Oddbean new post about login | logout Bitcoin is decentralized and every node owner has full power over whatever version they want to run themselves. They could even run several and partake in several networks, e.g. a tentative fork to see how the fork works out. It's up to each node owner to do what's right. Of course bitcoin core has an influential thought leadership there, so even if not formally in power a lot of nodes will follow their advice.
the "heaviest block wins" and "block reward can be some maximum" rules combine with network latency and block propagation patterns to ensure that a lot of the time, blocks that have the most common reward maximum, or less, have the greatest amount of time to be found compared to a fork with more even nodes that have forked to allow bigger rewards than the canonical schedule will allow blocks with a lower reward all that is required for them to be the "best block" is having a smaller block hash so long as the majority of nodes stick to the schedule the miners have to stick to the schedule, yes, even the little humble node runners because all it takes is a few miners using that old schedule as well, and 50/50 chance most of the time their block is going to be "heavier" and because of restricted propagation there is plenty of time for such side chains to become the winner in cumulative work (smallest sum of all blocks in the chain)
it is a 50% minimum divergence to break the security of nakamoto consensus, the "heaviest chain wins" rule even if a fork with bigger rewards gets ahead by one block chances are that two blocks will be mined that are from the canonical reward maximum and one of those is smaller hash unless someone also somehow gets 50% of hashpower to not just allow bigger rewards but REQUIRE them haha yeah, nah, not gonna happen because of the culture of bitcoin, the chances of enough miners AND node runners updating to a new schedule are basically not much better than the chances of cracking a bitcoin key
Mate, do you know how much Bitcoin mining capacity is installed world-wide? Some figure like "10 gigawatts" is abstract, try to picture this in terms of car factories. So far, the subsidy was miners' main source of revenue, with validation fees being an aside. With dwindling subsidies miners will have to make up the difference in fees to maintain the value of their investment. But there's only so much room there as no one is willing to spend $1000 of Bitcoin fees to transfer $100 worth of Bitcoin value, not even the drug dealers. It's better for the community to come to terms with the inevitable future now ahead of time while there's still room to experiment. As for the rules about competing forks and heaviest blocks, the community can decide whatever. In the real world, a majority of people coming together an collectively deciding on something is considered a win and a sign of a stable society. Somehow just in the twisted logic of the Bitcoin space a 51% consensus is somehow considered a threat. https://nostrcheck.me/media/47be0b2a89faaa66bc57f5c679203486da45660295cb3db3c2f38f4be8d8816e/227251e524ad3a330063e91865cdcab56789fecb93a7b8c92f205b690b59550a.webp
haha, the final boss of big blockers is human psychology, sorry but that's gonna be a no from me, i certainly won't run a bitcoin node with an altered reward schedule, neither will at least another 15k node runners out there, and many of those are pool miners and the pools will make blocks with the schedule and the heaviest block wins will ensure that until you can find a way to double that hash rate capacity at the same time as putting it in the hands of big blockers, will you succeed why do you think that craig wright is trying a social/government attack anyway? because he knows, being a reasonably competent computer scientist, and game theorist, that you can't win without a massive economic advantage against the established customs maybe some day you will come to understand the low time preference benefits of not ratting out your competitor in a prisoner's dilemma
