Dear Satoshi Nakamoto

[AngryDwarf]

This is always the same confusion.  You're talking about *economic* nodes.  But there are no economic nodes, there are simply economic USERS.  The fact of them having a node or not, doesn't matter, does it ?   The only thing that a full node can do, is INFORM its owner.  But that's it.

Suppose that you are a whale, holding 100 000 BTC.  You are running a full node, to watch those evil miners.  Now, suppose that those evil miners have decided to increase the block reward (that is, they change the protocol so that the next halving won't happen).  They keep on mining blocks with the old reward, and refuse to apply the halving.  They are not doing this in a sneaky way, they simply announce that they will apply a hard fork so that halving is not going to happen any more, for this and that reason.  95% of the hash rate is behind this move.

Your node sees this, and stops.  The last block it received and accepted, was the last block before the halving.  The next block in the only chain around is considered invalid, because the coinbase transaction is not correct, it isn't halved, as it should be, according to your node.

Now what ?   You decide to sell all of your bitcoin because you're not happy ?  What do you do with your 100 000 BTC ?  Where do you send your transaction ?

You're hoping for the 5% minority miners that wanted to keep the old chain ?  Maybe they do.  But the difficulty is now 20 times too high for them.  They can only mine one block every 3 hours or so, with HALF of the reward that their competitors win on the other fork.

Are they going to keep the "true" chain alive ?  With one block every 3 hours, for the next year or so ?  Or are they going to put their effort in the new bitcoin ?  Suppose they do.  Now, bitcoin has undergone a hard fork with no more halvings.  Your node is not happy about that.  What are you going to do with your 100 000 BTC wallet ?

Perhaps you would like to comment on my attempt to analyse the situation of economic weight in the event of a UASF.
Basically a stand off between economic nodes and miners would not last long due to its destruction of the bitcoin system operationally. A long standoff is a war of attrition. Economic business needs to continue or they will eventually go out of business. Miners need to be able to use their coin to keep running or they eventually will go out of business. It's Mutually Assured Destruction.

[dinofelis]

This is always the same confusion.  You're talking about *economic* nodes.  But there are no economic nodes, there are simply economic USERS.  The fact of them having a node or not, doesn't matter, does it ?   The only thing that a full node can do, is INFORM its owner.  But that's it.

Suppose that you are a whale, holding 100 000 BTC.  You are running a full node, to watch those evil miners.  Now, suppose that those evil miners have decided to increase the block reward (that is, they change the protocol so that the next halving won't happen).  They keep on mining blocks with the old reward, and refuse to apply the halving.  They are not doing this in a sneaky way, they simply announce that they will apply a hard fork so that halving is not going to happen any more, for this and that reason.  95% of the hash rate is behind this move.

Your node sees this, and stops.  The last block it received and accepted, was the last block before the halving.  The next block in the only chain around is considered invalid, because the coinbase transaction is not correct, it isn't halved, as it should be, according to your node.

Now what ?   You decide to sell all of your bitcoin because you're not happy ?  What do you do with your 100 000 BTC ?  Where do you send your transaction ?

You're hoping for the 5% minority miners that wanted to keep the old chain ?  Maybe they do.  But the difficulty is now 20 times too high for them.  They can only mine one block every 3 hours or so, with HALF of the reward that their competitors win on the other fork.

Are they going to keep the "true" chain alive ?  With one block every 3 hours, for the next year or so ?  Or are they going to put their effort in the new bitcoin ?  Suppose they do.  Now, bitcoin has undergone a hard fork with no more halvings.  Your node is not happy about that.  What are you going to do with your 100 000 BTC wallet ?

Perhaps you would like to comment on my attempt to analyse the situation of economic weight in the event of a UASF.

It is very difficult to foresee.  But you're missing the point: non-mining NODES don't matter in this affair.  This is between "miners" and "(economic) users", not "nodes".  The users can (try to) vote with their money and transactions, with or without a non-mining node.  

Suppose that the "economic majority" has its say.  It will have its say through the exchanges, not by running a node in its basement.  The interplay between economic users and miners is complex.   But whether or not these users run a node in their basement doesn't matter.

Exchanges will follow their customers, they don't care about the value of coins, they only care about the amounts of fiat that users trade, because exchanges take a fee on every flow of value, no matter to or from which coin.

What would a UASF mean ?  One vote per node ?  Does someone running a node, and holding half a bitcoin, have as much importance as the guy with his 100 000 BTC and also a node ?  

And if the guy with half a bitcoin fires up 500 nodes ?  Does that mean anything to an UASF ?  On the other hand, if you disgruntle 20 guys with each of them 100 000 BTC, maybe that matters ?

Finally, the miners sell their coins to whom ?  To whales ?  Or to NEWCOMERS that don't even have a node, nor a coin ?

Of course the economic vote matters, but the economic vote matters in the market, on the available choices, not on the non-available choices.  Miners decide what are the available choices (as long as the system is PoW).   Hell, even any dev can make a new available choice, by just making a new coin that forks off bitcoin, using PoW or even PoS.  Economic actors vote on those available choices in the market, but cannot create themselves, available choices.

And in all that, non mining nodes don't mean anything: they don't represent economic actors (certainly not proportionally), and they don't make new choices available.  They are only useful for their owners, informing them.  

[AngryDwarf]

<snip>

Miners have electricity costs, warehousing costs, equipment costs etc.. Without a bitcoin economy that accepts their bitcoin (either directly or through fiat exchange), then the coins they mine have no use, and they will go out of business. In this case the entire bitcoin economy goes to hell.
Do you think there is any point in miners passing bitcoin tokens between themselves for fun? They have no purpose if there is no bitcoin economy. It becomes worthless hard to compute 1's and 0's. Everybody loses.
So I think economic validation nodes have their purpose, since it stops miners from making up the rules without scrutiny.

[dinofelis]

So I think economic validation nodes have their purpose, since it stops miners from making up the rules without scrutiny.

My point is that there's no such thing as "economic validation nodes".  There are economic actors, USERS, that have of course their economic weight in the market on available choices.  Whether these actors run a node or not doesn't change their economic choices in the market.
And running a node, or not, doesn't increase the economic choices of actors, nor their economic weight.  So I fail to see the purpose that "running a node" has.  The economic power of the actors is independent of them running a node or not.  And the choices the economic actors have, are independent of them running a node or not. So what changes between economic actors voting in the market on the choices that are available, when they run a node, or they don't run a node ?

Think about this:

a) Suppose that the economic actors don't agree with the miners, and refuse to buy their coins, even though they don't run a node themselves.  Is the situation now better for miners than if on top of that, these actors were running a node that stopped working because it didn't agree with the block chain that miners were making ?

b) Suppose that many economic actors run a node that stops working because it doesn't agree with the chain that miners make.  But enough actors buy their coins on exchanges.  Did those running a node annoy the miners in the slightest bit ?

You see, the nodes don't mean shit.  What means something, is the market value at which the miners can sell their coins, but that is also the market value of coins held by the whales.  There are also the newcomers, the most interesting party in this game, that have no stake but are most probably the ones buying up the new coins from miners.  In all of this, whether you run a node or not, doesn't matter, because it doesn't alter anything.

[AngryDwarf]

So I think economic validation nodes have their purpose, since it stops miners from making up the rules without scrutiny.

My point is that there's no such thing as "economic validation nodes".  There are economic actors, USERS, that have of course their economic weight in the market on available choices.  Whether these actors run a node or not doesn't change their economic choices in the market.
And running a node, or not, doesn't increase the economic choices of actors, nor their economic weight.  So I fail to see the purpose that "running a node" has.  The economic power of the actors is independent of them running a node or not.  And the choices the economic actors have, are independent of them running a node or not. So what changes between economic actors voting in the market on the choices that are available, when they run a node, or they don't run a node ?

Think about this:

a) Suppose that the economic actors don't agree with the miners, and refuse to buy their coins, even though they don't run a node themselves.  Is the situation now better for miners than if on top of that, these actors were running a node that stopped working because it didn't agree with the block chain that miners were making ?

b) Suppose that many economic actors run a node that stops working because it doesn't agree with the chain that miners make.  But enough actors buy their coins on exchanges.  Did those running a node annoy the miners in the slightest bit ?

By validating the miners work, they are alerted to the fact that miners are changing the rules and can choose how to respond to the situation. If they blindly accept the miners work, they won't be alerted to the fact that the rules have changed. Hence they scrutinise the miners work and can choose to either change to the miners rules, or stop accepting that coin altogether.

[deisik]

He's talking about one or few centralized miner nodes, everyone directly connecting to it, and blocks of about 1 GB.
(the 100 GB is daily).

Then, he screwed up:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg23049#msg23049

Possibly the most prescient message on this forum. Who knows what the technical environment was like back then, I certainly don't, but they really should've seen this one coming and indeed this fella did

Yes, we certainly should take into account the environment back then

Right now it is as clear as day that none of what was suggested back in the day would work in the long enough term. It is understandable that the guys couldn't yet fancy how to make off-chain transactions in a decentralized and reliable way which would principally solve the issue and allow for virtually unlimited scaling of Bitcoin. It is also an example of how a new paradigm may render all previous efforts to solve the issue pretty irrelevant

[dinofelis]

By validating the miners work, they are alerted to the fact that miners are changing the rules and can choose how to respond to the situation. If they blindly accept the miners work, they won't be alerted to the fact that the rules have changed. Hence they scrutinise the miners work and can choose to either change to the miners rules, or stop accepting that coin altogether.

I would say: by "observing" the miner's work.  So yes, a full node informs its owner.  That's about it.  That's helpful if the miners were doing something sneaky.  If they openly announce that they don't apply the next halving, then your node just informs you that they did what they said, they were going to do.
Whether 5000 nodes tell you that, or just one, doesn't make much of a difference, does it ?

[dinofelis]

e
It is understandable that the guys couldn't yet fancy how to make off-chain transactions in a decentralized and reliable way which would principally solve the issue and allow for virtually unlimited scaling of Bitcoin.

We still don't.  LN is banking.  We already knew that banking works, if all people have accounts in a connected net of banks and have deposited their holdings there. 

[Xester]

So I think economic validation nodes have their purpose, since it stops miners from making up the rules without scrutiny.

My point is that there's no such thing as "economic validation nodes".  There are economic actors, USERS, that have of course their economic weight in the market on available choices.  Whether these actors run a node or not doesn't change their economic choices in the market.
And running a node, or not, doesn't increase the economic choices of actors, nor their economic weight.  So I fail to see the purpose that "running a node" has.  The economic power of the actors is independent of them running a node or not.  And the choices the economic actors have, are independent of them running a node or not. So what changes between economic actors voting in the market on the choices that are available, when they run a node, or they don't run a node ?

Think about this:

a) Suppose that the economic actors don't agree with the miners, and refuse to buy their coins, even though they don't run a node themselves.  Is the situation now better for miners than if on top of that, these actors were running a node that stopped working because it didn't agree with the block chain that miners were making ?

b) Suppose that many economic actors run a node that stops working because it doesn't agree with the chain that miners make.  But enough actors buy their coins on exchanges.  Did those running a node annoy the miners in the slightest bit ?

By validating the miners work, they are alerted to the fact that miners are changing the rules and can choose how to respond to the situation. If they blindly accept the miners work, they won't be alerted to the fact that the rules have changed. Hence they scrutinise the miners work and can choose to either change to the miners rules, or stop accepting that coin altogether.

That is the very reason why the community has established an UASF so that the one who will have the power to adopt and approve changes to the bitcoin network will be us the bitcoin holders and the miners will be forced to follow to what our dictates are or else their production will go to waste. But set your worry aside since the exchanges are already doing their job screening the bitcoin that are entering their site.

[AngryDwarf]

That is the very reason why the community has established an UASF so that the one who will have the power to adopt and approve changes to the bitcoin network will be us the bitcoin holders and the miners will be forced to follow to what our dictates are or else their production will go to waste. But set your worry aside since the exchanges are already doing their job screening the bitcoin that are entering their site.

You've gone from dinofelis only miners matter extreme, to the paper weight of users forcing the miners hand extreme. Bitcoin works when miners and the economy are working in consensus. UASF without miner majority is a charge of the light brigade moment. It only takes one exchange to reject UASF and they gain the business of the usable majority chain, so there is an incentive for one of them to do so. The minority chain will either have to fork off, or fall in line with the consensus by cancelling the UASF. In other words segwit UASF will have to retreat like a wounded brigade after achieving very little gain. Since severe disruption to the bitcoin system of operation would have occurred for a length of time, people will start to play the blame game. I wouldn't be surprised if the blame was deflected onto the users. That's politics.

[SvenBomvolen]

very unlikely to get a reply; but nice try though.

Yes. It's not even proved that Satoshi exist yet and this letter is kind of letter to nobody now. But I think you will find a lot of replies to your questions on the forum.

[ekoice]

Dear Satoshi Nakamoto I would like to know your opinion about all the blocksize bitcoin drama.

Blocksize drama will not over for sure and all these spam attacks on bitcoin network can't last long because it will cost so much for attackers. When all this attacks will be over, there will be no any problem regarding mempool being full with unconfirmed transactions and rise in transactions fees.  

Yes,many such dramas would continue even in future trying to split bitcoin and fill their pockets.But as usual,all such attempts would fail and bitcoin would last long as the king of crypto coins.

[dinofelis]

That is the very reason why the community has established an UASF so that the one who will have the power to adopt and approve changes to the bitcoin network will be us the bitcoin holders and the miners will be forced to follow to what our dictates are or else their production will go to waste. But set your worry aside since the exchanges are already doing their job screening the bitcoin that are entering their site.

You've gone from dinofelis only miners matter extreme

I didn't say that.  The complex interplay between miners and users (in the market) is what matters.  But in that story, nowhere, non-mining nodes appear.  That's my point.  Miners are the only entities making block chains with the protocol's PoW voting rights.  Users are the ones that turn "tokens on a block chain" into something that has economic value, by spending value (fiat) to obtain it, and as such, finance the whole ecosystem, miners included.   But at no point - apart for the function of *informing* node owners what miners are actually doing - nodes that do not mine, play any role in this.  They don't make block chains, they don't offer block chain VARIANTS (allowing for choice in the market), and they don't relate to economic value in the market.  A user with 500 000 BTC running a node has just as much "node count value" as one running an empty node without owning any BTC.  A potential buyer of BTC on an exchange is maybe not running a node, but has important economic weight for a miner.   So non-mining nodes are 1) not offering opportunities of choice, and 2) do not signal or influence any economic choices in the market between the offered choices.

[michkima]

Dear Satoshi Nakamoto I would like to know your opinion about all the blocksize bitcoin drama.

Blocksize drama will not over for sure and all these spam attacks on bitcoin network can't last long because it will cost so much for attackers. When all this attacks will be over, there will be no any problem regarding mempool being full with unconfirmed transactions and rise in transactions fees.  

Yes,many such dramas would continue even in future trying to split bitcoin and fill their pockets.But as usual,all such attempts would fail and bitcoin would last long as the king of crypto coins.

Can't say that much for bitcoins, unless we do something about the problems with bitcoins then we can't really scale to bigger heights. Look at it this way, if bitcoins will take forever to confirm at low costs then that would really be a turn off to the new users especially merchants who would want to wait for 1 confirmation atleas.

[AngryDwarf]

You've gone from dinofelis only miners matter extreme

I didn't say that.  The complex interplay between miners and users (in the market) is what matters.  But in that story, nowhere, non-mining nodes appear.  That's my point.  Miners are the only entities making block chains with the protocol's PoW voting rights.  Users are the ones that turn "tokens on a block chain" into something that has economic value, by spending value (fiat) to obtain it, and as such, finance the whole ecosystem, miners included.   But at no point - apart for the function of *informing* node owners what miners are actually doing - nodes that do not mine, play any role in this.  They don't make block chains, they don't offer block chain VARIANTS (allowing for choice in the market), and they don't relate to economic value in the market.  A user with 500 000 BTC running a node has just as much "node count value" as one running an empty node without owning any BTC.  A potential buyer of BTC on an exchange is maybe not running a node, but has important economic weight for a miner.   So non-mining nodes are 1) not offering opportunities of choice, and 2) do not signal or influence any economic choices in the market between the offered choices.

You are only considering the block building part of it. The blockchain is a distributed database. Validating nodes distribute the database amongst different actors and ensure the mining oligarchy can't fuck with the blockchain history.

[eaLiTy]

Reading the comments i have seen many people criticizing Satoshi that he did not make any changes to the block size limit at that time and so is the reason we are having issues right now,first thing everyone must understand is bitcoin at that time was a prototype and every software needs upgrades to keep up with time and that is the exact thing we need now,we need a good upgrade to solve the issue and what is best must be determined after careful thought process and testing.

[dinofelis]

You've gone from dinofelis only miners matter extreme

I didn't say that.  The complex interplay between miners and users (in the market) is what matters.  But in that story, nowhere, non-mining nodes appear.  That's my point.  Miners are the only entities making block chains with the protocol's PoW voting rights.  Users are the ones that turn "tokens on a block chain" into something that has economic value, by spending value (fiat) to obtain it, and as such, finance the whole ecosystem, miners included.   But at no point - apart for the function of *informing* node owners what miners are actually doing - nodes that do not mine, play any role in this.  They don't make block chains, they don't offer block chain VARIANTS (allowing for choice in the market), and they don't relate to economic value in the market.  A user with 500 000 BTC running a node has just as much "node count value" as one running an empty node without owning any BTC.  A potential buyer of BTC on an exchange is maybe not running a node, but has important economic weight for a miner.   So non-mining nodes are 1) not offering opportunities of choice, and 2) do not signal or influence any economic choices in the market between the offered choices.

You are only considering the block building part of it. The blockchain is a distributed database. Validating nodes distribute the database amongst different actors and ensure the mining oligarchy can't fuck with the blockchain history.

Of course not.  The source of this database is the miners, and only the miners.  And any actor can get its data directly from the source, and doesn't need a proxy server to relay it.

Think of it this way.

Consider, for the sake of argument, 3 populations:

1) miners (I actually mean, mining pools) and their data-center nodes.

2) users with a lot of coins and cash, that only use online wallets or lightweight wallets

3) bitcointalk idiots like us, that run most of the non-mining full nodes.

Now, suppose that the miners change protocol (open in the clear).  Suppose that the users (2) don't really mind about that.
Suppose that all of us (3) are upset, and refuse to distribute this "corrupt" database.

What do you think will happen ?  The users (2) will connect their wallets directly to the miner nodes (1), instead of taking a copy of what the miners produce, from us (3).   We don't distribute anything.  We are optional proxy servers for the database that is produced by the miners, and only by the miners.

[dinofelis]

Reading the comments i have seen many people criticizing Satoshi that he did not make any changes to the block size limit at that time and so is the reason we are having issues right now,first thing everyone must understand is bitcoin at that time was a prototype and every software needs upgrades to keep up with time and that is the exact thing we need now,we need a good upgrade to solve the issue and what is best must be determined after careful thought process and testing.

The point is that a crypto currency is not "software", it is a contractual protocol.  Upgrading a contract is difficult.

[AngryDwarf]

You are only considering the block building part of it. The blockchain is a distributed database. Validating nodes distribute the database amongst different actors and ensure the mining oligarchy can't fuck with the blockchain history.

Of course not.  The source of this database is the miners, and only the miners.  And any actor can get its data directly from the source, and doesn't need a proxy server to relay it.

Think of it this way.

Consider, for the sake of argument, 3 populations:

1) miners (I actually mean, mining pools) and their data-center nodes.

2) users with a lot of coins and cash, that only use online wallets or lightweight wallets

3) bitcointalk idiots like us, that run most of the non-mining full nodes.

Now, suppose that the miners change protocol (open in the clear).  Suppose that the users (2) don't really mind about that.
Suppose that all of us (3) are upset, and refuse to distribute this "corrupt" database.

What do you think will happen ?  The users (2) will connect their wallets directly to the miner nodes (1), instead of taking a copy of what the miners produce, from us (3).   We don't distribute anything.  We are optional proxy servers for the database that is produced by the miners, and only by the miners.

What stops the mining oligarchy from starting again from the genesis block and get 50 BTC block rewards? As soon as they connect to other validating nodes with the full  blockchain history they would have to sync to it!

[AngryDwarf]

The other thing to think about is if all mining nodes are located within a few jurisdictions, and those governments decide to simultaneously seize the mining nodes and take them offline, everybody's UTXO is lost. By having copies of the blockchain distributed around the world in the hands of different entities and jurisdictions, the blockchain data and UTXO set is significantly more secure.