Author: Eric Voskuil 2015-06-02 16:18:56
Published on: 2015-06-02T16:18:56+00:00
In an email conversation, Mike Hearn discussed how Bitcoin has become less decentralized over time. He argued that the number of people involved in mining has decreased due to the rise of mining pools. While there used to be thousands of people mining with their own CPUs and GPUs, now only dozens of full nodes matter for block selection. However, a recent report suggests that the number of Bitcoin miners is actually higher than popular estimates. The purpose of Bitcoin is to establish proof of cooperation among its users, which is what consensus means. Decentralization is about keeping control out of the hands of the state or any entity that would use violence instead of consensus. No one has the power to compel individual miners in a pool to cooperate, and when state power is applied to a pool operator, miners retain their vote. In short, while mining pools may make Bitcoin appear less decentralized, they do not necessarily undermine the cooperative nature of the ecosystem.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T22:01:11.040630+00:00