Re: "Miners can MASF, or users will UASF. either way, Segwit activated early August"
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.
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.
I think that is not correct.
51% 'attack' - does not exist.
51% 'collusion' happens ALL THE TIME - and is what defines the current chain.
If that 51% should decide on something else.. they can. The protocol simply says to follow the majority, NOT that the majority can never request upgrades, and can never change anything.
The current situation, as you say, will be 'a very entertaining spectacle'.
Because we have come to a situation, for the FIRST time imho, where what the 'Users' and the 'Miners' want clearly diverge.
I'll quote gmaxwell - so please don't chew my ear off about this whole 'non-mining nodes have no power' thing - Dino..
Quote
Any rollout of segwit must include majority hash power
No, that is one sufficient condition, it can instead include basically all of the users (in particular, economically significant users). Either are sufficient alone. The users define what are the miners and if the user define mining to include segwit, it does... from their perspective it is impossible to violate the rules, and any miner that tries just stops existing-- just as litecoin miners do not exist as far as Bitcoin users (and their nodes) are concerned today...
Realistically - we are currently nowhere near the actual amount of 'economic' nodes required for the UASF to work well.. but let's see what happens.. You can't stop them from trying. (I think that's kind of the point)
ps. IF it does work ( and it's a BIG IF ) will you admit that maybe there is more at play here than what you describe Dino ?