Do you trust the miners?

[worhiper_-_]

Hey all. Recent developments around the block size debate have sparked alot of discussion about several topics. I've seen many people arguing that BIP100 gives too much power to the miners. I'm not trying to provoke feelings one way or another, I'm just looking to see if people are willing to put their trust on miners about such decisions.

[GriffinHeart]

The whole thing could go horribly wrong if it isn't thought through fully.

[gentlemand]

Not really. Quite a few of the biggies who've been interviewed have stated they're purely in it for the dollars. They'll go with what'll load them up in the short term. Long term whatever they choose might be fatal.

[LiteCoinGuy]

Not really. I would like to have a BIP with an predictable blocksize increase and without votes.

[ebliever]

I don't know that we ultimately have much choice but to trust the miners - or rather, trust the miners to do whatever is in their financial self-interest.

The real question is what kind timescale the mining community has in mind when it looks at the financial basis of mining. If they are eager to jack up fees in the short run they could drive people to altcoins and kill the golden goose. So hopefully they will take the route of foregoing the extra earnings from transactions (since block rewards are still substantial) and try to build up bitcoin adoption with minimal fees.

[nagatlakshmi]

Now that Bitcoin is getting more popular and the demands increasing, the limitation of how many transactions can fit into a 1MB block threatens to slow everything down. You’d think the solution would be simple: make the blocks bigger. But any changes can make to Bitcoin Core only.

[knight22]

Anybody who trust miners is an idiot.

[tl121]

If you don't trust 51% of the miners then there is no way you can trust Bitcoin.  Trust in a majority of miners is the sole reason for anyone to trust the bitcoin network.

[ebliever]

It's Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" in action. It's not that we trust miners to be charitable and altruistic and to be nice to us out of perfect love. Bitcoin works because Satoshi created a system in which the economic self-interest of the miners acts to make bitcoin transactions and ownership secure for all of us.

So long as the design of bitcoin retains that function, we can trust the miners. The danger is that someone introduces changes to how bitcoin works that breaks this alignment between miner self-interest and the security of bitcoin for everyone. That's why we need to have copious amounts of debate to slowly - not quickly - build a concensus when changes need to be made.

[Amph]

they are purely for the profit, especially chinese, they even stated so, as long as there is profit to be made from something, you can't trust no one

but you can't do shit, because they are the backbone of bitcoin

[unamis76]

I don't mind trusting miners so far... I trust they'll mine my transactions and not simply ignore/blacklist them for whatever reason. I trust them this far, as I don't have powerful mining equipment neither do I have ways to control a big percentage of hashpower.

That being said, nobody needs to trust miners... Let's just make blocks scale according to the current network status.

[Mickeyb]

I don't mind trusting miners so far... I trust they'll mine my transactions and not simply ignore/blacklist them for whatever reason. I trust them this far, as I don't have powerful mining equipment neither do I have ways to control a big percentage of hashpower.

That being said, nobody needs to trust miners... Let's just make blocks scale according to the current network status.

Exactly. We don't need a system that needs to trust someone in order to work. Aren't we called decentralized, trust less system? So we need a change that will not depend upon anybody, but work depending on the rules we set, clear rules, just like until now.

The more I read about BIP100, the more I don't like it. Giving miners such power would be wrong, and if we do it, there will be a betrayal of that trust sometimes in the future. We need a better solution than this.

[ashour]

Not really. Quite a few of the biggies who've been interviewed have stated they're purely in it for the dollars. They'll go with what'll load them up in the short term. Long term whatever they choose might be fatal.

The miner's goal is to mine bitcoin and sell it for profit. So I agree, they only are there to make profits and messing with the bitcoin protocol would mean 0 profit for them. So I don't think that miners will mess with the bitcoin network at all actually they would be the one that would benefit if everything went smooth for bitcoin.

[TransaDox]

I don't mind trusting miners so far... I trust they'll mine my transactions and not simply ignore/blacklist them for whatever reason. I trust them this far, as I don't have powerful mining equipment neither do I have ways to control a big percentage of hashpower.

That being said, nobody needs to trust miners... Let's just make blocks scale according to the current network status.

I won't be happy until every client is a miner and there is no super hero group that have to be relied upon.

[gentlemand]

The miner's goal is to mine bitcoin and sell it for profit. So I agree, they only are there to make profits and messing with the bitcoin protocol would mean 0 profit for them. So I don't think that miners will mess with the bitcoin network at all actually they would be the one that would benefit if everything went smooth for bitcoin.

Agreed, but I don't think many are looking 10-20 years down the line. They're burning money and hardware now. If there's a move that secures bigger profit now at the expense of future strife then their bottom line is going to be drawn to that.

[pandacon8]

If you dont trust the miners theres no point in using bitcoin they are required

[ashour]

The miner's goal is to mine bitcoin and sell it for profit. So I agree, they only are there to make profits and messing with the bitcoin protocol would mean 0 profit for them. So I don't think that miners will mess with the bitcoin network at all actually they would be the one that would benefit if everything went smooth for bitcoin.

Agreed, but I don't think many are looking 10-20 years down the line. They're burning money and hardware now. If there's a move that secures bigger profit now at the expense of future strife then their bottom line is going to be drawn to that.

Most mining operations will focus temporarily profit, so they will focus to make as much and as fast  profit while they can. In 10 to 20 years the mining difficulty will be high and probably most mining operations will just shut down and the biggest and most advances mining operations will take their place.

[RGBKey]

I'm not sure I trust the miners to make decisions that will benefit the entire bitcoin community instead of just the miners right now.

[ashour]

I'm not sure I trust the miners to make decisions that will benefit the entire bitcoin community instead of just the miners right now.

Exactly, the miners only care about their profits. They don't actually care about bitcoin or the bitcoin community. The only thing they want is to mine bitcoin and sell them for a  profit, nothing else.

[worhiper_-_]

Miners caring for profit doesn't mean they'd want bitcoin failing. To say the least, I think they have at least some common interest with the rest. I'm not saying that they should be 100% trusted about taking important decisions.