To be permissionless means no need to get permission from a central authority for participating in the protocol to change the state of the machine, the blockchain , not just for claiming but for committing the transactions.
[...]
And there is huge difference between buying stuff from Intel, Nvidia, AMD, ... with buying a miner from Bitmain, don't you see it? In the latter case you buy a special purpose device for a special application: participating in bitcoin blockchain protocol but as for cpu/gpu the manufacturer/distributor has no clue about what you are going to do with the device. Are you pretending or you are simply ignorant?
Apart from coinbase transactions there's no state to be changed without people sending transactions. Which transactions gets added to the blockchain and which not is
not dependent on a singly entity, not even Bitmain.
People 'send' transactions to banks and it eventually changes the bank databases' states and thus banking systems are permissionless?!
In a permissionless cash transfer system it is not enough for people to be free to produce transactions they need to be free to oversee and participate in committing the transactions. Is that so hard to understand?
Merely producing mining hardware does not put Bitmain in control of the network, regardless of the devices being specialized hardware. If that were the case Bitcoin Cash would have ended up being the canonical Bitcoin blockchain.
Yes it does! Bitmain IS in charge of Bitcoin blockchain whether you admit it or not.
Bitcoin Cash story was written by Bitmain and it happened the way Bitmain wanted it to happen. We are not talking about what his majesty
wants to do, it is about what he
can do!
Whether you buy mining hardware from Bitmain, NVIDIA or AMD makes no difference, apart from Bitmain actively mining themselves. Looking at mining rigs and large scale alt coin mining operations (ie. the ones buying GPUs wholesale), GPUs stop being consumer devices once they are put to work on whatever alt is most profitable to mine. Hell, crypto mining had such an impact on the hardware market that GPU prices have risen substantially, leading to crypto enthusiasts being cursed by gamers all over the world. The impact of people mining as a hobby, on the other hand, using devices they use primarily as consumers (ie. gaming in the case of GPU) is negligible nowadays.
So, Bitmain has set free Bitcoin and the whole civilization and specially gaming community with an ASIC crack against SHA256. What a fortunate incident!
So yes, due to the industrialization of mining economics of scale has become more important than ever, making it hard for hobbyists to enter the mining market. But no, this does not make a blockchain permissioned or censorship-prone, as transactions are unaffected and for every miner that would wish to reject your transaction, another one will happily add it to the blockchain.
You mean, Bitmain will commit my transaction eventually, thanks god! We are free to make transactions and his majesty will take our fees and commit them in his permissionless blockchain, our money is safe and we are happy for now and who cares about the future anyway?
There is no future, we already know, don't we? Bitcoin is not an alternative monetary system, it is just an 'asset', kept safe enough by Bitmain, a company that is incentivized enough to keep it safe. Am I missing something or it is exactly how you and guys like you, re-invented bitcoin?
Either way, you obviously simply have a different definition of what the term "permissionless" is supposed to mean. Unfortunately it's neither useful nor being used.
My perception of a permissionless blockchain requires people to be able in both generating addresses and transactions and committing (participating to commit) transactions into the network, without buying/renting a device/license from Bitmain or anywho to do so, is there any other definition publicly available?
Ripple for instance is known to be a permissioned system because critical roles exist there that people can not simply take without undergoing a process and get/buy a license. People can check the state, can generate transactions but can not participate in changing the state further without permission, it is a permissioned system and bitcoin, practically is not in a better situation with ASICs and Bitmain.
