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It's not about them leaving the network, it's a matter of whether they could be coerced by an authoritarian government to alter transactions.

by JustLurking2022 2y ago

staplers 2y ago
They cannot alter transactions, only deny/duplicate them. Their node would be blacklisted by those working around censorship. Guys cmon its really childish the boring same issues thrown around when theyve been answered and addressed a million times. For a forum of "hackers" most are just hacks.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  I don’t think that answers the question. Denying transactions is certainly an issue. If it is true that the majority of mining power is in China, only a minority is outside of it. What mechanism does Bitcoin have for a minority of nodes to deny the transactions of a majority of nodes?
  - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
    Majority of verification nodes are not in China. No single jurisdiction approaches anywhere close to majority, with #1)USA@21% † †: https://bitnodes.io/ https://bitnodes.io/
    - zorked 2y ago
      The "verification" nodes don't do anything to prevent censorship by miners. The threshold isn't quite 50%+. If one of the 49% nodes mines a block with a would-be censored transaction, the censoring notes have to make an economic decision to try to mine a replacement block and then a second block on top of that to rewrite the chain. At 100% this is easy, but at just 51% it's a costly gamble that will frequently fail at a huge dollar cost. A block costs $200k at current prices. At just over 50% of the network, you are gambling at least two blocks to force a rewrite.
      - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
        >The "verification" nodes don't do anything to prevent censorship by miners. Absolutely agreed; however, eventually some non-hostile miner will randomly generate an acceptable `nonce` [entire point of hashing/energy-usage] which DOES include the censored-by-some transaction. An additional function of the node-verification network (which uses essentially no energy, relative to mining) it to maintain the entirety of `mempool`, which is where unaccepted transaction-attempts live until mined into a block [which is then "accepted/denied" by same node-pool]. tl;dr: as far a probabilities go, unless you own exactly 100% of mining pool, it is impossible to censor a tx from the node's mempool; all you can do with <100% is DELAY transactions.
      - staplers 2y ago
        Finally a comment that is informed thank you
- conradev 2y ago
  They can’t alter them? Can’t they do whatever they want if they collude to execute a 51% attack?
  - staplers 2y ago
    no, txns are cryptographically impossible to alter. The 51% problem is simply a double spend problem.

It's not about them leaving the network, it's a matter of whether they could be coerced by an authoritarian government to alter transactions.

staplers 2y ago

They cannot alter transactions, only deny/duplicate them. Their node would be blacklisted by those working around censorship. Guys cmon its really childish the boring same issues thrown around when theyve been answered and addressed a million times. For a forum of "hackers" most are just hacks.

janalsncm 2y ago
I don’t think that answers the question. Denying transactions is certainly an issue. If it is true that the majority of mining power is in China, only a minority is outside of it. What mechanism does Bitcoin have for a minority of nodes to deny the transactions of a majority of nodes?
- ProllyInfamous 2y ago
  Majority of verification nodes are not in China. No single jurisdiction approaches anywhere close to majority, with #1)USA@21% † †: https://bitnodes.io/ https://bitnodes.io/
  - zorked 2y ago
    The "verification" nodes don't do anything to prevent censorship by miners. The threshold isn't quite 50%+. If one of the 49% nodes mines a block with a would-be censored transaction, the censoring notes have to make an economic decision to try to mine a replacement block and then a second block on top of that to rewrite the chain. At 100% this is easy, but at just 51% it's a costly gamble that will frequently fail at a huge dollar cost. A block costs $200k at current prices. At just over 50% of the network, you are gambling at least two blocks to force a rewrite.
    - ProllyInfamous 2y ago
      >The "verification" nodes don't do anything to prevent censorship by miners. Absolutely agreed; however, eventually some non-hostile miner will randomly generate an acceptable `nonce` [entire point of hashing/energy-usage] which DOES include the censored-by-some transaction. An additional function of the node-verification network (which uses essentially no energy, relative to mining) it to maintain the entirety of `mempool`, which is where unaccepted transaction-attempts live until mined into a block [which is then "accepted/denied" by same node-pool]. tl;dr: as far a probabilities go, unless you own exactly 100% of mining pool, it is impossible to censor a tx from the node's mempool; all you can do with <100% is DELAY transactions.
    - staplers 2y ago
      Finally a comment that is informed thank you
conradev 2y ago
They can’t alter them? Can’t they do whatever they want if they collude to execute a 51% attack?
- staplers 2y ago
  no, txns are cryptographically impossible to alter. The 51% problem is simply a double spend problem.