2011 Newbie question

[Shiver]

Although I was mining in Q2 2011, since that became impractical after GPU, I'll lost touch with the tech side of developments and have a question that is noob:

I have a full node on a laptop, but I'm told that mining is disabled by default since it's not really practical anymore.  I'm on the latest release of the reference app (0.13.1) with Segwit.  I'm a supporter of SegWit implementation immediately, and want to look to BU after that is done (mainly for maleability and Lightning reasons).

My understanding is it needs 95% consensus (way too high % imho), and has to prevail for 2 weeks for it to activate.  Since we have more users now, can we make a difference by being millions of people versus miners with the BU opposition? or do we need to be actively mining our tiny Khashes (fine by me as I run it on a different computer than my day to day one).

Are mining pools going to control this decision or are the majority family of users?  I see good reasons for both, but don't see it as an either/or decision.  If we can fix maleability and let LN get on the case, if we still need larger blocks then that is surely still an option as a backup?

If together we can make an impact then I will turn mining on rather than the default.
 

[1715241542]

1715241542

[1715241542]

1715241542

[1715241542]

1715241542

[1715241542]

1715241542

[achow101]

My understanding is it needs 95% consensus (way too high % imho), and has to prevail for 2 weeks for it to activate.  Since we have more users now, can we make a difference by being millions of people versus miners with the BU opposition? or do we need to be actively mining our tiny Khashes (fine by me as I run it on a different computer than my day to day one).

The deployment threshold is 95% of the blocks in a retarget period must signal support. Since this has nothing to do with nodes or users, miners essentially have sole control of whether activation happens.

Are mining pools going to control this decision or are the majority family of users?  I see good reasons for both, but don't see it as an either/or decision.  

Ideally it should be both users and miners, but right now, only the miners get to decide as that is how the deployment mechanism works. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to gauge user support.

If together we can make an impact then I will turn mining on rather than the default.

Bitcoin Core 0.13.1 does not have any mining capability for the mainnet, that was entirely removed, not just disabled. You will have to use some other mining software in order to mine.


I suppose the best way to get segwit to activate soon would be to convince miners that segwit is good and convince them to either switch pools or convince the pool operators to mine segwit.

[Shiver]

Are supporters of pools such as ViaBTC there because they are people who support BU instead of tight code (big block CC engines rather than refined engineering elegance) or is it because they have a better percentage incentive or more competitive rates for miners than other pools?

Since we can have both, I'm having a hard time understanding why there is divisiveness.  There appears to me to be a right order to these implementations though.

If it is for economic reasons then I'd be happy contribute making up the difference if they're doing it for cost reasons rather than ideology belief systems.  It would after all benefit my selfish goals of making BTC a formidable contender on the world stage if we can get past this issue.  If we don't get consensus then it is a loss for all.  Maleability and LN reducing block content hugely could put back BU (which can be implemented also), by several years, and could make micro payments viable again, whilst miners would still benefit with similar or lower fees because of the orders of magnitude increase in the need to have their services and probably make more overall.  I'm sure they don't want this experiment to fold any more than anyone else invested.

[Shiver]

Another Q:

Could an individual user white/black list who they will deal with in accepting confirmations?  If that were possible then we could restore individual "voting with your feet" behaviour.

[achow101]

Are supporters of pools such as ViaBTC there because they are people who support BU instead of tight code (big block CC engines rather than refined engineering elegance) or is it because they have a better percentage incentive or more competitive rates for miners than other pools?

There are some people who think that BU is more technically sound than segwit. There are others who think that we should increase the block size before segwit, and lastly there are people who simply dislike anything and everything the the Bitcoin Core developers do so they support BU. Most of the anti-segwit sentiment is from the third group of people (which appears to also be the largest group of people who oppose segwit).

Since we can have both, I'm having a hard time understanding why there is divisiveness.  There appears to me to be a right order to these implementations though.

A lot of the divisiveness is because of politics and less technical or economic reasons. The anti-segwit sentiment primarily comes from a hatred for Core and thus segwit is also hated.

Could an individual user white/black list who they will deal with in accepting confirmations?  If that were possible then we could restore individual "voting with your feet" behaviour.

You could make such a white/black list but it would be a hard fork. You would only be accepting blocks mined by certain pools/miners. You can't choose which miner is allowed to mine your transaction or which block your transaction will go in.

[Shiver]

Okay, thank you for your clear and thorough answers.

It's such a shame there is the hatred part - I wasn't aware of that.  We seem to have that in all aspects of life these days, and it's the last thing we need to have it in something as beautiful as the concept of nationless transactions.


"... because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee".
                                                                                             - John Donne

[Yogafan00000]

It's such a shame there is the hatred part ....

Yes, it's such a shame there is so much egos involved blocking improvements for everyone. 

I wish there was more that this mere mortal could do.

I run a full node 13.1 and I'm thinking about firing up old mining equipment to support a segwit positive pool despite it's pitiful hashrate.

Maybe buying some cloud mining hashes would help it along?  I just don't know what else to do.