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The rules governing bitcoin are maintained by consensus, and the bitcoin developers have a large sway on this consensus. If the majority of people decided they

by ealloc 14y ago

The rules governing bitcoin are maintained by consensus, and the bitcoin developers have a large sway on this consensus. If the majority of people decided they didnt like the current rules (eg all the people complaining about bitcoin deflation) they could very well change them by simple agreement.

erikpukinskis 14y ago
It's not really consensus, it's rule by whichever coalition can get 51% of miners.
- Statistical 14y ago
  Not really. For example if 51% (or even 99.99999999999%) of miners decided they wanted to go back to 50 BTC block reward (or even a new 5,000 BTC block reward) that would simply create an incompatible fork. A fork which would most likely be promptly rejected by the consensus of users, merchants, exchanges, and service providers. One can't simply force a change to the rules. All you can do is make a hard fork in the network. If nobody adopts your hard fork well you can keep mining worthless coins but people can continue to use/mine the existing fork. Bitcoin is highly resistant to change (almost to a fault). It is a common myth that the person who controls the majority of hashing power can change the rules.
  - gizmo686 14y ago
    A (malicious) person who controls a majority of the hashing power can change the rules. Central to bitcoin is the idea that the longest chain is the valid one. If you control 51% of the network, you can create a chain that looks however you want it to look, and then publish that chain. Because your chain is longer than the correct one, it will be accepted, and your changes will be accepted. Using this, you can modify the chain to be what it would look like according to your rules. Of course, this is only possible becuase your chain looks as if it was following the rules. If you have a non malicious computational majority, than any change in the rules would make an incompatible block-chain and a hardfork.
    - joshaidan 14y ago
      So how hard would it be to get 51% control of the network?

by ealloc 14y ago

erikpukinskis 14y ago

It's not really consensus, it's rule by whichever coalition can get 51% of miners.

Statistical 14y ago
Not really. For example if 51% (or even 99.99999999999%) of miners decided they wanted to go back to 50 BTC block reward (or even a new 5,000 BTC block reward) that would simply create an incompatible fork. A fork which would most likely be promptly rejected by the consensus of users, merchants, exchanges, and service providers. One can't simply force a change to the rules. All you can do is make a hard fork in the network. If nobody adopts your hard fork well you can keep mining worthless coins but people can continue to use/mine the existing fork. Bitcoin is highly resistant to change (almost to a fault). It is a common myth that the person who controls the majority of hashing power can change the rules.
- gizmo686 14y ago
  A (malicious) person who controls a majority of the hashing power can change the rules. Central to bitcoin is the idea that the longest chain is the valid one. If you control 51% of the network, you can create a chain that looks however you want it to look, and then publish that chain. Because your chain is longer than the correct one, it will be accepted, and your changes will be accepted. Using this, you can modify the chain to be what it would look like according to your rules. Of course, this is only possible becuase your chain looks as if it was following the rules. If you have a non malicious computational majority, than any change in the rules would make an incompatible block-chain and a hardfork.
  - joshaidan 14y ago
    So how hard would it be to get 51% control of the network?