4 ms·

> [In Bitcoin] the power is moved from a monarch, a single point of failure, but it’s moved to nowhere. For example, who owns Bitcoin? Nobody! What? Ownership/

> [In Bitcoin] the power is moved from a monarch, a single point of failure, but it’s moved to nowhere. For example, who owns Bitcoin? Nobody! What? Ownership/power is distributed among all the miners, albeit a number much bigger than 7. It still exists and can (and will eventually) be consolidated by a majority cartel. The article is correct about ENS, but implying that N=1000000 power shares (approx # of Bitcoin mining individuals, likely trending down as mining margins decrease) is different than N=7 power shares (ENS sigs) in the realm of security guarantees is just smoke and mirrors. Neither system abolishes power nor is immune to manipulation.

duskwuff 5y ago
> Ownership, and power, is distributed among all the miners, albeit a number much bigger than 7. Not much bigger. Over the last month, 97% of blocks were mined by the top 10 mining pools. https://btc.com/stats/pool https://btc.com/stats/pool
yanmaani 5y ago
Even if you control 70% of hashrate, that doesn't mean you can just do anything. You still have to abide by the rules. You can't approve invalid transactions or directly steal people's money, only re-order past transactions. This is in contrast to ENS, where the equivalent of a 51% attack allows you to do just that - steal names, change registration parameters, basically anything. Furthermore, in PoW coins, 51% attacks are fleeting by nature - they usually only run for a short time. Compare this to ENS, where if you get 51% control once, you can give yourself 100% control for perpetuity, because you can execute arbitrary code on the smart contract.
- jorvi 5y ago
  > Compare this to ENS, where if you get 51% control once, you can give yourself 100% control for perpetuity, because you can execute arbitrary code on the smart contract. Maybe I don't understand crypto well enough, but since everything is in a public ledger, can't 'everyone' just decide to go on a hard fork right before the moment the bad actor took control, thus de facto invalidating all transactions after that point? If that is true, in a way the power over a crypto resides in wherever (rather, whatever fork) the majority of users believes it resides.
  - yanmaani 5y ago
    Yes (actually, it would only have to be a soft fork), but that would require serious coordination. Ethereum has done it before, so it's not literally impossible, but it would require the whole of the Ethereum network to do it, not just the ENS people. If it did happen, it would raise serious questions about the nature of the decentralization of Ethereum, and how suitable it is as a deterministic platform to build stuff on. Then again, it already happened and nobody seemed to really care. If Ethereum is willing to fork over X, what's to say they're not willing to fork over Y? And the answer to this question is probably to do with "the big guys with the money at the top like X, but not Y". So much for decentralization.
  - mdoms 5y ago
    Yes, in fact this is exactly what happened when a hacker found a bug in a DAO that allowed them to steal tens of millions of dollars. The outcome flies completely in the face of the idea of decentralization, censorship resistance and "law as code". But don't let that get in the way of the ponzi scheme. https://levelup.gitconnected.com/how-ethereum-reversed-a-50-million-dao-attack-cee528d8c030 https://levelup.gitconnected.com/how-ethereum-reversed-a-50-...
acegopher 5y ago
Additionally to the points raised by other replies, Ownership/power currently is in Binance and Coinbase, because very few people transact directly in Bitcoin, and those that do realize gas fees are so high so Binance and Coinbase provide convenience ledgers that they control. This is exactly the same process as if you were trading stocks on the stock exchanges. Everything eventually becomes centralized, to solve the problems like transacting and punishing bad actors that develop in the bazaar.
- jonathan-adly 5y ago
  I am sorry my man, but you sound like an old boss who was ranting about not being to print the electronic mail. Bitcoin doesn't have gas fees. That's Ether.
nateabele 5y ago
> What? Ownership, and power, is distributed among all the miners, albeit a number much bigger than 7. It still exists and can (and will eventually) be consolidated by a majority cartel. That's not quite true. To the extent that the Bitcoin network is 'owned', it is owned by the full node operators, of which there are many more than there are miners. See the SegWit2x vote[0], for example, wherein many large exchanges and miners representing < 83% of the hashing power of the network voted to increase the block size, but it failed for lack of adoption among node operators. Notably, anyone can operate a full node. There is no specialized hardware required. [0] https://dcgco.medium.com/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consensus-2017-133521fe9a77 https://dcgco.medium.com/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consen...
- pphysch 5y ago
  >Notably, anyone can operate a full node. There is no specialized hardware required. Great! The 51% cartel summons their crony Beff Jezos who runs a billion minimal & globally-distributed (compromised) BTC full nodes with his enormous compute resources. How does this affect the integrity of the network? How does my new full node connect to the network? Are there hardcoded relay/coordinator IPs that it tries to connect to? Who controls those?
  - gruez 5y ago
    >How does this affect the integrity of the network? it doesn't. operating a node isn't a vote. >How does my new full node connect to the network there are boostrap nodes that the client initially connects to, but afterwards it connects to nodes based on previously seen nodes and nodes it has heard from other nodes.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      The prior comment implied that full nodes had some power in ensuring the integrity of the network even in the event of a 51% attack. You are suggesting the opposite. Which is true?
      - 5y ago

duskwuff 5y ago

> Ownership, and power, is distributed among all the miners, albeit a number much bigger than 7. Not much bigger. Over the last month, 97% of blocks were mined by the top 10 mining pools. https://btc.com/stats/pool https://btc.com/stats/pool

yanmaani 5y ago

Even if you control 70% of hashrate, that doesn't mean you can just do anything. You still have to abide by the rules. You can't approve invalid transactions or directly steal people's money, only re-order past transactions. This is in contrast to ENS, where the equivalent of a 51% attack allows you to do just that - steal names, change registration parameters, basically anything. Furthermore, in PoW coins, 51% attacks are fleeting by nature - they usually only run for a short time. Compare this to ENS, where if you get 51% control once, you can give yourself 100% control for perpetuity, because you can execute arbitrary code on the smart contract.

jorvi 5y ago
> Compare this to ENS, where if you get 51% control once, you can give yourself 100% control for perpetuity, because you can execute arbitrary code on the smart contract. Maybe I don't understand crypto well enough, but since everything is in a public ledger, can't 'everyone' just decide to go on a hard fork right before the moment the bad actor took control, thus de facto invalidating all transactions after that point? If that is true, in a way the power over a crypto resides in wherever (rather, whatever fork) the majority of users believes it resides.
- yanmaani 5y ago
  Yes (actually, it would only have to be a soft fork), but that would require serious coordination. Ethereum has done it before, so it's not literally impossible, but it would require the whole of the Ethereum network to do it, not just the ENS people. If it did happen, it would raise serious questions about the nature of the decentralization of Ethereum, and how suitable it is as a deterministic platform to build stuff on. Then again, it already happened and nobody seemed to really care. If Ethereum is willing to fork over X, what's to say they're not willing to fork over Y? And the answer to this question is probably to do with "the big guys with the money at the top like X, but not Y". So much for decentralization.
- mdoms 5y ago
  Yes, in fact this is exactly what happened when a hacker found a bug in a DAO that allowed them to steal tens of millions of dollars. The outcome flies completely in the face of the idea of decentralization, censorship resistance and "law as code". But don't let that get in the way of the ponzi scheme. https://levelup.gitconnected.com/how-ethereum-reversed-a-50-million-dao-attack-cee528d8c030 https://levelup.gitconnected.com/how-ethereum-reversed-a-50-...

acegopher 5y ago

Additionally to the points raised by other replies, Ownership/power currently is in Binance and Coinbase, because very few people transact directly in Bitcoin, and those that do realize gas fees are so high so Binance and Coinbase provide convenience ledgers that they control. This is exactly the same process as if you were trading stocks on the stock exchanges. Everything eventually becomes centralized, to solve the problems like transacting and punishing bad actors that develop in the bazaar.

jonathan-adly 5y ago
I am sorry my man, but you sound like an old boss who was ranting about not being to print the electronic mail. Bitcoin doesn't have gas fees. That's Ether.

nateabele 5y ago

> What? Ownership, and power, is distributed among all the miners, albeit a number much bigger than 7. It still exists and can (and will eventually) be consolidated by a majority cartel. That's not quite true. To the extent that the Bitcoin network is 'owned', it is owned by the full node operators, of which there are many more than there are miners. See the SegWit2x vote[0], for example, wherein many large exchanges and miners representing < 83% of the hashing power of the network voted to increase the block size, but it failed for lack of adoption among node operators. Notably, anyone can operate a full node. There is no specialized hardware required. [0] https://dcgco.medium.com/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consensus-2017-133521fe9a77 https://dcgco.medium.com/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consen...

pphysch 5y ago
>Notably, anyone can operate a full node. There is no specialized hardware required. Great! The 51% cartel summons their crony Beff Jezos who runs a billion minimal & globally-distributed (compromised) BTC full nodes with his enormous compute resources. How does this affect the integrity of the network? How does my new full node connect to the network? Are there hardcoded relay/coordinator IPs that it tries to connect to? Who controls those?
- gruez 5y ago
  >How does this affect the integrity of the network? it doesn't. operating a node isn't a vote. >How does my new full node connect to the network there are boostrap nodes that the client initially connects to, but afterwards it connects to nodes based on previously seen nodes and nodes it has heard from other nodes.
  - pphysch 5y ago
    The prior comment implied that full nodes had some power in ensuring the integrity of the network even in the event of a 51% attack. You are suggesting the opposite. Which is true?
    - 5y ago