Bitcoin’s value proposition depends on its ability to withstand any form of censorship. Without that feature, Bitcoin loses its ability to challenge and resist any authority that wants to subject Bitcoin to the same laws that apply in the country of origin. With this in mind, it is very important that bitcoin has no central points of failure. If there is a gatekeeper, there is danger. If there is a weakness, it will be exploited. And at that point, Bitcoin as a free and distributed digital currency simply stopped.
To ensure network isolation, robustness and anti-weakness, we need to maintain the components that guarantee us, through time-tested battles, precisely these structures. No organization in the world felt that attacking Bitcoin would be a successful endeavor. The best way to do that is to distribute Bitcoin as much as possible to all corners of the world through the use of nodes. Like the virus of money. The more widespread it is, the more likely it is to succeed.
Satoshi mentioned several times that all previous electronic money projects failed because of their integration aspects. The monopoly on the money supply is a power of governments and a financial system that will not be easily relinquished. To ensure that Bitcoin will not be stopped by any bad actor, it is our duty to ensure that the Bitcoin distribution is increasing all the time. Forever.
Many people automatically dismiss e-money as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990s. I hope it is clear that it was only the government controlled nature of those programs that destroyed them. I think this is the first time we are trying a decentralized system, which is not supported by trust.
An open source Bitcoin startup for P2P currency
https://www.fbi.gov/charlotte/press-releases/2011/defendant-convicted-of-minting-his-own-currencyhttps://www.indianapolismonthly.com/news-and-opinion/business/mad- money/
If we take a good look at what Bitcoin has achieved so far and where it is currently as a global network, it is true that the network is highly fragmented. However, just as one could argue that bitcoin’s purchasing power is not high, bitcoin’s distribution rate is also not high. The more, the better! Without a certain degree of isolation, any attack on Bitcoin not only helps the attacker, but is also dangerous, since the failure of the attacker ends up strengthening the ability of bitcoin to resist any attack, strengthening the network in the process, while reducing the perceived success of any. an attempt to attack Bitcoin. Anti-fragility in its purest form!
Hydra – a mythical figure from the Book of Revelation. Whenever one of the heads was cut off, the Hydra would grow two heads. Every time the Hydra was attacked, the Hydra became stronger. Hydra is the opposite of weakness. Bitcoin is the Hydra of money.
What level of isolation ensures that any attacker is completely excluded from attacking the network? No one knows for sure. We can only measure it. However, the best strategy is to simply split the bitcoin as much as we can. And the most important tool we have is to use as many nodes as possible around the world.
Nodes fill one of the most important, if not the most important role in Bitcoin. By following the rules of the protocol, they confirm and verify all transactions and all blocks distributed throughout the network. They also transmit all this information to other nodes and store all the blocks published by the miners. If a transaction, block or other piece of information violates the protocol’s consensus rules, nodes automatically reject it. Nodes are essentially the referees of the bitcoin game, making sure that everyone is playing the way they should.
Bitcoin nodes are active
As more nodes join the network, more referees will be validating everything that happens in Bitcoin. The more nodes join the network, the more copies there will be of the entire blockchain. As more nodes join the network, there will be more guarantees that every actor behaves as it should. Every time a node joins the bitcoin network, anyone who wants to attack it will have to cut off an additional head to kill this Hydra of money called Bitcoin. If you’re not using node yet, it’s time to do your part.
Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to many bitcoin users, most of the miners don’t do it use node today. Giving valid shares to the pool operator is all that is required for them to earn money for their work. It is often said that miners are paid by the network to protect it from all enemy attacks by building a wall of energy that is so dense that it is impossible to penetrate. However, if we want to continue with this analogy, what we see is that miners are the workers of the pools, not of the bitcoin network. There is no direct connection between miners and the network. Miners effectively sell computing power in the form of hashrate to pools. The responsibility of selecting the transactions to block, creating the blocks themselves, distributing said blocks across the network and receiving all the necessary information is transferred to the pools. This means that the Pools are what closes, or not, the network and thus undermines Satoshi’s original vision of an open and permissionless protocol for the transfer of value.
In addition, if the level of distribution of the state was not reduced enough by that, there are proxy pools. Proxy pools are basically wolves in sheep’s clothing. Same pool, but different type. This means that if the large Pool A has 20% of the Hashrate, but the 3 smaller Pools B, C and D have 5% each, effectively Pool A controls 35% of the hashrate. That would be enough to carry out a Selfish Mining attack and damage the network. So, what we end up with is a few “main” node pools that decide which transactions make it to the blockchain. This situation does not seem to be very different. That’s because it isn’t. Thankfully, there is a way to fix this. It’s called Stratum V2.
Stratum V2 is a new mining protocol that hopes to bring a series of new features that make Bitcoin mining more secure, efficient and of course, more decentralized. Its open source reference was developed independently, driven by a community of more than 15 developers over the past three years, which has been tested against more than 30,000 streams. With this new agreement, Bitcoin diversification can reach new heights. How can you ask? By giving miners the ability to create their own block templates and choose which transactions are included in the blocks. To have this position, miners must use a node. More nodes mean a more decentralized and robust network. If all miners are building blocks instead of pools, we could end up witnessing Bitcoin taking another step towards insurmountable decentralization.
The DEMAND pool is the first mining pool to implement the Stratum V2 protocol reference. Our goal is to be first and foremost, to contribute to the decentralization of the network and to eliminate the threat of Bitcoin censorship. If you are a miner and want to be in a driver position, consider joining our pool. Special living conditions and other features will be available to founding members of our pool.
It’s time to upgrade the Bitcoin split. Are you coming?
This guest post is by Francisco Monteiro. The views expressed are entirely their own and do not reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.