Question regarding the role of miners vs nodes in securing the network

[BlackHatCoiner]

What's your view on that?

You have to see things a little more differently and maybe get away of the network thinking.

Regulating Bitcoin doesn't necessarily mean that governments will destroy it by establishing a 51% attack or they'll forbid you to be part of the peer-to-peer network. No, currently, you have every right to run full nodes and verify the validity of the block chain. So, in theory Bitcoin works. No one can stop this movement unless strict authoritarianism prevailed in the whole world.

But will the cryptopunks' dream come true? To sum their dream up, they supported anarchy and so, Bitcoin began with this ideology. They were visioning a currency that will not be regulated by anyone nor controlled. While it does, indeed, work decentralized, don't you see that the society's permission is required to adopt it officially? There are already many exchanges asking for KYC which ruin one of its principles; anonymity. So, besides its deflationary nature, how does it differ from fiat?

As time goes on, it'll be seen more as a weapon from the side of the governments.

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[aliashraf]

I think there is an important point overlooked in this thread:
Bitcoin, the way Satoshi Nakamoto designed it originally, was not supposed to face such a situation in which nodes and miners are almost two different, sometimes conflicting, groups of actors. Nodes and miners started to deviate only after the invention of pools and SHA256 ASICs, both taking place in the ecosystem when there was no Satoshi anymore. So, it is not a normal or pre-planned situation, furthermore it happened without getting any proper treatment. Bitcoin was great enough to absorb these events and adopt, yet it is very important to recognize both pools and ASICs as major open topics to be addressed.

Back to Op's question about the roles of each group in securing the network against 50%+1 attack:
It is hardly considered an 'attack' for an entity to put her hands on such a majority of hash power, unless s/he attempts a re-org for scamming specific victim(s) who didn't have enough patience to wait for a safe number of confirmations before accepting the attacker's payment as being finalized and releasing their assets.
Actually, an in-depth analysis of the problem could prove that there is always a threshold of safety for a receiver of bitcoin transaction, while this threshold is proportional to the total value of transactions that the sender is trying to convince the user to accept as being legitimate and finalized.

In practice, users adjust this threshold by applying factors derived from real-world information about the costs of re-org attempts, it is why even the most cautious users do accept payments in bitcoin after few confirmations, nowadays, and it is why bitcoin is the king in cryptocurrency for the time being, considered to be 'the most secure', it is VERY hard, hence costly, to run a scamming double-spend scheme by re-writing just a handful of blocks.

Obviously, non-mining Bitcoin nodes have nothing to do  in terms of 'helping' the victim(s) because they experience the hypothetical re-org event all the same as the victim(s), though they are not scammed in a double-spend scheme.

Now, let's take a closer look:
As I said, in Bitcoin, users are safe against double-spend even though there could be an evil spender with unlimited access to huge hash powers, but doesn't it look odd or somehow counterintuitive or at least surprising?
Sure it is, and it is what makes Bitcoin the invention of the century as the ultimate solution to double-spending problem in cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is absolutely safe against double-spending attack, it has always been and will be existentially double-spend proof, forever.

The rest of OP's security concerns about malicious counter-protocol blocks, with malicious txns injected in, are irrelevant because they are not categorically security issues. Full nodes are sovereign entities that follow the protocol and consensus rules independently, comparing work load of competing chains takes effect AFTER imposing consensus rules, chains have to pass the consensus test to be qualified for the race, although the client software does it somehow in a reverse order, ultimately it is what the code does.

[pooya87]

Bitcoin, the way Satoshi Nakamoto designed it originally, was not supposed to face such a situation in which nodes and miners are almost two different, sometimes conflicting, groups of actors.

I don't think so.
It is obvious that you can never prevent people from sharing a "computational work", and that's exactly what pools are meant to do. This is not specific to bitcoin or any specific algorithm, anything that can run in parallel (multiple threads) can also be expanded to run on multiple systems.
Satoshi also touched on this matter indirectly in his Email back in 2008 (before Bitcoin was launched) predicting that people will mostly run SPV clients instead of running full nodes and be mining bitcoin while it will be left to "specialized server farms" to do so.

[aliashraf]

Bitcoin, the way Satoshi Nakamoto designed it originally, was not supposed to face such a situation in which nodes and miners are almost two different, sometimes conflicting, groups of actors.

I don't think so.
It is obvious that you can never prevent people from sharing a "computational work", and that's exactly what pools are meant to do. This is not specific to bitcoin or any specific algorithm, anything that can run in parallel (multiple threads) can also be expanded to run on multiple systems.
Satoshi also touched on this matter indirectly in his Email back in 2008 (before Bitcoin was launched) predicting that people will mostly run SPV clients instead of running full nodes and be mining bitcoin while it will be left to "specialized server farms" to do so.

I knew about Satoshi's 2008 e-mail, it is Satoshi, not the White Paper, not Bitcoin to be specific.
In the paper, Bitcoin is discussed and justified as a network composed of nodes incentivized to act loyally because of the rational cost/benefit assessment they could make, costs being the work and benefits being the reward, hence they are ALL mining full nodes. It is Bitcoin the way it is presented and documented, not the way it is discussed loosely by the inventor.

As of your sharing argument:
Sharing is good, I used to be a socialist for a long time, I love sharing, but not the centralized way, I hate centralization and pools are centralized, simple.
Other than personal ambitions and judgements, there is strict mathematical reasons for avoiding centralized sharing of computational work: Collusion resistance is linearly dependent on the cardinality of the set of actors. Once you got 3 huge players possessing like 75%+ of votes, you are doomed simply because they could easily collide, like by setting up a meeting or calling each other, couldn't they?

And there is more:
Centralized pools push miners out of the bitcoin ecosystem by enslaving them, making them work blindly on their stupid 80 bytes block header templates which point to an unknown set of transactions they have no clue about. It is literary, an alienation process by which actual miners, are kept out from the network as they have no single reason to run a full node.

Obviously it is not Bitcoin the way it was originally designed, documented, and presented in the White Paper.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Obviously it is not Bitcoin the way it was originally designed, documented, and presented in the White Paper.

But, it's the way it was visioned;

If the network becomes very large, like over 100,000 nodes, this is what we'll use to allow common users to do transactions without being full blown nodes.  At that stage, most users should start running client-only software and only the specialist server farms keep running full network nodes, kind of like how the usenet network has consolidated.

For now, everyone just runs a full network node.

I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less.  It will reach an equilibrium where it's not worth it for more nodes to join in.  The rest will be lightweight clients, which could be millions.

At equilibrium size, many nodes will be server farms with one or two network nodes that feed the rest of the farm over a LAN.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale.  That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server.  The design supports letting users just be users.  The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be.  Those few nodes will be big server farms.  The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate.

Centralized pools push miners out of the bitcoin ecosystem by enslaving them, making them work blindly on their stupid 80 bytes block header templates which point to an unknown set of transactions they have no clue about.

I think calling miners slaves is a little bit excessive. Miners can leave and rejoin the pool at their own willing. They're also free to move on a different pool. As for the block header, that's what they've agreed upon. If you don't like these rulings, you can try solving a block yourself or work for a pool with much less effort.

[aliashraf]

Obviously it is not Bitcoin the way it was originally designed, documented, and presented in the White Paper.

But, it's the way it was visioned;

Satoshi's vision doesn't matter, the paper matters. Meanwhile, the quotes show nothing other than a confused inventor who is starting to understand the real world scaling problem without a specific plan for addressing it, instead trying to justify the situation as being somehow 'normal'.
Come on Satoshi, it is not normal, buddy  
Get back to your desk and prepare a plan, wait, where is Satoshi?

Centralized pools push miners out of the bitcoin ecosystem by enslaving them, making them work blindly on their stupid 80 bytes block header templates which point to an unknown set of transactions they have no clue about.

I think calling miners slaves is a little bit excessive. Miners can leave and rejoin the pool at their own willing. They're also free to move on a different pool.

No, it is the exact, direct definition of slavery, as miners have no choice other than working for pools, and they have no say on what this work looks like, alienated and powerless, it is slavery. Leaving and joining different pools is not much of an option, let's open our minds a bit more, not everything is perfect about Bitcoin, there are issues waiting to be fixed for years, let's not posing like a PR agent.

As for the block header, that's what they've agreed upon. If you don't like these rulings, you can try solving a block yourself or work for a pool with much less effort.

What  
Thank you for letting people solo mine if they wish to participate in securing the network as a free/conscious human being, appreciate it, but with less than one in a million chance of hitting a block every 10 minutes, no, thanks, I'd try the other option, so, what was it?
Gotcha it!
Blindly mining the blocks, the master decided and relayed their headers, ... ok, seems I'm out of options now, let me get rid of this full node I've been maintaining, first.

[pooya87]

I knew about Satoshi's 2008 e-mail, it is Satoshi, not the White Paper, not Bitcoin to be specific.

They aren't different things.
And if we are to be pedantic then the 7.5 pages of abstraction and simplification known as white paper doesn't represent the reality of Bitcoin either. The code does, and from the code it is obvious that parallelism and scaling (specifically nonce+extra nonce instead of only nonce or limiting it to a bigger nonce size that would be exhausted in a couple of years as hashrate grew) for much higher hashrate is envisioned.

As of your sharing argument:
Sharing is good, I used to be a socialist for a long time, I love sharing, but not the centralized way, I hate centralization and pools are centralized, simple.

I agree but that is a different discussion than whether or not Satoshi knew about it happening.

Once you got 3 huge players possessing like 75%+ of votes, you are doomed simply because they could easily collide, like by setting up a meeting or calling each other, couldn't they?

They couldn't do anything apart from perform a one time 51% attack.
They won't be able to sustain the attack since the miners would leave immediately protecting their investment.
They also won't be able to make any changes in the protocol.

No, it is the exact, direct definition of slavery,

I don't think you know what "slavery" means.

there are issues waiting to be fixed for years,

Issues don't fix themselves. Those who see the issue must do something about it.
I encourage you to start working on a proposal to address the issue and write a better mining pool software to be used by pools and the miners who connect to them in order to give more power/control to the miners.

[aliashraf]

I knew about Satoshi's 2008 e-mail, it is Satoshi, not the White Paper, not Bitcoin to be specific.

They aren't different things.
And if we are to be pedantic then the 7.5 pages of abstraction and simplification known as white paper doesn't represent the reality of Bitcoin either. The code does, and from the code it is obvious that parallelism and scaling (specifically nonce+extra nonce instead of only nonce or limiting it to a bigger nonce size that would be exhausted in a couple of years as hashrate grew) for much higher hashrate is envisioned.

They are absolutely different things. The white paper is 7.5 pages because of the elegance of the core idea, Einstein's paper which disrupted physics abruptly by representing the Special Relativity from scratch using lots of mathematical deductions and equations was like 20 pages long.
IMHO, it is not a good practice to put the paper aside and quote from the writer's chat and comment logs. It doesn't help after all.

BTW, giving space in a codebase for very large numbers is a common practice in software engineering and programming, doesn't imply the existence of a comprehensive and complete plan for dealing with scaling problems. It is just so easy to give extra space to variables for extreme conditions but doesn't help enough when the system goes through an actual one, it just keeps working, but how good?.

No, it is the exact, direct definition of slavery,

I don't think you know what "slavery" means.

Let's not going this line, sure I know what it is, I've also heard about modern slavery, do you?

Issues don't fix themselves. Those who see the issue must do something about it.
I encourage you to start working on a proposal to address the issue and write a better mining pool software to be used by pools and the miners who connect to them in order to give more power/control to the miners.

Thank you for the encouragement, but I rather need contribution and support ATM.  

[BlackHatCoiner]

Satoshi's vision doesn't matter, the paper matters.

But, the paper describes Satoshi's vision. You can't deny that what we're working on is someone's vision since the paper was written by them.

Why do you give so much emphasis to the whitepaper? The whitepaper also contains false definitions such as “the longest chain” instead of “the chain with the most work”.

No, it is the exact, direct definition of slavery, as miners have no choice other than working for pools, and they have no say on what this work looks like, alienated and powerless, it is slavery.

I guess you wanted to mean it metaphorically. Even that way, it's wrong to state it. They aren't forced to work anywhere. They're free to choose another pool or create one themselves if they feel they have to. The pool owner isn't an oppressor. He can't threaten miners. The opposite; the miners can damage him by choosing to not work on his pool.

They couldn't do anything apart from perform a one time 51% attack.

Wouldn't the miners realize it before it happens? They receive block headers and could understand if they're working on a block that was mined before.

[DannyHamilton]

They couldn't do anything apart from perform a one time 51% attack.

Wouldn't the miners realize it before it happens? They receive block headers and could understand if they're working on a block that was mined before.

Nope.  Miners just blindly hash the header.  They don't make any attempt to determine whether the "Previous Block" attribute has been used before or not.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Nope.  Miners just blindly hash the header.  They don't make any attempt to determine whether the "Previous Block" attribute has been used before or not.

But, one of them can realize if they're trying to reorg it. One's enough to spear the news, isn't he?

[TangentC]

The whitepaper also contains false definitions such as “the longest chain” instead of “the chain with the most work”.

Because Longest chain is more accurate, since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

For any reorg to ever occur , the # of blocks (height) has to be greater and have more work. ie: longer chain with more work.
You can never have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain as the wallets will ignore any blocks not near equal in height with the current blockchain.
 

[BlackHatCoiner]

Because Longest chain is more accurate, since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

But, a chain can be longer than the current one with less work. The difficulty is what determines the correct chain. Someone may choose to mine 1,000,000 empty blocks, but if they're all mined with a difficulty of 1, the chain will be rejected. So saying that the longest chain is the correct one refers more to the chain's height rather than its work.

You can never have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain as the wallets will ignore any blocks not near equal in height with the current blockchain.

You could mine the rest of the blocks with less difficulty and catch up really fast.

[TangentC]

Because Longest chain is more accurate, since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

But, a chain can be longer than the current one with less work. The difficulty is what determines the correct chain. Someone may choose to mine 1,000,000 empty blocks, but if they're all mined with a difficulty of 1, the chain will be rejected. So saying that the longest chain is the correct one refers more to the chain's height rather than its work.

You can never have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain as the wallets will ignore any blocks not near equal in height with the current blockchain.

You could mine the rest of the blocks with less difficulty and catch up really fast.

Nope ,  
block speed and difficulty settings would prevent that.
You're stuck at the same difficulty level for 2 weeks, so thinking you can catch up really fast is not possible.

FYI: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

they'll  generate the  longest  chain  and  outpace attackers

[BlackHatCoiner]

If you're replying to someone, please make it clear which part of it you respond.

You're stuck at the same difficulty level for 2 weeks, so thinking you can catch up really fast is not possible.

Alright, let's take the following scenario:

Bitcoin's chain: 700,000 blocks height and difficulty is very high.
Your chain: 650,000 blocks height with twice work of Bitcoin's chain.

You're the one who decides the timestamps between the blocks, so you could leave 20 minutes between each block. That would drop the difficulty by 50%. So now you've just made it easier to mine the rest 50,000 blocks. You could redo this in every period and you'll reach the 700,000 soon.

[DannyHamilton]

Nope.  Miners just blindly hash the header.  They don't make any attempt to determine whether the "Previous Block" attribute has been used before or not.

But, one of them can realize if they're trying to reorg it. One's enough to spear the news, isn't he?

Can they? Perhaps, but it's VERY unlikely.

Reorgs happen all the time. Nobody is likely to notice a significant reorg that damages the integrity of Bitcoin until AFTER it has happened.

Because Longest chain is more accurate, since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

For any reorg to ever occur , the # of blocks (height) has to be greater and have more work. ie: longer chain with more work.
You can never have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain as the wallets will ignore any blocks not near equal in height with the current blockchain.
 

You are mistaken.  It is absolutely possible for a chain with less blocks to have more total proof of work. Under normal circumstances it would be unusual and you aren't likely to ever see it happen, but in a scenario where someone is attempting to attack the network, the only reason they wouldn't TRY to create a chain with more blocks and less work is because they know that the nodes will ignore it.

The actual, real, rules as implemented result in nodes following the largest total proof of work regardless of number of blocks.

[TangentC]

You are mistaken.  It is absolutely possible for a chain with less blocks to have more total proof of work.
Under normal circumstances it would be unusual and you aren't likely to ever see it happen, but in a scenario where someone is attempting to attack the network, the only reason they wouldn't TRY to create a chain with more blocks and less work is because they know that the nodes will ignore it.

The actual, real, rules as implemented result in nodes following the largest total proof of work regardless of number of blocks.

That is not what I said , reread my earlier posts til you get it.

So in your confusion,
Someone could make 1 block with a greater proof of work today that the combined 701172 blocks that bitcoin currently has.

I can tell you, you're wrong, but it seems to be some cult mentality blocking logic from getting thru.

Tell you what, you and anyone that believes you, get together and overwrite all of bitcoin chains and do it in 3 blocks.  
LOL, BlackHatCoiner thinks he can modify the timestamps at will, so nothing is holding you back.  
* Anyone want to let him know that modifying the node program code and all of the other nodes would reject it, feel free,
he seems to have trouble believing me.*


FYI:
Until the block height reaches a near = height,
any wallet client will not check the proof of work verses the other chain.
At least that is the way it works in this reality, not sure about the fantasy world you guys seem to live in.

[BlackHatCoiner]

You must feel really superior.

LOL, BlackHatCoiner thinks he can modify the timestamps at will, so nothing is holding you back.

If you're the only person in the network, then you can decide which timestamps you'll use between the blocks and increase or decrease the difficulty analogously. You can't achieve this if there are other miners too, because they'll mine fairly and outpace your blocks. Only if you owned the majority of the hash rate and did the whole work by yourself until you exceed them, you could replace your chain with theirs.

any wallet client will not check the proof of work verses the other chain.

I wasn't talking about the wallet clients. I was talking about the Bitcoin clients.

At least that is the way it works in this reality, not sure about the fantasy world you guys seem to live in.

🤡

[aliashraf]

OK, It's getting pretty much derailed.

Back to OP's question, it is undisputable that Bitcoin mining scene is not in the best possible shape as a majority of participants who belong to the vast community of medium to small miners are alienated from the network and the blockchain, having no clue about what the actual blockchain's state is, period.
Arguments mentioning the ability of miners to migrate between pools (to fulfill their security role) are not solid enough. @pooya87 and @BlackHatCoiner are missing a critical point: The existential utility of a pool is the difficulty leverage it provides for small miners, hence small pools are not a real option for migration and miners are left with a handful of options to deal with the variance.

Although It is true for all PoW coins (not just bitcoin), it is not inherent to PoW, neither it is the only way variance could be handled even for winner-take-all model of PoW which Satoshi adopted first and others copied it, let's elaborate more:

Until recently, I believed that winner-take-all approach to PoW proposed and built into Bitcoin by Satoshi is such a fundamental mistake that leaves no chance for it (and its clone) to avoid centralization of mining and rise of pools. I'm now revising my perception of the problem and reaching to a somewhat more moderate conclusion, as it seems to be possible to improve the situation with pools without disrupting the whole thing.

For now, let's assume my idea is implemented and adopted by a majority of miners, just imagine it for a moment please, suppose we have hundreds of thousands of small miners across the globe with network hashrate share down to 10^^-7 (users who should wait like 2 centuries for hitting a block!), directly connected to the blockchain, generating/publishing their own blocks with a steady flow of daily and fair income, I know, I know, it is hard for you guys to imagine, you are "enchanted by pools" aren't you? But come on, I'll give you a kiss  .  Now you are awake, just imagine and answer me: In your "imaginary" pool-free bitcoin world, is network security understood the same as what you experience as an enchanted Bitcoiner now?

[DannyHamilton]

That is not what I said , reread my earlier posts til you get it.

Ok, since you want to be pedantic (personally, I do prefer pedantry anyhow), let's try this again using your exact words.

Because Longest chain is more accurate,

It is not. To the average person, "Longest chain" generally implies largest quantity of blocks. Bitcoin nodes do not use quantity of blocks to determine which chain to follow.

since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

It does not.  It is quite easy to create a chain with MANY more blocks, but much less total proof of work. If I purge all the blocks from the current blockchain EXCEPT the original "genesis block", and then immediately start mining a new chain with that same starting block, using today's modern ASICs I can produce thousands of valid blocks per minute. If I write code that sets the timestamp for each new block that I create 10 minutes later than the previous block, then the difficulty will remain low and I can continue this process completing a chain of 705,000 blocks in less than 8 hours. This will give me a chain that is "longer", but since those blocks are lower difficulty it will have "less work".  Clearly "longest chain" doesn't always have "more work".

For any reorg to ever occur , the # of blocks (height) has to be greater and have more work. ie: longer chain with more work.

This is simply a false statement.  The number of blocks is unimportant, only the total work.

You can never have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain as the wallets will ignore any blocks not near equal in height with the current blockchain.
 

This is also a false statement. Again, the number of blocks is unimportant.  IF SOMEONE HAD MORE HASHPOWER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD COMBINED, then they could go back a few difficulty adjustments and start replacing blocks. Since they have more hashpower, they'll produce blocks faster than the rest of the world. Therefore, the time between 2,016 blocks will be less than it was in the current chain, and the difficulty will increase faster at the difficulty adjustments.  By the time they start to get close to the current chain with their replacement chain, they'll have more total work BEFORE they exceed the current blockheight. At that point, if they broadcast their chain, all nodes will abandon the chain they currently have and will accept this replacement chain as the valid chain, even though it is a block or two shorter.  You absolutely CAN have a shorter chain overwrite a longer chain.

You could mine the rest of the blocks with less difficulty and catch up really fast.

Nope ,  
block speed and difficulty settings would prevent that.
You're stuck at the same difficulty level for 2 weeks, so thinking you can catch up really fast is not possible.

How fast you can catch up depends on how much more hashpower you have than the rest of the world combined.  If you have only 1% more than the rest of the world combined, then you are not going to catch up very fast.  If you have 10,000 times as much hashpower, then you can catch up quite a bit faster.

You are mistaken.  It is absolutely possible for a chain with less blocks to have more total proof of work.

That is not what I said , reread my earlier posts til you get it.

That is ABSOLUTELY what you said:

since using Proof of Work implies the longest chain would have more work.

So in your confusion,
Someone could make 1 block with a greater proof of work today that the combined 701172 blocks that bitcoin currently has.

That is not what I said , reread my earlier posts til you get it.

I said nothing about a single block having more work than a 700,000+ chain of blocks.  I said that a shorter chain can have greater proof of work. In other words, a 699,999 block chain could have more work than a 700,000 block chain.

I can tell you, you're wrong, but it seems to be some cult mentality blocking logic from getting thru.

Perhaps. What's your source of information?  I suspect mine is more reliable.

Tell you what, you and anyone that believes you, get together and overwrite all of bitcoin chains and do it in 3 blocks.

3 blocks?  Nah. Regardless, no matter whether it was 3 blocks or 699,999 blocks, the problem is that it is prohibitively expensive to acquire and operate enough hashpower. This is why Bitcoin remains secure.

LOL, BlackHatCoiner thinks he can modify the timestamps at will, so nothing is holding you back. 

Except for access to enough hashpower.

* Anyone want to let him know that modifying the node program code and all of the other nodes would reject it, feel free,
he seems to have trouble believing me.*

ABSOLUTE NONSENSE.  Nodes don't know anything about what code other nodes are running.  They havee no way of knowing if the block that they receive was created by modified code or not. As long as the block itself passes all the validation checks, nodes are perfectly willing to accept blocks from a modified node program.  As a matter of fact, there are SEVERAL variations of node software out there (and several versions of each variation). They all produce blocks that are accepted by all other nodes.  As long as the timestamps that you create fit within the rules for a valid block, you can modify them as much as you like.