9 ms·

Bitcoin isn't decentralized

59 points by homakov 9y ago

iamthirsty 9y ago
Stop. Writing. Like. This. Please.
- johnhenry 9y ago
  I have to wonder if comments like these might be better directed at the article on medium rather than hackernews, just in case the author isn't the poster.
  - iamthirsty 9y ago
    Probably true, but not everyone has a Medium account or would like to make one.
johnhenry 9y ago
Distributed?
Sniffnoy 9y ago
Huh, was expecting the article to be about different meanings of centralization and how Bitcoin doesn't meet all of them -- to use Vitalik Buterin's terminology[1], it's not logically decentralized (being ultimately based around a single consensus ledger). Instead it's claiming that Bitcoin isn't politically decentralized like it claims to be. [1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274 https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...
- placeybordeaux 9y ago
  Yeah bitcoin is distributed, it functions as if it has a ~10m global semaphore. The actual details are much more complicated, but with the current design you are not getting around that, current efforts are to build systems that only settle to the chain when trust is broken.
- dozzie 9y ago
  > being ultimately based around a single consensus ledger You managed to got two things wrong in one short sentence: it's not single ledger (everybody at each point have their own version, only to some degree compatible with anybody else), and it's not consensus ledger, as in consensus problem a.k.a. Byzantine generals. Bitcoin never aimed at consensus, it was always about timestamping the documents (transactions).
spraak 9y ago
It's still decentralized by design, though, even if not practically.
H99189 9y ago
So the main point of the article is that China controls > 50% of the mining pool. Is there any reason what-so-ever that multiple companies would ever want to collude and fork it, and thus crashing the value to 0?
- maxander 9y ago
  Not as long as they own a lot of the coin itself, no. If any of these miners sells their stake, freak out immediately since their next step would be to short bitcoin through some means before causing a value crash. And you’ve also got to consider market reactions; if any of the miners sells a decent amount of their stake, freak out immediately- because they’re liable to sell more soon, causing everyone to freak out and crashing the market. And so on. This doesn’t sound stable- perhaps the whole thing could be taken down by a miner deciding he needs a bit of cash to buy a house.
  - hossbeast 9y ago
    Your conception of the amount of money involved here is off by several orders of magnitude
    - maxander 9y ago
      Clarify? I can’t say the market capitalization of Bitcoin off the top of my head, but neither can I tell whether you think I’m making it out to be higher or lower than it is.
      - hossbeast 9y ago
        Much, much lower. Buying a house vs 120B+ market cap.
        maxander 9y ago
        And a bank run can’t occur in a 120B market? Or commodities worth 120B can’t be shorted? What?
colemannugent 9y ago
The article seems to focus on China's share of the miners, so I'll address that: I'm not that concerned about the Chinese miners. If they wanted to disrupt the network they have had plenty of chances to. The author assumes that all Chinese miners are controlled by the same entity. Which, while I do believe that the Chinese govt. can shutdown any miner they want to, I don't believe that 100% of the miners are operated by the Chinese govt. If you break down the pie chart into the different Chinese entities that actually operate the miners it begins to look more decentralized. After reading the paper that was posted here the other week about forking the network using BGP to effectively create two sepereate Internets, I think that if a country did go rouge, we could all just set our firewalls to drop all connections from Chinese nodes and that would be that. Let them run their own chain where they can manipulate their coins price like the do the yuan.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- homakov 9y ago
  >If they wanted to disrupt the network they have had plenty of chances to. "If paypal wanted to ban my account they would do it already. Must be secure to store all my money there then". >If you break down the pie chart into the different Chinese entities that actually operate the miners it begins to look more decentralized. The 4th chart is actually the official hashrate distribution from https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools I never said they are operated by the gov, __they are under its authority__. Because that's how govs worked for ages. >I think that if a country did go rouge, we could all just set our firewalls to drop all connections from Chinese nodes and that would be that. "We would just change PoW". "We would just cut off China from Internet". Just do a thought experiment - those are not solutions
  - colemannugent 9y ago
    >"If paypal wanted to ban my account they would do it already. Must be secure to store all my money there then". Why wait for a longer chain? What do they stand to gain? Act now and secure control. If the network is a vulnerable as you say, why has China not made their move? They control a majority of miners, they control their country completely and even manipulate their traditional currency to stay competitive economically, why would they not seize control over the network before it the US govt. becomes interested in protecting it? >"The 4th chart is actually the official hashrate distribution from https://blockchain.info/pools" https://blockchain.info/pools" Right, but pool membership is voluntary. If a pool doesn't act in support of its miners then the miners will go elsewhere. Pools are like political parties, centralized in appearance, but if you ask the members of a party what they think you quickly see that they never agree on everything. >I never said they are operated by the gov, __they are under its authority__. Because that's how govs worked for ages. Which is the crux of the issue. As long as the Chinese person running the miner can point their miner at a different pool or switch software then the government does not control the miners. I'm not current on the state of Chinese political affairs, but I was under the impression that they are not that authoritarian. Knowing that, you cannot count all those pools as agents of the Chinese govt. and can't make an argument that they are centralized. Just because their best financial interests align currently does not mean they will be aligned in the future. In my estimation, the Chinese govt. is losing its grip on the Chinese economy, which leads me to believe that in the future the contral govt. will have even less ability to manipulate like they do now. >"We would just change PoW". "We would just cut off China from Internet". Just do a thought experiment - those are not solutions Except the "cut China off from the internet" is feasible, see this paper on the impact BGP hijacking could have on the network: https://btc-hijack.ethz.ch/ https://btc-hijack.ethz.ch/. By your definition, nothing is a solution until implemented, which I think is a bit silly. Of course we couldn't completely separate the Chinese miners from the wider Internet, but we could make any attacks on the wider network so hard to achive that the electricity they would waste trying to attack us would cost them more than being a good cryptocitizen would make them. But then again, this is just an artifact of democracy when you replace citizens with CPUs. If more miners support one chain, that is the legitimate chain. That's what's outlined in the Bitcoin paper. This seems more like a political issue than a technological one.
pmorici 9y ago
This is such a tired argument. It says more about the author than it does about Bitcoin. The point isn't to have perfect decentralization. The point is to have good enough decentralization that the system works. In the case of Bitcoin "good enough to work" means at least three separate entities mining with none having greater than 50% share.
- homakov 9y ago
  Thisisfine.jpg is usual in Bitcoin problems p2p cash! => ok, store of value decentralized => ok, let's just hope China will be good to us I hold quite a few BTC, but I prefer to remain realist.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    nodes define decentralization in bitcoin, not miners, because it is nodes that define and police consensus in bitcoin, not miners.
    - homakov 9y ago
      Nodes are ephemeral and sybil attackable. Mining block is in fact consensus. If miners empty block forever whats next?
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        > If miners empty block forever whats next? Change the PoW algorithm. Do you follow bitcoin, or a dead algorithm? It is always best to understand a subject before commenting on it.
        homakov 9y ago
        Next question: what exactly algo? What hashrate will be? It will be 2009 back, with weak chain = basically without any security from double spends.
heimatau 9y ago
Sigh...I disagree. ~17M Bitcoins. ~17M BCH coins. How many splits coming up soon from the BTC chain? 10k Nodes. Multi-million dollars invested into 'mining'. 0.0001 is at parity/value with the USD Dollar. How many people trade these cryptocurrency tokens? How many program and develop to aid the security and value of the entire crypto network? How many businesses/services opt to accepting these tokens instead of fiat? I don't think people realize the gravity of what has happened in plain sight. There is no single one point of failure. None. Why? because this isn't about 'one ring to rule them all' nor 'one token to use'. Look at this entire ecosystem of crytpocurrencies, as a whole. Sure the code has had some issues but...those were ironed out many years ago. Even if multiple people own 1M tokens...guess what? It's distributed....many....many more times than our current oligarchy system from central banking and fiat currency. Where the USA prints money and accounts to no one but themselves. Anyone could look up how systems create points of failure. The crypto network, as a whole, has more computational power than numerous supercomputers. They aren't just 'solving puzzles', as Bitcoin 101 people are saying. These are built on-chain and off. Online and off. This thing, should be seen as a biological wonder. This is like a virus, trying to consume us all. I strongly doubt our, current and imperfect, society can stop this new paradigm shift. We are entering a phase of our history that will change how we value and interact with one another. It's here, it's incentives are ingenious. No war, bombs nor law can stop it. It is has no weakpoints. Those weakpoints that exist, are mitigated by other areas of the network being able to offload that risk. Or after skimming this guys article. It DOES NOT MATTER that 3-4 companies try to game the 'mining hashpower'. Why? because ~17M tokens already exist. Many of those earlier adopter CAN and DO shift the entire market, as they should. This isn't about 'hashpower'. This isn't about thinking about Bitcoin in a very traditional sense. Think of every aspect as a weakpoint and stakeholder. With all aspects being attributed a value. Sure, an exploit can be found, but over time, those exploits decrease exponentially because more brain, computational, and social dynamics have been 'attacking' the system. This system grows and evolves and it's adaptable based on the behavior of humanity. People choose the value and the system adjusts. P.S. I know I sound weird and maybe esoteric but...I've been watching this space almost since the beginning. I wish I entered sooner but I just didn't believe anyone would ever adopt it. The early days of bitcoin, these tokens were given away, proud and free. Now, 50 of them (one early block) could pay for most, if not all, 1st world college tuition. Or a home. The cost? Being socially crazy and weird. Well...things are a bit different now. Why? What is the math about? What are the social dynamics about? Why are 'splits' so contentious? What are those social dynamics about? There is SO much going on here that 90% of people don't know, let alone don't get. 20 years from now, we'll wonder why we/humanity didn't think of this sooner. P.P.S. I'm not resting on my own opinion but instead have been challenging my own throughout this 'bitcoin experiment' and I am open to changing my mind but...the math is decent, the software is decent...I look forward to when someone can articulate 'major' flaws that can 0 day the system. Or even 30 day the system. It's too ironclad but feel free to 'enlighten me'.
juicyfroot 9y ago
They should show a piechart of the genders of the people running the miners. It will show likely 99% male.
- zxcmx 9y ago
  End the blockchain patriarchy! We need more pink hashes. Red hashes no! Pink hashes yes!
redetedt 9y ago
From what I understand, the attacks miners can perform can be easily detected by the actually decentralised full nodes. Once detected, these miners can be removed. So yeah, this part of bitcoin still requires some human politics, but it is fairly minimal. People are trying to figure out how to make mining less centralised. None of these growing pains are some kind of fundamental flaw that cannot be overcome.
- ironjunkie 9y ago
  It's more complex than that. There needs also to be a consensus to remove a block of the chain. Without consensus, the best-case scenario would be that it results in a fork.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    > It's more complex than that. No it isn't actually.
darawk 9y ago
Stop. Equating. Hashrate. With. Network. Control. Hashrate barely matters. The influence these Chinese miners have is next to nil. Them having hashrate doens't mean they get to decide on anything meaningful, it just means they get to reap the economics benefits of transaction minting. If they tried to exploit their 'power' in any way, people would just fork the chain and move on. They have no ability to actually take advantage of their position in any meaningful way.
- debacle 9y ago
  > If they tried to exploit their 'power' in any way, people would just fork the chain and move on. You can't prevent someone from trying to mine, though. Bitcoin would have to develop some sort of defense or constantly be correcting whatever fork was the accepted truth.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    He explained the dynamic. You responded with something completely unrelated.
- freeloop3 9y ago
  They can block transactions they don't like by refusing to put them into blocks. They can mine any competing fork with all empty blocks so transactions never confirm.
  - darawk 9y ago
    Yes, totally. And the rest of the community can simply move to a fork with a new hashing algorithm that their hardware doesn't mine. Which is exactly what would happen if they tried anything. And is exactly why they will never try anything.
    - freeloop3 9y ago
      It's a lot more complicated than that. Suppose the miners did go MAD, and refused to accept any txns. How many days, weeks or months before the bitcoin users can decide on and implement a new hash algorithm? And with several other coins looking to take the crown away from bitcoin, how long before it no longer is the defacto entry point into crypto? Not only that, but if bitcoin dumps its miners as unceremoniously as you describe, it will create a lot of distrust between miners in general and the bitcoin users. I don't know what alternative hashing algorithm you had in mind, but if it becomes mineable by miners of another coin, they may see an opportunity to attack. Without a large community of miners protecting bitcoin, you will have thrown bitcoin to the wolves so to speak. And there is little reason for miners to protect bitcoin against such an attack, after they showed such disregard to the original community of miners. So, no, miners are not as impotent as you make out.
knocte 9y ago
Any article that refers to mining pools as "miners" is missing the picture and misleading. First get the naming right, then we can talk.
down 9y ago
If the Chinese act bad and there is a fork, even if the Chinese fork has more hash power doesn't mean the market will favor their coin, out contrary, no one will trust their chain, since they acted malicious, who will buy their coins.. it will also be an opportunity for new miners.
JonasJSchreiber 9y ago
I disagree with the premise of this article. Just because miners are based in China is not proof of collusion. I agree there is some fishy stuff going on with Bitmain and Antpool and others, but isn't it in their best interest not to break faith? Wouldn't exchanges (who are holding all the money and are not (explicitly NOT) based in China still have the cash to fund withdrawals? Wouldn't the rest of the world STILL be free to fork the chain to a good faith ecosystem? Isn't Bitcoin Core largely made up of non-Chinese?
sktrdie 9y ago
This article is so silly. How can it get front page on HN? The important point that he's missing is that, even though the pools are centralized, the individual miners are not! And this is really the main difference. As ASIC chips get faster and faster we'll reach a physical point that it won't be beneficial to keep large rigs running in a central location - because of the economy of energy distribution. I'd love it if there was a greener solution for decentralization than energy, but there isn't, otherwise we'd be using it! It's as simple as that.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  Yes, this is the logical implementation of the game-theory model.
- EGreg 9y ago
  There is. It's called NOT having a global consensus. Look at everything out there: Git Email The Web IRC Usenet IPFS
tromp 9y ago
> no hard-fork to different PoW alg can save you from that, because you will start with a much weaker hashrate Security derives not from hashrate but from energy consumption. E.g. Ethereum has a many orders of magnitude lower hashrate but its energy consumption is a significant fraction of bitcoin's.
polock 9y ago
You need to see this discussions "Decentralized credit rating on the Blockchain" https://us.teamblind.com/article/decentralized-credit-rating-on-the-blockchain-bNuPyCXs https://us.teamblind.com/article/decentralized-credit-rating...

59 points by homakov 9y ago

iamthirsty 9y ago

Stop. Writing. Like. This. Please.

johnhenry 9y ago
I have to wonder if comments like these might be better directed at the article on medium rather than hackernews, just in case the author isn't the poster.
- iamthirsty 9y ago
  Probably true, but not everyone has a Medium account or would like to make one.

johnhenry 9y ago

Distributed?

Sniffnoy 9y ago

Huh, was expecting the article to be about different meanings of centralization and how Bitcoin doesn't meet all of them -- to use Vitalik Buterin's terminology[1], it's not logically decentralized (being ultimately based around a single consensus ledger). Instead it's claiming that Bitcoin isn't politically decentralized like it claims to be. [1] https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentralization-a0c92b76a274 https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/the-meaning-of-decentrali...

placeybordeaux 9y ago
Yeah bitcoin is distributed, it functions as if it has a ~10m global semaphore. The actual details are much more complicated, but with the current design you are not getting around that, current efforts are to build systems that only settle to the chain when trust is broken.
dozzie 9y ago
> being ultimately based around a single consensus ledger You managed to got two things wrong in one short sentence: it's not single ledger (everybody at each point have their own version, only to some degree compatible with anybody else), and it's not consensus ledger, as in consensus problem a.k.a. Byzantine generals. Bitcoin never aimed at consensus, it was always about timestamping the documents (transactions).

spraak 9y ago

It's still decentralized by design, though, even if not practically.

H99189 9y ago

So the main point of the article is that China controls > 50% of the mining pool. Is there any reason what-so-ever that multiple companies would ever want to collude and fork it, and thus crashing the value to 0?

maxander 9y ago
Not as long as they own a lot of the coin itself, no. If any of these miners sells their stake, freak out immediately since their next step would be to short bitcoin through some means before causing a value crash. And you’ve also got to consider market reactions; if any of the miners sells a decent amount of their stake, freak out immediately- because they’re liable to sell more soon, causing everyone to freak out and crashing the market. And so on. This doesn’t sound stable- perhaps the whole thing could be taken down by a miner deciding he needs a bit of cash to buy a house.
- hossbeast 9y ago
  Your conception of the amount of money involved here is off by several orders of magnitude
  - maxander 9y ago
    Clarify? I can’t say the market capitalization of Bitcoin off the top of my head, but neither can I tell whether you think I’m making it out to be higher or lower than it is.
    - hossbeast 9y ago
      Much, much lower. Buying a house vs 120B+ market cap.
      - maxander 9y ago
        And a bank run can’t occur in a 120B market? Or commodities worth 120B can’t be shorted? What?

colemannugent 9y ago

The article seems to focus on China's share of the miners, so I'll address that: I'm not that concerned about the Chinese miners. If they wanted to disrupt the network they have had plenty of chances to. The author assumes that all Chinese miners are controlled by the same entity. Which, while I do believe that the Chinese govt. can shutdown any miner they want to, I don't believe that 100% of the miners are operated by the Chinese govt. If you break down the pie chart into the different Chinese entities that actually operate the miners it begins to look more decentralized. After reading the paper that was posted here the other week about forking the network using BGP to effectively create two sepereate Internets, I think that if a country did go rouge, we could all just set our firewalls to drop all connections from Chinese nodes and that would be that. Let them run their own chain where they can manipulate their coins price like the do the yuan.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
homakov 9y ago
>If they wanted to disrupt the network they have had plenty of chances to. "If paypal wanted to ban my account they would do it already. Must be secure to store all my money there then". >If you break down the pie chart into the different Chinese entities that actually operate the miners it begins to look more decentralized. The 4th chart is actually the official hashrate distribution from https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools I never said they are operated by the gov, __they are under its authority__. Because that's how govs worked for ages. >I think that if a country did go rouge, we could all just set our firewalls to drop all connections from Chinese nodes and that would be that. "We would just change PoW". "We would just cut off China from Internet". Just do a thought experiment - those are not solutions
- colemannugent 9y ago
  >"If paypal wanted to ban my account they would do it already. Must be secure to store all my money there then". Why wait for a longer chain? What do they stand to gain? Act now and secure control. If the network is a vulnerable as you say, why has China not made their move? They control a majority of miners, they control their country completely and even manipulate their traditional currency to stay competitive economically, why would they not seize control over the network before it the US govt. becomes interested in protecting it? >"The 4th chart is actually the official hashrate distribution from https://blockchain.info/pools" https://blockchain.info/pools" Right, but pool membership is voluntary. If a pool doesn't act in support of its miners then the miners will go elsewhere. Pools are like political parties, centralized in appearance, but if you ask the members of a party what they think you quickly see that they never agree on everything. >I never said they are operated by the gov, __they are under its authority__. Because that's how govs worked for ages. Which is the crux of the issue. As long as the Chinese person running the miner can point their miner at a different pool or switch software then the government does not control the miners. I'm not current on the state of Chinese political affairs, but I was under the impression that they are not that authoritarian. Knowing that, you cannot count all those pools as agents of the Chinese govt. and can't make an argument that they are centralized. Just because their best financial interests align currently does not mean they will be aligned in the future. In my estimation, the Chinese govt. is losing its grip on the Chinese economy, which leads me to believe that in the future the contral govt. will have even less ability to manipulate like they do now. >"We would just change PoW". "We would just cut off China from Internet". Just do a thought experiment - those are not solutions Except the "cut China off from the internet" is feasible, see this paper on the impact BGP hijacking could have on the network: https://btc-hijack.ethz.ch/ https://btc-hijack.ethz.ch/. By your definition, nothing is a solution until implemented, which I think is a bit silly. Of course we couldn't completely separate the Chinese miners from the wider Internet, but we could make any attacks on the wider network so hard to achive that the electricity they would waste trying to attack us would cost them more than being a good cryptocitizen would make them. But then again, this is just an artifact of democracy when you replace citizens with CPUs. If more miners support one chain, that is the legitimate chain. That's what's outlined in the Bitcoin paper. This seems more like a political issue than a technological one.

pmorici 9y ago

This is such a tired argument. It says more about the author than it does about Bitcoin. The point isn't to have perfect decentralization. The point is to have good enough decentralization that the system works. In the case of Bitcoin "good enough to work" means at least three separate entities mining with none having greater than 50% share.

homakov 9y ago
Thisisfine.jpg is usual in Bitcoin problems p2p cash! => ok, store of value decentralized => ok, let's just hope China will be good to us I hold quite a few BTC, but I prefer to remain realist.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  nodes define decentralization in bitcoin, not miners, because it is nodes that define and police consensus in bitcoin, not miners.
  - homakov 9y ago
    Nodes are ephemeral and sybil attackable. Mining block is in fact consensus. If miners empty block forever whats next?
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      > If miners empty block forever whats next? Change the PoW algorithm. Do you follow bitcoin, or a dead algorithm? It is always best to understand a subject before commenting on it.
      - homakov 9y ago
        Next question: what exactly algo? What hashrate will be? It will be 2009 back, with weak chain = basically without any security from double spends.

heimatau 9y ago

Sigh...I disagree. ~17M Bitcoins. ~17M BCH coins. How many splits coming up soon from the BTC chain? 10k Nodes. Multi-million dollars invested into 'mining'. 0.0001 is at parity/value with the USD Dollar. How many people trade these cryptocurrency tokens? How many program and develop to aid the security and value of the entire crypto network? How many businesses/services opt to accepting these tokens instead of fiat? I don't think people realize the gravity of what has happened in plain sight. There is no single one point of failure. None. Why? because this isn't about 'one ring to rule them all' nor 'one token to use'. Look at this entire ecosystem of crytpocurrencies, as a whole. Sure the code has had some issues but...those were ironed out many years ago. Even if multiple people own 1M tokens...guess what? It's distributed....many....many more times than our current oligarchy system from central banking and fiat currency. Where the USA prints money and accounts to no one but themselves. Anyone could look up how systems create points of failure. The crypto network, as a whole, has more computational power than numerous supercomputers. They aren't just 'solving puzzles', as Bitcoin 101 people are saying. These are built on-chain and off. Online and off. This thing, should be seen as a biological wonder. This is like a virus, trying to consume us all. I strongly doubt our, current and imperfect, society can stop this new paradigm shift. We are entering a phase of our history that will change how we value and interact with one another. It's here, it's incentives are ingenious. No war, bombs nor law can stop it. It is has no weakpoints. Those weakpoints that exist, are mitigated by other areas of the network being able to offload that risk. Or after skimming this guys article. It DOES NOT MATTER that 3-4 companies try to game the 'mining hashpower'. Why? because ~17M tokens already exist. Many of those earlier adopter CAN and DO shift the entire market, as they should. This isn't about 'hashpower'. This isn't about thinking about Bitcoin in a very traditional sense. Think of every aspect as a weakpoint and stakeholder. With all aspects being attributed a value. Sure, an exploit can be found, but over time, those exploits decrease exponentially because more brain, computational, and social dynamics have been 'attacking' the system. This system grows and evolves and it's adaptable based on the behavior of humanity. People choose the value and the system adjusts. P.S. I know I sound weird and maybe esoteric but...I've been watching this space almost since the beginning. I wish I entered sooner but I just didn't believe anyone would ever adopt it. The early days of bitcoin, these tokens were given away, proud and free. Now, 50 of them (one early block) could pay for most, if not all, 1st world college tuition. Or a home. The cost? Being socially crazy and weird. Well...things are a bit different now. Why? What is the math about? What are the social dynamics about? Why are 'splits' so contentious? What are those social dynamics about? There is SO much going on here that 90% of people don't know, let alone don't get. 20 years from now, we'll wonder why we/humanity didn't think of this sooner. P.P.S. I'm not resting on my own opinion but instead have been challenging my own throughout this 'bitcoin experiment' and I am open to changing my mind but...the math is decent, the software is decent...I look forward to when someone can articulate 'major' flaws that can 0 day the system. Or even 30 day the system. It's too ironclad but feel free to 'enlighten me'.

juicyfroot 9y ago

They should show a piechart of the genders of the people running the miners. It will show likely 99% male.

zxcmx 9y ago
End the blockchain patriarchy! We need more pink hashes. Red hashes no! Pink hashes yes!

redetedt 9y ago

From what I understand, the attacks miners can perform can be easily detected by the actually decentralised full nodes. Once detected, these miners can be removed. So yeah, this part of bitcoin still requires some human politics, but it is fairly minimal. People are trying to figure out how to make mining less centralised. None of these growing pains are some kind of fundamental flaw that cannot be overcome.

ironjunkie 9y ago
It's more complex than that. There needs also to be a consensus to remove a block of the chain. Without consensus, the best-case scenario would be that it results in a fork.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  > It's more complex than that. No it isn't actually.

darawk 9y ago

Stop. Equating. Hashrate. With. Network. Control. Hashrate barely matters. The influence these Chinese miners have is next to nil. Them having hashrate doens't mean they get to decide on anything meaningful, it just means they get to reap the economics benefits of transaction minting. If they tried to exploit their 'power' in any way, people would just fork the chain and move on. They have no ability to actually take advantage of their position in any meaningful way.

debacle 9y ago
> If they tried to exploit their 'power' in any way, people would just fork the chain and move on. You can't prevent someone from trying to mine, though. Bitcoin would have to develop some sort of defense or constantly be correcting whatever fork was the accepted truth.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  He explained the dynamic. You responded with something completely unrelated.
freeloop3 9y ago
They can block transactions they don't like by refusing to put them into blocks. They can mine any competing fork with all empty blocks so transactions never confirm.
- darawk 9y ago
  Yes, totally. And the rest of the community can simply move to a fork with a new hashing algorithm that their hardware doesn't mine. Which is exactly what would happen if they tried anything. And is exactly why they will never try anything.
  - freeloop3 9y ago
    It's a lot more complicated than that. Suppose the miners did go MAD, and refused to accept any txns. How many days, weeks or months before the bitcoin users can decide on and implement a new hash algorithm? And with several other coins looking to take the crown away from bitcoin, how long before it no longer is the defacto entry point into crypto? Not only that, but if bitcoin dumps its miners as unceremoniously as you describe, it will create a lot of distrust between miners in general and the bitcoin users. I don't know what alternative hashing algorithm you had in mind, but if it becomes mineable by miners of another coin, they may see an opportunity to attack. Without a large community of miners protecting bitcoin, you will have thrown bitcoin to the wolves so to speak. And there is little reason for miners to protect bitcoin against such an attack, after they showed such disregard to the original community of miners. So, no, miners are not as impotent as you make out.

knocte 9y ago

Any article that refers to mining pools as "miners" is missing the picture and misleading. First get the naming right, then we can talk.

down 9y ago

If the Chinese act bad and there is a fork, even if the Chinese fork has more hash power doesn't mean the market will favor their coin, out contrary, no one will trust their chain, since they acted malicious, who will buy their coins.. it will also be an opportunity for new miners.

JonasJSchreiber 9y ago

I disagree with the premise of this article. Just because miners are based in China is not proof of collusion. I agree there is some fishy stuff going on with Bitmain and Antpool and others, but isn't it in their best interest not to break faith? Wouldn't exchanges (who are holding all the money and are not (explicitly NOT) based in China still have the cash to fund withdrawals? Wouldn't the rest of the world STILL be free to fork the chain to a good faith ecosystem? Isn't Bitcoin Core largely made up of non-Chinese?

sktrdie 9y ago

This article is so silly. How can it get front page on HN? The important point that he's missing is that, even though the pools are centralized, the individual miners are not! And this is really the main difference. As ASIC chips get faster and faster we'll reach a physical point that it won't be beneficial to keep large rigs running in a central location - because of the economy of energy distribution. I'd love it if there was a greener solution for decentralization than energy, but there isn't, otherwise we'd be using it! It's as simple as that.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
Yes, this is the logical implementation of the game-theory model.
EGreg 9y ago
There is. It's called NOT having a global consensus. Look at everything out there: Git Email The Web IRC Usenet IPFS

tromp 9y ago

> no hard-fork to different PoW alg can save you from that, because you will start with a much weaker hashrate Security derives not from hashrate but from energy consumption. E.g. Ethereum has a many orders of magnitude lower hashrate but its energy consumption is a significant fraction of bitcoin's.

polock 9y ago

You need to see this discussions "Decentralized credit rating on the Blockchain" https://us.teamblind.com/article/decentralized-credit-rating-on-the-blockchain-bNuPyCXs https://us.teamblind.com/article/decentralized-credit-rating...