The #Foundry pool mined nine blocks in a row today.
If this trend accelerates, I’d bet that we see #censorship on #Bitcoin before the year is out.
Discussion
I’m anticipating censorship at some point but I don’t expect it to be as soon as this year. The trend is concerning though.
If so much of the hash rate is based here already that Foundry can mine nine blocks in a row, then I’d say we’re closer to censorship than most imagine.
I agree. Bitcoin hasn’t proven that it is censorship resistant yet. I believe that it is in theory, but we haven’t seen it yet. The government can take over the mining companies in the US and begin censoring users for whatever reason. I expect this to happen at some point. Bitcoin prove that it is censorship resistant if/when censored Bitcoin users pay extremely high fees that incentivize the world to collectively “break the law” and mine censored transactions. This would create a black market in Bitcoin but it’s the only way to overcome censorship.
Bitcoin is censorship resistant if you are controlling your own hashrate.
If you do not control hashrate its a trust-based system where you trust miners to add your transactions to the block.
Proof-of-work is unfortunately the least understood part of this new computational system.
That’s not true. You can control the hash rate of your bitaxe but that doesn’t mean your transactions can’t be censored. You need to have a lot of hash rate to prevent censorship.
Correct, the protocol is only permissionless and zero-trust for the people projecting the most physical power. But an adversarial equilibrium emerges. This is described by Satoshi in the whitepaper in regards to a 51% attack, but the same logic applies to writing blocks to the chain.
It's conceivable that China and Russia could combine hashrate to potentially censor their adversaries transactions . This is why it's really important for the US and her allies to control enough hashrate to ensure we can still regularly add blocks to the chain. Unless our adversaries can completely censor our transactions which would require much more than 50% hashrate they are highly incentivized to continue acting in an honest way.
Also. If they did try to censor US transactions, it would degrade the value of the network for them aswell. The incentive structure is solid.
The protocol is working exactly as Satoshi designed it. He decentralized control authority of block writing to those who display the most computational power.
If you are worried about potential censorship, I suggest you summon up some watts and enter the physical power competition.
The largest mining pools were inevitably going to organizations similar to NATO and BRICS. This aligns with the way human evolution is playing out at a systemic biological level. Pure game theory. But it's important to realize that the incentive structure results in mutually assured preservation of access to the system. Not degrading access to the system even for adversaries.
I think in the long run this is true but it can get messy as these features are stress tested.
That is true but these morons in the government don’t know about that and don’t really care because they still have fiat.
Fair point. Other nation states can secretly mine. I’m hoping this is enough to keep things in balance
You're describing censorship proof. It's censorship proof if you mine your own block. I still think it's censorship resistant if you are simply publishing transactions.
I don’t think that censorship proof either. Mining one block doesn’t mean your transaction is secure. You need 6 confirmations remember. The rest of the network can out mine you still.
6 confirmations is an arbitrary number, originally suggested for increased security which may not be necessarily true any more. Does anyone know of blocks that are several blocks old getting reorganized lately?
That’s a fair point but it likely has to be around that number because the odds of multiple solo miners finding the next 3-5 blocks consecutively is very low. And the reason I say that is because in this censorship attack, I am anticipating the government taking over the big mining companies and having a large portion of the hash. And I believe that a large penalty will be imposed by the government on miners that don’t comply which can scare people away from building up a resistance.
Maybe not censorship proof, but you don't need to mine more than one block. If you are being censored by other miners, then they won't build on your block even if it is 6 deep.
The real concern is not becoming orphaned. If there is a chain branch, you have a chance that some miner will build on your block. Of course you could be that miner finding block 2 and winning the longest chain. That's good enough for most cases.
Why would they don't add? Nobody I know would refuse money
Ok but would it be effective censorship?
Assume there is transaction that Gov want Foundry not to include in the block. So Foundry excludes it from its mempool but some other miner eventually mines it. Then Foundry starts building on block prior to that and maybe is lucky to find the block and another so it wins but the game is not over. Someone else again finds the block and Foundry does not manage to find the next one. Ok it might have that luck to build on block -2 and find 3 blocks in a row and build chain with more proof of work, or not.
The point is this game is risky for Foundry as it is risking resources and might also fail. Would miners be that happy to allocate their hashrate there? Maybe some would leave. What if 10% leaves because they are not affraid.
If 3 biggest pools are forced to censor transactions then they have mbigger chances to win but still it is game of probabily.
This is a game and it is not lost untill the ball is at play. Have some faith in pleb with Bitaxes.
🤌
I've only recently begun learning about mining and the whole mining centralization scenario worries me. I'm planning on buying a bitaxe to play around with.
Nice 💪🏼
Looks a bit concerning