Consensus Mechanism - A Proposal Idea

[BitProdigy]

In trying to figure out how to arrive at consensus on decisions like protocol changes such as the Block Size issue, it is necessary (i believe) to come up with a way to do so that involves the bitcoin users and not just the miners.

We need the ability to vote on our favored BIP and we need more than just a majority vote, we need a way to arrive at consensus. The problem with arriving at consensus is the existence of trolls and contrarions that just want to disrupt the process. I have a few keys that I think are required to arrive at consensus which are:


1) The Ability to Change Your Mind (change your vote)

2) The Ability to Vote For Multiple Proposals

3) A Mechanism That Rewards Consensus and Punishes Disagreement


There are multiple services which allow Bitcoin holders to vote such as crypto voter, coin-vote, bit congress, etc. All we would need is a BIP to peg part of it's deployment mechanism not only to miner vote consensus but also coin vote consensus. say 75% for a single BIP

This could only be possible if voters could change their mind and change their votes according to new information and argumentation, and also according to revisions of the BIPs themselves.

And if there were a way to punish disagreement and reward consensus, i feel that this 75% threshold could be reached. For instance, if voters vote with their coins and truly risk their coins.

The mechanism could be that all voters vote with the coins they are willing to risk on all BIPs (not disregarding the ability to vote on multiple BIPs and change one's mind) the coins using a kind of DAC or DOA setup are locked up until the 75% threshold is reached, at which point, all users who have voted for the BIP that reached consensus, are rewarded by being given back their Bitcoin that they voted with, along with getting their BIP voted into implementation.

All those who voted for the BIP's that did not reach consensus, lose their Bitcoin they voted with, and the DAO mechanism releases those funds as a reward to the developer, or development team that produced the BIP that will be implemented.

Not only does this create the correct incentives for consensus, it rewards the developers for their hard work.

It should be noted that the threshold should be kept high enough to avoid voting in proposal changes to the bitcoin protocol as a profit seeking opportunity. BIP should always only be voted on and implemented when absolutely necessary.

Thoughts?

[1713979120]

1713979120

[BitProdigy]

Perhaps 90% is the better threshold level.

[franky1]

to be honest.. its exchanges and payment gateways that hold the most weight..

afterall if coinbase, bitfinex, bitstamp, localbitcoins, and ofcourse bitpay(processing 100k retailers) all decided to go one way.. then people will instantly find that funds are not being recognised if they users chose another fork..

thus users would panic and change forks just so that the payment gateways will accept their money..

its like real life.. if a shop decided to no longer accept bank notes.. people would panic and get angry but eventually they would take out their debit card..
the belief that people would try boycotting such stores would only work if there were a direct alternative retailer accepting the user preferred payment for the same product/service, otherwise customers adapt out of need for the product/service.

and it only takes 5 key corporations to sway the masses