Author: Luv Khemani 2017-03-31 08:19:07
Published on: 2017-03-31T08:19:07+00:00
The conversation centers around the importance of node operation and its role in Bitcoin's security model. Node users have the power to block the propagation of certain things, and they decide what a Bitcoin is. This is important because it protects the user from changes to any properties of Bitcoin which they do not agree with. The ability for a user to run a node is what keeps miners honest and prevents them from rewriting any of Bitcoin's rules. It also gives confidence that the 21 million limit will be upheld and makes transactions irreversible. However, the debate over the blocksize is a waste of time. Even if the blocksize increases to 2MB, 5MB, or 10MB, transaction capacity will still be too low for global usage in the medium-long term. Lightning potentially offers a couple of orders of magnitude of scaling and will make blocksize a non-issue for years to come. Even if it fails to live up to the hype, the market will innovate solutions when there is money to be made. Additionally, there is a discussion about SPV wallets and their risks. SPV wallets trust miners fully, and in the event of a hard fork, they will blindly follow the longest chain. This means that there is a risk of receiving made-up money. However, all these low-value transactions can happen off-chain, and none of the use cases will be killed off. There are sub-dollar trades happening on exchanges off-chain. Finally, the conversation touches on the role of politics in node operation. Node users only have the power to block the propagation of certain things. Since miners also have a node endpoint, they can cut the node users out of the equation by linking with each other directly. Node users do not have the power to arbitrate consensus; that is why we have blocks and PoW.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T22:46:45.500295+00:00