4 ms·

Nah, it would take the coordinated effort of just a few big mining pools to change the rules of Bitcoin completely. Or another fork happens and the "primary" f

Nah, it would take the coordinated effort of just a few big mining pools to change the rules of Bitcoin completely. Or another fork happens and the "primary" fork decides to have different rules. Not quite "ever ever ever". Totally up to human whims.

sparkie 8y ago
Mining pools can't change the rules of Bitcoin. They can only change the rules in their own clients, which would have them producing blocks which are not accepted by the larger Bitcoin network. Changes to Bitcoin rules require consensus by all the participants (people running and using nodes). The only things a majority of miners can do are attempt double-spends of their own transactions, or temporary denial-of-service by excluding transactions from the chain of blocks they mine. Any other changes will fork them off the network, and then they'd be minting coins with no economy to sell them into.
- damon_c 8y ago
  Well isn't the problem at hand that the 51% of the "larger" bitcoin network can actually, at this moment be controlled by only 4 pools? https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools
  - sparkie 8y ago
    Ideally we would be better with increased decentralization. It could be a problem if they colluded and attempted to censor or double spend. Chances are they won't, because it will probably negatively affect their own bottom lines (reduced confidence in Bitcoin leading to reduced value of their own assets). Secondly, any blatant attack on the network could be countered by the participants forking in a change in the algorithm used to do the proof-of-work. This would bankrupt the attacker because they would be sat on enormous amounts of now useless mining hardware.
- etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
  I'm not sure about my statement but I'm not sure about yours either. Before Bitcoin was created I would have said such a system was probably impossible... I guess my point is that the world is a complicated place to try to understand.
h1d 8y ago
How do you think Bitcoin Cash was built? Major miners wanted block size increase but most of the rest of the world thought segwit was enough at that time and miners had to fork it off without taking over the original. Miners can't go against the will of the users, especially if exchanges aren't going to like their changes as they won't be able to cover their bills.

sparkie 8y ago

Mining pools can't change the rules of Bitcoin. They can only change the rules in their own clients, which would have them producing blocks which are not accepted by the larger Bitcoin network. Changes to Bitcoin rules require consensus by all the participants (people running and using nodes). The only things a majority of miners can do are attempt double-spends of their own transactions, or temporary denial-of-service by excluding transactions from the chain of blocks they mine. Any other changes will fork them off the network, and then they'd be minting coins with no economy to sell them into.

damon_c 8y ago
Well isn't the problem at hand that the 51% of the "larger" bitcoin network can actually, at this moment be controlled by only 4 pools? https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools
- sparkie 8y ago
  Ideally we would be better with increased decentralization. It could be a problem if they colluded and attempted to censor or double spend. Chances are they won't, because it will probably negatively affect their own bottom lines (reduced confidence in Bitcoin leading to reduced value of their own assets). Secondly, any blatant attack on the network could be countered by the participants forking in a change in the algorithm used to do the proof-of-work. This would bankrupt the attacker because they would be sat on enormous amounts of now useless mining hardware.
etaioinshrdlu 8y ago
I'm not sure about my statement but I'm not sure about yours either. Before Bitcoin was created I would have said such a system was probably impossible... I guess my point is that the world is a complicated place to try to understand.

h1d 8y ago

How do you think Bitcoin Cash was built? Major miners wanted block size increase but most of the rest of the world thought segwit was enough at that time and miners had to fork it off without taking over the original. Miners can't go against the will of the users, especially if exchanges aren't going to like their changes as they won't be able to cover their bills.