Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by strings29 1356 days ago
Bitcoin miners do not control the network. People that run bitcoin nodes do.
2 comments

Full nodes do, sure. But the point stands. Who controls which blocks are proposed and validated? Whoever can buy the most nodes and miners.
If you had that many miners. You'd benefit more from mining then destroying the network. It's effectively financially impossible to attack the network through mining. Its the whole reason PoW is used since energy tethers bitcoin within the realm oh physic. Real world limitations are required to produce digital scarcity.
The nodes are pretty much useless without miners... Ofc they can pass historical records around and transactions that never happen.
Not true. First off, any number of miners could exist and the difficulty adjustment keeps the blockchain growing at a steady rate.

Independent, easy & decentralized nodes are almost all that matter.