Can the centralization of Bitcoin mining pools be prevented?

[Beerwizzard]

I know nothing about mining but I have to ask it.
What stops miners from switching to another pool? For example if people see that very soon blockchain will be centralized then they can switch to the other pool in order to save their money and investments.

Nothing stops miners from switching to another pool. Miners don't even care about blockchains being centralized. The far majority of the miners just focus on profitability, and when that's in their favor they'll mine any coin, regardless of its fundamentals or legitimacy.

Miners are so focused profitability that some of them allowed their hashrate to be used by Crack the Scammer Wrong and CoinGeek in an attempt to attack another chain and potentially double spend on exchanges, which just shows how rogue miners can be if the situation presents itself.

Their profitability fully depends on the blockchain centralization.
51% attack would be fatal for the entire BTC blockchain and all their investments altogether with their BTC shashes (they probably have some big ones) will lose their value.
I hope that miner community would be able to find some consensus and save the blockchain.

[eaLiTy]

As Bitcoin's mining industry grows, the dominant ASIC company known as Bitmain controls most of the network's hashrate. Major mining pools are under such company's control, putting at risk the entire Bitcoin blockchain against 51% attacks.

One thing they will not do is to hurt their business in the first place, if they destroy bitcoin with any kind of attack it is like destroying them self and i am not sure they will be doing that kind of thing, no one will kill the golden goose. Sure the entire mining is centralized and there is nothing that can be done at this stage, if there is a fork regarding that i am not sure how it will impact the market.

[pinoycash]

I know nothing about mining but I have to ask it.
What stops miners from switching to another pool? For example if people see that very soon blockchain will be centralized then they can switch to the other pool in order to save their money and investments. The pool consists of ordinary miners that are not controlled by Bitmain.

The bigger the pools the highest chances of hitting a block, 

That's the sole reason why people choose a pool with the highest hashrate. Coming to centralization, Any pool that controls more than 51% of the hashrate controls the blockchain. 

[Beerwizzard]

I know nothing about mining but I have to ask it.
What stops miners from switching to another pool? For example if people see that very soon blockchain will be centralized then they can switch to the other pool in order to save their money and investments. The pool consists of ordinary miners that are not controlled by Bitmain.

The bigger the pools the highest chances of hitting a block, 

That's the sole reason why people choose a pool with the highest hashrate. Coming to centralization, Any pool that controls more than 51% of the hashrate controls the blockchain. 

And at the same time they should understand that if they choose pool,  which is very close to 51% they they won't earn anything and even lose everything they got. I know that miners are earning money but I don't think they are so retarded that they would harm themselves.

[Steamtyme]

It's never too late, but the problem are :
1. Decentralized pool (such as P2Pool) already exist, but it's barely used. It means miners don't care about decentralization or too lazy to configure their miners for P2Pool.

Depending on how they get into mining, they may not even know it exists. That's the problem, with all the informative sites just regurgitating the same info. People mostly wind up on a Bitmain owned/controlled/partnered pool or Slush. The bigger hey get the harder it is for people to think about trying out smaller pools spreading the hashrate out but increasing variance in reward frequency.

2. Assuming the community/developer agreed to change into PoW which prevent pool, miner & pool owner most likely will stall/prevent it from happening.

If discussions ever got far enough to consider moving away from POW and people were actively considering this. You might see people open their eyes and branch out to other pools to spread the hashrate. If for no other reason than to not rock the boat possibly having a negative impact on the overall market.

The bigger the pools the highest chances of hitting a block, 

They will hit them more frequently, but the miner earns a smaller fraction of each block because the reward is spread so thin. That's why in theory these miners can earn the same amount at any size pool over a long enough period of time. Ideally you want to be at a pool that is large enough to expect a block every Difficulty Adjustment Period. This way you might hit fewer blocks but you earn more BTC per block. So really the lowest fee pool, is the best choice assuming they share block rewards.

And at the same time they should understand that if they choose pool,  which is very close to 51% they they won't earn anything and even lose everything they got. I know that miners are earning money but I don't think they are so retarded that they would harm themselves.

Just because someone reaches 51% doesn't mean everyone instantly loses everything. If they began doublespends then yes the market would be in trouble, loss of faith is huge. Like I said above if we ever got close enough it would become a frontline issue and people would actually have to make themselves aware.

That would be interesting to see if the majority hashrate holder would try to convince the world to make them the central authority.

[Herbert2020]

It's never too late, but the problem are :
2. Assuming the community/developer agreed to change into PoW which prevent pool, miner & pool owner most likely will stall/prevent it from happening.

the problem is that this type of change is going to introduce a ton of issues in bitcoin apart from what you said. mainly security issues and new attack surface that each proposal so far is suffering from. otherwise miners don't control the future of bitcoin if some day we did actually find an algorithm which was truly superior to PoW and had little disadvantages that made the result more advantageous.

[Abiky]

I don't think such a big company like Bitmain would risk everything they built in all this time by performing an attack. They are producing millions of dollars every year and that would all stop if people find out they have even the smallest implication in something suspicious and harmful to bitcoin.

That's certainly true, mate. Bitmain has a lot to lose if it comes up with a scheme like that. People might start losing interest into Bitcoin itself, resulting in large losses for the Bitmain company itself. It would be best for them to support the BTC blockchain at its fullest, as it proves to be highly beneficial to them. The mining industry is a highly competitive one, even though small miners (or the average Joe) cannot easily get into Bitcoin.

Still though, Bitcoin maximalists believe that the centralization of mining pools is far beyond reach. This means that Bitcoin will be put on a risk of 51% attacks in case there's conspiracy from governments worldwide.

Nonetheless, I hope that BetterHash and Optical PoW come into effect soon to further minimize the risks of centralization into Bitcoin's mining process. Just my thoughts