Please run a full node

[jbreher]

All of the arguments that "nodes do matter" have the logical fallacy of taking the "intended way the network SHOULD work" as the "actually technically resulting technical operation".

I agree with all you say. However, the situation is even more dire. Turns out we have been lied to all this time. The reality is that no entity is a node, if that entity does not mine. Indeed, this is the true, original, and proper definition of a node.

We need to reevaluate who 'sold us a bill of goods'. We have abdicated our authority in the network. In reality, non-mining nodes are irrelevant. Indeed, in the original wallet, nodes mine - period.

from https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/92ee8d9a994391d148733da77e2bbc2f4acc43cd/src/main.h#L795

// Nodes collect new transactions into a block, hash them into a hash tree,
// and scan through nonce values to make the block's hash satisfy proof-of-work
// requirements.  When they solve the proof-of-work, they broadcast the block
// to everyone and the block is added to the block chain.  The first transaction
// in the block is a special one that creates a new coin owned by the creator
// of the block.

GitHub
trottier/original-bitcoin
original-bitcoin - This is a historical repository of Satoshi Nakamoto's original bitcoin sourcecode

(emphasis added)

I don't know when the definition of 'node' became corrupted to include non-mining entities. I don't know who introduced this lie. Though I must admit to propagating it. For years. Sorry. I was ignorant.

[dinofelis]

I never interpreted anything in this thread that he implied that (I actually think he tried to argue exactly what you are arguing -- that the percentages don't change based on the other pools) but I guess he can answer to that point.

He can, of course.  But I took this as such an indication:

We are in the scenario where all pools agree upon a protocol, and the full nodes want another one.  Pools only care about their block being accepted by other miners

nope. because IF pools right now made blocks 465623-465723 that were, say using MD5 hashing..

by this evening.. they would find out that all the merchants wont see their rewards of 465622+
the pools would have most definetly realised that merchants wont buy their 465622 reward by at most 465623

Stick to the case where all miners agree on a set of rules, where the full nodes don't agree with, if you want to show the power of full nodes imposing their rules on miners.

so pools wont continue making md5 hashed blocks for 16 hours because 1 pool will see a nice easy income by switching back to sha256 and win every block that is spendable to the merchants and have no competition

... and have no competition ....

together with:

but if pools were to change the rules they would get orphaned

2017-01-29 06:59:12 Requesting block 000000000000000000cf208f521de0424677f7a87f2f278a1042f38d159565f5
2017-01-29 06:59:15 ERROR: AcceptBlock: bad-blk-length, size limits failed (code 16)

No, if SOME pools would change the rules.  But we are considering the case where ALL pools fix the rules (the same ones, or the same change).

You are just printing what your local full node would tell YOU.  But if all miners are in agreement on the rules (old ones or new ones) - that's the case we consider - then there's no orphaning.  Because only miners can orphan blocks, by building on other blocks.

and while say pools BCDE are creating their blocks ontop of B for 16 hours.

pool A gives nodes blocks that are rule A acceptable. and pool A get to spend the funds(pool Awins every 10 minutes, zero competition)

so 16 hours earlier.. it would be like

nodes 399,999 height rule A
poolb 400,000b height rule B
poola 400,000a height rule A

nodes 400,000a
poolb 400,001b
poola 400,001a

..16 hours later
nodes 400,100a
poolb 400,101b - dang it i cant spend 400,001 and it looks like i cannot spend the other 99 blocks either. dang it i wasted half a day
poola 400,101a - woo hoo i won every block for last 100, PARTY AT MY HOUSE 1250 btc to spend thanks B for being a dumb & orphaning urself for 16 hours

..16 hours later
nodes 400,101a
poolb 400,102a - ok i lost 100 rewards, ill just stick with rule A from now on.. i wont be changing the rules that easily again
poola 400,102a - dang it B learned his lesson.. ok guys party only every other block, we have competition again, seems they learned their lesson

..
which is why NOW when a pool sees their bloc getting ropped by the ntwork.. they wont continue for 16 hours they realise their mistake straight away.

(btw, strictly speaking, an invalid block is not orphaned but rejected: the definition of orphaning is a VALID block that is not built upon ; by definition, blocks in the chain are valid).

by the way strictly speaking an orphan was 'suppose' to be used in terms of, when a CHILD (newest addition) gets rejected purely because the parent(previous block) disappears..

but reality is a new block can be an orphan if the parent still exists but just gives up its child..

check the definition
An orphan is a child whose parents are dead or have permanently abandoned the child.

most pretend that "orphans" = parents are dead.. but the reality of human orphanages/foster care system is that children do not have to have dead parents to be classed as orphans.

where he says:
(pool Awins every 10 minutes, zero competition)

and where indeed, he puts as many blocks (100) by pool A as by the 4 other pools.

[dinofelis]

All of the arguments that "nodes do matter" have the logical fallacy of taking the "intended way the network SHOULD work" as the "actually technically resulting technical operation".

I agree with all you say. However, the situation is even more dire. Turns out we have been lied to all this time. The reality is that no entity is a node, if that entity does not mine. Indeed, this is the true, original, and proper definition of a node.

This is what I'm trying to point out.  I don't know if it is "lying" or "indoctrinated" or whatever.
But the argument that bigger blocks would lead to centralization, while the centralization already took place, always left me astonished: no-body ever reacted to that.  It is not so much that I absolutely want bigger blocks or whatever - it is that the argumentation is fallacious, and I have a hard time believing that the experts saying so, can't make the same obvious reasoning than I did here, and did several times, just to be greeted with the counter argument "but everyone knows that full nodes matter / keep the network honest / .... " and if that doesn't work, that "I'm a paid shill " or something of the kind.  So, are all these people self-deluded ; or do some of them know this but don't want it to be acknowledged ?

I have difficulties with fallacious arguments from experts.

That said, full nodes are not totally useless, but their only use is for *their owner* who is the only one who can *check for himself*.  But with that knowledge, he can do nothing else but acknowledge "that he has been had" or "that he hasn't been had", but that's about it.  The other advantage of a full node, for his owner, is that his owner can send out his own transactions, and nobody can know that HE was the one sending that transaction, as, being a full node, he would also send all transactions of light wallets connected to him.  So there is some kind of deniable anonymity of the IP address that sent out a transaction.

But that's about it.  These can be sufficiently good reasons to run a full node, BTW.

Of course, it is true that full nodes DID HAVE power of filtering "bad blocks" when mining nodes were connected only to the P2P network to other mining nodes, and didn't talk to themselves directly.  Then the P2P network could stop them from building a chain with which the full nodes didn't agree, because they would not receive one-another's blocks.

But as I explained several times, a miner pool would be crazy to wait for other miners' blocks through the P2P network, while he can just configure his node to connect directly to the other miner pool's node and get it faster, wasting less hash rate.  As this is mutually beneficial, I don't see why mining pools wouldn't do so.

When I look at the LOW orphan rate, I arrive at the conclusion that miners know one another's blocks in about 1.5 seconds on average, which indicates that those blocks cannot really hop from node to node in between.  1 MB blocks, transmitted and verified within 1.5 seconds seems impossible to do over a random P2P path, where each node receives the block, checks it, and sends it out again.

[EthSports]

ut if you want to prove the power of full nodes, you will have to leave aside hard forking.  Hard forking will be decided in the market ; NOT by full nodes.

[franky1]

2) the betraying node is not winning anything, because he's not making blocks at any faster pace than if he remained faithful to the other miners and their agreed-upon protocol.

wrong.. he has no competition so although his average times of maybe say 10.026.. he is not fighting off competition

ok

imagine it this way...

there are 2 100m tracks
track A
5 runners
they do their runs and after 100 races
on average each racer wins 20 races (give or take as some racers are slightly faster) but each race has a winner somewhere around 10 seconds


track B
1 runner
he runs, and after 100 races
he wins 100 races no competition
each race take around 10 seconds give or take a few miliseconds

he does not take 50 seconds.. he still only takes ~10 seconds but because he has no competition he wins every time

here il display it better


remember only the green numbers matter as thats the "fastest win", and there is no second place.. hense why no one cares about how long it takes the rest, which is where you wrongly think it takes the others much much much longer than reality(you imply he only gets 1 block every ~50 seconds)

as you can see.. on a track of 5 racers 1 guy only wins once out of 5 races..
but on his own he wins every race.. obviously.. and also it does not mean that if he only wins 1 race out of 5 with competition. that it would take 50 seconds without competition

[Sadlife]

What full node should i run ? chinese nodes aka BUg nodes ?
that is using an exploit called ASICBOOST that only mines an empty block.
Or should i run a core devs nodes that maintained the welfare of bitcoin through all this years ?

[franky1]

What full node should i run ? chinese nodes aka BUg nodes ?

lol your reading too much reddit
seems you are already reading the scripts of the doomsday FUD buzzwords

What full node should i run ? chinese nodes aka BUg nodes ?
Or should i run a core devs nodes that maintained the welfare of bitcoin through all this years ?

so far other nodes brands lik BU have only dropped at most 420ish
 on march 17th CORE dropped 560 nodes in on go.


also core is not perfect
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3ABug
and thats just the bugs they want to reveal. they also have a policy to not publicly divulge certain bugs for atleast a month after a fix
as commented here
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/10364

announcing bugs with exploit guidelines 30 days after a fix is released would put a ton of our users at massive risk.

all in all nothing is perfect. and even microsoft with thousands of devs has bugs
linux has bugs, even web browsers have bugs.

i would just choose which ever implementation offers you the features you will use/want.
PS. dont get the 30 second sales pitches from reddit/twitter. do proper research on the code/documentation if it means alot to you to want/need to run a full node. (especially if you are running a business)

also if people tell you Gmaxwell is god
even gmaxwell gets bugs in his own client which he has yet to fix
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/9997

that is using an exploit called ASICBOOST that only mines an empty block.

oh and BTCC (core/blockstream/dcg cartel pool) also does empty blocks
https://blockchain.info/block-height/465117

Relayed By    BTCC Pool
Number Of Transactions    1
Size    0.266 KB

[dinofelis]

I never interpreted anything in this thread that he implied that (I actually think he tried to argue exactly what you are arguing -- that the percentages don't change based on the other pools) but I guess he can answer to that point.

See: now you got it directly from him  

2) the betraying node is not winning anything, because he's not making blocks at any faster pace than if he remained faithful to the other miners and their agreed-upon protocol.

wrong.. he has no competition so although his average times of maybe say 10.026.. he is not fighting off competition

ok

franky1, really, you have a serious, serious misunderstanding of the basics of bitcoin mining.

You are EXACTLY committing the error I pointed out above:

One may erroneously think that there are, say, 5 miners *in competition* and that it takes them *about exactly* 10 minutes of computing to get a block, but that sometimes, it takes the first one only 9 minutes and 59 seconds, and the second one, 10 minutes and 1 second, and they were all almost within a few seconds "in time".

I think it is because you do not understand the difference between a very peaked distribution around 10 minutes intervals, and an exponential distribution with AVERAGE 10 minutes.

[dinofelis]

What full node should i run ? chinese nodes aka BUg nodes ?
that is using an exploit called ASICBOOST that only mines an empty block.
Or should i run a core devs nodes that maintained the welfare of bitcoin through all this years ?

I think ideally, you run the full node you wrote yourself !  As such, you don't have to trust anyone and the reason to run a full node is to verify whether the thing one presents you as bitcoin corresponds to what has been sold/told to you as bitcoin.  If you trust code writers, you can just as well trust block chain writers, and you don't need a full node.

[franky1]

I think it is because you do not understand the difference between a very peaked distribution around 10 minutes intervals, and an exponential distribution with AVERAGE 10 minutes.

i do understand, much more then you think

my maths are only simplified not due to not understanding, but just to try getting to the point in a way even a layman can understand easily.
i use layman analogies to tone DOWN technicals into average guy speak. however it seems you try to grasp things at a laymen and try to abstract it into technical babble, while still missing the main points

yes there are more variables, but my posts only explain parts of them because the parts i mention are trying to show where your parts fall flat and it would end up taking a whole book to explain how the other parts interplay aswell..(which then just sidetracks the point)

you some how think there are only like 2 mechanisms of bitcoin and that non-mining nodes play no part in any security, bar being a data backup.

there are over a dozen mechanisms that all interplay each other. where nodes and pools have a symbiotic relationship not just for data backup, but for security purposes and data validation, collation and formation.

bitcoins symbiotic relationship, the fastest first, the orphan consensus, the propagation, the relay the tx validation, the block validation, and all the others all have a part to play.

you keep thinking that its only a pool is master.. node is slave game. where if a pool only gets a block every 6th block its average solution must take 60 minutes to find.. is RIDICULOUS

your maths of statistics has not looked at the context of where the numbers come from, nor (it seems) have you run scenarios either using algorithms, or paper or dice or just your mind.

the short and curlies of the part you try to suggest is that if there were 20 pools of say 5% (where the average pool only gets 1 block every 20th block) in your eyes means a pool only finds a block every 3 hours 20 minutes..(wrong on so many levels of understanding the context of numbers)

when the reality is they find block solutions much faster, but are IGNORED/GIVE UP as soon as a winner is found. and they all start again.. the hashtime does not add up on the next round. it starts at 0 again.
just look at the times of orphans where a runner up actually does get to win because the fastest first cheated or done something wrong, or other unmentioned reasons
https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks

465722    
Timestamp    2017-05-10 08:19:11
Timestamp    2017-05-10 08:19:10
ONE SECOND DIFFERENCE

464681
Timestamp    2017-05-03 18:55:39   
Timestamp    2017-05-03 18:55:46
SIX SECOND DIFFERENCE

463505    
Timestamp    2017-04-25 23:15:20
Timestamp    2017-04-25 23:15:22
TWO SECOND DIFFERENCE

not hours apart

much like olympic runners, having to run 100m..
just because linford christie or usain bolt win the majority of races, does NOT mean it takes 20 years for someone else to run 100m because they only win every 4th Olympic game

please look deeper at the numbers and look at the context of the stats.

[dinofelis]

if a pool only gets a block every 6th block its average solution must take 60 minutes to find.. is REDICULOUS

You're digging yourself deeper in the hole.  Of course, that is EXACTLY the reason why he only has a block every hour, and hence, about 1/6 of the total amount of blocks.  

[franky1]

if a pool only gets a block every 6th block its average solution must take 60 minutes to find.. is REDICULOUS

You're digging yourself deeper in the hole.  Of course, that is EXACTLY the reason why he only has a block every hour, and hence, about 1/6 of the total amount of blocks.  

he only gets a block every one sixth, because there is other competitors that beat him by seconds. and only the fastest guy wins..
as soon as the winner is found the clock resets.. blocks are found in 10 minute average. they do not continue hashing the same data for hours..
they reset and start again on fresh data as soon as a winner is found

[dinofelis]

if a pool only gets a block every 6th block its average solution must take 60 minutes to find.. is REDICULOUS

You're digging yourself deeper in the hole.  Of course, that is EXACTLY the reason why he only has a block every hour, and hence, about 1/6 of the total amount of blocks.  

he only gets a block every one sixth, because there is other competitors that beat him by seconds. and only the fastest guy wins..
as soon as the winner is found the clock resets.. blocks are found in 10 minute average. they do not continue hashing the same data for hours..
they reset and start again on fresh data as soon as a winner is found

As I said, and tried (in vain, apparently) to explain, you're totally wrong about how mining happens.  You think it is a cumulative calculation effort (even if you say you know it isn't, you think it takes very close to 10 minutes for every miner each time, whether that miner has 1% of the hash rate, or 40% of the hash rate, it always takes, up to a few seconds, 10 minutes). Can't help you any more.  This invalidates much of what you think about many things in bitcoin.

[franky1]

if a pool only gets a block every 6th block its average solution must take 60 minutes to find.. is REDICULOUS

You're digging yourself deeper in the hole.  Of course, that is EXACTLY the reason why he only has a block every hour, and hence, about 1/6 of the total amount of blocks.  

he only gets a block every one sixth, because there is other competitors that beat him by seconds. and only the fastest guy wins..
as soon as the winner is found the clock resets.. blocks are found in 10 minute average. they do not continue hashing the same data for hours..
they reset and start again on fresh data as soon as a winner is found

As I said, and tried (in vain, apparently) to explain, you're totally wrong about how mining happens.  You think it is a cumulative calculation effort (even if you say you know it isn't, you think it takes very close to 10 minutes for every miner each time, whether that miner has 1% of the hash rate, or 40% of the hash rate, it always takes, up to a few seconds, 10 minutes). Can't help you any more.  This invalidates much of what you think about many things in bitcoin.

you argue it takes hours, and you knitpick my simplifying of "a few seconds" difference (facepalm)
the few seconds difference is in regards to your scenarios of all pools having equal hash..
you mention 10 pools of 10% hash.. so times would be similar...

yes if you add in other variables and change your scenario the times become more than just a few seconds.. but still not going to be hours like you suggest.

seriously go run some tests.. get some dice.. get you and some friends to run a few lengths of a field
make an alt and buy a few usb asics and run some proper tests
make an bitcoin testnet and buy a few usb asics and run some proper tests

[dinofelis]

if a pool only gets a block every 6th block its average solution must take 60 minutes to find.. is REDICULOUS

You're digging yourself deeper in the hole.  Of course, that is EXACTLY the reason why he only has a block every hour, and hence, about 1/6 of the total amount of blocks.  

he only gets a block every one sixth, because there is other competitors that beat him by seconds. and only the fastest guy wins..
as soon as the winner is found the clock resets.. blocks are found in 10 minute average. they do not continue hashing the same data for hours..
they reset and start again on fresh data as soon as a winner is found

As I said, and tried (in vain, apparently) to explain, you're totally wrong about how mining happens.  You think it is a cumulative calculation effort (even if you say you know it isn't, you think it takes very close to 10 minutes for every miner each time, whether that miner has 1% of the hash rate, or 40% of the hash rate, it always takes, up to a few seconds, 10 minutes). Can't help you any more.  This invalidates much of what you think about many things in bitcoin.

you argue it takes hours, and you knitpick my simplifying of "a few seconds" difference (facepalm)
the few seconds difference is in regards to your scenarios of all pools having equal hash..
you mention 10 pools of 10% hash.. so times would be similar...

10 pools with each 10% of the hash power find, each individually, a single solution on average every 100 minutes (1 hour and 20 minutes).  On AVERAGE with an exponential distribution: so sometimes after 1 minute, sometimes after 5 hours.  Note that statistically, there is not the slightest influence *on what block* they mine.  They could change block at each hash, that wouldn't change their rate of success nor the statistical distribution of their finding solutions.  As such, they don't care when they have to switch blocks on which they mine: it doesn't change anything to their success.

Each time they find a solution, they win a block.  The chronological order in which the different blocs are found, is the block chain.  

Very rarely, it can happen that two pools find a solution within a few seconds interval, while they were mining on the same block - then, one of them will orphan.  The only reason why the second pool has an orphaned block, was that he wasn't aware he had to switch the block on which he was mining, and continued to mine on the old block (in vain), and happened to find a solution right at that moment.

If miners would know each-others' solutions instantaneously (no propagation delay, no verification delay) there wouldn't be any orphaning, because at the microsecond when a pool found a block, all others are aware of this, and switch to the next one.  So if 3 seconds later, a miner finds another block, it is already the following block, not an orphan on the old block.  Orphaning only happens because of delays between miners.

It is simply fascinatingly amazing to be talking about bitcoin technical aspects, and to miss this ultra elementary aspect.

[franky1]

10 pools with each 10% of the hash power find, each individually, a single solution on average every 100 minutes (1 hour and 20 minutes).  

they dont
they find a solution in an average of 10 minutes..

SEPARATELY

their solution is only accepted every 10th time, due to the competition

being accepted as part of the chain.. is different than how long it takes them to make a solution.

learn the context

[dinofelis]

10 pools with each 10% of the hash power find, each individually, a single solution on average every 100 minutes (1 hour and 20 minutes).  

they dont
they find a solution in an average of 10 minutes..

SEPARATELY

their solution is only accepted every 10th time, due to the competition

being accepted as part of the chain.. is different than how long it takes them to make a solution.

learn the context

There's really no point any more in trying to explain how mining works to you.

[jbreher]

That said, full nodes are not totally useless, but their only use is for *their owner* who is the only one who can *check for himself*.  But with that knowledge, he can do nothing else but acknowledge "that he has been had" or "that he hasn't been had", but that's about it.  The other advantage of a full node, for his owner, is that his owner can send out his own transactions, and nobody can know that HE was the one sending that transaction, as, being a full node, he would also send all transactions of light wallets connected to him.  So there is some kind of deniable anonymity of the IP address that sent out a transaction.

But that's about it.  These can be sufficiently good reasons to run a full node, BTW.

Absolutely. With the caveat that despite the misappropriation of the word, entities that do not mine are not 'nodes', by the original definition. That aside, you sum up pretty completely the reason that I run a fully-validating-wallet.

[jbreher]

Franky1 -

You've made some good observations over the years. However, I think your clinging to bad analogies has you confused. On this mining issue, dinofelis is correct.

[franky1]

Franky1 -

You've made some good observations over the years. However, I think your clinging to bad analogies has you confused. On this mining issue, dinofelis is correct.

dinofelis is looking at things from a 2 dimensional view. he is not understanding all the features of bitcoin and what makes bitcoin so different than a fiat cheque clearing house.

bitcoin is unique for many more reasons than dinofelis seems to realise. and it seems all he wants to do is convince people to run lite wallets to hand pools more power by diluting the node count that can obstruct pools from changing the rules soo easily.(sorry if my critical mind things thats his motives, where it could just b he has yet to really fall down the bitcoin rabbit hole)

nodes do provide a crucial and critical part ofthe symbiotic relationship way more than dinofelis ieither wants to admit to, or yet to grasp.
but if he wants to run a lite wallet he should just go ahead and run a lite wallet.. but those of us that understand the real need/reasons for running a node will continue to

i feel that dinofelis is still stuck in the mindset of the fiat world of central control. and is still learning but not yet grasped ALL of the beauty of ALL of the bitcoin features that differentiate it from fiat archaic systems

lets say there are atleast a dozen different mechanisms of bitcoin.
i feel dinfelis only understands 4 out of 12... and is only brushing against understanding another 1or2 (from reading his post history).. id give him another year of actually running simulations and learning the context of it.. before he see's the mindblowing wonder of why bitcoin is better than fiat.

i feel he has not yet had that mind blowing experience.. but it will come