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Who is responsible for ensuring that the bitcoin protocol is not violated in the network?
- The market forces behind the supply and demand of bitcoin
- Miners
- Consensus of the miners
- Developers of the bitcoin protocol
Who is responsible for ensuring that the bitcoin protocol is not violated in the network?
Answers
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There is no single entity responsible for ensuring the rules of the protocol are not violated. Rather, bitcoin is a decentralized network, so all participants must adhere to the protocol’s rules, or else the network will ignore them.
This is accomplished by a network of full nodes, that relay and validate all transactions and blocks against the network’s rules. All of the nodes together form the decentralized network, so to join the network you must adhere to the rules defined by the node’s code.
- The market forces behind the supply and demand of bitcoin
This will determine the price, but the price will not affect the ability of participants to violate the networ’s rules, nor will it ensure that rules are not violated. The rules must be followed whether the price is $1 per bitcoin, or $1 million per bitcoin.
- Miners
Miners work to secure the blockchain record, they will validate transactions in the same way other (non-mining) full nodes do, and they will ensure only valid transactions are added to the blockchain.
- Consensus of the miners
Same as above. Note that even if a group of miners decided to violate the network’s rules, then the network (full nodes) would simply ignore any new (invalid) blocks found by those miners.
- Developers of the bitcoin protocol
The developers collaboratively write and refine the code that runs the network, but this does not give them absolute powers to violate or change the rules. Their code works to ensure that everyone involved in the network is behaving, and that any misbehaving nodes are banned.
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Bitcoin is a decentralized. Therefore, there is no central regulatory governing/policing person or group responsible for the proper usage of bitcoin.
No person, group or country controls the entire BitCoin or BlockChain network.
Let me know if that’s not clear or further detail is needed.
Cheers
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That's a big part of the point of bitcoin... it's not just one entity, it is everyone ensuring the rules are followed.
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“Rather, bitcoin is a decentralized network, so all participants must adhere to the protocol’s rules, or else the network will ignore them”
So if the network were to ignore the actors involved in the theft of Bitcoins stolen through bitcoin protocol violation, amongst many other methods, will this have the result of preventing any further violation of protocol by the group responsible for its initial successful theft through its violation? No!
I am not aware of any Bitcoin theft through protocol violation, but I am interested if there has been. Do you have any links or references? – Willtech – 2018-02-14T10:58:28.223
No, Im sorry I don’t have any references for you. My comments stem from my experience as an it security engineer with a background in investigation and prosecution of digital crimes against banking and credit card institutions; In recent years I’ve had many discussions with many it security engineer, digital forensic investigators, who specialize and have been tasked with the investigation into crypto currency theft. I’m told that protocol weakness has been leveraged in several large scale crypto currency thefts. – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T11:43:20.640
2The protocol itself has not caused any known thefts of Bitcoin. Rather all large scale thefts of cryptocurrencies have been errors by the implementors of custom software used as backends (or even frontends) of various services. There have also been a few social engineering attacks. But these are not related to the protocol itself; rather they are the result of poorly written custom software and human error. – Andrew Chow – 2018-02-14T16:03:36.420
If a group were to steal Bitcoin, the rest of the network will ignore them. What they stole would not be Bitcoin because it will result in a hard fork of the blockchain. So what they stole would be worthless. – Andrew Chow – 2018-02-14T16:04:46.207
Completely false. – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T16:06:06.027
@BeepBopBoom I encourage you to research past bitcoin thefts, as others have mentioned none of them have happened because someone successfully violated the protocol’s rules, or exploited a security weakness in the protocol itself. AndrewChow covered the nature of some of the attacks that have happened well (software implementation errors, etc). – chytrik – 2018-02-14T20:19:52.707
@BeepBopBoom please also note that on StackExchange an ‘answer’ post should address the main question, not another one of the answers. Your post here would have been better suited as a comment on my answer. SE is designed to be a community-built Q/A posting board, not a discussion board/forum. – chytrik – 2018-02-14T20:26:24.360
Is it safe to say that there is a general consensus amongst you and the “others” you’ve spoken to about this, that there has never been any theft of bitcoins, which was achieved by leveraging an aspect of the protocol, as a part in the process of the overall method utilized? – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T20:35:54.493
1@BeepBopBoom there have certainly been thefts, but none are the fault of the protocol. All* transactions require a valid signature to prove their validity, and only the owner of the coins has the key required to sign, so the protocol would deem any other transaction of those coins as invalid – MeshCollider – 2018-02-14T23:48:27.677
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All the decentralized miners are responsible, as it is defined in the Bitcoin white paper. Noone else.
Its not just the miners. Users cannot blindly trust the miners. – MeshCollider – 2018-02-17T02:37:22.263
@MeshCollier what are you taking about, have you read the white paper? That's the whole point if PoW. – Lubo Kanev – 2018-02-18T06:14:33.507
Of course, but all users must verify that miners obey the rules too. Otherwise the proof of work is invalid. Don't trust, verify. – MeshCollider – 2018-02-18T11:55:24.530
hello thank you, What about if you were to choose from the below options:
No one is responsible for ensuring the BitCoin protocol, unless perhaps you’re referring to the developers in the development stage of bitcoin could be considered responsible for making sure the protocol was coded in such a manner as to prevent violation; but once it was released there is no one person, groupOr government agency that is responsible for it bitcoin violations – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:17:08.360
Now if there are laws broken during the violation of Bitcoin protocol which you’re referring the lawn Forssman or government agency who handles the laws that were broken during the violation could be deemed responsible for investigation and prosecution of the crimes committed during the bitcoin protocol violation. E.g. Someone hacked into a server in the United States and steals bitcoins law enforcement is responsible to investigate and prosecute The laws violated within their jurisdiction that were broken during the theft – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:21:10.890
Hope that’s helpful please let me know if perhaps I’m not understanding your question in the terms you had in mind when you asked. Cheers – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:22:46.917
@Joey I am sure that the programmers would explain that they program the consensus, that Bitcoin Core (the reference client) is deterministically programmed. Blocks will not be accepted by the client if they break protocol rules so, not the miners' consensus. – Willtech – 2018-02-14T09:22:58.007
So does the BitCoin core, as you described, ensure the BitCoin protocol is not violated in the network? – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:25:14.633
And if so, has it prevented all violation of BitCoin protocol in the network? – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:26:12.023
I would assume that he market forces behind the supply and demand of bitcoin are responsible as users actually decides which bitcoin protocol to use? – Codke – 2018-02-14T09:37:58.260
supply and demand, market forces, bitcoin users, etc....do not have any control over enforcing bitcoin protocol violations. – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:46:13.367
Case in point: stolen bitcoins is a daily occurrence, and it cannot be stopped; it can mitigated but not controlled to the point of elimination. – BeepBopBoom – 2018-02-14T09:49:50.867
4Bitcoin Core ensures that the protocol is not violated at the installed node, at each installed instance of Bitcoin Core. Yes, it has many times rejected blocks because they violate the protocol, e.g. a block contains a double spend. Nodes often reject transactions from the mempool before they even reach a block. Also, with some forks of Bitcoin, the forked client runs alongside the Bitcoin network using a fork on the blockchain and their invalid for Bitcoin transamissions are also routinely rejected. – Willtech – 2018-02-14T09:50:22.143