Who Really Controls Bitcoin? | Bitcoin Mechanic

Thx for the deep insight into upcoming dynamics!

Hearing a lot about how this will work because everyone is dumber than Mechanic. Yawn. Also don't think we missed that he said he wishes he had unilateral power. Have fun playing with your BLV's.

Okay, this is a very interesting point. We still do not fully know how Bitcoin ultimately behaves in upgrades involving consensus, because these dynamics only become fully visible during real conflict situations. However, the Blocksize Wars already gave us important insight into how Bitcoin behaves under pressure. It is often said that changing Bitcoin consensus rules is extremely difficult. In theory, that is true. In practice, however, the dynamics could look very different. If users attempt to activate new rules through a User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) and enough nodes begin signaling support for those rules, miners come under pressure. Miners have a strong incentive to avoid producing blocks that could later be rejected by the relevant part of the network. Because of this miners may tend to adopt the new rules, or at least produce blocks that remain compatible with the change, even when the initial active support is relatively small. That would mean Bitcoin may, in practice, be more changeable than we assumed. The key question would then no longer be how changes are activated, but how they are prevented. Because stopping a UASF would not simply happen through passive inaction. It would require an active counterfork with opposing rules that is consciously supported by nodes, users, and miners. And this is where it becomes especially interesting: Not all existing nodes determine the outcome, only the active participants do. Nodes and miners must proactively support, or oppose a proposed direction. Those who do not participate are effectively treated as neutral. Many people do not want to engage with every technical debate. Some do not have the time, others may not fully understand the arguments, or simply consider both outcomes acceptable. In this model, passive participants are not automatically interpreted as opposition. As a result, changes would primarily be decided by those willing to actively take responsibility and participate. At the same ti…

I don't like bip110 and think most of bip110 arguments are strictly left curve. But I agree the game theory is kind of on your side. Do I think this is reckless? YES. Do I like jpegs enough to actively fight for them? NO. Will I run knots on my LN node? I will have to research that now ....