Miners attemptig to change anything against the broad consensus would find themselves using their expensive mining hardware to mine worthless blocks accepted by no-one.
People would only follow mining power that represents their interests. They don't care about individual miners. If a majority of miners were not representing the interests of the users, the users would find a way to push those miners out and will carry on as before.
Miners can only generate revenue by mining a coin that people want to use. They want to use it because it is secured by a distribution of miners, such that no collaboration of miners can attack it. If the premise is that a group of miners can attack it, because that group of miners want to push their rules, then the concept is broken.
Total hash power is not the deciding factor. What matters is that honest participants have more hash power than dishonest ones. The honest ones can adapt far more easily than large miners, who have too much invested to handle something like a proof-of-work adjustment.
> If a majority of miners were not representing the interests of the users, the users would find a way to push those miners out and will carry on as before.
And how would the users do that? Do you imagine all the users getting together and taking a vote?
The vast majority of people will follow the mining power because the vast majority of people are not miners. This idea of a "popular revolt" against miners is fantasy.
> Miners can only generate revenue by mining a coin that people want to use. They want to use it because it is secured by a distribution of miners, such that no collaboration of miners can attack it.
Do you really think the miners would "attack" the chain? Isn't this just playing with words? The realistic scenario is that the miners will enforce their own rules. Whether this is an "attack" or not is pure sophistry.
> Total hash power is not the deciding factor. What matters is that honest participants have more hash power than dishonest ones.
This is a meaningless distinction in a world where it's very easy for malicious actors to quickly accumulate hashing power. BTC's success is a function of its hashing power, not the other way around.
And how would miners convince most exchanges and services accepting bitcoin to use their own Bitcoin implementation instead of Bitcoin Core? Because Bitcoin Core and compatible implementations would just discard invalid blocks and ban everyone who broadcasts them. And after segwit2x fiasco I don't think miners will even try.
> And how would the users do that? Do you imagine all the users getting together and taking a vote?
Yes.
It's more likely people will follow the rules in the software client they prefer. Therefore, the developers of those clients have a significant voice in determining where people will chose to transact. If mining power decreases, this means it's easier for every person to mine on their own hardware, and incentivizes the redistribution of mining. This may happen in cycles.
There will always be a culture of users who will only transact on a currency which cannot be inflated and does not incur demurrage fees. Given gresham's law, this chain will always retain value better (good money) verses whatever bad rules the dishonest miners are attempting. People will flock to the good money.
> Do you really think the miners would "attack" the chain? Isn't this just playing with words? The realistic scenario is that the miners will enforce their own rules. Whether this is an "attack" or not is pure sophistry.
They already are doing. Every fork of Bitcoin is an attempt to attack the network, because it is driven by the miner's ego in that he knows what is best. Miners can do what they want with their own client, but if they want to mine a valuable coin which has highly liquid markets to sell into, then they would be naive to go off and try to change the rules alone.
The egomaniacs all left Bitcoin and are now competing for who gets to decide the rules of BCash. This mentality is not compatible with Bitcoin. To understand Bitcoin, you need to drop the ego. Your opinion means nothing in Bitcoin. The opinion of the majority of participants means everything. Nobody gets to decide. The market decides organically.
> BTC's success is a function of its hashing power, not the other way around.
I think you have it backwards. The mining economy emerged out of Bitcoin having value. The incentive to profit is what drives miners and nothing else. Meanwhile, what drives users is the fundamental principles that nobody can decide the rules. If a small group of miners can decide the rules, the users would not be interested, the coin would lose value, and the miners would no longer profit.
BTC would be successful if it were still running on the CPUs of hackers. It was already successful the moment it went from $0.00 to $0.01. It meant that it had value, which provided the mining incentive. Everything else is inevitable.
It’s not the store of value that will keep a chain alive but rather a stream of transactions sufficient to pay enough miners to survive repeated attacks. All it takes to kill a chain is more resources with incentives to kill it than incentives to mine it.
PS: Hashing power also assumes the owners of that hashing power control their network. A tiny group of hackers with limited capital could take over a coins network.
I guess this is what crypto people tell themselves to resolve the cognitive dissonance. I don't think this assumption applies to reality. We've observed in the historical record several instances of mining majorities unilaterally forking chains and/or even reversing transactions. The result of this has not been any revolt. Given that this is fundamentally the way the system is designed and that it has happened in the past, it seems logical to say it will happen again.
