RE: Should validators be able to reject transactions?
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Should validators be able to reject transactions?
I think a better question is this:
Can you prove a validator received a transaction?
The short answer: 'no'.
And if you could then you would not need a validator.
That's precisely the validators job: to validate.
So the question pivots away from a technical one to a philosophical one.
A validator can always reject a transaction by definition.
The only question left is should they be removed from power if they engage in this behavior.
The answer there depends on several variables that include intent and more philosophy.
This means that each soft or hard fork is an amendment or an introduction of a new law for the blockchain.
A hard-fork is a new law for the blockchain, but a soft-fork is just a new action using the same laws.
A node that implements a soft fork can do so without any of the other nodes realizing it happened.
A soft fork follows all the old rules so no new rules are being created and no old rules broken.
To eliminate the power validators currently have in censoring transactions would require upgrades to blockchains that takes away their autonomy to pick and choose.
Again, to eliminate the power of validators simply makes them not validators.
This is an impossible upgrade to achieve.
It's legit their only job to pick and choose.
This is why POW consensus gets severely underestimated.
POW consensus CANT make these censorship decisions.
A rogue block will always sneak through that the validators can't deny.
Whether that is "good" or "bad" depends on the situation and the opinions surrounding it.
But the fact that the technology exists is inarguably & objectively good.
Quickly looked this up and I can't believe that it never comes up when people talk about transactions censorship even though it's just an important detail.
The fact that one can't makes any censorship arguments dismissible, all the more reason why decentralization is important.
May have loosely phrased that, but "amendment" in this context meant a conservative change through soft forks.
That, is interesting. Could you make my research on that easier by explaining a bit on why that happens?
Let's say 99 out of 100 block producers (miners) are actively censoring your transactions with a softfork on a POW network. That means 1 out of every 100 blocks is going to include the censored transaction and it will be included on the blockchain even though 99% of the network was against allowing it. That means that even if 99% of the network opposes what you are doing on Bitcoin you're still going to make it through after around 17 hours of waiting.
Put this context in the situation of a hacker who just stole millions of dollars.
Having to wait 17 hours to move the money somewhere else or syphon it through a privacy protocol like CoinJoin is a trivial affair. It's not going to matter to the hacker one bit that 99% of the network opposes their action.
On a DPOS or POS chain getting 99% consensus is the same as 100% consensus and they can rollback the chain and prevent the block from ever being minted. On Hive I think you need 16/20 witnesses to agree for the block to be finalized. 16/20 is only 80% which is how these networks are able to censor things. POW can't do this even with 99%.
I agree I think the issue is very hard to explain and the details fly under the radar.