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I guess you'd better hope you're never on the wrong side, politically, from a majority of ETH miners. "This guy who we all hate now owns $100MM in ETH? Now he

by SamBam 5y ago

I guess you'd better hope you're never on the wrong side, politically, from a majority of ETH miners. "This guy who we all hate now owns $100MM in ETH? Now he doesn't."

rattlesnakedave 5y ago
Yeah, miners and node operators. That’s how this has always worked.
ludamad 5y ago
Yeah they can always coordinate, but these things are never so clean. They'd also need to be convinced it wouldn't undermine the network faith in a way against their interests, beyond being a well hated figure. And that no fork would emerge reinstating the person (as their deed is far from hidden)
erulabs 5y ago
This is also how nation states work. And it takes probably far fewer people, less time, and can be done in secrecy when the US wants to enact a sanction and freeze accounts than it does to hard-fork ethereum.
jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
Miners can't just take money out of your account without your consent. That would require a change to how the protocol works. At best a cabal of miners could censor you by refusing to include your transactions into blocks, and refusing to mine on top of any block that includes your transaction. But only while they maintain a majority of hashing power.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  > Miners can't just take money out of your account without your consent. That would require a change to how the protocol works. But that's exactly what we were talking about: hard forks that change how the protocol works. The parent comment that you responded to is correct in that theoretically a majority of miners could fork Ethereum to steal $100M from a single person.
  - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
    The majority of nodes/users (not miners) would need to switch to the miners' new fork. Otherwise if the miners mined a block that doesn't follow the current protocol, it would be an invalid block and rejected by the network.
    - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
      > The majority of nodes/users (not miners) would need to switch to the miners' new fork. Otherwise if the miners mined a block that doesn't follow the current protocol, it would be an invalid block and rejected by the network. In the event of a contested hard fork both chains would continue to live, because some miners would mine chain A, and some miners would mine chain B. Yes, miners who mine the old chain would not accept blocks from miners who mine the new chain, you are correct about that, but the same statement holds true in reverse: miners who run the new chain would not accept blocks from miners who mine the old chain. If a majority of miners decided to steal $100M by forking the chain, they absolutely could do that, even if the majority of users would support the old chain. In that event the tokens (which used to be worth $100M) would now exist on both chains, and it would be up to the market to decide how much the tokens are worth on each chain.
      - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
        You don't need a majority of miners to create a hard fork. I still maintain it is up to the majority of nodes/users to determine if it is valid. If there has been a hard fork then by definition the network has rejected an invalid block(s). It is up to nodes/users to determine which network is "the" coin and thus mining valid blocks.
        baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        > You don't need a majority of miners to create a hard fork. I still maintain it is up to the majority of nodes/users to determine if it is valid. If there has been a hard fork then by definition the network has rejected an invalid block(s). It is up to nodes/users to determine which network is "the" coin and thus mining valid blocks. Nope, I was very clear that in this context there is more than one network, so expressions like your "by definition the network has rejected invalid blocks" doesn't make sense. Network A rejects blocks by network B, and network B rejects blocks by network A. There is more than one network. You don't need to look further than Ethereum Classic to see that this can happen in practice. The "minority chain" doesn't just disappear magically.

by SamBam 5y ago

I guess you'd better hope you're never on the wrong side, politically, from a majority of ETH miners. "This guy who we all hate now owns $100MM in ETH? Now he doesn't."

rattlesnakedave 5y ago

Yeah, miners and node operators. That’s how this has always worked.

ludamad 5y ago

Yeah they can always coordinate, but these things are never so clean. They'd also need to be convinced it wouldn't undermine the network faith in a way against their interests, beyond being a well hated figure. And that no fork would emerge reinstating the person (as their deed is far from hidden)

erulabs 5y ago

This is also how nation states work. And it takes probably far fewer people, less time, and can be done in secrecy when the US wants to enact a sanction and freeze accounts than it does to hard-fork ethereum.

jallen_dot_dev 5y ago

Miners can't just take money out of your account without your consent. That would require a change to how the protocol works. At best a cabal of miners could censor you by refusing to include your transactions into blocks, and refusing to mine on top of any block that includes your transaction. But only while they maintain a majority of hashing power.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago
> Miners can't just take money out of your account without your consent. That would require a change to how the protocol works. But that's exactly what we were talking about: hard forks that change how the protocol works. The parent comment that you responded to is correct in that theoretically a majority of miners could fork Ethereum to steal $100M from a single person.
- jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
  The majority of nodes/users (not miners) would need to switch to the miners' new fork. Otherwise if the miners mined a block that doesn't follow the current protocol, it would be an invalid block and rejected by the network.
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    > The majority of nodes/users (not miners) would need to switch to the miners' new fork. Otherwise if the miners mined a block that doesn't follow the current protocol, it would be an invalid block and rejected by the network. In the event of a contested hard fork both chains would continue to live, because some miners would mine chain A, and some miners would mine chain B. Yes, miners who mine the old chain would not accept blocks from miners who mine the new chain, you are correct about that, but the same statement holds true in reverse: miners who run the new chain would not accept blocks from miners who mine the old chain. If a majority of miners decided to steal $100M by forking the chain, they absolutely could do that, even if the majority of users would support the old chain. In that event the tokens (which used to be worth $100M) would now exist on both chains, and it would be up to the market to decide how much the tokens are worth on each chain.
    - jallen_dot_dev 5y ago
      You don't need a majority of miners to create a hard fork. I still maintain it is up to the majority of nodes/users to determine if it is valid. If there has been a hard fork then by definition the network has rejected an invalid block(s). It is up to nodes/users to determine which network is "the" coin and thus mining valid blocks.
      - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
        > You don't need a majority of miners to create a hard fork. I still maintain it is up to the majority of nodes/users to determine if it is valid. If there has been a hard fork then by definition the network has rejected an invalid block(s). It is up to nodes/users to determine which network is "the" coin and thus mining valid blocks. Nope, I was very clear that in this context there is more than one network, so expressions like your "by definition the network has rejected invalid blocks" doesn't make sense. Network A rejects blocks by network B, and network B rejects blocks by network A. There is more than one network. You don't need to look further than Ethereum Classic to see that this can happen in practice. The "minority chain" doesn't just disappear magically.