegWit, which most of the miners and users accepted.  Those that didn't accept it have the option of BCH.  That's what happened in the real world.  Nothing in your fantasy world of make believe is going to happen.  You are a renowned kook.  Get your meds adjusted.  Come back when you're not having some sort of perpetual paranoid-psychotic episode.



The entirely fictitious miners that only exist in your head?  The ones that act in a manner wholly contrary to their own future success and longevity?  Tell them the real world says hi for me.



Except it doesn't enable theft.  The game theory was all done before the code was even written.  Read the whitepaper again:

"The incentive may help encourage nodes to stay honest.  If a greedy attacker is able to
assemble more CPU power than all the honest nodes, he would have to choose between using it
to defraud people by stealing back his payments, or using it to generate new coins. He ought to
find it more profitable to play by the rules, such rules that favour him with more new coins than
everyone else combined, than to undermine the system and the validity of his own wealth."

The Schelling point of pay-to-anyone non-immutability doesn't change this incentive to remain honest.  If it did, SegWit never would have been devised, let alone implemented.  Again, no amount of telling us "but look how many bitcoins they could steal" is going to change the fact that doing so would seriously impact the value of those bitcoins going forwards.  The wealthy won't be wealthy anymore if they lose their shirts in the attack.



Ah, you've been drinking the MP kool-aid.  Not surprising that he attracts your ilk.  The mentally unhinged always rally around MP's deranged war-cries.  I can't take anyone who references or quotes his gutter-spiel seriously.  

Only pre-Segwit nodes (about 2% of the network, none of which are miners) interpret Segwit tx's as ANYONECANPAY. It's the soft-forking logic that keeps pre-Segwit nodes from rejecting Segwit blocks, every other node (the other 98%) knows that Segwit transactions need a valid signature (hence why 95% of miners was the activation threshold for Segwit). Remember how it got activated: miners essentially began to threaten each other with orphaning non-Segwit signalling blocks to force the others to enforce the Segwit soft fork. But apparently, according to your logic, miners will wait until Segwit addresses are in majority use, then roll back the Segwit soft fork and steal everyone's BTC, mwuhahahhahaha!

Here's a little issue with your theory: Segwit buried deployment (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/13120), which maintains Segwit's activation since block number 1.

And there's always going to be enough independent miners to keep the chain going from attack block -1, any miners contemplating such an attack know this in advance. So it's not a functional attack at all, and certainly won't be after Segwit deployment is permanently enforced.



This is last year's FUD, and you've been forced to scrape this one up off the floor after the biggest clown trolls in existence barfed it up when they couldn't get it to stick.

You've not got much imagination, your only gift seems to be that you believe if you can just keep talking, then everyone will accept your babbling. But what happens in reality? You stop talking

Thanks. That proves my first thought that he might be a person that I should not listen to.

Plus I believe BIP148 and NO2X showed Jihan Wu who's boss. It is also the reason why he supported Roger Ver's call to hard fork to Bitcoin Cash. To "own" a network they can control.

Does covert AsicBoost still work in Bitcoin Cash?


Oh?


But in truth non-mining full nodes are not irrelevant. The miners, users, merchants, services, the economic majority are all relevant in the network. NO2X proved it.

I tried to understand all the technical posts you made but let me tell you, this is when my instincts started telling me to stop listening and wear my tinfoil hat on. You remind me of franky1. Hahaha.

You can be a paid propagandist of Roger Ver.


Sorry about your health. I hope you get well. Take care of yourself.

SegWit signalling aside, it is still a fact that actual SegWit nodes do honor SegWit transactions like they would honor legacy transactions. I mean that's pretty much the definition of a SegWit node.

It is also worth noting that a SegWit rollback hardfork (ie. back to legacy nodes that interpret SegWit transactions as ANYONECANPAY) requires either (a) literally all miners including the majority of non-mining nodes to collude, or (b) if full miner control can't be achieved, enough hashpower to both force the SegWit rollback while keeping the SegWit blockchain in lockdown with a 51% attack.

While I understand you firmly believe in a SegWit reckoning happening it is still pretty close to impossible to pull off. And that has nothing to do with lying our trying push an agenda.



Yes, as it's SegWit transactions that make the advantage covert AsicBoost moot it likely still works in Bitcoin Cash. So if Bitmain was using covert AsicBoost (afaik this was never conclusively proven?) they indeed had a strong interest in trying to prevent SegWit from being activated on mainnet.

I found a simplified explanation of why covert AsicBoost is thwarted by SegWit transactions here: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56514/how-does-segwit-prevent-asicboost

I think this is what it boils down to. The economic majority.

Even if enough miners where to collude as to attempt a SegWit rollback hardfork, I simply do not see the rest of the ecosystem to play along. Or at least I have yet to read a convincing argument of why the market would decide for the rollback blockchain (ie. the one you are referring to as Satoshi blockchain) over the currently canonical Bitcoin blockchain (ie. the one you are refererring to as Core).

In other words, it all stands and falls with the economic majority, not with what the miners decide to do. All the SegWit booty in the world won't help if no one's willing to buy. Hence there's a real economic cost in attempting such an coup. Hence it's more than just "the flick of a switch" that you make it out to be. (Holistically speaking. False signalling and changing software is trivial, of course, but I presume that lies not at the heart of your argument)

It's good exercise to refute Annoymint's claims, it consolidates the way one understands Bitcoin.

OTOH, I had Annoymint and his alias accounts (TPTB_need_war, iamnotback, dinofelis etc) in mind when I suggested adding a pay per post feature to the forum. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3345485.msg35012104#msg35012104) I was wrong, I hereby propose "pay-per-character" :D

(seriously, imagine if you earned enough merit to get a cut of the paid-posters? Annoymint would be paying you every time he unleashes his rainbows of effluent)

Where's yours?

"Liar, liar" was your reply, and unfortunately you failed to identify a lie, or provide reasoning. That's not a request as such btw, I think your reply speaks for itself :)

Your contribution to bitcoin has been #noted.

Carlton Banks stated a clear technical fact. I expanded on it. While I obviously can't speak for Carlton Banks I personally definitely never said that SegWit nodes are a reflection of the economic majority -- neither explicitely nor implicitely.

However the market is. And I can't say for sure, of course, but I personally doubt that SegWit-booty-coin would fare well in the market. Even given plenty of room for market manipulation.



As there is no central authority to say otherwise, and pretty much everyone refers to the "Core blockchain" as Bitcoin, it is the currently canonical Bitcoin blockchain.

That's what canonical means.

Unless you're the Pope of Bitcoin you have no say in what constitutes the canonical Bitcoin blockchain.

When you talk about wealthy, you mean wealthy in general, or Bitcoin wealthy specifically? Because I've seen wealthy ($billionaires) involved in scams such as Ethereum and others, so I doubt all that wealth has any idea of all of this, most are still learning. As far as old money is concerned (the one that owns most of the real state, gold, access to armies, nukes.. etc out there) I doubt they are involved at all in Bitcoin and if they are, they aren't aware of your proposed scenario and are just holding BTC not worried about any of this. All these "Rothschild-Bitcoin" type of connections I've seen are just conspiracy theories as far as im concerned.


As long as the USD is accepted to buy things, they can print as much as it's needed to pump anything they want in the marketplace, and if for some reason they decide to buy the other fork then the rest will follow, and assuming the other end has already sold their share after the split they no longer have selling pressure on it. For how long that would be viable I don't know, but then again, they have managed to keet USD alive for ages even if it should have died already, as long as it's accepted to buy things it will continue being the case.

Right, and all BTC in segwit addresses on the original blockchain will be protected.


The blockchain must fork for this attack to work, so it's simple really: anyone can create a fork anytime with rules that permit stealing outputs. There's nothing special about choosing a "Segwit booty" approach, any fork can choose to redistribute BTC in any way the creators of the fork see fit. You're trying to say this is somehow a weakness in segwit, it's not.

So, now you've popularised this idea of a "steal from Segwit addresses" fork, what's the reason to do it? Do you have one? Why don't you want to steal from vanity addresses, or Satoshi's coins? All are equally possible when you fork, so why not some other target

This statement is self contradictory. If old nodes without segwit are incompatible, why are old nodes without segwit still following the Bitcoin blockchain? How are they doing it?

ANYONECANSPEND has existed in Bitcoin since before Segwit was introduced, and I think using it as a way to upgrade signing rules was always at least one of the intentions for ANYONECANSPEND's existence. Old nodes understand ANYONECANSPEND, precisely to maintain compatibility with changes in how transactions are signed. Get a job

Which Bitcoin fork used this "transition" feature you speak of? None

So if Segwit is a different fork of Bitcoin, why are the pre-segwit nodes still following the original chain

Continuing on the real topic.

From what I got from Anonymint, there are "a cartel of miners" that are "possibly" colluding. Then that opens the argument that users should run full nodes and validate transactions and make sure that they are valid. Am I wrong in thinking that?

Plus we have also witnessed a group of Bitcoin "oligarchs" try to "take over" through the NYA. That too should be a reason for users to run full nodes. Yet the UASF and NO2X were dismissed as drama? Hahaha.

But Anonymint then posts technical explanations why non-mining nodes do not matter, and makes it more confusing. But in reality, don't the nodes treat other nodes as "nodes" and that there are really no "mining nodes" but "just nodes" from a full node's perspective?

I am not criticizing the teacher but I expect no less than the teacher not criticizing his student for his inquisitiveness as well.

 

Are you replying in the wrong thread to make things confusing again? Seriously, grow up

I think some of you will find this very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMvI73jJ6uc
I would recommend at least watching from 28:00-33:00 (by that point you'll be hooked  ;)). Andrew DeSantis explains the importance of the Satoshi address format, the importance in maintaining the continued, shared heritage with the genesis block , and its address format, etc.

He also implies around 31:40 that the Satoshi fork will be very valuable there will be a Satoshi fork, since it contains the last 10 years of data on the blockchain.

There are known and emergent properties of the Satoshi address format that will be lost forever when we switch to bech32 addresses. He posits that this change in address format, which no one seems to question, may break the bitcoin incentive system in unexpected, and even currently unknown, ways.

Haha. I thought it was only me because I was a little stupid to "get" some concepts about Bitcoin, and I swear I thought some of his "theories" might be biased or too extreme and impractical that they will not materialize.

But I believe he is a person to learn from. I hope the other posters will not be afraid to ask him more questions.


Thanks. I will watch it later.

That is absolute nonsense. Bech32 is superior to the legacy address format(s) in every definable-aspect. There is no network effect on the addresses; 99.9% of the users today don't care whether the prefix is '1', '3', 'bc1'  or something completely random. He's partially delusional. Stop listening to fake experts.

---

I quit this video after 5 minutes. I'm almost better off listening to Ver's gibberish, at least he isn't trying hard. :)

Every post from @anunymint apparently was deleted. The thread is now very difficult to understand because a significant portion of the discussion is missing.

Some of this thread was archived here (http://archive.is/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4416188.0;all) and here (https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4416188.0;all).

The account has been banned and all posts deleted. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2189580
https://snag.gy/loMb9V.jpg

It might be because of the lies and misinformation they were spreading.

CENTRALIZED determination of what is misinformation is the antithesis of our entire decentralized crypto movement.
Bitcointalk is no longer congruent with our movement.
It has become some echo chamber for selling CENTRALIZED, PERMISSIONED, BOOTY calls.

Many will argue that it makes far more more sense now.    :D

It was less of a "discussion" and more of a diatribe anyway.  Plus, readers should still be able to gain sufficient context from the segments of insanity that remain in quotes.



You know what else is antithetical to crpyto and our movement?  Theft at the protocol level.  No amount of calling it a "donation" changes the fact that people have ownership over the funds in their SegWit addresses and they aren't going to relinquish that ownership by following a chain where the funds have been taken.  If you think advocating theft is congruent with our movement, you need to find another movement.

Even if that were true, you entirely did not respond to my point.


You do not know the definition of decentralization.

Good Riddance!!

He was spreading confusion and conspiracy theories. His basic argument was that what he was saying needs an understanding of Game theory and Schelling points. Nobody else was intelligent enough to understand it and so he was right. How else is that different from that other credential flaunting mad hatter who tried to prove himself Satoshi?