Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Is Bitcoin not decentralized anymore?
by
phillipsjk
on 18/06/2014, 00:24:26 UTC
Hash rate is part of the 51% attack problem.

Which isn't a problem, so doesn't need to be fixed.

I think you may be underestimating the dangers of mining concentration.
My latest book-mark: How A Mining Monopoly Can Attack Bitcoin
Quote
  • Loss of decentralized trust narrative, inability to differentiate Bitcoin from competing technologies.
  • Double-spends against 6-confirmed transactions are certain to succeed.
  • Selected miner targeting: Pool can reject any selected block found by any competing miner.
  • Selected transaction targeting: Pool can reject any selected transaction and keep it out of the blockchain.
  • Selected address blocking: Pool can block Bitcoin flows in or out of selected addresses.
  • Transaction Differentiation: Pool can deprioritize certain transactions and rely on other miners to mine them unless a (hefty) fee is attached.
  • Fee Extortion: Pool can deny transactions from a particular address unless a (hefty) fee is attached to those transactions.
  • Complete denial of service: Pool can ignore and orphan every single block found by competitors, thus stop all Bitcoin transactions.

I am considering ignoring S4VV4S. They keep insisting that self-regulation can't work, even though it has in the past (admittedly when the community was smaller). A hard-fork to make hash-power concentration irrelevant would also "(loose the) decentralized trust narrative, (causing the) inability to differentiate Bitcoin from competing technologies."

Edit: in the speculation sub-forum it is often said that Bitcoin is either worth $astronomical_number or $0. I don't think I can overstate that a hard-fork to work around mining concentration will tend to make the latter value the more correct one.