Where do unalienable rights come from in Bitcoin?
Hard forks have been a hot topic in Bitcoin recently, and I want to try and make sure non technical people understand the implications of a hard fork. This blog post builds off of this previous blog post:
First off, consensus rules are equivalent to unalienable rights. By running a full node in Bitcoin, you are guaranteed not to have your unalienable rights violated by other users on the network. An instance of an unalienable right is the right that 21M Bitcoin will only ever exist. Our software explicitly states this is an unalienable right.
I want to kill this misconception that unalienable rights come for miners. This is categorically false. All miners do is spend computational power to try and solve blocks. We use this computational power to give assurances that a payment is finalized — but there is no guaranteed finality — only practical finality.
It is our responsibility as users of Bitcoin to make sure miners are following the rules. We have had instances in the past where miners weren’t following the rules — and this required us to penalize them in the form of losing block rewards. If miners were unilaterally in control of the network, they would be able to make up any rules they wanted to. Fortunately they are not.
Soft forks fundamentally preserve our unalienable rights — hard forks fundamentally violate them. While current hard fork proposal are mostly benign, I think the principle is worth standing up for. Bitcoin won’t always have early adopters fighting amongst early adopters about these unalienable rights. There are much larger fish in the sea with an ocean of influence that aren’t afraid to exert pressure on the community to conform to whatever there version of “unalienable rights” are. Do we want to set a precedent of conforming over this?
What happens when we start changing unalienable rights?
This is a good question. Once we start eroding the rights we have given to Bitcoin users anything can change. We should always be wary of politicians promising green pastures if only you give up a few of your rights. Once we start losing our unalienable rights we will start losing the things that made Bitcoin interesting — censorship resistance, permissionless innovation.
What are not examples of unalienable rights
- Low fees
- Fast confirmations
- Putting Katy Perry albums on the blockchain
Conclusion
Remember, your unalienable rights in Bitcoin come from running full node software on your own machine. If you do this, you have a guarantee that no one can violate your rights as a Bitcoin user.
Hard forks change your unalienable rights to something new. The easier this is, the more alienable our rights are. Soft forks preserve our unalienable rights. We need to commit to a culture preserving our rights. Once we change our unalienable rights once, it makes it much easier to do it again.
Is it worth it?
