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The miners can choose to fork fork away from those changes. The core team is merely starting the change and the miners are supporting and carrying out those cha

The miners can choose to fork fork away from those changes. The core team is merely starting the change and the miners are supporting and carrying out those changes by continuing to mine the chain with those updates.

amasad 8y ago
Why would the miners agree to adding the "difficulty bomb" which is against their incentives? It's more likely they didn't have a say in it.
- nostrademons 8y ago
  Because otherwise they end up mining the chain that nobody's using. You can own a lot of ETC and it doesn't do you much good if you can't sell them because nobody's interested in using or trading them.
  - amasad 8y ago
    However in Bitcoin the opposite happened -- the classic chain is the most valuable one despite being the least "scalable" or whatever pet feature the forks has. Also despite all the bitcoin celebrities being for the fork. That's behaving more like a decentralized technology that no single entity controls.
    - darawk 8y ago
      What's happening is people are voting with their feet. Anyone can make any fork they like, and then everyone on the network can choose which one they prefer to use. That is what decentralization means. And both Ethereum and Bitcoin have that property.
    - iSnow 8y ago
      A lot of BTC celebs didn't follow BCH at all. And essentially, L2 scaling as well as SegWit was shoved down our throats by the BTC Core devs. I don't see how that was very decentralized. OTOH, I am not strongly against it, as decentralization doesn't mean every single aspect has to be free of centralized decision making (starting with the name, logo or the code). In the end, users decide if they want to use it or not.
- chowells 8y ago
  If the miners ever have a serious disagreement with the core developers, they can always remove the difficulty bomb in a fork. The purpose of the difficulty bomb is to force some update, not to force the core developers' preferred update.
  - make3 8y ago
    the idea that forks are easy enough for the power to be distributed seems ludacris. you need to fork a large ratio of the users in order for a fork to do anything at all, otherwise the new coin has no value. This a gives massive inertia advantage to the original project
    - ascendantlogic 8y ago
      Yes because humans are still the end users here and humans congregate into groups. Network effect is a human trait. In order for any network to be useful it needs a majority of people agreeing to use it, and to that end it ends up with inertia. There is no utopia, there's just "more decentralized" or "less decentralized"
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      Thanks, I feel like I’m the crazy one when people talk about “just fork it” in response to the fact that developers of any specific coin could crash it at any point. That’s not how it works in reality. Bitcoin could be entirely ruined by a couple dozen people around the world in different ways at any time. Eth and other coins even more so. The idea of who “gets trusted” in these coins is just nuts. I’m not anti-coin... but man, I’m feel like I’m far enough from it to see a reality that many want to ignore.
      - iSnow 8y ago
        I think your misunderstanding is believing users are locked into a crypto system if its implementation is controlled by a small group. They are not - if the developers abuse their power, users are free to migrate elsewhere and take their funds with them (in fiat value or as a different coin). That's different to e.g. PayPal where your funds can be locked and there's nothing you can do. Decentralized control over name, logo, features or code of a crypto coin is extremely hard to impossible, if only because there aren't too many people alive that can discuss core crypto features with any meaningful knowledge (I know I can't). Some coins do have governance features, but none of those have profited very much from that.
- dahdum 8y ago
  The miners aren’t looked at the same way in Ethereum because you don’t have the large concentration of mining to a handful of companies like Bitcoin. Also because from the very first whitepaper it’s been known Ethereum would move to PoS.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
exo762 8y ago
Wrong. Economic majority decides which fork will live and which fork will die. Miners have no say. If they are unhappy, they may attempt to attack fork abiding to new rules. Whey have three venues of attack. 1. Producing blocks that abide to old rules will do nothing - client software will just reject them as incorrect. Fork choice rule (e.g. longest chain or most work done) applies when choosing between two valid blocks, not between valid block and invalid block. 2. Attempts to do a famous 51% attack is crazy expensive and have low impact. Why low impact? Because small events that are similar to rewriting history 51% attack does happen all the time. They are called block reorgs and all the software which uses blockchain as a data store have to handle it properly. Also, such attack will be perceived by users as attack on them, solidifying community around opposition to miners. 3. Targeting difficulty adjustment algorithm by mining on a fork and leaving it at the beginning of adjustment period. Lets imagine 80% of miners leaving. For Bitcoin it would create a situation when adjustment period would last 8 weeks instead of 2. Blocks would be produced every 40 minutes at average instead of 10. Ethereum is immune to this type of attack since difficulty adjustment is done every block, not every 2016 blocks.
- iSnow 8y ago
  There's additionally 4. Targeting transaction throughput via spam/dust attacks where malicious miners introduce empty blocks or transactions with very small sums to clog up the network/drive up tx fees. To my knowledge, this has been tried against BTC, ETH, NEO, and BCH, where at least the dust attacks against BTC were done to try to force a big-block agenda.
- hanniabu 8y ago
  All of the things you listed are in the miners control. Of course this requires economic means, but just having economic right is not enough, you still need to contribute to mining.
  - exo762 8y ago
    > All of the things you listed are in the miners control. May I ask you to elaborate? My point is - miners' power over the network is extremely limited. They are just a paid work force, working on a very small margin. They have almost no say where network will go in terms of evolution.

amasad 8y ago

Why would the miners agree to adding the "difficulty bomb" which is against their incentives? It's more likely they didn't have a say in it.

nostrademons 8y ago
Because otherwise they end up mining the chain that nobody's using. You can own a lot of ETC and it doesn't do you much good if you can't sell them because nobody's interested in using or trading them.
- amasad 8y ago
  However in Bitcoin the opposite happened -- the classic chain is the most valuable one despite being the least "scalable" or whatever pet feature the forks has. Also despite all the bitcoin celebrities being for the fork. That's behaving more like a decentralized technology that no single entity controls.
  - darawk 8y ago
    What's happening is people are voting with their feet. Anyone can make any fork they like, and then everyone on the network can choose which one they prefer to use. That is what decentralization means. And both Ethereum and Bitcoin have that property.
  - iSnow 8y ago
    A lot of BTC celebs didn't follow BCH at all. And essentially, L2 scaling as well as SegWit was shoved down our throats by the BTC Core devs. I don't see how that was very decentralized. OTOH, I am not strongly against it, as decentralization doesn't mean every single aspect has to be free of centralized decision making (starting with the name, logo or the code). In the end, users decide if they want to use it or not.
chowells 8y ago
If the miners ever have a serious disagreement with the core developers, they can always remove the difficulty bomb in a fork. The purpose of the difficulty bomb is to force some update, not to force the core developers' preferred update.
- make3 8y ago
  the idea that forks are easy enough for the power to be distributed seems ludacris. you need to fork a large ratio of the users in order for a fork to do anything at all, otherwise the new coin has no value. This a gives massive inertia advantage to the original project
  - ascendantlogic 8y ago
    Yes because humans are still the end users here and humans congregate into groups. Network effect is a human trait. In order for any network to be useful it needs a majority of people agreeing to use it, and to that end it ends up with inertia. There is no utopia, there's just "more decentralized" or "less decentralized"
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Thanks, I feel like I’m the crazy one when people talk about “just fork it” in response to the fact that developers of any specific coin could crash it at any point. That’s not how it works in reality. Bitcoin could be entirely ruined by a couple dozen people around the world in different ways at any time. Eth and other coins even more so. The idea of who “gets trusted” in these coins is just nuts. I’m not anti-coin... but man, I’m feel like I’m far enough from it to see a reality that many want to ignore.
    - iSnow 8y ago
      I think your misunderstanding is believing users are locked into a crypto system if its implementation is controlled by a small group. They are not - if the developers abuse their power, users are free to migrate elsewhere and take their funds with them (in fiat value or as a different coin). That's different to e.g. PayPal where your funds can be locked and there's nothing you can do. Decentralized control over name, logo, features or code of a crypto coin is extremely hard to impossible, if only because there aren't too many people alive that can discuss core crypto features with any meaningful knowledge (I know I can't). Some coins do have governance features, but none of those have profited very much from that.
dahdum 8y ago
The miners aren’t looked at the same way in Ethereum because you don’t have the large concentration of mining to a handful of companies like Bitcoin. Also because from the very first whitepaper it’s been known Ethereum would move to PoS.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

exo762 8y ago

Wrong. Economic majority decides which fork will live and which fork will die. Miners have no say. If they are unhappy, they may attempt to attack fork abiding to new rules. Whey have three venues of attack. 1. Producing blocks that abide to old rules will do nothing - client software will just reject them as incorrect. Fork choice rule (e.g. longest chain or most work done) applies when choosing between two valid blocks, not between valid block and invalid block. 2. Attempts to do a famous 51% attack is crazy expensive and have low impact. Why low impact? Because small events that are similar to rewriting history 51% attack does happen all the time. They are called block reorgs and all the software which uses blockchain as a data store have to handle it properly. Also, such attack will be perceived by users as attack on them, solidifying community around opposition to miners. 3. Targeting difficulty adjustment algorithm by mining on a fork and leaving it at the beginning of adjustment period. Lets imagine 80% of miners leaving. For Bitcoin it would create a situation when adjustment period would last 8 weeks instead of 2. Blocks would be produced every 40 minutes at average instead of 10. Ethereum is immune to this type of attack since difficulty adjustment is done every block, not every 2016 blocks.

iSnow 8y ago
There's additionally 4. Targeting transaction throughput via spam/dust attacks where malicious miners introduce empty blocks or transactions with very small sums to clog up the network/drive up tx fees. To my knowledge, this has been tried against BTC, ETH, NEO, and BCH, where at least the dust attacks against BTC were done to try to force a big-block agenda.
hanniabu 8y ago
All of the things you listed are in the miners control. Of course this requires economic means, but just having economic right is not enough, you still need to contribute to mining.
- exo762 8y ago
  > All of the things you listed are in the miners control. May I ask you to elaborate? My point is - miners' power over the network is extremely limited. They are just a paid work force, working on a very small margin. They have almost no say where network will go in terms of evolution.