Can the blockchain be frozen of miners stop validating transactions?

[Possum577]

Reading all the news about Greece, thinking about how Bitcoin could be the alternative, got me thinking about whether the Bitcoin system could ever be frozen due to non-activity or a community consensus - could the blockchain be frozen?

If I understand correctly, miners validate transactions which then create the blockchain (or blockchain history, forgive me if I'm using the terminology incorrectly).

What if the miners decided to stop working? What if the community decided to stop validating transactions? Wouldn't that freeze the blockchain and thereby put a halt to bitcoin the currency?

[medUSA]

What if the miners decided to stop working? What if the community decided to stop validating transactions? Wouldn't that freeze the blockchain and thereby put a halt to bitcoin the currency?

I believe there will always be miners for the foreseeable future when bitcon has resale value. The the sake of the argument, let's say all large mining farms are "on strike". What would happen? I don't know how much hashrate is from large mining farms, I assume 50%? The network hashrate will drop while difficulty is still high. Blockrate should also decrease to average of 20min/block. This would continue until the next difficulty adjustment.

There would not be a complete halt, solving blocks would be incredibly slow depending on how much hashpower is offline. You can still send transactions. Fee may skyrocket because everyone is fighting to confirm in the next block. It will not be nice 

[pooya87]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

[BillyBones]

Reading all the news about Greece, thinking about how Bitcoin could be the alternative, got me thinking about whether the Bitcoin system could ever be frozen due to non-activity or a community consensus - could the blockchain be frozen?

I guess, you got to invest huge sum on Bitcoin trading, isn't it ? since you draw your mind to this extent that you worried about it's frozen state, good that you bring an attention regards to this, let's see further comments.

[Amph]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

well yes but not immediately, it need two week for that, mainwhile other miners will jon the party, because of the poissible profit

so in the end the diff will never decrease, and that's the reason why POW is great, because as long as there is profit to be made there will be always miners that will join the network it's a self sustaining thing

[coinsect]

the Bitcoin system could ever be frozen due to non-activity or a community consensus - could the blockchain be frozen?

The volume of transaction is on the uptrend as bitcoin's adoption rate is increasing. How could be non-activity. The community would never allow freeze the bitcoin system, and it wouldn't happen at the moment or the near future.

What if the miners decided to stop working? What if the community decided to stop validating transactions? Wouldn't that freeze the blockchain and thereby put a halt to bitcoin the currency?

As long as bitcoin has value in terms of fiat money, miners wouldn't decide to stop working, at least for most of them.

[medUSA]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

well yes but not immediately, it need two week for that, mainwhile other miners will jon the party, because of the poissible profit

so in the end the diff will never decrease, and that's the reason why POW is great, because as long as there is profit to be made there will be always miners that will join the network it's a self sustaining thing

Difficulty adjusts every 2016 block, not two weeks. Even when new miners join the mining, if remaining hashing power is let's say 10% of hashing power before, blocks would take an average of 100 minutes. If my calculations are correct, will take around 4 months to the next difficulty adjustment. After the adjustment, difficulty will drop very low, so blocktimes are back to average of 10 minutes.

[BTCjust]

bitcoin, as a spare wheel. but always time, if the old car break down, people would buy a new car rather change a spare wheel...

[Amph]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

well yes but not immediately, it need two week for that, mainwhile other miners will jon the party, because of the poissible profit

so in the end the diff will never decrease, and that's the reason why POW is great, because as long as there is profit to be made there will be always miners that will join the network it's a self sustaining thing

Difficulty adjusts every 2016 block, not two weeks. Even when new miners join the mining, if remaining hashing power is let's say 10% of hashing power before, blocks would take an average of 100 minutes. If my calculations are correct, will take around 4 months to the next difficulty adjustment. After the adjustment, difficulty will drop very low, so blocktimes are back to average of 10 minutes.

i know this, it goes without saying that i was talking about two weeks as average like it is 10 minutes as average, the fact that some times will be 100 min or days does not mean much, you need to calculate the average, and that's it

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

It's a self regulated system so if said miner group stops doing their job someone else would do it as they would realize it's profitable for them to do so due the difficulty drop.

[S4VV4S]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

well yes but not immediately, it need two week for that, mainwhile other miners will jon the party, because of the poissible profit

so in the end the diff will never decrease, and that's the reason why POW is great, because as long as there is profit to be made there will be always miners that will join the network it's a self sustaining thing

Difficulty adjusts every 2016 block, not two weeks. Even when new miners join the mining, if remaining hashing power is let's say 10% of hashing power before, blocks would take an average of 100 minutes. If my calculations are correct, will take around 4 months to the next difficulty adjustment. After the adjustment, difficulty will drop very low, so blocktimes are back to average of 10 minutes.

Actually, AFAIK, the difficulty will go down up to a point (and to gradually get to the point of a block found on 10 minute average).
Basically there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down.

[franky1]

Reading all the news about Greece, thinking about how Bitcoin could be the alternative, got me thinking about whether the Bitcoin system could ever be frozen due to non-activity or a community consensus - could the blockchain be frozen?

If I understand correctly, miners validate transactions which then create the blockchain (or blockchain history, forgive me if I'm using the terminology incorrectly).

What if the miners decided to stop working? What if the community decided to stop validating transactions? Wouldn't that freeze the blockchain and thereby put a halt to bitcoin the currency?

if the top 5 mining pools stopped. then someone else will take the opportunity.. most probably 10000's of hobby miners..

because the code it not stored centrally even if some dumb mining pool owners demanded some code update which would blocked mining, and end their income..... smart people wont update to this dumb code and continue mining.. leaving the pools playing around with a useless fork, while mining continues on the non-updated code

[tertius993]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

well yes but not immediately, it need two week for that, mainwhile other miners will jon the party, because of the poissible profit

so in the end the diff will never decrease, and that's the reason why POW is great, because as long as there is profit to be made there will be always miners that will join the network it's a self sustaining thing

Difficulty adjusts every 2016 block, not two weeks. Even when new miners join the mining, if remaining hashing power is let's say 10% of hashing power before, blocks would take an average of 100 minutes. If my calculations are correct, will take around 4 months to the next difficulty adjustment. After the adjustment, difficulty will drop very low, so blocktimes are back to average of 10 minutes.

Actually, AFAIK, the difficulty will go down up to a point (and to gradually get to the point of a block found on 10 minute average).
Basically there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down.

There are any number of altcoins you can look at to see what happens when the difficulty gets high and the miners move away ... the blockchain starts to crawl and it takes weeks or months to get to the next difficulty adjustment.  Especially those that simply copied the BTC model of adjusting every 2016 blocks.

So, yes the difficulty will adjust ... eventually.

[melody82]

So it takes a HUGE investment of capital to make a mining farm.  As long as the miners are making money, they will continue to mine.  It is a simple as that.  I think that the chances of anyone turning off their miners is pretty close to zero (not counting hobby miners of course).  It is just business.  if someday mining becomes unprofitable, then there might be something to sorry about.  But even then the network would adjust: some miners would use their capital elsewhere, while the remaining ones would have more of the pie to themselves.  I think it will always balance out that way.

[countryfree]

Miners aren't like workers in a factory. A strike can easily stop a factory, but miners all over the world. In the US, Russia and China, and I know some of them are isolated. There's no organization on top of all of miners to unite them. There could be a tsunami on the American West coast, meaning that all miners in California will disappear, but those in China will keep on going.

[S4VV4S]

i read somewhere that if all or so many of the miners turn off their mining equipment and stop mining, then the difficulty would decrease drastically.
so i think blockchain can not be frozen! as long as at least one person is mining bitcoin. and since the difficulty would be so low by then, solo mining would be doable.

well yes but not immediately, it need two week for that, mainwhile other miners will jon the party, because of the poissible profit

so in the end the diff will never decrease, and that's the reason why POW is great, because as long as there is profit to be made there will be always miners that will join the network it's a self sustaining thing

Difficulty adjusts every 2016 block, not two weeks. Even when new miners join the mining, if remaining hashing power is let's say 10% of hashing power before, blocks would take an average of 100 minutes. If my calculations are correct, will take around 4 months to the next difficulty adjustment. After the adjustment, difficulty will drop very low, so blocktimes are back to average of 10 minutes.

Actually, AFAIK, the difficulty will go down up to a point (and to gradually get to the point of a block found on 10 minute average).
Basically there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down.

There are any number of altcoins you can look at to see what happens when the difficulty gets high and the miners move away ... the blockchain starts to crawl and it takes weeks or months to get to the next difficulty adjustment.  Especially those that simply copied the BTC model of adjusting every 2016 blocks.

So, yes the difficulty will adjust ... eventually.

Yeah, sorry, I don't think I was clear about what I wrote.
What I meant is that there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down on each difficulty retarget
So, it can't drop/rise more than a certain number each time.

My bad, I should have been more clear about what I wrote.

[medUSA]

Yeah, sorry, I don't think I was clear about what I wrote.
What I meant is that there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down on each difficulty retarget
So, it can't drop/rise more than a certain number each time.

My bad, I should have been more clear about what I wrote.

You are clear, I understood you perfectly. I have known that difficultly do cannot drop "too much" but I couldn't find a definite answer what is "too much". I have an impression that it's 80% (drop by 80%, so 20% of original difficulty). Any coders can confirm that?

[turvarya]

Yeah, sorry, I don't think I was clear about what I wrote.
What I meant is that there is a limit on how much the difficulty can go up or down on each difficulty retarget
So, it can't drop/rise more than a certain number each time.

My bad, I should have been more clear about what I wrote.

You are clear, I understood you perfectly. I have known that difficultly do cannot drop "too much" but I couldn't find a definite answer what is "too much". I have an impression that it's 80% (drop by 80%, so 20% of original difficulty). Any coders can confirm that?

Look here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty
and here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Target

There should be the answer in there.

@Topic
I think, in Bitcoin we see the advantage in a global market. With miners all around the world, there isn't a way to stop them all.
Also keep in mind, the difference between pool and miners. Sure, you can take down a pool, but that just means miners are going to another one.
So, how much miners can be shut down in one sweep? Even if it is 50%(which I doubt, that it is possible), that would just mean, confirmation time doubles from avg. 10 minutes to avg 20 minutes till the next adjustment. Big deal 

[Herbert2020]

Reading all the news about Greece, thinking about how Bitcoin could be the alternative, got me thinking about whether the Bitcoin system could ever be frozen due to non-activity or a community consensus - could the blockchain be frozen?

If I understand correctly, miners validate transactions which then create the blockchain (or blockchain history, forgive me if I'm using the terminology incorrectly).

What if the miners decided to stop working? What if the community decided to stop validating transactions? Wouldn't that freeze the blockchain and thereby put a halt to bitcoin the currency?

well, as long as there are people who are using bitcoin, and it has any kind of value, there will be some miners who will mine bitcoin.
the only scenario is if the price was to fall down so low under $50 then maybe enough people will leave it that it breaks apart.

[ransomer]

If 90% of miners stopped working (which is completely unrealistic) then I am many many more would start mining I'm sure.

I'll put 50 PC on the job right away. There are some issues with bitcoin but that there are not enough miners is not and will never be one of them.