We could build a democracy out of bitcoin, here's how

[wxa7115]

I don’t see how expressing our intention in this way is any different than doing it in a forum; there will no way to enforce this and make others acknowledge our “decision”.

[1715378491]

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[1715378491]

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[countryfree]

I kinda like your idea of 2 outputs with a "blank" one. A possible issue could be that it would not be doable with all clients. Much organization would be needed...

Yes, I was just trying to design a transaction that would be considered "standard" by the reference client.  More exotic designs (such as having multiple OP_RETURN outputs) would be difficult to propogate.

If you want it to be so that a vote can be cast easily by most/all clients then you have more of a challenge.  Without some coin control, the voter would have no easy way to tie his wallets balance to a particular vote.  This will basically be by design; good wallets protect the user's financial privacy by default.  With coin control, a user might replace the OP_RETURN output with a regular transaction, burning a small number of satoshi to a special voting address.  The number of satoshi burnt would correspond to the choice of the voter.  Expect to meet resistance with such a proposal though as these voting outputs would not be "provably unspendable", tantamount to an attack on pruning nodes.

I've thought of coin control. That was one of the reason behind the choice of a speedy vote. No more than 24 hours, with voters making the pledge not to make any other transaction during the allowed voting period.

I guess this isn't going anywhere, though. I was looking for a way to solve the blocksize issue, but my idea hasn't had enough support so far. When I look at all the posts on this topic, there is clearly more people against the idea than there are supporters. Well, it was worth trying.

[stuff0577]

We do not have a democracy and we certainly will never have it.

Satoshi Nakamoto designed the system in a way that the decisions are
made by the miners. He certainly thought this would enforce some kind
of democracy: Everybody could run a miner on his PC and setting up
some kind of dedicated high performance computer systems just for this
purpose should not pay out.

He was not aware of ASICs and the concentration of mining power in the
hands of a few people.

However, even if miners finally can decide what to do, there are
strong forcing for a consensus and for a conservative behaviour:
- miners who create a fork will sit alone on their chain.
- miners have to respect the technical constraints (bandwidth etc)
  otherwise they are lost.
- Miners have to serve the community, otherwise the price of bitcoin
  will fall and they will not make any profit (in fiat).
- Large miners depend on profits in fiat: they have expenses in
  electricity, hardware cost, infrastructure, etc.
- Small miners can ignore these costs, so there is still some chance
  for democracy. Be aware of your power!

The code developers do not have any power. Everybody can set up a fork
(as XT). But in order to succeed he has to achieve consensus.

To conclude: I like bitcoin very much. It is anarchy with a very
strong forcing for consensus. It now has survived for approximately 5
years.  It is really interesting to see how this system will evolve
further under real world conditions.  Bitcoin is in beta status and a big
experiment. I am looking forward into the future.

yup exactly,miners vote with their hashing power.

Bitcoiners could vote with their funds too its just not directly built into the software. But there is no reason coinage voting couldnt exist.

Yes, consensus. There's nothing wrong with that except that the actual quantity of people needed to get it is probably too small. We would have the same problem with coinage voting, but it would be better as there are always more and more people owning BTC, in total opposition to miners, who are fewer and fewer.

Most of us bitcoiners should participate and also bring our opinion on the said topic. We have also created a poll question with this one. You can use your bitcoin signatures to vote for your chosen opinion here http://coin-vote.com/poll/55e8a33299baadff0a34acb7 

[BADecker]

I don’t see how expressing our intention in this way is any different than doing it in a forum; there will no way to enforce this and make others acknowledge our “decision”.

If we built voting contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain, like with Counterparty, and nobody could vote unless his contract was on the blockchain, we might be able to solve a lot of voting/election fraud problems.

[teukon]

I guess this isn't going anywhere, though. I was looking for a way to solve the blocksize issue, but my idea hasn't had enough support so far. When I look at all the posts on this topic, there is clearly more people against the idea than there are supporters. Well, it was worth trying.

I appreciate the effort.

[countryfree]

I guess this isn't going anywhere, though. I was looking for a way to solve the blocksize issue, but my idea hasn't had enough support so far. When I look at all the posts on this topic, there is clearly more people against the idea than there are supporters. Well, it was worth trying.

I appreciate the effort.

Thanks! The idea is in the air. Someone may pick it up someday if it ever becomes useful to find out what large BTC holders really want. I'm not expecting that in the near future, but BTC shall have a long life.