{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub17w8rw3wtcr03zdsdjhmcj37w0g6l79gsspleltsznexdktv0qw0qd3nc05","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub17w8rw3wtcr03zdsdjhmcj37w0g6l79gsspleltsznexdktv0qw0qd3nc05","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2017-04-07\n📝 Original message:Praxeology Guy,\n\nWhy would the actual end users of Bitcoin (the long term and short term\n\u003e owners of bitcoins) who run fully verifying nodes want to change Bitcoin\n\u003e policy in order to make their money more vulnerable to 51% attack?\n\u003e\n\nCertainly, if only one company made use of the extra nonce space, they\nwould have an advantage. But think of it this way, if some newer ASIC\noptimization comes up, would you rather have a non-ASICBoosted hash rate to\ndefend with or an ASICBoosted hash rate? Certainly, the latter, being\nhigher will secure the Bitcoin network better against newer optimizations.\n\n\n\u003e If anything, we would be making policy changes to prevent the use of\n\u003e patented PoW algorithms instead of making changes to enable them.\n\u003e\n\nIs that patented in any jurisdiction, all jurisdictions or only certain\njurisdictions? Would a patent granted for SHA256 in Swaziland be sufficient\nfor Bitcoin to change the Proof of Work algorithm? This is a very\nsubjective judgment based on quasi-legality and I don't think that's a road\nthat Bitcoin should go down.\n\nCertainly, it would be better if the patent for ASICBoost were\nopen-sourced, but the legality of such-and-such thing in such-and-such\njurisdiction should not affect Bitcoin policy as that in itself introduces\nsignificant risk to the network. A sufficiently authoritarian government\ncan then grant a monopoly for various algorithms in their country and\nnegatively impact Bitcoin.\n\nIndeed, there are already many individuals that disobey the laws of their\ncountry to help the Bitcoin network run. I would expect the same with\npatents. Should there come a time when a patent or some other legal\nmaneuvering gives one network actor a large advantage to the detriment of\nthe network, I believe that Bitcoin will handle that in the specific case.\n\nIn the meantime, I believe such changes increase the odds of Segwit\nactually being accepted and activated as per BIP-141.\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170407/fd84d18b/attachment-0001.html\u003e"}