Quote from: blunderer on February 12, 2016, 01:09:08 AM

Quote from: madjules007 on February 12, 2016, 12:35:16 AM

Quote from: blunderer on February 11, 2016, 11:52:20 PM

Lol, how much, would you say, as compared to running a major factory mine? 1/100000th? Less?
If you invest a million dollars into mining BTC, might you not throw a buck or two @ nodes?

Miners already run nodes. Why would miners be interested in mounting a Sybil attack that might break bitcoin into multiple ledgers? Seems that would be a poor business decision.

Why?
Because:
"--The attacker can relay only blocks that he creates, putting you on a separate network. You're then open to double-spending attacks.
--If you rely on transactions with 0 confirmations, the attacker can just filter out certain transactions to execute a double-spending attack"
Sorry for retarded passive -> active voice jump, but that's the cringe factor of teh Bitcoin wiki 4U Sad

Ah, so we're talking about two different things. Sybil attacks don't imply incompatible consensus rules. I was talking about the lack of incentive a miner has to enforce a contentious hard fork because it would erode all trust in the system by creating multiple valid ledgers.

You're referring to specific double-spend attacks. Of course a miner will double-spend if he can profit by doing so. That's basic incentive. That's very different than miners intentionally running multiple incompatible versions to provoke a chain fork.

Quote from: blunderer on February 12, 2016, 01:09:08 AM

Didn't you yourself suggest that the nodes are there as a means of stopping the miners from doing bullshit? Or was that Lauda?
How about *you* tell me why they're important to Bitcoin's security?

Non-mining nodes reflect the interests of non-mining users, serving as a check on the power of miners. By not trusting mining nodes and enforcing the protocol they are integral to the integrity of the p2p system. Without them, miners have simply replaced central banks -- they may be competing against each other, but they can also collude against the userbase. And if nodes are sufficiently centralized, miners are not the only concern; it becomes much easier for other actors to coordinate Sybil attacks (tx censorship, etc).

Quote from: blunderer on February 12, 2016, 01:09:08 AM

I'm not suggesting that the 4079 Bitcoin Core nodes are anything but genuine. I, personally, haven't run a non-mining node (or mining, for that matter) for years. Seen no need. Some people are probably feeling the need for their voices to be heard, with all the draconian bullshit thermos let loose here & on /bitcoin when XT came out. Yeah, that sort of bullshit backfires, so now you're seeing people fire up nodes.
Not sure why this is surprising :-

Sure, I don't rule out a bit of that. You could have said the same thing after the XT release -- fast jump in XT nodes, which quickly fizzled out to nothing. "Thermos is such a dictator, of course people are firing up Classic nodes!" isn't a measurable phenomenon, nor is it provable. Probably better to keep other possibilities in mind, especially considering this is basically a replay of the XT release.