BIP100 gives miners too much power. Everyone should reconsider it

[meono]

I urge the community to be extremely careful what they vote for. BIP 100 simply gives miners too much power.

We must remember bitcoin value isnt from mining cost but from the utility of the network: the merchants, services and users. Let miners decide the volume of the bitcoin network is a bad move. Our system has always been designed such that miners can be profit driven without affecting the protocol rules ( block rewards, avg block time....)

Now BIP100 will let them to manipulate the voting mechanism for a short term gain. Bandwidth should be one of the costs of their mining operation. Make them follow the rules ( blocksize) and have no ability to change it for their profits.

[tokeweed]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

[knight22]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

Maket makers can still reject it. They are the ones ultimately giving value to the coins.

[meono]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

Wrong.... Miners can fork bitcoin to raise block rewards. Does not mean they will because users, exchanges and service providers wont adopt their fork.

Bitcoin economy system isnt about mining.

Ofcourse if a BIP gives power to one group, that group will support it.

[unholycactus]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

Wrong.... Miners can fork bitcoin to raise block rewards. Does not mean they will because users, exchanges and service providers wont adopt their fork.

Bitcoin economy system isnt about mining.

Ofcourse if a BIP gives power to one group, that group will support it.

Raising block rewards with a selfish lucrative goal would instantly crash Bitcoin.

How does BIP100 go against what you call "utility for the network"?

[spazzdla]

Its less aggressive then gavincoin imo.  Miners tend to love btc.. Although this wont always be the case so your concer is quite valid.

[meono]

Its less aggressive then gavincoin imo.  Miners tend to love btc.. Although this wont always be the case so your concer is quite valid.

There is no guaranteed long term commitment from miners. Any of them can quit if they face technological challenge. This alone can lead to manipulation for short term gain while they still hold good percentage of network hashrate.

Just because you dont like one proposal (BIP101), you should not rush into another one.

[meono]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

Wrong.... Miners can fork bitcoin to raise block rewards. Does not mean they will because users, exchanges and service providers wont adopt their fork.

Bitcoin economy system isnt about mining.

Ofcourse if a BIP gives power to one group, that group will support it.

Raising block rewards with a selfish lucrative goal would instantly crash Bitcoin.

How does BIP100 go against what you call "utility for the network"?

Blocksize limit should have says from all players of the game. Miners are known to be purely profit driven. They can only see short term gain (due to the nature of the industry )and thus give them power to do is a bad decision.

Mining right now is very centralized. Most hashrate is from ONE country.

[achow101]

So how exactly can miners manipulate the block size for their short term gain?

One scenario that I can think of are increasing the blocksize limit so that all transactions are accepted and confirmed and then they can collect all of the fees for higher profits.
Another is decreasing the blocksize limit and hope that a fee market exists so they can earn more from fees.

[knight22]

So how exactly can miners manipulate the block size for their short term gain?

One scenario that I can think of are increasing the blocksize limit so that all transactions are accepted and confirmed and then they can collect all of the fees for higher profits.
Another is decreasing the blocksize limit and hope that a fee market exists so they can earn more from fees.

Exact. It gives incentives to miners to create a cartel lowering the block size and artificially increase fees. Like any cartels are decreasing productivity to increase their profits in a non competitive environment.

BIP100 incentives are very badly aligned. No wonder why miners like it.

[uvt9]

I have same concern, BIP 100 can't promise bigger blocks while it undermines decentralization by giving miners more control. I want blocksize increase but if i have to choose between BIP100 and staying at 1MB forever, i would choose the latter. Core devs need to reject this proposal.

[Amph]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

Maket makers can still reject it. They are the ones ultimately giving value to the coins.

in this case it would be bad if in the future miners themselves will become market also, even in some cases only

i can see a big company of mining generating good profit and expanding their business to be a merchant also, only to take advantage of this issue

[marky89]

Its less aggressive then gavincoin imo.  Miners tend to love btc.. Although this wont always be the case so your concer is quite valid.

There is no guaranteed long term commitment from miners. Any of them can quit if they face technological challenge. This alone can lead to manipulation for short term gain while they still hold good percentage of network hashrate.

Just because you dont like one proposal (BIP101), you should not rush into another one.

Well to be honest, I felt a lot of pressure to support BIP 101... people have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off, screaming about the sky falling because we don't have 8MB blocks yesterday.

At the end of the day, bitcoin is PoW. Miners are kept in check by economic incentive (and disincentive)..... to suggest that they don't already have the power (ie to fork bitcoin) is silly. The beauty is that there are great disincentives to them irrationally doing so.

Priority #1: consensus. If we want bigger blocks, we want a less controversial implementation that the vast majority of miners are likely to support. That simply isn't going to be BIP 101.

[Kakmakr]

It's already out there. I doubt the community can do anything if the miners support it.

Wrong.... Miners can fork bitcoin to raise block rewards. Does not mean they will because users, exchanges and service providers wont adopt their fork.

Bitcoin economy system isnt about mining.

Ofcourse if a BIP gives power to one group, that group will support it.

The miners is a very important part of the Bitcoin network, and they should have a more active role in the Bitcoin development. I am more worried about the control we are giving to the GovCoin groupies for their financial gain.
Let's be objective, without the miners there will be no Bitcoin network.

I also believe they have too much power, but say what you want, we need them to be able to use Bitcoin. The best solution would have been to develop a system where everyone could vote on this, but then the Chinese will win.  

[marky89]

We must remember bitcoin value isnt from mining cost but from the utility of the network: the merchants, services and users.

Huh? But miners are fundamental to bitcoin value. They secure the network. Competitive mining is what protects the neutrality of the network by preventing anyone from being able to block certain transactions. It also prevents anyone from replacing parts of the block chain to roll back their own spends.

Merchants, services and users are left with an insecure network without a robust mining economy.

[Nagle]

Miners make the rules. That's how the system is designed.

The problem is that the design didn't anticipate 2 or 3 mining pools being a majority.

[emelac]

So how exactly can miners manipulate the block size for their short term gain?

One scenario that I can think of are increasing the blocksize limit so that all transactions are accepted and confirmed and then they can collect all of the fees for higher profits.
Another is decreasing the blocksize limit and hope that a fee market exists so they can earn more from fees.

Miners are already manipulating the block size for their short term gain. Some miners refuse to accept any transactions and mine an empty block because it's slightly faster to do that. It's not helping the network and purely selfish behavior to make more profits, but they are in it for the money.

[medUSA]

Without miners' support, we can't fork bitcoin to accept higher than 1M blocksize. It is important to have a majority in the mining sector to make any changes to the bitcoin protocol. If BIP100 is the only BIP they would support, then we would have to accept BIP100 unless we miraculously find hashing power to secure a non-BIP100 fork.

[colinistheman]

OP, I agree with you on this. I was studying the differences between BIP 100 and 101 and while at first BIP 100 sounds good, but it does put too much power in the miner's hands. It needs to be more of a balance. Mike Hearn best said it here:

It [BIP101] gives miners additional power to modify the system for no obviously good reason beyond "some miners are saying they'd like more power". Miners are not the only stakeholders. Users, merchants, exchanges, etc matter too - if not more!

The upper limit is meant to be a kind of DoS limit, to stop troll miners generating giant mega-blocks. It's not meant to be a stick that miners can use to beat important but voteless economic players.

source: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/bitcoin-xt/oFmzqn46v74/B1CKY7bNBgAJ


Miners vote for miners to be in control. I am shocked. [source]

This is a slippery slope. It's easy to give more control to miners (they'll always vote for), but much harder to take away control, once they have it... [source]

Miners voting for miners to vote. Shocking indeed. [source]

Merchants tend to favor BIP101 and Miners tend to favor BIP100.

So what happens if all the merchants/businesses want BIP101 and the miners want BIP100? [source]

If merchants and exchanges are only using a chain that's ignored by miners, it's a useless chain. It goes both ways. [source]



TL;DR:

Merchants tend to favor BIP101 and Miners tend to favor BIP100.

A developer working for a mining firm (Bitfury) proposed a solution which give miners more control, and this proposal gains enormous support from miners. [source]

[uxgpf]

Is it possible that greedy miners could try to squeeze more fees from existing transactions by voting for smaller blocks?

Maybe there's something I don't understand here.