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Is there anything preventing an implementation vote by the miners? I would think that convincing 50% of miners would be all it takes to change these types of fe

by lojack 11y ago

Is there anything preventing an implementation vote by the miners? I would think that convincing 50% of miners would be all it takes to change these types of features.

dogecoinbase 11y ago
Up to a point, miners have an incentive to increase transaction delays in order to drive up fees (which they receive).
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  Miners can't increase transaction delays in practicality because they need their blocks to propagate to be able to capture the mining fees.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > Miners can't increase transaction delays in practicality because they need their blocks to propagate to be able to capture the mining fees. They get the mining fees regardless of whether they include your transaction or any others for that matter.
    - lololomg 11y ago
      The miners get the Block Reward without including transactions but they earn extra Transaction Fees for each fee-bearing transaction they include in the block too.
colejohnson66 11y ago
IIRC, The majority of the blocks are "mined" in China where they continue using the "old" fork of Bitcoin instead of the "new" fork that upped the block size. I would assume they're resistant to change as keeping the block size down can, over time, force the transaction fees up (bringing in more cash for the miners)
- ilaksh 11y ago
  China has people in both camps.
- 21 11y ago
  I find it funny how all talk about decentralization, but ignore the fact that most mining is in China, a known bastion of freedom. Yesterday it made illegal movies depicting homosexuality or one night stands. Tomorrow it might decide to make bitcoin mining illegal (as it has forbidden some forms of bitcoin trading in the past)
  - Nutmog 11y ago
    All kinds of silly things are illegal in China, even copyright infringement, but that doesn't mean the police are breaking down people's doors and confiscating their computers. People flagrantly do many of the illegal things anyway. So I'd say, yes China really is a bastion of freedom - just a different kind of freedom than what westerners think. Economic freedom, rather than political freedom.
zanny 11y ago
That is what Classic is, except they are using 75% as their consensus threshold (it is arbitrary though - if you maintain 51% of hash power you can dictate the protocol).
- matthewbauer 11y ago
  It's not really 51%. The miners are supposed to accept the "tallest" chain. So you can get lucky and mine a block then change the rules and sneak in some breaking change (like a larger block). No one else will accept it unless you can keep mining quicker than everyone else and eventually convince everybody that yours is the "true" blockchain so everyone else should switch. The thing is if you have less than 50% of hash power, it's extremely unlikely you'll be successful because 50%+ other miners disagree. Once you get above 50%, you're chances go up but you're still playing with fire here because just a short period of bad luck can end up breaking your "fork". Even at 75% there would be some big issues with the 25% left behind who might not initially realize what's happening (and maybe get lucky).
  - sanswork 11y ago
    If you do something like a larger block it doesn't matter if you have the longest chain because no one will be relaying it.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    The fork accepting more kinds of block is probably going to be jittery and broken right at the switchover no matter what. The percentage only affects how fast things stabilize. 60% would be fine after a couple hours. Requiring 75% or more is to smooth things on a political level.
  - TD-Linux 11y ago
    >The miners are supposed to accept the "tallest" chain. The tallest valid chain. A chain with block sizes exceeding the max won't be considered valid.
adrianmacneil 11y ago
Because it's a consensus rule (enforced by every fully validating node), it would require a backwards incompatible change (hard fork) to be implemented by every single miner, exchange, wallet and merchant. Only soft forks (which are backwards compatible) can be rolled out with a 51% miner vote. Bitcoin Classic is trying to gain support for a hard fork with 75% miner vote, but in reality this would also require every exchange, wallet and merchant to pledge their support, or risk creating a network split with two separate currencies.

by lojack 11y ago

Is there anything preventing an implementation vote by the miners? I would think that convincing 50% of miners would be all it takes to change these types of features.

dogecoinbase 11y ago

Up to a point, miners have an incentive to increase transaction delays in order to drive up fees (which they receive).

CyberDildonics 11y ago
Miners can't increase transaction delays in practicality because they need their blocks to propagate to be able to capture the mining fees.
- aianus 11y ago
  > Miners can't increase transaction delays in practicality because they need their blocks to propagate to be able to capture the mining fees. They get the mining fees regardless of whether they include your transaction or any others for that matter.
  - lololomg 11y ago
    The miners get the Block Reward without including transactions but they earn extra Transaction Fees for each fee-bearing transaction they include in the block too.

colejohnson66 11y ago

IIRC, The majority of the blocks are "mined" in China where they continue using the "old" fork of Bitcoin instead of the "new" fork that upped the block size. I would assume they're resistant to change as keeping the block size down can, over time, force the transaction fees up (bringing in more cash for the miners)

ilaksh 11y ago
China has people in both camps.
21 11y ago
I find it funny how all talk about decentralization, but ignore the fact that most mining is in China, a known bastion of freedom. Yesterday it made illegal movies depicting homosexuality or one night stands. Tomorrow it might decide to make bitcoin mining illegal (as it has forbidden some forms of bitcoin trading in the past)
- Nutmog 11y ago
  All kinds of silly things are illegal in China, even copyright infringement, but that doesn't mean the police are breaking down people's doors and confiscating their computers. People flagrantly do many of the illegal things anyway. So I'd say, yes China really is a bastion of freedom - just a different kind of freedom than what westerners think. Economic freedom, rather than political freedom.

zanny 11y ago

That is what Classic is, except they are using 75% as their consensus threshold (it is arbitrary though - if you maintain 51% of hash power you can dictate the protocol).

matthewbauer 11y ago
It's not really 51%. The miners are supposed to accept the "tallest" chain. So you can get lucky and mine a block then change the rules and sneak in some breaking change (like a larger block). No one else will accept it unless you can keep mining quicker than everyone else and eventually convince everybody that yours is the "true" blockchain so everyone else should switch. The thing is if you have less than 50% of hash power, it's extremely unlikely you'll be successful because 50%+ other miners disagree. Once you get above 50%, you're chances go up but you're still playing with fire here because just a short period of bad luck can end up breaking your "fork". Even at 75% there would be some big issues with the 25% left behind who might not initially realize what's happening (and maybe get lucky).
- sanswork 11y ago
  If you do something like a larger block it doesn't matter if you have the longest chain because no one will be relaying it.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  The fork accepting more kinds of block is probably going to be jittery and broken right at the switchover no matter what. The percentage only affects how fast things stabilize. 60% would be fine after a couple hours. Requiring 75% or more is to smooth things on a political level.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  >The miners are supposed to accept the "tallest" chain. The tallest valid chain. A chain with block sizes exceeding the max won't be considered valid.

adrianmacneil 11y ago

Because it's a consensus rule (enforced by every fully validating node), it would require a backwards incompatible change (hard fork) to be implemented by every single miner, exchange, wallet and merchant. Only soft forks (which are backwards compatible) can be rolled out with a 51% miner vote. Bitcoin Classic is trying to gain support for a hard fork with 75% miner vote, but in reality this would also require every exchange, wallet and merchant to pledge their support, or risk creating a network split with two separate currencies.