Quote from: andron8383 on May 21, 2017, 08:18:42 AM

Quote from: dinofelis on May 21, 2017, 06:45:00 AM

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So in any case this will be an adventure full of suspense, in which the users starting UASF don't matter much apart from the psychological effects. It will be the miners that have to decide to fork off, and the market that will decide in a risky game.
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I agree there are multiple scenarios and some are risky in worse case scenario UASF will fork away and if problems will rise higher it will change POW.
For safety transition we need 51%+ miners on board but even without it i am so tired of no solution that I would go for it.
That whole mining centralization is way to strong and can not deny development no more.

Well, I have a different opinion on that. After all, miners are not imposing any change, and their "job" was to keep respect of the rules. Anything that deviates from the rules is in principle "illegal" in bitcoin land, so in fact, miners are doing exactly what they were supposed to do. The inconsistency in the bitcoin system was to want to build a decentralized system with central developer control: that is, there's supposed to be ONE bitcoin piece of software, edited by a very restraint club of people (the Core devs in this case), who determine the rules, and modify the rules (called "development"). On the other hand, the consensus which is defined by proof of work was supposed to stick faithfully to "the rules" and anyone deviating from this in majority was called an "attacker".

Bitcoin's imaginary power model was hence totally inconsistent: the "honest consensus protocol" is to be defined by proof of work, and is supposed to remain "honest" (that is, never get a 51% majority that deviates from the rules). But on the other hand, there was supposed to be a small group of developers who would write the unique bitcoin software, and that would modify the rules sometimes.
On one hand, it was claimed that the competition between proof of work providers would allow, provided never 51% of them "colluded", to keep immutability and "honesty" (that is, sticking to the existing rules) ; on the other hand, there was to be a small permissioned club that is the central authority on the rules.

This is one of the several inconsistencies in the projected working of the system, and it is no wonder that we get a conflict between the "guardians of the protocol" on one hand, and the "modifiers of the protocol" on the other hand. In the past, the modifiers of the protocol were the central authority in bitcoin, but now they lost that potentially, and bitcoin became decentralized. But, by its very functioning, it should remain immutable in that case.

I think the inconsistency came from the fact that on one hand, bitcoin's value resided in its highly publicised "immutability of the rules by mathematics" (in fact, by lines of code) ; but this implied also that no "evolution" and no "development" could ever occur, which would pinpoint a general failure of the system, because no system that pretends to be a technological advancement can at the same time show that it cannot evolve. So the fundamental conflict between "flexible technological evolution" which needs central authority on one hand, and the publicised "immutability, by mathematics" on the other hand, had to be denied/put away/ talked away. The rhetorical concept that was used to cover up this fundamental conflict was the notion of "consensus", which has a normal meaning of people agreeing, but which had a special meaning in bitcoin: the mechanism that established immutability and honesty as long as no 51% collusion happened.

In a way, the conflict is the following:
A) in order to guarantee the good workings of the system, never ever, 51% of the consensus power (that is, mining power) should collude (agree on anything else but the "honest rules").
B) in order to have evolution, regularly, a very high majority of the consensus power (that is, mining power) should collude. over the change to be applied.

This can only happen if an *external* authority can define what are the "honest modifications of the honest rules", which is a select permissioned club.