Here's a great thread that does an incredible job of explaining the role miners play within the beautiful Bitcoin incentive system. Our boy Matthew uses a great analogy to make this point clear; miners are similar to security guards who are hired to protect an office where a company has decided to house its headquarters. Matthew is far more articulate than I am, so definitely check out the whole thread before reading my spiel.
2/ The security guards have a meeting and decide that they don't like commuting to work. They decide that the following week they won't turn up at the offices but instead will guard a different, vacant building closer to where *they* all live.
— Matthew Haywood (@wintercooled) September 16, 2018
4/ Next Monday the old security guards do as planned and are surprised that by lunchtime none of the office folk have turned up at the location the are now guarding. They go back round to the offices to see what's up and are surprised to see the security gate fully staffed.
— Matthew Haywood (@wintercooled) September 16, 2018
6/ SW2X miners very nearly turned up to guard the "wrong office" last year. Luckily for them they remembered they like getting paid. Even luckier because the office that they were about to "guard" would have fallen down on them as the architect made a simple engineering error.
— Matthew Haywood (@wintercooled) September 16, 2018
8/ You "advertise" what you will pay for and want securing by using a node. Be wary of those that say you shouldn't run a node as they don't just want to provide security - they want to remove your ability to choose what you pay for and force you to "move".
— Matthew Haywood (@wintercooled) September 16, 2018
10/ Addendum for the pedantic:😉Rogue miners free to switch back any time they want to get paid again. In real life Bitcoin users don't lose security of existing confirmations during the 'walk out' as the difficulty of the network remains the same, block intervals likely increase
— Matthew Haywood (@wintercooled) September 17, 2018
For you freaks who weren't around last Summer, there was a lot of confusion as differing Bitcoin stakeholders had a heated debate about the future of the protocol and how the network should be scaled. A contingent of these stakeholders strongly believed that miners would have the ultimate say in these matters as they believed the miners' hash power would have the power to dictate what rules got adopted into the protocol, no matter what users or node operators thought. This contingent of stakeholders was proven to be completely wrong by the end of the Summer with the adoption of SegWit via BIP148 (UASF) and the rejection of the 2x movement (an attempt to arbitrarily double the block size after SegWit was accepted). All of this despite the fact that "90% of the hash rate was in support of Bitcoin Cash and, subsequently, SegWit2x.
What we learned towards the end of last Summer is exactly what Matthew is describing in his thread, node operators ultimately decide what Bitcoin is and miners are contracted out to secure the network and collect block rewards and transaction fees for their service. In the long run, miners will mine what has value and that will always turn out to be what full node operators decide Bitcoin is. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
For another great thread from our boy Matthew, I highly recommend you click on this link and learn more about Bitcoin consensus, UASF and SegWit2x. And when you're done reading that, it wouldn't be a terrible idea to take seven more minutes to read Pierre Rochard's piece, Bitcoin Governance.
Final thought...
Have a long flight later this week. Seriously contemplating picking up a neck pillow. Been a pretty big anti-"neck pillow" guy up until now. That may have to change.
