rich1.0npub1jkdfcglr59lwnhek94l393g0hhhaj0v5yzz3n5s3p0r9u0576sgs7373ckhttps://nostr.ae/npub1jkdfcglr59lwnhek94l393g0hhhaj0v5yzz3n5s3p0r9u0576sgs7373cknjumphttps://nostr.ae📅 Original date posted:2014-04-27 📝 Original message:On 27/04/14 11:42, Christophe Biocca wrote:> This seems like splitting hairs, no? A block isn't a guarantee (it can > get orphaned). And as a user of bitcoin (as opposed to a miner), this > change cannot affect any payment you ever receive. Disagree. Maybe we just have a fundamental disagreement about what Bitcoin is? :) Bitcoin is this perfect /trustless/ mathematical machine, built - most unfortunately - upon a foundation of mushy humans. We depend specifically upon these three assumptions: 1. >50% of hashpower will not cooperate to rewrite history 2. the economic majority will not cooperate to reinterpret history 3. enough people believe in the illusion of artificial scarcity to give it real value Given that the above hold, from there up the system operates completely trustlessly, with predictable security parameters. (Of course a block isn't a guarantee of anything, but I know the probability that you can cause a re-org from depth N with X% hashpower, which allows me to reason about security.) Now, some people on this thread might point to the above 3 points and say "that isn't really a trustless system, it's a democratic system." And then advocate that we can do without assumption 2, replacing it with: 2. the economic majority will not cooperate to reinterpret history against any good guys, only against bad guys; "please trust their good judgement." That moves us away from a pure trustless system built upon a small democratic foundation (as something of a necessary evil in an imperfect world where humans run our computers and use our system) and toward a "democratic system". You don't have to agree, but I hope you can understand the point I'm making :-) It's a fundamental shift in the nature of the system, and to some people a violation of the social contract. Definitely not splitting hairs. I feel I've now consumed rather more bytes of everyone's inboxes than I ought to have with this topic. I appreciate you and Mike taking the time to reply to a newbie/lurker. -Gareth -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 555 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20140427/421557d1/attachment.sig>