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It is also important to understand in technical terms what a 'peer' is in bitcoin. A peer is a node, which is a client that validates all transactions and blo

It is also important to understand in technical terms what a 'peer' is in bitcoin. A peer is a node, which is a client that validates all transactions and blocks in the blockchain. It is this understanding which forces people to respect the resource requirements of nodes, because any reduction in nodes is a reduction in peers. Any increase in resources requirements must be carefully planned and implemented to ensure the security of the network is maintained.

dpkp 9y ago
This seems incorrect. Isn't a node a process on the network that is mining blocks? It does not seem as if a process that simply reads blocks but does not add any hashrate is participating in the network as I understand it.
- stale2002 9y ago
  This is a hotly debated point. I don't think there are any Satoshi quotes that definitely prove what he intended. But there are some quotes of him talking about data centers and the like. The miners vs nodes vs blocksize/scaling debate just wasn't a thing that anyone was thinking about back then.
- justrobert 9y ago
  A node is just a computer that has the whole blockchain. A standard node will almost never produce a single new block. For that, you need custom asic or luck.
- psyc 9y ago
  Nodes can mine, but they don't have to. They participate in validation, which is distinct from mining.
  - dpkp 9y ago
    That seems inconsistent with the paper. For example, from the conclusion: [Nodes] vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism. I do see the separate section on "Simplified Payment Verification", which does seem distinct from mining. Is that what you are referring to?
    - psyc 9y ago
      I'm referring to how the network is actually implemented. The paper is simply vague on the point.
    - dmm 9y ago
      It's very possible he never imagined* a non-mining full-node(as opposed to an spv node). Regardless full-nodes do enforce the consensus rules and reject invalid blocks. * Another phenomenon he didn't imagine was mining pools, which drastically changed the dynamics of mining.
      - dpkp 9y ago
        *Or she. But that's an interesting point re mining pools. Do you have any links to more information about how they drastically changed dynamics?
        jacksproit 9y ago
        *Or they.
      - warboat 9y ago
        mining pools only group hashpower for the purpose of reducing variance and distributing payment. The mining pool does not dictate what the individual miners in the pool can and cannot do. Individual miners can enter and leave mining pools at will. Mining pools change nothing. Non-mining nodes enforce nothing without proof-of-work.
        Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        And yet here we are seeing off four hostile fork attempts in a couple of years (xt/classic/bu/2x). You'd think after four failures in a row, all failing for exactly the same reason, that the people supporting the failures might learn why they fail. But here we are. Explaining why they fail, after they fail, and yet the supporters of the failures are trying to assert that even though they fail, they understand the system. Without even acknowledging that they have failed, let alone why.
  - dmm 9y ago
    You're right, a non-mining node still enforces the consensus rules. A non-mining node will reject any invalid blocks. Even if I controlled 100% of the mining hashrate I could not create a block that did something to violate the consensus rules. For example I couldn't mine a block that resulted in >21MM bitcoins.
    - sobani 9y ago
      You can definitely 'mine' such a block. The problem is getting the rest of the network to accept it. In fact, with Bitcoin Cash you can basically see what happens if blocks are created according to different rules. However I image if suddenl 100% of the miners decided 42MM bitcoins is better (because 42), something a lot of users would be opposed to (printing money), things would become 'interesting'.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  > Isn't a node a process on the network that is mining blocks? No. It is only the validation that is important, because it is only the validation that ensures that consensus is maintained between nodes, and valid transactions can be included in the blockchain. Nodes even define the algorithm that miners must use in order to produce valid blocks. There has been a hard education for people over the past year that have carried an incomplete understanding of how bitcoin works, and that has been encouraged by centralized companies that are attempting to wrest control of bitcoin away from its nodes. There have been four wildly unsuccessful hostile fork attempts (XT/Classic/BU/2x), and two in which alt-coins were forked (BCH/BGLD) from bitcoin in order to attempt to convince people to use their alt-coin instead of bitcoin. All of these attempts have been failures, because all of these attempts have not understood how bitcoin works, and the fact that nodes are the peers in bitcoin, and they police and enforce consensus.
  - dpkp 9y ago
    I guess I just have never found support for that in the nakamoto paper. You obviously have strong feelings about it, and I'm not trying to provoke an argument. I just still don't understand where in the paper there is any discussion of non-mining nodes. The only place I can find mention of nodes that are not working on constructing new blocks on the network is in Section 8 re: the simplified verification protocol.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      Perhaps it should give you pause with that belief structure when you realize the word 'mining' doesn't even exist in the bitcoin whitepaper. It is only the nodes that exist, because it is only the nodes that validate, and everything that didn't have anything to do with validation is rightly considered a secondary concern of the protocol. So there are nodes, which are peers. And there are people who need nodes for performing bitcoin transactions, and some of those people are miners, and some of them are just making good-ol-fashioned transactions. The correct term is "I am a peer, and I use this node for my transactions, which create blocks". Or "I am a peer, and I use this node for my transactions, which are payments." Download it for yourself and see. https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/
- riprowan 9y ago
  > Isn't a node a process on the network that is mining blocks? Yes, see section 5 of the white paper referenced in OP. It is quite clear what "peer" means in the context of Bitcoin. Others are mistaken here.
CryptoPunk 9y ago
This is incorrect. The 'peer' in 'peer-to-peer electronic cash' is a reference to a counterparty to a transaction. It's "peer-to-peer" because there is no "trusted third party" (a term used in the white paper) acting as an intermediary. Satoshi extensively detailed the ability of participants in the Bitcoin network to use light clients, that don't fully validate the blockchain, and predicted that the vast majority of people would use such clients in the future. The vision of Bitcoin Core that you're promoting totally contradicts the one promulgated in the Bitcoin white paper and further descriptions provided by Satoshi. The idea of the vast majority of people not being able to hold their own private keys, because transaction fees are so high, contradicts several core features of Bitcoin that are described in the white paper.
- Frogolocalypse 9y ago
  > because there is no "trusted third party" If you don't run your own node, you need to trust a 3rd party to transact with the blockchain, because you require someone elses node in order to record a bitcoin transaction. So you are, by definition, not a peer, because you are not equal to a person who runs a node, because you need to trust a 3rd party.
  - CryptoPunk 9y ago
    I just explained the evidence that this is not how Satoshi defined "trusted third party". He extensively promoted the use of light clients, and didn't find any contradiction between this and peer-to-peer electronic cash. I don't understand why you ignore this point, which I've conveyed to you in our previous discussion as well. You also continue to sidestep the fact that Bitcoin Core's vision of letting transaction fees rise to astronomical levels with growing usage of the blockchain is going to mean the vast majority of the world population will have to trust other parties to hold their private keys, which is a much greater reliance on trusted third parties than polling random nodes for SPV proofs, as required when running a light client, which still let's the user control their own private key.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
simpsond 9y ago
Your posts about bitcoin prompted me to deep dive with it. I read the white paper a few times. I setup a node on one of my machines. I wrote some code to fetch a block template from my local nodes RPC service and generate some block generations for mining. I ran some basic cpu mining, etc. I feel like I have a better grasp of it all now. One thing I am struggling with is the incentive for miners once there are no more Coinbase/generation transactions. If the POW is maximally hard (energy intensive) then transaction fees will need to be high for miners to have ROI. If transactions fees are that high, then consumers are going to spend a lot to initiate transactions. This doesn’t seem like a win win to me. How is it going to play out once all coins are mined? Reduce the complexity of POW for post Coinbase txns? The security of the network is still there due to the amount of computation in the block chain up until the mine is dry. What are your thoughts on this?
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  > "How is it going to play out once all coins are mined?" Difficulty, transaction costs, competition with other coins (and off-chain networks/sidechains), and the market price of bitcoin will all hopefully & probably settle around an equilibrium that is sufficient to incentivize enough miners necessary to maintain the security of the network.
- thinkmassive 9y ago
  We’ve already witnessed transaction fees exceed the reward (see block 494045). I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s happened again during the past 3 days when getting into the next block cost 500 sat/byte. The solution for BTC appears to be off-chain scaling, such as Lightning Network. The end of mining rewards is beyond our lifetimes, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if there’s a successful hard fork to continue the final 1 Satoshi reward indefinitely.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    That's my favorite part of Bitcoin, the fact that it can evolve over time. If it's found that deflationary really won't work, and it's genuinely hurting the usage and adoption of the currency, and it's in the current users of bitcoin's best interest to do so, it can be turned into an inflationary asset. Flaws can and are fixed in it, and because those changes can't be pushed through by some appointed authority without overwhelming majority from all involved parties, you don't need to worry about this ability to drastically change being unfairly pushed upon you.
riprowan 9y ago
> A peer is a node, which is a client that validates all transactions and blocks in the blockchain. According to the white paper, Section 5, a peer is a miner. That has not changed, regardless of attempts to redefine the paper. To be a peer, you MUST contribute proof of work. Running a non mining node gives you a copy of the blockchain data that you can trust is valid according to the rules you used to validate it. It does not make you a peer.
- statoshi 9y ago
  False; peers validate and propagate information across the network. You don't have to be creating blocks in order to validate and propagate them.
  - lawn 9y ago
    He just said nodes validate the information. It just doesn't matter to anyone else other than the node operator and users of that node. The only occassion the propagation is valid if you're transferring a transaction from another full node to a miner (or helping to do so). As long as there is any path to do so more nodes do not matter. All miners are already connected together using high speed channels.
warboat 9y ago
a peer in bitcoin is a mining node. a non-mining node just listens and does nothing. If anything, it adds impedance and reduces security.
- statoshi 9y ago
  False. For more details: https://medium.com/@lopp/securing-your-financial-sovereignty-3af6fe834603 https://medium.com/@lopp/securing-your-financial-sovereignty...
  - warboat 9y ago
    Oh sure, just back your argument with reference to a page that runs the Core Propaganda. Please evaluate the whitepaper, section 5 and really understand how bitcoin functions.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      Please learn how bitcoin works, by learning what a node does, and how nodes police and enforce consensus.
tlrobinson 9y ago
FYI this comment was linked to in /r/btc, which explains the "miners are peers" brigading: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7il8rr/the_original_satoshi_whitepaper_is_trending_on/dqzpf9k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7il8rr/the_original_sa...
sayurichick 9y ago
this contradicts what satoshi himself said. I recommend people take a look at the satoshi emails https://pastebin.com/Na5FwkQ4 https://pastebin.com/Na5FwkQ4 https://pastebin.com/cKZPC1rF https://pastebin.com/cKZPC1rF https://pastebin.com/wA9Jn100 https://pastebin.com/wA9Jn100 https://pastebin.com/JF3USKFT https://pastebin.com/JF3USKFT https://pastebin.com/syrmi3ET https://pastebin.com/syrmi3ET Confirmed to be real by Mike Hearn Himself https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6t2ci2/never_before_seen_mike_hearn_satoshi_nakamoto/dliizv6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6t2ci2/never_before_se... take what this user is saying with a huge grain of salt as I see he has an agenda based on his other comments in this thread. Read the e-mails and decide for yourself.

dpkp 9y ago

This seems incorrect. Isn't a node a process on the network that is mining blocks? It does not seem as if a process that simply reads blocks but does not add any hashrate is participating in the network as I understand it.

stale2002 9y ago
This is a hotly debated point. I don't think there are any Satoshi quotes that definitely prove what he intended. But there are some quotes of him talking about data centers and the like. The miners vs nodes vs blocksize/scaling debate just wasn't a thing that anyone was thinking about back then.
justrobert 9y ago
A node is just a computer that has the whole blockchain. A standard node will almost never produce a single new block. For that, you need custom asic or luck.
psyc 9y ago
Nodes can mine, but they don't have to. They participate in validation, which is distinct from mining.
- dpkp 9y ago
  That seems inconsistent with the paper. For example, from the conclusion: [Nodes] vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism. I do see the separate section on "Simplified Payment Verification", which does seem distinct from mining. Is that what you are referring to?
  - psyc 9y ago
    I'm referring to how the network is actually implemented. The paper is simply vague on the point.
  - dmm 9y ago
    It's very possible he never imagined* a non-mining full-node(as opposed to an spv node). Regardless full-nodes do enforce the consensus rules and reject invalid blocks. * Another phenomenon he didn't imagine was mining pools, which drastically changed the dynamics of mining.
    - dpkp 9y ago
      *Or she. But that's an interesting point re mining pools. Do you have any links to more information about how they drastically changed dynamics?
      - jacksproit 9y ago
        *Or they.
    - warboat 9y ago
      mining pools only group hashpower for the purpose of reducing variance and distributing payment. The mining pool does not dictate what the individual miners in the pool can and cannot do. Individual miners can enter and leave mining pools at will. Mining pools change nothing. Non-mining nodes enforce nothing without proof-of-work.
      - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
        And yet here we are seeing off four hostile fork attempts in a couple of years (xt/classic/bu/2x). You'd think after four failures in a row, all failing for exactly the same reason, that the people supporting the failures might learn why they fail. But here we are. Explaining why they fail, after they fail, and yet the supporters of the failures are trying to assert that even though they fail, they understand the system. Without even acknowledging that they have failed, let alone why.
- dmm 9y ago
  You're right, a non-mining node still enforces the consensus rules. A non-mining node will reject any invalid blocks. Even if I controlled 100% of the mining hashrate I could not create a block that did something to violate the consensus rules. For example I couldn't mine a block that resulted in >21MM bitcoins.
  - sobani 9y ago
    You can definitely 'mine' such a block. The problem is getting the rest of the network to accept it. In fact, with Bitcoin Cash you can basically see what happens if blocks are created according to different rules. However I image if suddenl 100% of the miners decided 42MM bitcoins is better (because 42), something a lot of users would be opposed to (printing money), things would become 'interesting'.
Frogolocalypse 9y ago
> Isn't a node a process on the network that is mining blocks? No. It is only the validation that is important, because it is only the validation that ensures that consensus is maintained between nodes, and valid transactions can be included in the blockchain. Nodes even define the algorithm that miners must use in order to produce valid blocks. There has been a hard education for people over the past year that have carried an incomplete understanding of how bitcoin works, and that has been encouraged by centralized companies that are attempting to wrest control of bitcoin away from its nodes. There have been four wildly unsuccessful hostile fork attempts (XT/Classic/BU/2x), and two in which alt-coins were forked (BCH/BGLD) from bitcoin in order to attempt to convince people to use their alt-coin instead of bitcoin. All of these attempts have been failures, because all of these attempts have not understood how bitcoin works, and the fact that nodes are the peers in bitcoin, and they police and enforce consensus.
- dpkp 9y ago
  I guess I just have never found support for that in the nakamoto paper. You obviously have strong feelings about it, and I'm not trying to provoke an argument. I just still don't understand where in the paper there is any discussion of non-mining nodes. The only place I can find mention of nodes that are not working on constructing new blocks on the network is in Section 8 re: the simplified verification protocol.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Perhaps it should give you pause with that belief structure when you realize the word 'mining' doesn't even exist in the bitcoin whitepaper. It is only the nodes that exist, because it is only the nodes that validate, and everything that didn't have anything to do with validation is rightly considered a secondary concern of the protocol. So there are nodes, which are peers. And there are people who need nodes for performing bitcoin transactions, and some of those people are miners, and some of them are just making good-ol-fashioned transactions. The correct term is "I am a peer, and I use this node for my transactions, which create blocks". Or "I am a peer, and I use this node for my transactions, which are payments." Download it for yourself and see. https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/
riprowan 9y ago
> Isn't a node a process on the network that is mining blocks? Yes, see section 5 of the white paper referenced in OP. It is quite clear what "peer" means in the context of Bitcoin. Others are mistaken here.

CryptoPunk 9y ago

This is incorrect. The 'peer' in 'peer-to-peer electronic cash' is a reference to a counterparty to a transaction. It's "peer-to-peer" because there is no "trusted third party" (a term used in the white paper) acting as an intermediary. Satoshi extensively detailed the ability of participants in the Bitcoin network to use light clients, that don't fully validate the blockchain, and predicted that the vast majority of people would use such clients in the future. The vision of Bitcoin Core that you're promoting totally contradicts the one promulgated in the Bitcoin white paper and further descriptions provided by Satoshi. The idea of the vast majority of people not being able to hold their own private keys, because transaction fees are so high, contradicts several core features of Bitcoin that are described in the white paper.

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
> because there is no "trusted third party" If you don't run your own node, you need to trust a 3rd party to transact with the blockchain, because you require someone elses node in order to record a bitcoin transaction. So you are, by definition, not a peer, because you are not equal to a person who runs a node, because you need to trust a 3rd party.
- CryptoPunk 9y ago
  I just explained the evidence that this is not how Satoshi defined "trusted third party". He extensively promoted the use of light clients, and didn't find any contradiction between this and peer-to-peer electronic cash. I don't understand why you ignore this point, which I've conveyed to you in our previous discussion as well. You also continue to sidestep the fact that Bitcoin Core's vision of letting transaction fees rise to astronomical levels with growing usage of the blockchain is going to mean the vast majority of the world population will have to trust other parties to hold their private keys, which is a much greater reliance on trusted third parties than polling random nodes for SPV proofs, as required when running a light client, which still let's the user control their own private key.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago

simpsond 9y ago

Your posts about bitcoin prompted me to deep dive with it. I read the white paper a few times. I setup a node on one of my machines. I wrote some code to fetch a block template from my local nodes RPC service and generate some block generations for mining. I ran some basic cpu mining, etc. I feel like I have a better grasp of it all now. One thing I am struggling with is the incentive for miners once there are no more Coinbase/generation transactions. If the POW is maximally hard (energy intensive) then transaction fees will need to be high for miners to have ROI. If transactions fees are that high, then consumers are going to spend a lot to initiate transactions. This doesn’t seem like a win win to me. How is it going to play out once all coins are mined? Reduce the complexity of POW for post Coinbase txns? The security of the network is still there due to the amount of computation in the block chain up until the mine is dry. What are your thoughts on this?

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
> "How is it going to play out once all coins are mined?" Difficulty, transaction costs, competition with other coins (and off-chain networks/sidechains), and the market price of bitcoin will all hopefully & probably settle around an equilibrium that is sufficient to incentivize enough miners necessary to maintain the security of the network.
thinkmassive 9y ago
We’ve already witnessed transaction fees exceed the reward (see block 494045). I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s happened again during the past 3 days when getting into the next block cost 500 sat/byte. The solution for BTC appears to be off-chain scaling, such as Lightning Network. The end of mining rewards is beyond our lifetimes, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if there’s a successful hard fork to continue the final 1 Satoshi reward indefinitely.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  That's my favorite part of Bitcoin, the fact that it can evolve over time. If it's found that deflationary really won't work, and it's genuinely hurting the usage and adoption of the currency, and it's in the current users of bitcoin's best interest to do so, it can be turned into an inflationary asset. Flaws can and are fixed in it, and because those changes can't be pushed through by some appointed authority without overwhelming majority from all involved parties, you don't need to worry about this ability to drastically change being unfairly pushed upon you.

riprowan 9y ago

> A peer is a node, which is a client that validates all transactions and blocks in the blockchain. According to the white paper, Section 5, a peer is a miner. That has not changed, regardless of attempts to redefine the paper. To be a peer, you MUST contribute proof of work. Running a non mining node gives you a copy of the blockchain data that you can trust is valid according to the rules you used to validate it. It does not make you a peer.

statoshi 9y ago
False; peers validate and propagate information across the network. You don't have to be creating blocks in order to validate and propagate them.
- lawn 9y ago
  He just said nodes validate the information. It just doesn't matter to anyone else other than the node operator and users of that node. The only occassion the propagation is valid if you're transferring a transaction from another full node to a miner (or helping to do so). As long as there is any path to do so more nodes do not matter. All miners are already connected together using high speed channels.

warboat 9y ago

a peer in bitcoin is a mining node. a non-mining node just listens and does nothing. If anything, it adds impedance and reduces security.

statoshi 9y ago
False. For more details: https://medium.com/@lopp/securing-your-financial-sovereignty-3af6fe834603 https://medium.com/@lopp/securing-your-financial-sovereignty...
- warboat 9y ago
  Oh sure, just back your argument with reference to a page that runs the Core Propaganda. Please evaluate the whitepaper, section 5 and really understand how bitcoin functions.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Please learn how bitcoin works, by learning what a node does, and how nodes police and enforce consensus.

tlrobinson 9y ago

FYI this comment was linked to in /r/btc, which explains the "miners are peers" brigading: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7il8rr/the_original_satoshi_whitepaper_is_trending_on/dqzpf9k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7il8rr/the_original_sa...

sayurichick 9y ago

this contradicts what satoshi himself said. I recommend people take a look at the satoshi emails https://pastebin.com/Na5FwkQ4 https://pastebin.com/Na5FwkQ4 https://pastebin.com/cKZPC1rF https://pastebin.com/cKZPC1rF https://pastebin.com/wA9Jn100 https://pastebin.com/wA9Jn100 https://pastebin.com/JF3USKFT https://pastebin.com/JF3USKFT https://pastebin.com/syrmi3ET https://pastebin.com/syrmi3ET Confirmed to be real by Mike Hearn Himself https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6t2ci2/never_before_seen_mike_hearn_satoshi_nakamoto/dliizv6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6t2ci2/never_before_se... take what this user is saying with a huge grain of salt as I see he has an agenda based on his other comments in this thread. Read the e-mails and decide for yourself.