Is it good or bad that Core development is virtually controlled by one company?

[BitUsher]

Of course greg! Of course "it's physically impossible for them to break" the rules. Thats why you change the rules, and then allow the nodes ( in the white paper sense) to vote with their hashpower on what will constitute the fabled state of zen consensus. Isn't that they way its supposed to be? Dont nodes choose the rules?

Not really constrained, deeply or otherwise.

I believe Greg was making a distinction between a mining node and a non mining full node. Mining nodes do vote on what is valid or not, but don't have as much of a vote as a large investor or an exchange.

...
I think its safe to say non-mining nodes *never* had any power. In the white paper the word 'node' was synonymous with the word 'miner'. It's only over time that this 'node/miner' separation has arisen.
...

sgbett has been explained multiple times why he is wrong and how non-mining full nodes still have all the power but is making a nuanced argument that Full nodes who don't mine simply don't vote because developers defer votes to miners for soft forks and hard forks as a signal to accept a proposal or not. This is purely coincidental due to the limitations in approximating an accurate vote among economic full nodes and  because of this we are left with and interesting attack vector some have already committed to exploit during a hard fork.  

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[blunderer]

Not a word in that link re. "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners""
Sill waiting, still confused.

They simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the rules of the protocol (and ban the peer(s) that sent them). If the block isn't valid it does not exist any more than a litecoin or a namecoin block exists to the Bitcoin network.

Yes, "A" nodes ignore etc. blocks they consider invalid (such as "B"), "B" nodes ignore blocks they consider invalid (such as "A"). As long as there is at least one of each (there is, non-SPV miners are also full nodes), everything's happening.

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

*Also explain this bit in the Bitcoin wiki:

Some are incentivizing it.

Bitnodes is incentivizing full node operators "until the end of 2015 or until 10,000 nodes are running."[2] For rules and how to join the incentives program, visit Bitnodes Incentive Program.

Finally, if nodes are essential to Bitcoin security & are quite cheap to implement, what's preventing a malefactor from breaking Bitcoin by throwing up a bunch of misbehaving nodes (which "simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the [new] rules of the protocol (and ban the [old rule] peer(s) that sent them)."?

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

Mining nodes do vote on what is valid or not, but don't have as much of a vote as a large investor or an exchange.

1. Investors dont 'vote'
2. exchanges dont 'vote'

Nodes competing to find blocks and then building upon them 'vote'.

[1] & [2] make choices on predetermined outcomes.

[BitUsher]

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

This was already answered. Full nodes can veto the miners at any given moment. All of the miners investments can instantly become expensive useless liabilities if the economic consensus of full nodes rejects the miners longest chain.

I will give you two possible scenario's of how this can occur-

1) In the unlikely event Classic convinces 75% of miners to HF, their are multiple extremely large investors* who have made commitments to dump their classic coins and keep their original coins.(remember a HF essentially doubles the money supply unless there is complete consensus). This high stakes form of attack would quickly devalue the chain with the most hashpower driving miners to the other chain or completely ruining both chains. Others may discount this due to the flawed assumption that this would only temporarily devalue the currency but in reality this attack can be ongoing and be conducted in a manner to create steady and persistent downward pressure on the majority hashpower chain.

2) Their are multiple technical solutions that can be implemented if a miner mis behaves where their double rounds of SHA256 hashing means less or nothing at all by the nodes.  Full nodes simply can change the consensus algo.


* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"

Finally, if nodes are essential to Bitcoin security & are quite cheap to implement, what's preventing a malefactor from breaking Bitcoin by throwing up a bunch of misbehaving nodes (which "simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the [new] rules of the protocol (and ban the [old rule] peer(s) that sent them)."?

This was also just answered with a specific example. I will give you the benefit of the doubt one last time that you aren't deliberately trying to "blunder" the conversation. 100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet. If those 100 nodes deliberately break consensus by the owner, or are hacked to break consensus than all the damage they will be doing is misleading the community to how decentralized the ecosystem is(Unless a SPV wallet trusts them). Their vote will be ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered.

[blunderer]

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

This was already answered. Full nodes can veto the miners at any given moment. All of the miners investments can instantly become expensive useless liabilities if the economic consensus of full nodes rejects the miners longest chain.

I will give you two possible scenario's of how this can occur-

1) In the unlikely event Classic convinces 75% of miners to HF, their are multiple extremely large investors* who have made commitments to dump their classic coins and keep their original coins.

And nodes figure into this how?

2) Their are multiple technical solutions that can be implemented if a miner mis behaves where their double rounds of SHA256 hashing means less or nothing at all by the nodes.  Full nodes simply can change the consensus algo.

Well sure, they can create an altcoin, like any other altcoin. How does this effect miners & users with new nodes?

* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"

Mutual destruction, the paragon of maturity

Re. your edit:

This was also just answered with a specific example. I will give you the benefit of the doubt one last time that you aren't deliberately trying to "blunder" the conversation. 100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet.

What does that even mean? What determines what's less and what's more of a vote?

If those 100 nodes deliberately break consensus by the owner, or are hacked to break consensus than all the damage they will be doing is misleading the community to how decentralized the ecosystem is(Unless a SPV wallet trusts them). Their vote will be ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered.

But you don't understand. THOSE NODES WILL BE THE MAJORITY. It's the "real" nodes that will be blacklisted & "ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered."

[BitUsher]

Mining nodes do vote on what is valid or not, but don't have as much of a vote as a large investor or an exchange.

1. Investors dont 'vote'
2. exchanges dont 'vote'

Nodes competing to find blocks and then building upon them 'vote'.

[1] & [2] make choices on predetermined outcomes.

sgbett has been explained multiple times why he is wrong and how non-mining full nodes still have all the power but is making a nuanced argument that Full nodes who don't mine simply don't vote because developers defer votes to miners for soft forks and hard forks as a signal to accept a proposal or not. This is purely coincidental due to the limitations in approximating an accurate vote among economic full nodes and  because of this we are left with an interesting attack vector some have already committed to exploit during a hard fork.  

Way to take my comments out of context. Pay attention to the nuanced distinctions I am making. There are different forms of votes being expressed. Non - mining Economic actors/nodes can quickly cripple the miners if they so decided to.

[gmaxwell]

This was already answered. Full nodes can veto the miners at any given moment. All of the miners investments can instantly become expensive useless liabilities if the economic consensus of full nodes rejects the miners longest chain.  

FWIW, full nodes have rejected the most-pow chain on several occasions in the past. E.g. in 2010 there was an incident where software errors caused miners to mine a block that minted a billion bitcoins out of thin air. That fork grew to about 75 blocks. There was another incident in 2013 which made it to about 35 blocks.  More recently, at the enforcement of strict-der, nodes started enforcing the new soft-fork rule with 95% hashpower support, and miners not in conformance with the rule (then a hardfork) managed to produce a chain of blocks 5 longer.

By block count, litecoin's chain has more 'work' than Bitcoin, and yet bitcoin nodes don't follow it.

I think that many people, versed in pre-cypherpunk organizational modalities constantly seek to attribute control to some authority in any system. When they look at Bitcoin they see mining and say "ah, here is the parties that are in charge" (or, alternatively and less  often, some software developers).  They're wrong about that: no one is simply "in charge", and that is a big part of the point and value. It also makes some people uncomfortable, because what they want is the old way of doing things with singular authorities which can be influenced in traditional ways... rather than the personal autonomy of cryptographic proof that backs Bitcoin.

[blunderer]

.@gmaxwell: could you actually answer my questions instead of waxing philosophical re. "pre-cypherpunk organizational modalities"?
ty

[BitUsher]

Mutual destruction, the paragon of maturity

I don't advocate for this action or repeat these facts to fear monger, but they are important considerations one must consider when
deciding upon what level of consensus one must agree to before activating a fork. It is no surprise that many of the Chinese miners are advocating 90% -95% threshold and a much larger window.

And nodes figure into this how?

The code determines what fits consensus or not. Human beings with Nodes full of BTC that now represent 2 different coins can transfer that BTC from their non-mining node to an exchange or another human which places downward pressure upon one of the coins price.

Well sure, they can create an altcoin, like any other altcoin. How does this effect miners & users with new nodes?

It all depends upon perspective. From their Eyes the big block coin that uses democratic form of governance where a majority can impose changes upon a minority would be the alt where their coin that uses anarchistic forms of consensus would be the true bitcoin. In their eyes the change in political consensus is much larger of a change than the change in the mining algo.

[blunderer]

...
It all depends upon perspective. From their Eyes the big block coin that uses democratic form of governance where a majority can impose changes upon a minority would be the alt where their coin that uses anarchistic forms of consensus would be the true bitcoin. In their eyes the change in political consensus is much larger of a change than the change in the mining algo.

I'm not talking about ideology, I'm asking about the mechanics, the actual methodology.

I don't see how "100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet."
Please explain.

P.S. I'm trying hard to overlook your bitchy insinuations re. trolling & shilling. Try to avoid such infantile faggotry in the future.

[BitUsher]

I think that many people, versed in pre-cypherpunk organizational modalities constantly seek to attribute control to some authority in any system. When they look at Bitcoin they see mining and say "ah, here is the parties that are in charge" (or, alternatively and less  often, some software developers).  They're wrong about that: no one is simply "in charge", and that is a big part of the point and value. It also makes some people uncomfortable, because what they want is the old way of doing things with singular authorities which can be influenced in traditional ways... rather than the personal autonomy of cryptographic proof that backs Bitcoin.

Very well said and something I completely agree with.

The reality is miners share power with many other groups and there exists a complex interwoven power dynamic between nodes, users, merchants, processors/banks/exchanges, developers, and miners. When developers discuss centralization of mining concerns among each other in private there is an understanding of these complex nuances already .

[BitUsher]

I'm not talking about ideology, I'm asking about the mechanics, the actual methodology.

I don't see how "100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet."
Please explain.

Every individual Full Node wallet is a distinct node that can independently verify every transaction going back to the genesis block. They aren't dependent upon those 100 full nodes spun up on amazon ec2.* If one of those amazon ec2 nodes attempts to relay a block that doesn't conform to their full nodes consensus rule it will simply be ignored. The reason why a single full node with bitcoin is worth something is because there is an economic actor behind that full node who has agency and decides those coins have value. The only reason anything has value whether gold, fiat or bitcoin deals with that economic agent who places value upon their asset and can make choices or vote with that value.

Thus 100 full nodes spun up by one person with no btc associated with any of them has the exact same vote* and 1 node with no btc and even less of a vote than 1 node with btc. In fact those 100 nodes impose a very slight security risk as they are being hosted within a central company and misleading our ecosystem into believing that the node count is more decentralized than it actually is. If any of those full nodes changed consensus and other non -full node SPV clients trusted them that would also be another attack vector.  


* There is a low probability attack if those full nodes provided an alternative history during the bootstrap process(first time the blockchain is downloaded, that a new full node can coincidentally and unluckily peer from only those 100 nodes which could maliciously provide an alternative history as well. This means that there is a different and distinct form of a vote that is the exception that breaks the rule. 100 nodes have more of a vote than 1 node with regards to influencing new nodes bootstrapping to the main chain. Therefore not only is there a complex interwoven power dynamic between multiple groups within bitcoin there are distinct forms of "voting" at play here.

[maokoto]

I do not know if it is good or bad that it is controlled by one company. But I think that being controlled by more than one company does not guarantee it will go good either.

[blunderer]

I'm not talking about ideology, I'm asking about the mechanics, the actual methodology.

I don't see how "100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet."
Please explain.

Every individual Full Node wallet is a distinct node that can independently verify every transaction going back to the genesis block. They aren't dependent upon those 100 full nodes spun up on amazon ec2.* If one of those amazon ec2 nodes attempts to relay a block that doesn't conform to their full nodes consensus rule it will simply be ignored. The reason why a single full node with bitcoin is worth something is because there is an economic actor behind that full node who has agency and decides those coins have value. The only reason anything has value whether gold, fiat or bitcoin deals with that economic agent who places value upon their asset and can make choices or vote with that value.

BAH! But the network doesn't know if there's a wallet behind a node or not. There is no way for the network to know if there's 1000BTC or 0BTC behind a node. NONE. If one of your "real" nodes attempts to relay a block to one of my "fake" nodes, it gets ignored & B&. "My" node will pass on the blocks from "my" miners just fine, because they comply with "my," "fake" node's ruleset.
There is no value judgement here. Your nodes don't propagate "my" blocks, "my" nodes don't propagate yours.

Thus 100 full nodes spun up by one person with no btc associated with any of them has the exact same vote* and 1 node with no btc and even less of a vote than 1 node with btc.

You keep saying that, but it keeps making no sense. Via what mechanism? How?

In fact those 100 nodes impose a very slight security risk as they are being hosted within a central company and misleading our ecosystem into believing that the node count is more decentralized than it actually is. If any of those full nodes changed consensus and other non -full node SPV clients trusted them that would also be another attack vector.  

Don't care, irrelevant. Stay on topic. We're still trying to determine how the network decides which nodes have money/"humans" behind them and which do not.
Please explain the mechanism.
ty

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"

I think a lot of you are unstable. But threats are always a clever means of promoting your ideas.

Quite compelling when everything else fails.

[BitUsher]

I think a lot of you are unstable. But threats are always a clever means of promoting your ideas.

Quite compelling when everything else fails.

Some of us actually care about the security of the network and spend time and effort to protect it from malicious actors. Part of this process is understanding the attack vectors , and educating others the risks so we can collectively make the right decisions so threats aren't realized. MP and other fringe lunatic 1MB forever disciples can indeed carry out this attack and are no friends to me or most/all developers in Core. In fact he has threatened to murder some prominent developers.

If you consider my politics to classify me as unstable , than so be it. I call them principles, you consider them unstable ... but perhaps you would be better off considering them "insane convictions" or "convictions you disagree with" instead because these principles are quite stable and consistent . I'll respect your thoughts and try to offer you some consolidation that we truly do want to increase capacity and are working hard to do so safely.

Don't care, irrelevant. Stay on topic. We're still trying to determine how the network decides which nodes have money/"humans" behind them and which do not.
Please explain the mechanism.
ty

You are fixated on the code acting as a form of AI that solely does the voting. The network consists of nodes with human agents behind them that "vote" with the BTC in their wallet. Actual human being interacting with the code is part of the network!

[blunderer]

I think a lot of you are unstable. But threats are always a clever means of promoting your ideas.

Quite compelling when everything else fails.

Some of us actually care about the security of the network and spend time and effort to protect it from malicious actors

Don't care, irrelevant. Stay on topic. We're still trying to determine how the network decides which nodes have money/"humans" behind them and which do not.
Please explain the mechanism.
ty

You are fixated on the code acting as a form of AI that solely does the voting. The network consists of nodes with human agents behind them that "vote" with the BTC in their wallet. Actual human being interacting with the code is part of the network!

In other words, they can dump their BTC. That's fine, and for that, non-mining nodes are neither necessary nor instrumental.
I'm not interested in some feelsy newagey humanist take of Bitcoin network. At this point, all I'm interested in how the Bitcoin protocol can differentiate between "real" (money-backed) and "unreal" (unbacked by anything other than crunch power) non-mining nodes.
The answer is "IT FUCKING CAN NOT."

Allow me this argumentum ad verecundiam:
"... They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism." --S.N.

P.S. I also don't care if you "care about the security of the network and spend time and effort to protect it from malicious actors."
I care about kittens, which is equally relevant to this topic, which is to say not at all.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Estimates have Classic at 16% of full nodes. This is madness. What will happen to Blockstream's alliances/sidechains under Classic? Any change in business strategy? Are we all doomed?

[Cconvert2G36]

* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"

So, unstable people are threatening to dump their coins and/or spam the mempool to get their way... therefore, we should do exactly what they want...

How about... no.

[BitUsher]

At this point, I'm interested in how the Bitcoin protocol can differentiate between "real" (money-backed) and "unreal" (unbacked by anything other than crunch power) non-mining nodes.
The answer is "IT FUCKING CAN NOT."

This question has already been answered. The protocol cannot assign value to these tokens. Just like with Gold, Commodities, Fiat... value is assigned by human agents or AI in the future. This means that 1 person can fork off of the network, have almost no hashing power and his/her coins can be extremely valuable as long as they and another believe it is real money and has value.

This is very basic economics that applies to any assets, that seems to escape you.

"... They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism."

At the time when Satoshi wrote that, CPU power was synonymous with Full nodes.  This distinction has changed over the years. Now there are differences in the vote and influences of a full node and mining full node.

So, unstable people are threatening to dump their coins and/or spam the mempool to get their way... therefore, we should do exactly what they want...

How about... no.

I agree , and all/most of core agrees with you here, that is why we are pushing for changes to increase capacity with Segwit.

Estimates have Classic at 16% of full nodes. This is madness. What will happen to Blockstream's alliances/sidechains under Classic? Any change in business strategy? Are we all doomed?

I count 8.89% of all nodes now... where are you getting your data?