Politics behind Bitcoin development?

[bct2702]

I understand that a fork results when a minority group decides not to concur with the consensus changes (or lack thereof) in the underlying Bitcoin Protocol. 

Who are the people that participate in the "consensus"?  How are these votes cast?  What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork? 

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[bct2702]

 No one knows the answer to this question?

[Emoclaw]

I understand that a fork results when a minority group decides not to concur with the consensus changes (or lack thereof) in the underlying Bitcoin Protocol.  

Who are the people that participate in the "consensus"?  How are these votes cast?  What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork?  

A fork is a radical change to the Bitcoin protocol that results in previous block versions to be invalid, thus requiring all users to upgrade to the new software. It's not just a minority group. Bitcoin Core developers can choose to do a hard fork if they deem it necessary.

The people who participate are miners. By mining (or not) on a pool that is signaling support for a hard fork proposal, they vote. If a proposal reaches a fixed miner support percentage, set by those who enact the proposal, that proposal activates and the network splits. If a supermajority wants a hard fork, then those who don't can either accept it and use the new software or maintain the older version.
If the supermajority doesn't want a fork and there are few people that do, they can still go through with it but it will be an altcoin.
Basically the main Bitcoin chain is considered by many to be the one which has the majority of miners.
Hope it makes sense.

[HeRetiK]

Who are the people that participate in the "consensus"?  How are these votes cast?

From a purely technical viewpoint the consensus is based on mining hashrate as mentioned in the post above.

From a practical viewpoint it's the market that decides. The more people believe in the viability of a hardfork, the more people will buy into this hardfork as opposed to the other side of the fork. The more people buy into one side of the fork over another, the higher the profitability of said fork, the more hashrate you will find on the respective side of the fork.

What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork? 

They are free to continue mining on the old fork and / or to buy coins as issued by the old fork.


Of course if either side of a fork has a bad codebase the fork may still fail regardless of market sentiment -- as has happened with B2X, as was the reason for the BTG delay.

[franky1]

From a purely technical viewpoint the consensus is based on mining hashrate as mentioned in the post above.

its not mining hashrate

for instance imagine you owned a pool with DOUBLE the hashrate of the entire network. but your codebase of your pool node wanted to change a rule..
all that will happen is that your blocks will get rejected by the network because their desired rules are not your rules.
you could mine billions of blocks but only you would retain them and everyone else would reject them. thus  you have made your own altcoin that only you hold

consensus is about the NODES that accept the rules. hash power has nothing to do with the RULES. the hashpower is only about protecting the DATA from people manipulating the data retrospectively. EG for someone to make a block that does not contain certain transactions (attempted refund) from a block in 2012. then that pool needs to also recreate every block after that to get uptodate to todays blockheight. and the rules must match to not get rejected.

in short hashrate does not determine the rules. it just makes changing old data harder


the politics of CORE controlling the rules.. is the thing people are avoiding talking about. because its core that set the rules and push people to download their wallet as oppose to other wallets. thus they control the development and they control the rules. and yes they do and have bribed big names to get their way. (many free all inclusive weekend breaks, jobs, bonuses, freebies and more)

[dimastegar]

I think the person is a Revolutionary Bitcoin, who wants a Bitcoin revolution by creating a new system, which we call fork, to continue to be integrated with every development of the Bitcoin Block. Usually Voting is done by miners.

[franky1]

I think the person is a Revolutionary Bitcoin, who wants a Bitcoin revolution by creating a new system, which we call fork, to continue to be integrated with every development of the Bitcoin Block. Usually Voting is done by miners.

nope its done by nodes.

pools collate the data into batches. but the nodes validate and accept/reject it

[pedrog]

I understand that a fork results when a minority group decides not to concur with the consensus changes (or lack thereof) in the underlying Bitcoin Protocol. 

Who are the people that participate in the "consensus"?  How are these votes cast?  What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork? 

Open source software development follows the scientific method, people who want the block size increased failed to present enough evidence for such change, then they decide to run their own coin with their own rules.

Learn more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software_development

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development)

[HeRetiK]

From a purely technical viewpoint the consensus is based on mining hashrate as mentioned in the post above.

its not mining hashrate

for instance imagine you owned a pool with DOUBLE the hashrate of the entire network. but your codebase of your pool node wanted to change a rule..
all that will happen is that your blocks will get rejected by the network because their desired rules are not your rules.
you could mine billions of blocks but only you would retain them and everyone else would reject them. thus  you have made your own altcoin that only you hold

consensus is about the NODES that accept the rules. hash power has nothing to do with the RULES. the hashpower is only about protecting the DATA from people manipulating the data retrospectively. EG for someone to make a block that does not contain certain transactions (attempted refund) from a block in 2012. then that pool needs to also recreate every block after that to get uptodate to todays blockheight. and the rules must match to not get rejected.

in short hashrate does not determine the rules. it just makes changing old data harder

Excellent point, nodes are also a very important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is why keeping a lean blockchain is important for decentralization. In practice there's nothing stopping miners from mining on a fork with poor node density though, as propagation will still find a way one way or another. It's just that network stability is likely to suffer, in addition to increased centralization towards the network segments with the best access to full nodes.

the politics of CORE controlling the rules.. is the thing people are avoiding talking about. because its core that set the rules and push people to download their wallet as oppose to other wallets. thus they control the development and they control the rules. and yes they do and have bribed big names to get their way. (many free all inclusive weekend breaks, jobs, bonuses, freebies and more)

The market has decided in favor of Bitcoin Core's design philosophy and development approach over that of its hardfork competitors. Anyone who believes that BTC's market support is only caused by market manipulation and astroturfing should rejoice over the possibility on getting their hands on cheap hardfork coins until the market finally decides to wake up.

[iop789]

Well, the IRS has already been getting involved trying to tax it so...: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/dltr/vol16/iss1/1/.

[DooMAD]

How are these votes cast?  What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork?  

It's not a "vote" as such.  You simply run the software that enforces the rules you agree with and you'll be matched up with any like-minded people who run the same software.  Any full node and/or any miner can create a fork at any time they wish, for any reason they wish, but generally it will need a significant number of both miners and full nodes on board if the newly forked chain is to be considered successful.  But those who disagree don't have to follow and can carry on following the same chain as before.  So if you find yourself in the minority about what rules should be enforced on the network, forking away means you'll be removing yourself from the network everyone else is transacting on.

[lance04]

Actually in my own opinion, all things in this worlds affects by the politics inside the government.
The company and management of bitcoin development gives them insight to be consider by the government in all projects which the public will the one who will benefited.

[xdrpx]

Who are the people that participate in the "consensus"? 

- I believe the answer to this is the people who support the fork in terms of the network rules, mining hash rate, blocksize and scalability and any other features that enhance the scalability of Bitcoin. So basically "the people" here means you, me and others. When all of us participate and we decide that the fork that we support has value, and meets the necessary network rules (and doesn't break any) and is for the betterment of all the people who use that fork. An example of this is - when the recent Bitcoin hardforks happened people who supported Bitcoin (the original chain) were on a mission to gather as many users to support the User Activated Hard Fork (UASF) / BIP 148, a proposal that would get SegWit to activate forcefully by the users who ran these upgraded UASF nodes that would reject any block that the miner would mine if they had not supported SegWit in a way.

How are these votes cast? 

For hardforks, although votes aren't really mandatory, you can fork Bitcoin and run your own fork with rules that could be weakened unlike soft forks where the rules get stronger. Now the acceptance of people to use the coins from that new fork depends on the people who would want to support it, run nodes on it or transact on the newly forked coins.

What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork? 

If they don't want a fork, then those who didn't support the new fork can continue transacting on the existing blockchain fork. They could setup mining pools and mining equipment as well to mine on the older fork if needed to support in terms of hashrate if the new fork has majority of it. Also the ones who don't support it, and if replay protection exists on the newer fork, they'll get coins on both these hard forked blockchains and can use them at their will.

[Zebra.Guy]

From a purely technical viewpoint the consensus is based on mining hashrate as mentioned in the post above.

its not mining hashrate

for instance imagine you owned a pool with DOUBLE the hashrate of the entire network. but your codebase of your pool node wanted to change a rule..
all that will happen is that your blocks will get rejected by the network because their desired rules are not your rules.
you could mine billions of blocks but only you would retain them and everyone else would reject them. thus  you have made your own altcoin that only you hold

consensus is about the NODES that accept the rules. hash power has nothing to do with the RULES. the hashpower is only about protecting the DATA from people manipulating the data retrospectively. EG for someone to make a block that does not contain certain transactions (attempted refund) from a block in 2012. then that pool needs to also recreate every block after that to get uptodate to todays blockheight. and the rules must match to not get rejected.

in short hashrate does not determine the rules. it just makes changing old data harder

Excellent point

Yes it is an excellent point. But let us not forget that it is core developers who will or will not backup the development plan and they are a kind of the first line where any proposal may get rejected. If it doesn't get to coding phase than no voting takes place, ever. So it is not as democratic as the comments above seem to imply.

[tonysitaly]

I think it's the miner to dominate the bitcoin 's bifurcation, but from the deep analysis, the miners are actually affected by the market. So bitcoin is actually a reflection of the mood of the market.

[subSTRATA]

I think the person is a Revolutionary Bitcoin, who wants a Bitcoin revolution by creating a new system, which we call fork, to continue to be integrated with every development of the Bitcoin Block. Usually Voting is done by miners.

nope its done by nodes.

pools collate the data into batches. but the nodes validate and accept/reject it

would this only include the bitcoin core client or any hard wallet with the entire chain downloaded? i've understood for a while on the basics of the subject, but didn't take the time to look into this question. in addition, how do the running nodes decide on which 'side' they would choose to follow, or do they have no say in the matter, and the 'voting' is left completely to the miners? my assumption is that the nodes would choose which fork to follow by manually adding the first block of the desired fork into the folder where their blockchain data is stored, and let the client run its course, but that seems too simplistic in my opinion.

[Digitalbitcoin]

Politics is taking Bitcoins characteristics and enviournment towards centralization. And Bitcoin is anonymous, decentralized and open source with its own protocol. There is no connection of any political person or group in Bitcoin development, invention and formulation.

Hard fork is completely depends upon conclusion and decision of majority. Bitcoin development is one of the successful experiment done with blockchain and cryptography.

[Rahar02]

From a purely technical viewpoint the consensus is based on mining hashrate as mentioned in the post above.

its not mining hashrate

for instance imagine you owned a pool with DOUBLE the hashrate of the entire network. but your codebase of your pool node wanted to change a rule..
all that will happen is that your blocks will get rejected by the network because their desired rules are not your rules.
you could mine billions of blocks but only you would retain them and everyone else would reject them. thus  you have made your own altcoin that only you hold

consensus is about the NODES that accept the rules. hash power has nothing to do with the RULES. the hashpower is only about protecting the DATA from people manipulating the data retrospectively. EG for someone to make a block that does not contain certain transactions (attempted refund) from a block in 2012. then that pool needs to also recreate every block after that to get uptodate to todays blockheight. and the rules must match to not get rejected.

in short hashrate does not determine the rules. it just makes changing old data harder


the politics of CORE controlling the rules.. is the thing people are avoiding talking about. because its core that set the rules and push people to download their wallet as oppose to other wallets. thus they control the development and they control the rules. and yes they do and have bribed big names to get their way. (many free all inclusive weekend breaks, jobs, bonuses, freebies and more)

Good explanation, but I do not agree with "bribe theory" as everyone has a right to choose and run any software which support a certain nodes.
I understand Core developers is the politics behind bitcoin development, they always refuse every hard fork that doesn't suitable with their desire, but still, I support Core.
The thing is; current Segwit nodes (1.4 Mb) should be able to fulfill blockchain transactions, right? Or at least mempool will not flooded with too many unconfirmed transactions, but the problem, not all of the exchanges and wallet use Segwit nodes even though it has been activated since few months ago.

[HeRetiK]

Yes it is an excellent point. But let us not forget that it is core developers who will or will not backup the development plan and they are a kind of the first line where any proposal may get rejected. If it doesn't get to coding phase than no voting takes place, ever. So it is not as democratic as the comments above seem to imply.

No one is forced to follow core. And no one has the right to force open source developers into a direction they themselves disagree with.

Open source is not a democracy in that you are entitled to have features implemented the way you want them to. It's a democracy in that anyone can pull up their sleeves and fork the codebase or support the development team that is closest to their own understanding of how the software is supposed to work.

[TTITA]

I understand that a fork results when a minority group decides not to concur with the consensus changes (or lack thereof) in the underlying Bitcoin Protocol.  
Who are the people that participate in the "consensus"?  How are these votes cast?  What happens to dissenting voices that don't want a fork?  

Surely yes, politics that affect in economy profit was behind all development.
There is no minority group in consensus. Protocol was made when votes has been agrees with all participant.
Those participant are core developer, miners, some exchanges board team. The role of dev greatly influences the outcome of this consensus, because they are the ones who will make software design for its development. Inputs about the current deficiencies of the bitcoin system include block size, stuck chain, actually already mentioned by exchanges and miners, but the political interest remains behind all this.