Can miners "freeze" bitcoin addresses?

[bitcoiner422]

Is it technically possible for miners to "freeze" certain bitcoin addresses by rejecting all transactions to/from a list of addresses? For example if all (or 50%+) miners agree or are forced to by some new regulation to block any transaction from an address that is known to contain stolen funds. If this is possible, then it would open up for all types of regulations forcing miners to become gatekeepers and blocking "bad" transactions.

[Troonetpt]

Is it technically possible for miners to "freeze" certain bitcoin addresses by rejecting all transactions to/from a list of addresses? For example if all (or 50%+) miners agree or are forced to by some new regulation to block any transaction from an address that is known to contain stolen funds. If this is possible, then it would open up for all types of regulations forcing miners to become gatekeepers and blocking "bad" transactions.

If this happen, that means bitcoin is going to die.
Why people chosen bitcoin?
Freedom of financial.

[Vod]

Is it technically possible for miners to "freeze" certain bitcoin addresses by rejecting all transactions to/from a list of addresses? For example if all (or 50%+) miners agree or are forced to by some new regulation to block any transaction from an address that is known to contain stolen funds. If this is possible, then it would open up for all types of regulations forcing miners to become gatekeepers and blocking "bad" transactions.

If 50%+ of miners decide to do something, and they have the programming ability, they can make bitcoin into whatever they want.

[CIYAM]

If 50%+ of miners decide to do something, and they have the programming ability, they can make bitcoin into whatever they want.

You mean if miners (mining pools actually) that control >50% of the hashing power decide (i.e. nothing to do with the % of miners as you could have 90% of miners only controlling say 30% of the total hashing power).

Such ideas of "black lists" have been brought up many times before and thankfully they haven't been adopted. If they do get adopted then Bitcoin would have a very big problem with regards to "fungibility".

[teukon]

Is it technically possible for miners to "freeze" certain bitcoin addresses by rejecting all transactions to/from a list of addresses? For example if all (or 50%+) miners agree or are forced to by some new regulation to block any transaction from an address that is known to contain stolen funds. If this is possible, then it would open up for all types of regulations forcing miners to become gatekeepers and blocking "bad" transactions.

Exactly.  Bitcoin can only function correctly should the majority of hashing power remain honest.  In this context, miners following such regulations are dishonest because they do not always build on the longest chain.

[josef2000]

Every single miner can individually set up the requirements. The miners can skip any transaction that they dont want to confirm. But thats only possible when they found a block and dont want to include the transaction into the block.

[cakir]

It's not about percentage. It's about excluding tx's from "all" tx pools. That's the only way.
 
Even if all of the miners exclude spesific address's tx's then those people can edit their mining pools & tx pools to accept only those tx's to create block. If they're lucky enough they'll create block and their tx's will be on the chain.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Bitcoin is a self regulating system, which means if you go as far as being able to attack the system, you had to put too much effort for it to be more beneficial than just being a legitimate part of the network.

[cozk]

Its possible.

Won't happen.

[coinableS]

Miners would be shooting themselves in the foot. They make money from their expensive hardware and operations by selling/trading/hoarding bitcoin. If 50%+ started a blacklist then the value would most certainly plummet and the miners would no longer have a stream of revenue. The system is set up to incentivize everyone to play fair.

[odolvlobo]

It's not about percentage. It's about excluding tx's from "all" tx pools. That's the only way.
Even if all of the miners exclude spesific address's tx's then those people can edit their mining pools & tx pools to accept only those tx's to create block. If they're lucky enough they'll create block and their tx's will be on the chain.

In your scenario, the txs may be put in a block, but the block will be rejected by other miners and orphaned.

[cakir]

It's not about percentage. It's about excluding tx's from "all" tx pools. That's the only way.
Even if all of the miners exclude spesific address's tx's then those people can edit their mining pools & tx pools to accept only those tx's to create block. If they're lucky enough they'll create block and their tx's will be on the chain.

In your scenario, the txs may be put in a block, but the block will be rejected by other miners and orphaned.

How will they orphan it? if it's a block that has all requirements of network, miners can not reject it.
Also it's not their choice to make a block orphan.

[S4VV4S]

Is it technically possible for miners to "freeze" certain bitcoin addresses by rejecting all transactions to/from a list of addresses? For example if all (or 50%+) miners agree or are forced to by some new regulation to block any transaction from an address that is known to contain stolen funds. If this is possible, then it would open up for all types of regulations forcing miners to become gatekeepers and blocking "bad" transactions.

In short, yes, they can.

Will they?
Not unless they got a gun to their head or some government imposed it claiming "terrorist attacks"  

Apart from that, AFAIK the 50%+ attack will not serve the attacker to anything else other than double spends and preventing others from transacting.
But then again if the word gets out that there is a 50+ on one entity/group, changes will happen very soon as to get things back to normal.

[panck4beer]

Doing something like that would destablize the system and make what the miners are doing relatively pointless anyway...

[teukon]

How will they orphan it? if it's a block that has all requirements of network, miners can not reject it.
Also it's not their choice to make a block orphan.

Dishonest miners may decide they do not like the transactions in the current chain X and focus their efforts on creating a fork Y, building upon the most recent block of which they approve.  If majority hashrate decides to ignore the "always extend the longest chain" rule and work on chain Y then eventually chain Y will be longer than chain X.  At this point, the honest miners will abandon chain X in favour of the longer chain Y.


Many people seem to be justifying the security of Bitcoin in this context by describing the attack as being uneconomic.  I'm not so comfortable with this in light of OPs description that miners are not choosing to do this but being forced to do this.  If existing industries are anything to go by we may even see the largest miners support (even write) the regulations when they feel Bitcoin is sufficiently well entrenched that the public discontent will be outweighed by the advantage of driving smaller miners out of business and lowering difficulty.

Instead, I propose a greater focus on Bitcoin's fungibility and privacy.  If it is not possible to identify a "bad transaction" then it will not be possible to create a blacklist in the first place.  Were blockchain addresses and transactions to be well divorced from wallets and real-world transactions then miners would have little choice but to function as dumb pipes, using only overt transaction properties such as size and fee to determine block admission.

Should this privacy arms race be won, mining blacklists would be as nonsensical as Tor-relay censorship.

[justusranvier]

If 50%+ of miners decide to do something, and they have the programming ability, they can make bitcoin into whatever they want.

They can certainly try, but miners are at the whim of market forces (just like the rest of the world).

Everyone holding bitcoins before the miners "do something" can sell these new "whatever the miners want" forked coins and buy actual bitcoins with the proceeds. The smart kids will mine the valuable coin while the we-are-trying-to-push-rules-on-you crowd will be stuck with a bunch of worthless tokens.

Miners only make money because people value the properties of the current block chain and are willing to exchange other things of value for the bitcoins which exist because of that block chain. I keep hearing long-time bitcoiners talking about the power miners have when it's obvious that the economic majority has all the power.

If no one will trade other objects of value for whatever it is the miners are selling, I can promise you that the miners won't be selling it for long. Miners have no power.

TLDR: No.

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/who-controls-bitcoin/

[Meuh6879]

they can't.

even when P2Pool work for found 1 block every 2-3 days ... the 300 miners process the valid Tx ...

so, when all the miner won't want do the job ... other pool do the job with 1 block found and 2-3 days of waiting time for the adress.

even in P2P file sharing, you can't stop a file to spread ... and it's a less hard network than bitcoin.
honest member always win against scammers on the long term.

---

P2Pool = 2PH/s
whole Bitcoin network = 337PH/s

P2Pool members = 300 miners
whole Bitcoin miners members = 50 550 miners.

so, try to ban ... try ... 

[odolvlobo]

It's not about percentage. It's about excluding tx's from "all" tx pools. That's the only way.
Even if all of the miners exclude spesific address's tx's then those people can edit their mining pools & tx pools to accept only those tx's to create block. If they're lucky enough they'll create block and their tx's will be on the chain.

In your scenario, the txs may be put in a block, but the block will be rejected by other miners and orphaned.

How will they orphan it? if it's a block that has all requirements of network, miners can not reject it.
Also it's not their choice to make a block orphan.

They certainly can reject it. If they don't consider the block to be valid because it contains an invalid transaction (the blacklisted one), they continue the chain from a different block and that one is orphaned.

[S4VV4S]

they can't.

even when P2Pool work for found 1 block every 2-3 days ... the 300 miners process the valid Tx ...

so, when all the miner won't want do the job ... other pool do the job with 1 block found and 2-3 days of waiting time for the adress.

even in P2P file sharing, you can't stop a file to spread ... and it's a less hard network than bitcoin.
honest member always win against scammers on the long term.

---

P2Pool = 2PH/s
whole Bitcoin network = 337PH/s

P2Pool members = 300 miners
whole Bitcoin miners members = 50 550 miners.

so, try to ban ... try ... 

What you wrote doesn't make sense.

P2Pool = 2PH/s - Decentralized
whole Bitcoin network = 337PH/s - everyone else

So how is your coins protected?
And where is the honesty in that?

If everyone else decides to screw you, they will.

[cakir]

It's not about percentage. It's about excluding tx's from "all" tx pools. That's the only way.
Even if all of the miners exclude spesific address's tx's then those people can edit their mining pools & tx pools to accept only those tx's to create block. If they're lucky enough they'll create block and their tx's will be on the chain.

In your scenario, the txs may be put in a block, but the block will be rejected by other miners and orphaned.

How will they orphan it? if it's a block that has all requirements of network, miners can not reject it.
Also it's not their choice to make a block orphan.

They certainly can reject it. If they don't consider the block to be valid because it contains an invalid transaction (the blacklisted one), they continue the chain from a different block and that one is orphaned.

If they want to reject & orphan it they have to find a block with same height at the same time which is acceptable by the network.