"They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism."
- 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System', Satoshi Nakamoto
The words of Satoshi. Do you believe we should follow it like a religion?
No. At least not just because they are The Words Of Satoshi. But it does concisely explain how Bitcoin actually operates. No matter how much bloviating is directed to the incorrect impression that non-mining entities have any enforcement power over the chain consensus, the design decision of the miners determining the rules is unchanged. As it should.
But that is not the case on how Bitcoin operates today.
You are incorrect. It is exactly how bitcoin operates today.
Ok so from your point of view it was the miners that agreed and decided to activate Segwit without outside pressure?
Whether or not subject to outside pressure, it was indeed the miners that activated The SegWit Omnibus Changeset.
That did not answer the question. Did or did the miners not succumb from outside pressure and went along to activate Segwit? Or do you believe they did the decision by themselves?
Hypothetical situation, what if the miners disagree with the economic majority in activating something and the economic majority announces that it will activate and enforce it themselves and take the risk of a chain split?
In such a case, it would be a Mexican standoff until one or the other groups capitulates. There is no a priori way to determine which group would cave. For while it is true that a chain that nobody wants (as if it would be nobody) is worthless, similarly a chain that cannot be traded upon is also worthless.
But a more important question to ask would be why it is that you think that non-mining, validating entities -- the most Sybil-able group in the ecosystem -- has anything to do whatsoever with economic power? But that was not what I was asking. I was asking about the importance of non-mining nodes enforcing the rules and validating transactions and blocks themselves. If there was "economic power" that would come with it, it would be secondary or a side effect.
No. See my bolding of your quote. You were
not asking about the importance of non-mining validators. You asked about a divergence between miners' desires, and desires of the
economic majority. You seem to me to imply that non-mining validator count is an indication of economic majority. If this indeed be your claim, I call bullshit. Non-mining validators are a trivial cost to spin up any number of sybil clones. As opposed to mining power or demonstrated coin hodlings.
Nevertheless,
I am asking why you think non-mining validator count has any bearing on a measurement of 'economic majority'?
But if the miners came to decide to do a Sybil attack because it is "easy", do you believe that the economic majority running non-mining nodes will follow? Would it not cause another chain-split? Do you really believe that the miner's chain will be called "the Bitcoin"?
On one side, we have a bunch of neck beards marshalling an army of raspberry pis. On the other side we have a wealth of industry tycoons controlling a multi billion dollar investment in specialized infrastructure. And additional racks and racks of servers dedicated to the validation function. Which of these two groups do you seriously represents the economic majority?
Again, despite your delusion, non-mining validators have fuck-all to do with consensus.
I don't know, but I believe either one of them, separated, without consensus, will not achieve anything. The top Bitcoin merchants tried it through 2X, but without the smaller merchants support and the community they have nothing.
So you are implying that 'top Bitcoin merchants' and miners are the same group?
Not all the time. But the NYA signatories consisted of the top Bitcoin merchants and services, and 83% of the total hashrate. They supported the hard fork to a 2mb block size, but the community, who ran non-mining nodes that can easily be "Sybilized" were the ones followed. Why?
Or what if the miners want to enforce something and the non-mining nodes do not follow?
They will. An investment in an overwhelming number of validators is a rounding error to the miners.
(grammatical edits)
I believe it is not that simple. It is misinforming to simply say "they will".
So do you believe that, under the (false) hypothetical that non-mining validators have power over the consensus rules, that miners bent on changing the rules would not spin up an overwhelming count of such non-mining validators?
Would it be the economically correct decision for miners to do a
Sybil attack on Bitcoin?