Yes, "A" nodes ignore etc. blocks they consider invalid (such as "B"), "B" nodes ignore blocks they consider invalid (such as "A"). As long as there is at least one of each (there is, non-SPV miners are also full nodes), everything's happening.

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

*Also explain this bit in the Bitcoin wiki:

Finally, if nodes are essential to Bitcoin security & are quite cheap to implement, what's preventing a malefactor from breaking Bitcoin by throwing up a bunch of misbehaving nodes (which "simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the [new] rules of the protocol (and ban the [old rule] peer(s) that sent them)."?

This was already answered. Full nodes can veto the miners at any given moment. All of the miners investments can instantly become expensive useless liabilities if the economic consensus of full nodes rejects the miners longest chain.

I will give you two possible scenario's of how this can occur-

1) In the unlikely event Classic convinces 75% of miners to HF, their are multiple extremely large investors* who have made commitments to dump their classic coins and keep their original coins.(remember a HF essentially doubles the money supply unless there is complete consensus). This high stakes form of attack would quickly devalue the chain with the most hashpower driving miners to the other chain or completely ruining both chains. Others may discount this due to the flawed assumption that this would only temporarily devalue the currency but in reality this attack can be ongoing and be conducted in a manner to create steady and persistent downward pressure on the majority hashpower chain.

2) Their are multiple technical solutions that can be implemented if a miner mis behaves where their double rounds of SHA256 hashing means less or nothing at all by the nodes.  Full nodes simply can change the consensus algo.


* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"


This was also just answered with a specific example. I will give you the benefit of the doubt one last time that you aren't deliberately trying to "blunder" the conversation. 100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet. If those 100 nodes deliberately break consensus by the owner, or are hacked to break consensus than all the damage they will be doing is misleading the community to how decentralized the ecosystem is(Unless a SPV wallet trusts them). Their vote will be ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered.

Way to take my comments out of context. Pay attention to the nuanced distinctions I am making. There are different forms of votes being expressed. Non - mining Economic actors/nodes can quickly cripple the miners if they so decided to.

.@gmaxwell: could you actually answer my questions instead of waxing philosophical re. "pre-cypherpunk organizational modalities"?
ty

I'm not talking about ideology, I'm asking about the mechanics, the actual methodology.

I don't see how "100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet."
Please explain.

P.S. I'm trying hard to overlook your bitchy insinuations re. trolling & shilling. Try to avoid such infantile faggotry in the future.

Every individual Full Node wallet is a distinct node that can independently verify every transaction going back to the genesis block. They aren't dependent upon those 100 full nodes spun up on amazon ec2.* If one of those amazon ec2 nodes attempts to relay a block that doesn't conform to their full nodes consensus rule it will simply be ignored. The reason why a single full node with bitcoin is worth something is because there is an economic actor behind that full node who has agency and decides those coins have value. The only reason anything has value whether gold, fiat or bitcoin deals with that economic agent who places value upon their asset and can make choices or vote with that value.

Thus 100 full nodes spun up by one person with no btc associated with any of them has the exact same vote* and 1 node with no btc and even less of a vote than 1 node with btc. In fact those 100 nodes impose a very slight security risk as they are being hosted within a central company and misleading our ecosystem into believing that the node count is more decentralized than it actually is. If any of those full nodes changed consensus and other non -full node SPV clients trusted them that would also be another attack vector.  


* There is a low probability attack if those full nodes provided an alternative history during the bootstrap process(first time the blockchain is downloaded, that a new full node can coincidentally and unluckily peer from only those 100 nodes which could maliciously provide an alternative history as well. This means that there is a different and distinct form of a vote that is the exception that breaks the rule. 100 nodes have more of a vote than 1 node with regards to influencing new nodes bootstrapping to the main chain. Therefore not only is there a complex interwoven power dynamic between multiple groups within bitcoin there are distinct forms of "voting" at play here.

BAH! But the network doesn't know if there's a wallet behind a node or not. There is no way for the network to know if there's 1000BTC or 0BTC behind a node. NONE. If one of your "real" nodes attempts to relay a block to one of my "fake" nodes, it gets ignored & B&. "My" node will pass on the blocks from "my" miners just fine, because they comply with "my," "fake" node's ruleset.
There is no value judgement here. Your nodes don't propagate "my" blocks, "my" nodes don't propagate yours.
You keep saying that, but it keeps making no sense. Via what mechanism? How?
Don't care, irrelevant. Stay on topic. We're still trying to determine how the network decides which nodes have money/"humans" behind them and which do not.
Please explain the mechanism.
ty

Some of us actually care about the security of the network and spend time and effort to protect it from malicious actors. Part of this process is understanding the attack vectors , and educating others the risks so we can collectively make the right decisions so threats aren't realized. MP and other fringe lunatic 1MB forever disciples can indeed carry out this attack and are no friends to me or most/all developers in Core. In fact he has threatened to murder some prominent developers.

If you consider my politics to classify me as unstable , than so be it. I call them principles, you consider them unstable ... but perhaps you would be better off considering them "insane convictions" or "convictions you disagree with" instead because these principles are quite stable and consistent . I'll respect your thoughts and try to offer you some consolidation that we truly do want to increase capacity and are working hard to do so safely.


You are fixated on the code acting as a form of AI that solely does the voting. The network consists of nodes with human agents behind them that "vote" with the BTC in their wallet. Actual human being interacting with the code is part of the network!

Estimates have Classic at 16% of full nodes. This is madness. What will happen to Blockstream's alliances/sidechains under Classic? Any change in business strategy? Are we all doomed?

This question has already been answered. The protocol cannot assign value to these tokens. Just like with Gold, Commodities, Fiat... value is assigned by human agents or AI in the future. This means that 1 person can fork off of the network, have almost no hashing power and his/her coins can be extremely valuable as long as they and another believe it is real money and has value.

This is very basic economics that applies to any assets, that seems to escape you.


At the time when Satoshi wrote that, CPU power was synonymous with Full nodes.  This distinction has changed over the years. Now there are differences in the vote and influences of a full node and mining full node.


I agree , and all/most of core agrees with you here, that is why we are pushing for changes to increase capacity with Segwit.


I count 8.89% of all nodes now... where are you getting your data?