Martin:
Re: Block Space Authority, or "authority": in general
An authority dictates policy.
Authority arises in 4 cases off the top of my head:
- Authority because entity threats violence/dominance
- Authority because entity's claim to property is respected to maintain
friendship/benefits of specialization and trade. (one has authority over one's
own property/business/contractually agreed claims)
- Authority because entity claims divine inspiration, and others accept such a
claim
- Authority because entity gained respect and was voluntarily delegated
"Miners" do not fit in any of these categories. In fact "miners" do the exact
opposite, their policy is dictated by market demand. They do us the service of
creating block candidates. If a miner is a good businessman, he mines whatever
currency gives him the most profit. The end users decide the policy and which
currency is worth anything. Hence the users are the ones dictating to the
miners how much work they should perform on each coin.
Miners compete against each other until there is only very slim profit. If they
are devoting too much work to a coin they spend too much on
energy/computers/network, and they have losses, so they reduce capacity on that
coin. If mining a coin is extremely profitable, they expand their work until
there is no profit.
So... miners don't really have any authority. Or if for some reason somebody
does give them authority, its due to either the Divine (lol unlikely) or
Respect reasons above... which is an unfounded/insecure reason.
Using miner signalling to determine when/whether SegWit is activated was a
mistake in any extent that gave people the implication that miners have any
authority. It was a poor way to schedule its activation. We assumed that the
miners would activate it in a reasonable time because SegWit is undeniably
good, so we just used this method to try to prevent a soft fork. Instead I
recommend my proposed BitcoinUpdateBoard https://pastebin.com/ikBGPVfR. Or
bitcoin core could include more entities such as specific miners and exchanges
in their table located here: https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/.
We already have come to consensus that SegWit is good. So we should just
schedule a date to activate it in the future where market participants have a
reasonable time to prepare.
Cheers,
Praxeology Guy
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