Quote from: brg444 on September 07, 2015, 09:05:24 PM

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Quote from: brg444 on September 07, 2015, 08:47:52 PM

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Quote from: brg444 on September 07, 2015, 08:27:16 PM

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Quote from: Peter R on September 07, 2015, 07:09:09 PM

Will mining centralize around one single miner? No one knows. This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.
But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

I think the point of contention is really about this conclusion.

My understanding is that it may also happen with several miners if they have an incentive to synchronize their mempools (with a mechanism like IBLT).

Do you agree that this conclusion applies to the way the network is now and the way it has always been?

I ask, just because I want it to be clear to readers that this "point of contention" is about a hypothetical future scenario. And that we already know that there are hypothetical future scenarios, such as mining centralized around a single super pool, that would be bad for Bitcoin.

It absolutely doesnt. Miners already optimize for profit by centralizing in various ways. The recent SPV mining near-catastrophe is an excellent example.

Your conclusions hold under no existing and future scenario. It makes assumptions that are untenable and require absolute altruism from miners.

The crux of the issue is that miners incentives are not aligned with the network's users. The max block size cap mitigates the fact that they are expected (for security reasons) to prioritize financial profit over network decentralization. Yes, there might be no other way to align these incentives than by forcing it through consensus code.

hey! i disagree!! Grin

in my view miners are nothing if it was not for the users they validate the transactions for: users do the speculation, users gives bitcoin its value, which then makes it profitable to mine (and not any other altcoin) .

remember what happened btc price wise when ghash.io almost had 50% of the network? massive sell out.. Roll Eyes

hence, miners do have an incentive to keep on mining the longest VALID chain, which, by definition means the one that has the more value potential.
so they better not screwing around with some power grabbing fork, else they loose everything...

this is bitcoin's consensus.

I agree with most of what you said but I don't believe it really addresses my point.

The GHash situation is very different as it was very public.

The centralization I refer to relates to geographical and technical optimization that give larger miners a slight advantage over smaller ones that slowly but surely dries out the smaller miners revenue.

It is not something that is immediately apparent to most users and the extent to which such centralization can occur is difficult to examine.

That is not to suggest they are expect to fork off or create immediate damage but it is a slippery & dark road that can slowly lead to a level of centralization that enables considerable throughput hence the centralization pressure externalized to the network nodes.

I don't think it is such a dark path as long as the market has the hability to fork if the system becomes too centralised. If that happen the market will reacted because they is no incentives for them to use such a system.

How do you judge when the system becomes too centralised, particularely when it comes to nodes?

You guys have been suggesting the market is interested is in a global payment network/currency unrestricted by a transaction bottleneck. A more centralized network offers exactly that.

Are you not worried that miners can slowly capture the participants up until a point where they control a great majority of the network nodes and can trivially change protocol rules? At which point users might be presented with a choice to stay at the behest of miners and assume that they will act in everyone's interest or fork the coin and risk severely undermining the trust in cryptocurrencies in general (causing important financial losses).

I guess nearing 50% hashrate centralization is enough for the market to start panicking as shown by the Ghash episode and another similar episode with another pool which I can't recall ATM.

We all know the advantages decentralized system have over centralised one. And no, I don't think a centralized miner will be able to fool everyone as long as the system remains open. The blockchain is too heavily monitored for this to happen.