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> 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 consolid

> 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?
    - yanmaani 5y ago
      It's the economic majority - an exchange or a merchant has a lot of economic influence, some guy with a VPS almost zero.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        Isn't this just proof-of-stake with more steps? And those steps aren't built into the protocol, so they require even more trust.
        gruez 5y ago
        >Isn't this just proof-of-stake with more steps? It's related, yes. The main difference is that rather than your power being determined by how much bitcoins you hold, your power is determined by how much influence/power/contribution you have in the overall bitcoin ecososytem. A major merchant might not hold that many coins compared to the average whale, but probably holds more influence. >so they require even more trust. I wouldn't say it requires more trust. It's not like bitcoin holds an election every few years for determining which party holds the economic majority.
        dane-pgp 5y ago
        > I wouldn't say it requires more trust. It's not like bitcoin holds an election every few years for determining which party holds the economic majority. But it's at least possible, from the protocol, to determine the balance of each address, and for each address to vote (with a message on the blockchain) for or against a given proposal. Compare that to trying to determine which address "probably holds more influence", which seems like something you'd have to trust someone else's (off-chain) judgement on.
        yanmaani 5y ago
        Yes, but that doesn't work if what you're voting on is consensus-critical (e.g. the ordering of blocks). If you're talking about other rule changes, sure. In practice, I think most would consider Bitcoin's sluggishness of rule changes to be a feature, not a bug. Because the process is not entirely deterministic, it is much harder for a bad actor to corrupt.

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?
  - yanmaani 5y ago
    It's the economic majority - an exchange or a merchant has a lot of economic influence, some guy with a VPS almost zero.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      Isn't this just proof-of-stake with more steps? And those steps aren't built into the protocol, so they require even more trust.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >Isn't this just proof-of-stake with more steps? It's related, yes. The main difference is that rather than your power being determined by how much bitcoins you hold, your power is determined by how much influence/power/contribution you have in the overall bitcoin ecososytem. A major merchant might not hold that many coins compared to the average whale, but probably holds more influence. >so they require even more trust. I wouldn't say it requires more trust. It's not like bitcoin holds an election every few years for determining which party holds the economic majority.
        dane-pgp 5y ago
        > I wouldn't say it requires more trust. It's not like bitcoin holds an election every few years for determining which party holds the economic majority. But it's at least possible, from the protocol, to determine the balance of each address, and for each address to vote (with a message on the blockchain) for or against a given proposal. Compare that to trying to determine which address "probably holds more influence", which seems like something you'd have to trust someone else's (off-chain) judgement on.
        yanmaani 5y ago
        Yes, but that doesn't work if what you're voting on is consensus-critical (e.g. the ordering of blocks). If you're talking about other rule changes, sure. In practice, I think most would consider Bitcoin's sluggishness of rule changes to be a feature, not a bug. Because the process is not entirely deterministic, it is much harder for a bad actor to corrupt.