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RE: Why Immutability is All That Matters. A Reply to @PSamuelson & a Question to the Developers
You may find this interesting: https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/draft-steem-constitution
Average members can help security by voting for witnesses. Or, if you have the skills, run a witness yourself.
Btw, Bitcoin is not immutable. It doesn't take billions of dollars to create a fork, thereby rolling back blocks. It only takes the cooperation of three mining pool operators, plus some lobbying. Maybe a handful of mining farm owners.
But again, you're talking about two separate things there. Bitcoin is 100% immutable UNLESS it's changed. Right now, the feature of Bitcoin is immutability. So we can trust that it will remain immutable until it isn't. If it isn't, that's because it was attacked or because the devs forked it to be mutable. Since the devs have not forked for MtGox or Bitfinex, I see no reason why they would do this.
Therefore, what you've described is an attack on a feature of Bitcoin. Mining pools getting together to roll back blocks would be an attack on the blockchain. That doesn't make it any less immutable; that means it has been attacked.
Immutability is a feature; changing that through miner collusion is an attack.
Well, what isn't? :-)
The thing is, forks happen all the time in Bitcoin, when two miners find a block at roughly the same time. In most cases these forks are resolved pretty quickly. Sometimes it takes several hours though. The built-in rule is "longest chain wins".
From a technical POV there is no difference between these random forks and a deliberate decision by miners. Calling it an attack is therefore questionable, IMO.
Yes, but attacks are not technical, but political and economical. The intent is different and that's key in this conversation.
When miners collude to change transactions or prevent transactions, you've lost your immutability and censorship resistance. That's different than two miners finding a block simultaneously and then it becoming a game of longest chain wins.
What I'm trying to say is that BTC is immutable in the same sense that ETH was immutable until the DAO hack. In other words - not at all.