But, and what you
are ignoring (possibly purposefully) is that Verifying nodes maintain the valid ledger for
everyone other than the miners. If this independent decentralized ledger alerts the
community and economies that a miner or miners are building invalid blocks, everyone
other than the miners stop, not just the nodes, that is stupid. All users, developers,
exchange owners, and etc are immediately alerted to a possible problem and are
advised to halt until the issue is resolved. That is what Verifying Nodes do.
My whole argument is, that
no, they won't stop. Because they need to transact. You would probably be right with a technical incident, like happened in the past. Something that those causing it weren't even aware of, and say "oops, sorry for the inconvenience". Yes. But this is not what we are talking about this time. We are talking about economic and political choices. We are talking about miners that continue to make a valid chain according to the old rules, with the old software, ON PURPOSE.
No, we aren't talking about that. That is what you keep talking about.
I am talking about invalid work created intentionally or by accident.
And we are talking about users that want/need to transact. So what you are imagining, is that users are going to download, themselves, new software of which they KNOW that it will not agree with what miners are producing, to stop their own ability to transact, and think that:
1) they will do so and put themselves out of the system that way
2) this will affect the miners in any way
is totally misguided.
Please cite in any of my prior statements where users or verfying node
operators are downloading ad implementing protocol violating rules. I
have never said anything along those line. I am talking about the current
protocol, not any possible future protocols or etc.
I would even say, even though it is bolder: if miners purposely decide themselves to modify their protocol (which is a difficult thing to do for them, and they can only consider that if they have a large majority, because they take the initiative to fork away), and ALL of them do so, then users and exchanges still have to follow, because if they don't, they exclude themselves.
Technically, bitcoin is made such that as long as there is only one block chain out there, there's no choice but to use it or to leave it. If you leave it, you don't have access to your coins, you cannot transact, you cannot receive transactions. It is as if you left bitcoin. If you accept it, you accept the consensus protocol by which it is being built.
What you are describing without overwhelming community consensus is
an attack on the network. It would be an act of war that has not occurred
within Bitcoin ecosystem yet. What you are advocating is the annihilation
of the trustless network and the creation of a trusted corporate platform.
The users will not follow the miners without very high support. Otherwise
it is an attack on the network and those miners will create more enemies
than allies.
You wish to open pandora's box, then do it. Stop bullshitting and do it
already. Stop putting your toes in the water and lets get this party started.
Miner's have not done so yet, because the network and the users have not
agreed to it yet. If the miners don't need permission, do it already.
Miners are just bluffing and everyone knows, that is why no one cares and
disregards them now. They have overplayed their hand.
But in all of this, the essentially difficult and impossible step, is for those "stepping out". For miners, stepping out means MODIFYING the protocol they are used to. For full nodes, stepping out means: installing software that is not compatible with the actually made chain.
For miners, this implies that they fork away.
For nodes, it means that they stop.
This is the strong force of immutability. For every actor, it is individually a crazy thing to do to deviate from the actual consensus protocol. For miners, it means that they might start wasting all their hash rate. For nodes, it means that they exclude themselves, and cannot transact any more.
That is your belief. You ignore that the system is cyclical. Each part of the
system feeds the fuel for the next part. When you say "the v-nodes stop
and can't transact" you are ignoring where the miners coins ultimately go
after 200 more confirmations. You ignore that the whole system will
eventually stop. You think the party goes on forever.
You are ignoring the full symbiotic Bitcoin organism just to argue that
Verifying Node have no value and that only Miner nodes matter. Overall
it is a shortsighted argument.