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then if you're not talking about governance, you're still wrong. there's no voting, only if you insist on re-defining what words mean, at which point i won't be

then if you're not talking about governance, you're still wrong. there's no voting, only if you insist on re-defining what words mean, at which point i won't be interested in continuing the discussion.

Jweb_Guru 5y ago
Of course there is voting. Who do you think decides which transactions go in the chain, and in what order? The miner who wins leader election during this round (in Bitcoin anyway) does, and the rest of the nodes decide whether to accept its vote. The other nodes can also choose to reject this vote for a while, as long as after seeing it they don't accept a chain with less hashpower, and still follow the protocol (more or less). The leader can even opt to put no transactions in the current block, something that has actually happened on many occasions: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/67928/bitcoin-miners-are-mining-fewer-empty-blocks-in-2020-and-it-may-not-all-because-of-chance https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/67928/bitcoin-miners-are.... Obviously, the leader was making a decision here, there were not actually zero transactions to process :)
- keymone 5y ago
  You have zero clue how bitcoin works. No, there is no voting and there is no leader election. Miners construct blocks with transactions and if they manage to find a signature - that block is appended to the chain. If somebody does it faster - they append their block. Please at least get the basics before you start arguing with people.
  - Jweb_Guru 5y ago
    What, exactly, do you think the purpose of computing a SHA prefix is? It's to perform distributed, decentralized leader election. The leader who wins has the privilege of proposing the next block. "If somebody does it faster" is the voting aspect--nodes vote on who they think did it faster, and it is quite possible that they disagree (which can only be resolved by another round of leader election, since the next leader can choose which block to continue from). In the event that there's a longest chain, of course, nodes will go with the longest chain as a tiebreaker scenario. I know far more about Bitcoin than I ever wanted to, believe me. You really should not be making these kinds of ad hominem arguments when you don't understand terms like "consensus" or "leader election."
    - keymone 5y ago
      > The leader who wins has the privilege of proposing the next block. No, the hash that you win with, deterministically points to the only possible block that you can “propose”. Your understanding is completely backwards. You seriously don’t know how bitcoin works.
      - Jweb_Guru 5y ago
        Whether leader election happens at the same time as the block is proposed or not is completely irrelevant to the nature of the problem from a distributed systems perspective. The point is that in each round, the leader both wins the election, and proposes the next block. There are other variants of proof of work in which the leader is allowed to continue generating new blocks for a period of time and (AFAIK) these inherit all of Bitcoin's security properties. Here is my question to you: if the node that wins the election (and the ones that accept its mined block, of course) is not the one voting on which transactions get to go into the chain, rather than be stuck in the mempool somewhere, who is? Do you genuinely think there is no decision being made there?
        keymone 5y ago
        There is no leader election. You trying to insist on this terminology is like trying to explain that the earth is really flat by proposing some very special space metric. All miners “vote” by hashing and one of them wins. They don’t win because somebody voted for them, they win because they happened to find a satisfactory hash. The chance to win that hash faster than other miners is proportional to hashrate. The hash is determined by the block of transactions entirely, so once you win the race, you don’t get to propose anything other than that one predetermined block. Which transactions go into a block is decided before any mining for that transaction happens. Just read, please.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        > Just read, please. You're coming off worse in this argument because you seem to realize on some level they're just using different (possibly wrong) terms in their accurate description of the mechanisms, but then you keep making snide remarks that imply they don't understand the mechanisms.
  - lottin 5y ago
    > No, there is no voting and there is no leader election. Every 10 minutes a miner wins the right to append a block to the chain, by guessing a secret number. The chances of winning are proportional to the amount of money each miner has expended in the process of guessing the secret number. This is equivalent to holding a vote every 10 minutes in order to choose who gets to append the transaction block. Therefore, you're wrong. There's a vote. And if you can't understand this obvious fact about bitcoin, you have no business discussing bitcoin.
    - keymone 5y ago
      Obviously I can’t change your decision to use this terminology, but ponder this: when the leader is elected every 10 minutes, do they get a choice of what block they append to the chain? No they don’t. So was it election of the leader or election of the block? And if it was an election, wouldn’t the result always be the same with largest miner always winning because they have most votes? As I said in a sibling thread, it’s like arguing the earth is flat by proposing a very special metric of space. Feel free of course, I just don’t accept it.
      - lottin 5y ago
        > do they get a choice of what block they append to the chain? No they don’t. Of course, they have a choice. If didn't, miners would serve no purpose. We would just have one block and that would be the block that would be appended. The consensus would be achieved automatically, without any need of guessing secret numbers. > And if it was an election, wouldn’t the result always be the same with largest miner always winning because they have most votes? No, because the miner is elected at random. The crucial point to understand is that their chances of getting elected are proportional to the money they spent. That doesn't mean the largest miner will get elected 100% of the time.
        keymone 5y ago
        > Of course, they have a choice lol, no they don't. a certain hash wins, every ~10 minutes. that hash is calculated from sha(block, nonce), where nonce is the randomized part that miner mutates to get different hashes. once a hash that satisfies the protocol is found - that's it, you can't choose a different block to append to the chain. it is just laughable that i have to explain this level of basics.

Jweb_Guru 5y ago

Of course there is voting. Who do you think decides which transactions go in the chain, and in what order? The miner who wins leader election during this round (in Bitcoin anyway) does, and the rest of the nodes decide whether to accept its vote. The other nodes can also choose to reject this vote for a while, as long as after seeing it they don't accept a chain with less hashpower, and still follow the protocol (more or less). The leader can even opt to put no transactions in the current block, something that has actually happened on many occasions: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/67928/bitcoin-miners-are-mining-fewer-empty-blocks-in-2020-and-it-may-not-all-because-of-chance https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/67928/bitcoin-miners-are.... Obviously, the leader was making a decision here, there were not actually zero transactions to process :)

keymone 5y ago
You have zero clue how bitcoin works. No, there is no voting and there is no leader election. Miners construct blocks with transactions and if they manage to find a signature - that block is appended to the chain. If somebody does it faster - they append their block. Please at least get the basics before you start arguing with people.
- Jweb_Guru 5y ago
  What, exactly, do you think the purpose of computing a SHA prefix is? It's to perform distributed, decentralized leader election. The leader who wins has the privilege of proposing the next block. "If somebody does it faster" is the voting aspect--nodes vote on who they think did it faster, and it is quite possible that they disagree (which can only be resolved by another round of leader election, since the next leader can choose which block to continue from). In the event that there's a longest chain, of course, nodes will go with the longest chain as a tiebreaker scenario. I know far more about Bitcoin than I ever wanted to, believe me. You really should not be making these kinds of ad hominem arguments when you don't understand terms like "consensus" or "leader election."
  - keymone 5y ago
    > The leader who wins has the privilege of proposing the next block. No, the hash that you win with, deterministically points to the only possible block that you can “propose”. Your understanding is completely backwards. You seriously don’t know how bitcoin works.
    - Jweb_Guru 5y ago
      Whether leader election happens at the same time as the block is proposed or not is completely irrelevant to the nature of the problem from a distributed systems perspective. The point is that in each round, the leader both wins the election, and proposes the next block. There are other variants of proof of work in which the leader is allowed to continue generating new blocks for a period of time and (AFAIK) these inherit all of Bitcoin's security properties. Here is my question to you: if the node that wins the election (and the ones that accept its mined block, of course) is not the one voting on which transactions get to go into the chain, rather than be stuck in the mempool somewhere, who is? Do you genuinely think there is no decision being made there?
      - keymone 5y ago
        There is no leader election. You trying to insist on this terminology is like trying to explain that the earth is really flat by proposing some very special space metric. All miners “vote” by hashing and one of them wins. They don’t win because somebody voted for them, they win because they happened to find a satisfactory hash. The chance to win that hash faster than other miners is proportional to hashrate. The hash is determined by the block of transactions entirely, so once you win the race, you don’t get to propose anything other than that one predetermined block. Which transactions go into a block is decided before any mining for that transaction happens. Just read, please.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        > Just read, please. You're coming off worse in this argument because you seem to realize on some level they're just using different (possibly wrong) terms in their accurate description of the mechanisms, but then you keep making snide remarks that imply they don't understand the mechanisms.
- lottin 5y ago
  > No, there is no voting and there is no leader election. Every 10 minutes a miner wins the right to append a block to the chain, by guessing a secret number. The chances of winning are proportional to the amount of money each miner has expended in the process of guessing the secret number. This is equivalent to holding a vote every 10 minutes in order to choose who gets to append the transaction block. Therefore, you're wrong. There's a vote. And if you can't understand this obvious fact about bitcoin, you have no business discussing bitcoin.
  - keymone 5y ago
    Obviously I can’t change your decision to use this terminology, but ponder this: when the leader is elected every 10 minutes, do they get a choice of what block they append to the chain? No they don’t. So was it election of the leader or election of the block? And if it was an election, wouldn’t the result always be the same with largest miner always winning because they have most votes? As I said in a sibling thread, it’s like arguing the earth is flat by proposing a very special metric of space. Feel free of course, I just don’t accept it.
    - lottin 5y ago
      > do they get a choice of what block they append to the chain? No they don’t. Of course, they have a choice. If didn't, miners would serve no purpose. We would just have one block and that would be the block that would be appended. The consensus would be achieved automatically, without any need of guessing secret numbers. > And if it was an election, wouldn’t the result always be the same with largest miner always winning because they have most votes? No, because the miner is elected at random. The crucial point to understand is that their chances of getting elected are proportional to the money they spent. That doesn't mean the largest miner will get elected 100% of the time.
      - keymone 5y ago
        > Of course, they have a choice lol, no they don't. a certain hash wins, every ~10 minutes. that hash is calculated from sha(block, nonce), where nonce is the randomized part that miner mutates to get different hashes. once a hash that satisfies the protocol is found - that's it, you can't choose a different block to append to the chain. it is just laughable that i have to explain this level of basics.