You seem to be suggesting that miners, merchants, and exchanges are the only entities (or people...) running nodes.
Not at all. Indeed, I am neither a miner, merchant, nor exchange, yet I run a full node. My claim is that the network would operate just fine without any but merchants, miners, and exchanges running a node. Independents add little to no value to the system. Further, as you acknowledge, there is no economic incentive for an independent to run a node.
That canard has no place in a 'core vs classic' compariso.
It does, as one team has just released node software to increase the block size limit.
Classic increases the block size in a honest manner. Core increases the block size as well through chicanery. A fully validating node still needs signatures, so it's actual Max block size is anywhere from 1MB to ~4MB, depending upon how much multisig is in that block.
Block size directly impacts the bandwidth needs of nodes -- the only real disincentive to run one. Would you agree that the entire economy depending on a single node for validation endangers security and fungibility?
Probably. Which makes it A Good Thing that anyone who is concerned about such centralization is free to run a full node.
Fact is, any fully validating core node with the SegWit Omnibus Changeset implemented will need the signatures in order to validate. The fact that they have been repartitioned into a separate chain means nothing to such a node - it still needs the signatures in order to validate. Accordingly, The SegWit Omnibus Changeset is as big a disincentive to operating a node than is classic.
How, specifically, is this as big of a disincentive to operating a node as Classic?
Because core requires as much or more data transfer and storage as does classic, as per proportion of multisig.
But it's really kind of irrelevant - as has been pointed out, an insignificant proportion of current nodes will stop node-ing simply because the disk space required goes up from $3.09 worth to $6.18 worth, nor if they need to go from 10 MB upload every 10 min to 20 MB upload every 10 minutes.
I don't think anyone here is really arguing about disk space. But could you provide some evidence that "an insignificant proportion of current nodes will stop node-ing" if block size doubles? No data I've seen appears to support that, but maybe you could provide some.
Merely a rationally reasoned conclusion. Can you support an assertion to the contrary?.
But it is still really kind of irrelevant - the dirty little secret is that independent nodes essentially fulfill zero marginal utility. Sure, every node validates transactions. Guess what - so does every intelligent miner. They would not risk building a block that has a transaction included that would be rejected by the rest of the network.
Intelligent miner =/= honest miner. Non-mining nodes reflect the interests of non-mining users, serving as a check on the power of miners. Non-mining nodes, by not trusting mining nodes and enforcing the protocol are integral to the integrity of the p2p system.
No, they are not. It is trivial for any miner to implement their own forwarding node, connecting explicitly to other miners which share their philosophy, completely bypassing any set of independent nodes.
Summary:
1) 'Node Centralization' is no reason to choose between 1MB Core and 2MB other
2) Doubling block size will have negligible impact upon node count
3) In the end, nodes are negligible marginal utility anyhow.
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