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"Quasi-consensus": help me understand this conversation with Chris Guida
806 sats \ 8 comments \ @Scoresby 4h bitcoin
Earlier today, Stephan Livera responded to a post by Nick Szabo and said
To which Chris Guida (I thought he was on SN, but I couldn't find his profile) responded
Now, this is something that kinda gets to me. I don't like the claim that the "network never consented to this" and frankly, I think such statements fundamentally misunderstand Bitcoin. If you hadn't consented to the consensus rules of the network, you wouldn't have considered the coins as a payment.
I seldom argue with people on X, but
Chris replied with something that is even more silly than claiming you didn't consent to rules the coins had on the package
I therefore took issue with the term
But apparently I was unclear because
And I attempted to clarify
Yay, we agree! ...oh.
So we go back to the drawing board
But Chris continues to abide in the land of "quasi-consensus"
Further clarification is required
Chris tries a defensive maneuver
I still dislike "quasi-consensus"
At which point Chris seemed to grow tired of our conversation
This is something that has irked me about the spam debate from the very beginning: Bitcoin is a system designed to make sure any consensus valid transaction can get mined even if other people (or powerful actors such as states) try to prevent it.
If relay policy is effective at preventing consensus valid transactions from being mined then we are all very wrong about what Bitcoin does and how well it delivers on its value proposition.
If consensus valid transactions that do things we don't like can be prevented from reaching blocks as long as "enough true Bitcoiners" run "good relay policies," then the whole proof of work, consensus system is kinda pointless.
Relay policies, at best, encourage people to shape their transactions in certain ways, but if people want to shape them some other way (as long as it is still consensus valid) Bitcoin is designed to help them get their transactions into blocks.
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102 sats \ 6 replies \ @Undisciplined 3h
"Zero imagination"? Has he seen your posters?
As an academic, confusing jargon is par for the course. Oftentimes technical terms, like "consensus", also have more colloquial uses. I get what he's trying to do by saying there's been a sort of social agreement around this mempool policy.
I hadn't thought about this in the way you lay it out: i.e. the tension between censorship resistance as a feature and spam resistance as a capacity. I don't think there's a contradiction, though. It is still possible to make a consensus valid transaction, even if filters aren't transmitting most transactions of that type.
I don't see why the network has to make all consensus valid transactions easy or cheap. They just need to be possible. It's fine for the users of the network, acting in aggregate, to make certain types of transactions difficult or expensive.
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42 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby OP 2h
It's fine for the users of the network, acting in aggregate, to make certain types of transactions difficult or expensive.
If this is possible, then Bitcoin really is ineffective at the only thing it does: censorship resistance.
Nodes can be spun up without any real proof of work. I can run several nodes on my computer. If the relay policies enacted by these nodes can effect the difficulty of getting transactions confirmed, what's the point of proof of work?
The reason we don't assign every node a number and then randomly pick a number and have that node sign a new block is that nodes can be easily created. If Bitcoin relied on such a system, whoever had the most AWS servers would control the network. We use proof of work because it prevents such a dynamic.
Relay policies aren't part of consensus and therefore no different than a jurisdiction passing a law saying "don't do these kind of transactions" -- neither should be effective at preventing consensus valid transactions from getting confirmed.
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102 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 2h
You’ve written about how being an economic node is what matters.
How can that be true without implying any shared policies amongst those nodes are impactful?
We still have censorship resistance because there’s no stopping someone from mining their own blocks, right?
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100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby OP 2h
As far as relay policies go, a node's economic weight doesn't matter.
Think about it this way: a node can relay transactions even if it's never been used to verify coins in any particular wallet. A node can refuse to relay transactions even if all it has ever done is download and verify the chain. In fact the "amount" of relaying a node does is the same no matter how it is used. It either relays a transaction or it doesn't.
When people (also including me) talk about economic nodes, they mean that you are using your node to say: "Yes, these coins I accept follow the consensus rules of bitcoin. I will accept them." An economic node with a lot of weight is able to say this about a lot of coins.
The reason relay policy is different is that you and I can have completely different relay policies and still agree on the state of the chain. This is not the case of consensus rules.
A big economic node will still have to accept as valid a block that includes transactions it refused to relay (transactions that it filtered or that it never allowed in it's mempool in the first place).
I suppose the economic node could refuse to accept any block that had transactions it didn't like, but if that was the case, the node would effectively be creating new consensus rules...and it would need to be sure that at least 51% of the hashrate followed the same rules.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 1h
We still have censorship resistance because there’s no stopping someone from mining their own blocks, right?
No, see #1222210:
Sure, it only takes one block, but if everybody else can get into each block while I can only get into one block a year, I would consider myself censored, not very unlike a bank closing my account.
In reality, if you’re really mining your own tx, it’s more like never though.
Bitcoin’s censorship resistance relies on miners acting in their own interest, not that everyone is mining their own tx, that would be ridiculous.
Chris Guida & Co. are suggesting miners to not be selfish, see debate in the linked post.
This is absolutely crazy to me.
You should really watch the debate.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 1h
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that would be ridiculous
Because getting a single confirmation on your tx would be like winning the lottery
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 1h
It's fine for the users of the network, acting in aggregate, to make certain types of transactions difficult or expensive.
Is it also fine if a nation state does that as a “user of the network”? They can spin up as many “users of the network” as they want.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 1h
If relay policy is effective at preventing consensus valid transactions from being mined then we are all very wrong about what Bitcoin does and how well it delivers on its value proposition.
It doesn't matter how we feel about it, what matters is what the truth is. Is relay policy effective at preventing consensus valid transactions or is it not?
Take the spam debate out of it and just focus on that question itself.
It seems to me that the answer is it is effective if enough nodes do it, and you don't have a side channel with a miner.
That suggests to me that the social layer is an important determinant of censorship resistance, over and above what the consensus rules are. Broad censorship resistance can only be maintained if enough nodes agree not to censor.
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