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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 f

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.
        keymone 5y ago
        i in fact do insist on them not understanding the mechanism. trying to force incoherent terminology is just the largest red flag signifying that lack of understanding. snide remarks is my bad, i definitely lost my patience, it's hard to argue with somebody saying that sky is pink because they've changed what pink means.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        Red flag, sure. But when they say things like "The peer-reviewed paper to which I linked, which I am not proposing as a replacement for Bitcoin, explains (to those who are willing to read it) why the block being chosen before or after the leader election does not matter when it comes to the security and consensus properties of Bitcoin." it seems very clear to me that they do understand the mechanism, despite that red flag. I think your analogy to flat earth was better. Because sure, treating the earth as flat isn't correct, but it's often a perfectly good approximation, and arguing about whether a big field is flat or not is a giant waste of time. Don't completely dismiss someone because they use those terms. "Leader" or not, it's basically equivalent. And the process of letting miners input yes/no values for whether they support a proposal into their block, averaged over thousands of blocks, gives you the same result as "voting". So talk about whether those results are useful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
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

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.
      - keymone 5y ago
        i in fact do insist on them not understanding the mechanism. trying to force incoherent terminology is just the largest red flag signifying that lack of understanding. snide remarks is my bad, i definitely lost my patience, it's hard to argue with somebody saying that sky is pink because they've changed what pink means.
        Dylan16807 5y ago
        Red flag, sure. But when they say things like "The peer-reviewed paper to which I linked, which I am not proposing as a replacement for Bitcoin, explains (to those who are willing to read it) why the block being chosen before or after the leader election does not matter when it comes to the security and consensus properties of Bitcoin." it seems very clear to me that they do understand the mechanism, despite that red flag. I think your analogy to flat earth was better. Because sure, treating the earth as flat isn't correct, but it's often a perfectly good approximation, and arguing about whether a big field is flat or not is a giant waste of time. Don't completely dismiss someone because they use those terms. "Leader" or not, it's basically equivalent. And the process of letting miners input yes/no values for whether they support a proposal into their block, averaged over thousands of blocks, gives you the same result as "voting". So talk about whether those results are useful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

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.