{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2014-04-24\n📝 Original message:\u003e\n\u003e And that's achieved through proof of work, not through \"miner's honesty\".\n\u003e\n\nYou can't disentangle the two. Proof of work just makes a block chain hard\nto tamper with. What it contains is arbitrary. Honest miners build a block\nchain that's intended to stop double spending. Dishonest miners don't.\nThey're both engaging in proof of work, to different ends.\n\n\n\u003e Whatever, let's keep calling stupid miners \"honest miners\"\n\u003e\n\nNo, let's not. Your definition of \"smart miner\" is one I'd called \"stupid\nminer\" (or possibly \"short bitcoin miner\"). They are miners who would\nreduce the value of their coins, by making their own system less useful.\nThat's not smart, that's simply short termism taken to an extreme, sort of\nlike a business owner who puts so much pressure on his employees they all\nquit. He might have gained a bit more profit in the short term, but only at\nthe cost of destroying his business that would have given lower but\nsustainable returns over the long term.\n\n\n\u003e This persistent argument from authority is annoying.\n\u003e\n\nPeter always says this too, but it's again an incorrect position. This is\nnot an argument from authority.\n\nWhy are we here? We are here because we were brought together by shared\ngoals.\n\nWhat are those goals? They were defined at the start of the project by the\ncreator of the project.\n\nWhy do we issue 21 million coins and not 42? Because 21 million is the goal\neveryone signed up for.\n\nWhy did everyone sign up for 21 million coins? Because that's what Satoshi\npicked.\n\n\nIf someone asked us to change from 21 to 42 million coins, we'd probably\nsay no and the justification would be that this is the number we started\nwith. That's not \"argument from authority\", it's just recognition that the\nparameters of a shared project has to be defined somehow, and for Bitcoin\nit was defined at the start.\n\nNow the argument Gregory makes is that changing the block chain algorithm\nin this way would be a violation of the social contract. This is a generic\noutcome to be legitimately worried about - we don't want to change what\nBitcoin is in ways that would dismay its users. That just leads to a fork.\n\nI argue that this isn't such a change because it makes nothing possible\nthat was previously impossible, it just makes it less disruptive, and the\n*actual* shared goal of Bitcoin is not \"preserve the block chain algorithm\nexactly as found in v0.1\" but rather \"stop double spending\".\n\nYou are arguing elsewhere that Bitcoin should allow double spending for a\nfee. That *would* be a clear violation of the social contract!\n\n\n\u003e That's not what I'm saying. Miners that don't mine on top of the\n\u003e longest chain are dishonest by my own definition as well.\n\u003e\n\nRight, but I don't accept this definition of honesty. That's not a\ndefinition any man on the street would use:\n\n    \"If you pay for something with forged bank notes and walk out\nimmediately, you are honest. But if you pay for something with forged bank\nnotes and hang around for longer than 10 minutes, you are dishonest\"\n\nThat would sound silly to anyone because what's so special about 10\nminutes? It's the act of passing counterfeit money and stealing from the\nmerchant that's the dishonest act, how long it takes is irrelevant.\n\nIn Bitcoin, the dishonest act by the user is signing for the same output\ntwice (ignoring special protocols here), and the dishonest act by the miner\nis deviating from normal behaviour for a fee to try and trick the recipient\ninto believing they have been paid. The exact details are something\ncomputer scientists care about, but the average Bitcoin user would not.\n\n\n\u003e And I also disagree that all the people who think this way are\n\u003e \"hopelessly confused\". We may be confused, but I think there's always\n\u003e hope for removing confusions provided that there's will to learn,\n\u003e which I think it is at least my case.\n\u003e\n\nIndeed and that's why we have these threads! These are fundamental issues\nthat simply must be debated.\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20140424/77b3e511/attachment.html\u003e"}