Can the blockchain be frozen of miners stop validating transactions?

[ranochigo]

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.

There isn't much incentive into attracting people to mine if the difficulty remains the same and the profit would still be low. It can be a problem since the difficulty wouldn't be reasonable till a few difficulty adjustment later.

[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.

There isn't much incentive into attracting people to mine if the difficulty remains the same and the profit would still be low. It can be a problem since the difficulty wouldn't be reasonable till a few difficulty adjustment later.

The fewers miners the better the chances to get alloted btcs for the rest, right?

So as (or if) miners get fewer, more and more people would start mining.

[ranochigo]

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.

There isn't much incentive into attracting people to mine if the difficulty remains the same and the profit would still be low. It can be a problem since the difficulty wouldn't be reasonable till a few difficulty adjustment later.

The fewers miners the better the chances to get alloted btcs for the rest, right?

So as (or if) miners get fewer, more and more people would start mining.

The chances wouldn't change right away as the difficulty would still be the same. Your machine must be able to solve a block and the hash of block header must be equal to or lower than the target to be accepted. The amount of BTC you get depends on the amount of BTC you solve. Even if the entire network stops mining and you starts mining, you won't receive anything till you solve a block.

[fryarminer]

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 miners stop mining it would take forever for blocks to be mined by the hobby miners who would start mining.

But I got the impression you were asking what if the mining farms did not include transactions in the blocks they mine - that would be an interesting scenario.

We need to keep the blockchain decentralized as much as possible.

[Amph]

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.

There isn't much incentive into attracting people to mine if the difficulty remains the same and the profit would still be low. It can be a problem since the difficulty wouldn't be reasonable till a few difficulty adjustment later.

The fewers miners the better the chances to get alloted btcs for the rest, right?

So as (or if) miners get fewer, more and more people would start mining.

in other words, miners cannot be fewer, for every miners that leave the field another one will replace it, like it was said, bitcoin network is self-sustaining

this will work as long as the bitcoin price is good and there is enough demand, if the demand start decrease too much, than miner will diminish slowly until we have a problem regarding security and double spend, at that point i'm not sure if bitcoin can recover