Quote from: Variogam on June 22, 2017, 04:28:09 PM

You talk about importance of node numbers enforcing certain rules not for the first time, but how you know what nodes are economicaly important and what are basically worthless? Or you really believe 1 node = 1 vote Huh

theres many aspects to it.. theres many reasons for having a distributed decentralised network of nodes.
things like (using torrent as an analogy) if your connected to 8 seeds and need to sync(your the leacher for now) and the seeds have 4 nodes of 485,000 blocks but another 4 nodes have 484000 blocks. your going to grab data from the 485,000 nodes as you define that as the most complete list.

however you find out that the 485,000 nodes are on the old rules you end up orphaning them blocks and banning the nodes.. leaving you only seeing the 4 nodes with a height of 484,000(new rules) as that becomes the new visible highest height (complete chain)

so its not the case of just relying on one source of data... nodes prefer to have multiple sources that way if one source is 'wrong' they can grab data elsewhere..

so its important there are multiple sources of data, and that the majority of those multiple sources have the same rules as you do..

thats why its best that there are more then just 70 nodes all run just by merchants. but there are 'backup's too. which helps put less strain on the merchant nodes needing to be seeds because people can grab data from other locations, should a merchant get shutdown or ddosed or just over strained by too many leachers trying to connect to merchant nodes.

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once you grasp the need for the decentralisation of the data.. you then can move on and grasp why its best that those decentralised diverse brand nodes also agree to the same rules as a majority, to avoid orphan drama.

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once you grasp that. you realise by having your node agreeing to the merchant rules you can spend with that merchant because they see your tx. also to flip the argument, if the merchant see's its only getting bad data and the majority of the community is agreeing to other rules.. the merchants would treat the most popular chain as the main chain. and the bad data least popular nodes as the alt.

thus its not a sheep follow merchants who follow pools.. its about symbiotic relationship of consensus of everyone finding something agreeable.
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having grasped that..you can then move on and grasp that bitcoin is revolutionary because it doesnt rely on everyone just leaching off of one pool of data but each node validates independently which makes the network stronger and less vulnerable to central-point-of-attack vectors. it also allows sharing of data to not put a strain on a central point..
it also ensures no central point decides the direction..

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things would /could go very wrong if everyone was a leacher to just lets say 70 nodes all colluding to a single cartel. and this is why consensus only moves the network forward when independant people agree that the new rules that are in benefit to the community.. by the community having nodes that have the most reliable chain that is acceptable to the majority.

Quote from: Variogam on June 22, 2017, 04:28:09 PM

The only support/acceptance I find reliable is the statements from companies, and there seem enought SegWit2x support/acceptance from the important companies to guarantee 2MB. The only question remains whether there going to be split if 1MB gets enough holdout support.

signing a PDF is one thing.. changing a few bytes in a flag is one thing.
but in the end the nodes should only flag when they actually have the code to handle what they are flagging. otherwise its an empty gesture that falls flat on itself when 'activation' occurs.

EG lets say 80% want X and flag it,, but 75% actually are running A. X gets activated(false pretence). but then a clusterf**k of orphans because 75% are rejecting the activated rule. because they dont have the code to handle the new rule. they just waved a flag.