125 sats \ 3 replies \ @moneroshill 5 Sep 2022 \ on: What do miners control vs plebs? bitcoin
he says that miners don't control the protocol (and that we learned in block size wars)
It is blatantly obvious that the miners do not control the protocol. We did not learn that during the block size wars, it was obvious since the beginning that changes like increasing the block size will result in a "hard fork". See these quotes from satoshi: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15139#msg15139
what is controlled by the miners?
What transactions get in a block, and to some extent, the order of those blocks.
what is controlled by the plebs running full nodes?
Fuck all.
what is controlled by people using custodial wallets?
They have a digital "IOU" in the database (table) of someone who actually owns bitcoin (such as a bank, exchange or other custodian).
I'm interested in both theoretical answers and especially empirical examples (from the Bitcoin history).
Theoretical answers? This is not some sort of wishy-washy historical debate. These are simply hard facts about the network that are intrinsic to its design.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBC-nXj3Ng4
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @pillar 5 Sep 2022
They have a digital "IOU" in the database (table) of someone who actually owns bitcoin [...]
Just wanted to add that the last part of this sentence does not need to be true. I would keep it at "They have a digital "IOU". The rest, under no proof-of-reserves, is theoretical and trust based.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @phaedrus OP 5 Sep 2022
How Bitcoin works is not wishy-washy, but that's not what I meant by this question. I'm curious about the implications, ie miners can't change the protocol rules (hard fork) even if they have 100% hash power, but they can censor transactions. Is that an absolute statement? I'm not sure.
If 2017 taught me anything, that its really hard to predict what's gonna happen. Back then I thought the hard fork was inevitable since so many miners were behind it. It's easy to say it was obvious, but it wasn't to me at that time, so I'm curious to learn what else am I missing.
How about KYC? Who can enforce that?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryptocoin 6 Sep 2022
Just like with drug laws. They can make weed illegal to use. But that doesn't mean there will be compliance with the law. With mass non-compliance, those laws either get repealed, or they stop being enforced, or if still enforced, enforcement simply occurs for the most egregious examples, or sporadically and publicized to make an example out of the unlucky target.
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