Quote from: RainbowKun on August 24, 2021, 08:58:11 AM

Quote from: Pmalek on August 22, 2021, 06:34:57 AM

Quote from: jaysabi on August 22, 2021, 04:43:43 AM

Bitcoin doesn't exactly have an efficient way to measure "consensus" and further, there's a major difference between what bitcoin users might think versus a consensus by miners,

Full nodes are responsible for overseeing and verifying that consensus rules are being respected. Miners create blocks and include transactions whose validity is again controlled by the full nodes.

Quote from: jaysabi on August 22, 2021, 04:43:43 AM

There's a status quo which, for reasons that have nothing to do with consensus, is very difficult to change.

It's difficult to change because you need a huge majority of the community to agree to the change. It's not like when you vote for a new president and the person with 52% comes to power. You need much more than that in Bitcoin.

It's also difficult to change because interested parties will never vote on something that decreases the decentralization or network security of Bitcoin.

Yes, there are always two most important things in the Bitcoin network. The first is decentralization, and the second is security. This is the basis of Bitcoin's value and the basis of Bitcoin's consensus. If these two points are lost, Bitcoin will no longer be valuable. At present, the Bitcoin technology itself has proven its value, and there is currently no force that can tamper with the data of Bitcoin and crack the private key of Bitcoin. On the other hand, Bitcoin is also becoming more and more decentralized, because Bitcoin is currently being dispersed in the hands of more people.

In the beginning this may have been true, but bitcoin today is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. It has value simply because it has reached a critical mass of people who believe it has value. It's not the decentralization and security that keeps the value either, it's just that there are enough people who bought into the premise to keep it there. Now it's just a speculative asset, relatively few people actually use it for its intended purpose (actual commerce), which is where decentralization and security would actually matter.