{"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:2015-08-15\n📝 Original message:\u003e\n\u003e I use bitcoin heavily (not from time to time) but I don't mine - can I\n\u003e vote? The way I see it I cannot, and I am not saying it is a bad thing,\n\u003e but I missed the argument explaining why users don't matter and only\n\u003e miners do.\n\u003e\n\nIt is a reasonable question. Let me try and explain why it's done this way.\n\n*In theory*, you do have a vote. If a majority of miners were to club\ntogether and decide to change the protocol against the wishes of the wider\nuser base, then we'd get a fight between the hashpower majority and the\nso-called economic majority. And because bitcoins only have value because\nyou can buy things with them, in theory, the wishes of the economic\nmajority should always win.\n\n*In practice*, the code we have today doesn't let us measure what the\neconomic majority wants. It's not even really clear how that term is\ndefined. Intuitively we can understand that people who are trading real\ngoods and services for bitcoin have the final say, because they can always\njust refuse to accept BTC. But defining it precisely enough to put in an\nalgorithm is tricky.\n\nThen you have the question of how to express the vote? For miners, it's\neasy: they express their vote by switching to a different full node\nimplementation that gives them different blocks.\n\nFor users, it'd mean switching to a different wallet. If their wallet is\nfully validating and the decision is implemented via hard fork, this is\nsufficient. If the wallet is *not* fully validating and cannot detect the\nfork point by itself, then it'd need help in the form of checkpointing.\nSome months ago I pointed out this possibility and a whole bunch of people\nfreaked out - then bitcoin.org decided to start censoring any wallet that\nsaid it'd ignore what miners wanted.\n\nSo if you want a user vote, that's an issue that'd have to be tackled: the\npeople who admin the main communication channels Bitcoin users have vowed\nto censor any program that doesn't slavishly follow 51%+ hash power. That\nattempt to control the conversation is certainly not libertarian or\ndemocratic in nature, but there you go.\n\nWe can also imagine voting via proof-of-stake. This might be useful as a\nform of opinion poll, but wallet developers would have to actually add\nsupport for such a protocol to their apps, and then we're back to the same\nissue as with mining pools. Plus, of course, static wealth does not equal\neconomic importance.\n\nLuckily the wallet market is a decentralisation success story. There are\nwallets everywhere these days. Man+dog make their own wallet, it seems. So\nit's not silly to think a coin voting protocol could one day happen.\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150815/feb8df3a/attachment.html\u003e"}