0 sats \ 1 reply \ @BTC_Commons OP 12 Aug 2023 \ parent \ on: Since only economic nodes matter, doesn't this sound a little bit like POS? bitcoin
Well, I am trying to understand if the below scenario, described on that article, makes sense. It sounds valid to me, i.e. only economic nodes have power to enforce consensus.
Dystopia: let’s think it through
Imagine a worst-case scenario, where there are only two big economic nodes, some miners and a hundred idle nodes. What happens if there is business- or miner-driven desire to change the consensus rules, for example to allow bigger blocks? Let’s take a look:
  1. Some big miners decide that it’s time for bigger blocks, because more transactions mean more fees in total.
  2. The two big economic nodes think that this is a good idea, as cheap transactions are good for business.
  3. The idle nodes don’t like that and threaten to not accept bigger blocks.
  4. But the miners don’t care. All they want is to sell their newly minted bitcoins, which will be accepted by the economic nodes. So they start producing bigger blocks.
  5. The economic nodes accept these blocks, bringing them into the Bitcoin ecosystem and giving them value.
  6. The hundred idle nodes reject these blocks and the Bitcoin network silently undergoes a hardfork. Unfortunately for the idle nodes, their side of the fork does not have any economic activity, so nobody even notices.
  7. As the owners of the idle nodes also use the two economic nodes to send and receive Bitcoin, they are forced to accept the new consensus rules.
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @premitive1 12 Aug 2023
There is no such thing as an economic node. I don't know where this delusion comes from.
All nodes are the same size, the size of the block chain. Someone owning more Bitcoin does not make their node bigger.
All full nodes enforce consensus. No one can force a node to accept a change in rules, as changes require software updates. Nodes who do not change their software to adopt the new rules will reject blocks made with new rules. And this causes a fork
I write again, read the white paper, and read up on the history of Bitcoin Cash. Idle nodes, economic nodes, these are made up nonsense. Just because it makes sense to you doesn't mean you aren't wrong and perpetuating a misunderstanding of how Bitcoin works.
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