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The Merge

ethereum.org

411–414 of 414 posts

Re: The Merge

#411
post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it can be profitable to crash the price even though you're holding the asset at the same time. in that case, the less you hold the more profitable it is. I'm not sure I get your point...

The point is that your assumption > If you own a large amount of a currency, you want to ensure that the currency in question is trusted, or otherwise that currency would end up losing its value. is fundamentally flawed. You can own a large amount of a currency and profit from it losing its value.

OK, now I see what you mean, yes I agree with you then. But I think you are trying to generalise my comment - it wasn't an absolute statement, I was just trying to tell parent that in my opinion they misunderstood the grandparent's point.

Re: The Merge

#412
post #402
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As opposed to miners which are… not heavily centralized?

Miners don't rule the Bitcoin network. Every single Bitcoin client has a vote, in that the most followed branch of the bitcoin network is the one that matters. The more clients, the more resistant the network is. Your Bitcoin client has the same voting power as the guy running an ASIC farm. That's the point of proof-of-work.

You got it completely backwards: in Bitcoin the only thing that matters is the computing power of miners, not the number of nodes. That is precisely the problem that Satoshi Nakamoto intended to solve, preventing Sybil attacks [0]. In few words, you don't want the consensus of the network to change just because you spawn more nodes voting the way you want to, they need to expend a resource that cannot be duplicated, in Bitcoin's case computing power/electricity.

The Bitcoin Whitepaper also explains this in Section 4, "Proof of Work" [4]:

> The proof-of-work also solves the problem of determining representation in majority decision making. If the majority were based on one-IP-address-one-vote, it could be subverted by anyone able to allocate many IPs. Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it. If a majority of CPU power is controlled by honest nodes, the honest chain will grow the fastest and outpace any competing chains.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

[1] https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/#proof-of-work

Edit: changed typo, "and the number of nodes" should have been "not the number of nodes".

Re: The Merge

#413
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miners don't rule the Bitcoin network. Every single Bitcoin client has a vote, in that the most followed branch of the bitcoin network is the one that matters. The more clients, the more resistant the network is. Your Bitcoin client has the same voting power as the guy running an ASIC farm. That's the point of proof-of-work.

You got it completely backwards: in Bitcoin the only thing that matters is the computing power of miners, not the number of nodes. That is precisely the problem that Satoshi Nakamoto intended to solve, preventing Sybil attacks [0]. In few words, you don't want the consensus of the network to change just because you spawn more nodes voting the way you want to, they need to expend a resource that cannot be duplicated,…

> Bitcoin the only thing that matters is the computing power of miners

> That is precisely the problem that Satoshi Nakamoto intended to solve, preventing Sybil attacks

"The problem" Satoshi wanted to solve is building a trustless ledger that can store real value, even if the only value is the ability to publish data uncensored and universally. Sybil attacks are an aspect of that and proof of work had already existed before Bitcoin to solve, you guessed it, Sybil attacks.

You're view of Satoshi's intentions are therefore myopic.

This is demonstrated when you conflate your quoted passage about chain reorganization with power over the network as a whole. Satoshi was sensitive to block size, so were and are all Bitcoiners. There is a reason the block size was not massive out of the gate, and in the main forks remains small: Satoshi understood that node participation was important and should not be gatekept.

In a way, that's all irrelevant. We do not need the authority of the founder to draw our own conclusions about Bitcoin or blockchain - in fact one intention of Satoshi which is plainly obvious is this fact.

Volunteer nodes absolutely contribute to decentralization of resources and power. Mining nodes have an interest in maximizing profits, while volunteer nodes have an interest in keeping the network tied to its ideology, which means not significantly changing, which is valuable for a store of value. It certainly is not a scalable model (neither is Ethereum, it just makes other trade offs), but the nodes do in fact keep check on each other.

Re: The Merge

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us know when you figure out that "some other reason." The primary defense against 51% attacks is waiting the amount of block confirmations that make the cost of attacking the block your transaction is in more than the possible rewards. If we all have to worry about people randomly burning money to 51% attack blockchains then the whole premise is bunko anyways. Here's a hint, randomly attacking the network in a wa…

I don't need to identify a reason. I simply need to point out that BSV, BTG, and ETC have all suffered 51% attacks already. So someone out there is motivated to perform these attacks.

And if you knew the reason you would understand why, though possible, they are not common on Bitcoin Core.
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