"If you believe Proof of Work decides the protocol, then go to BTC because it has the most Proof of Work!"

I see this argument a lot, and it really makes my skin crawl because its so surface-level and unrigorous.

So I want to debunk it.

Firstly, Proof of Work is not deterministic, it's probabilistic. Theoretically, if i had super good luck, i could pull out my mobile phone, start mining, by some crazy chance score a bunch of blocks in a row, then 51% attack the network. Its not impossible, just very very unlikely. My point here is that is to have hashpower means to have a good chance of having control over a portion of the network, not a guarantee.

Secondly, market actions and price fluctuations are also probsbilistic, not deterministic. Whether Bitcoin goes 5% up or 5% down is completely random, as nobody can predict when everyone will buy or sell, and how each price movement influences the next.

Thirdly, once exchanges establish a ticker, they don't change it for superficial reasons such as fluctuations in hashpower or price. Once a ticker and name is established, it sticks, as exchanges can't just rename everything all the time. People would needlessly lose tons of money due to name confusion if they did, and the exchange would go out of business. And an exchange establishes names and tickers based on what is recognized by people, which usually requires some initial exchange naming something as something.

To put it simply, there is a high degree of randomness during a contentious chain split as to whether one side gets to keep a name/brand or not. If market conditions were more or less favorable, miners would be able to profitably mine or or less. The action of mining itself is also probabilistic, and its possible for someone with more hashpower to be beat by someone with less hashpower during a temporary time period. So basically, if the Bitcoin Cash hardfork were to have happened on a different day, its theoretically possible that Bitcoin Cash today could have BTC's name, brand, and ticker, with no objective variables like raw hashpower changed.

Because of this fact, it's possible that BTC's success over BCH could be a random outcome, and it is possible that the roles could be switched if we went back in time and rolled the probability dice again.

This is not a failure of Proof of Work, but a fact of Proof of Work. This is also not a failure of free markets, but a fact of free markets.

It is also possible that miners allowed BTC to win due to wanting to get rid of culture rot, wanting to increase coin holdings, wanting more time to innovate on the protocol, or a plethora of other personal reasons.

And Regardless of the reason why BTC exists above BCH today, whether due to inherent randomness, hard-to-see miner strategy, purely a moral mistake, or perhaps just a different set of miners voting at the time, this does not in any way delegitimize the proof of work consensus process on Bitcoin Cash. Proof of Work still is the mechanism that determines what goes into the protocol, and is at constant play. The miners mining on BTC are also mostly pro-BCH at this point, which should indicate that even though BTC mistakenly (or unfortunately) has been glorified above BCH, the Proof of Work consensus mechanism is still intact and healthy.

Basically, there is nothing logically inconsistent about being a Proof of Work maximalist, and existing on a chain with less Proof of Work in the others, since my perception is that the Proof of Work will follow the utility.

I think that the BCH miners rightfully implement the protocol they desire to implement (which is currently ABC, but could change at any time), and that at the end of the day if they have a hard call to make, it is both their moral right, and is a logical outcome of the Proof of Work mechanism itself.

submitted by /u/LoopNester
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from Bitcoin - The Internet of Money https://ift.tt/3eYDUcV