Opinion | Using Nakamoto Consensus and Mining Parliament to deal with Bitcoin network problems

On June 28, Bitcoin Cash supporter Javier Gonzalez announced the launch of an interesting protocol called Bitcoin Mining Parliament (BMP). The theory behind BMP is that "miners are the executors of Bitcoin" and "any required rules and incentives can be enforced through this consensus mechanism" in Nakamoto Consensus.

Building a virtual and transparent Bitcoin mining parliament

The Satoshi Nakamoto system created more than 10 years ago has changed the lives of many people and even the course of history. The technology released by Satoshi Nakamoto has many advantages, but one of Bitcoin's core innovations is the Nakamoto consensus, a method that keeps the network in a state of effective consensus despite imperfect information. The Nakamoto consensus uses proof of work, block selection, and reward structures to incentivize network participants to act in concert.

There is some debate about whether non-mining nodes have power and the high concentration of mining nodes, and Gonzalez believes that miners are the enforcers of Bitcoin for a variety of reasons. Developers have launched a new open source protocol called Bitcoin Mining Parliament (BMP) and a mining pool called Bmp.virtualpol.com for miners to use the protocol. Currently, the BMP project's readme specification details that the platform is still in early testing, but the tool is currently in use; at the time of writing, 124 miners are participating in the BMP mining pool, and the interface shows how to use hash power to vote on certain matters.

Gonzalez’s BMP theory paper explains: “Miners can write in proportion to their hashrate in a proof-of-work network blockchain, or they can make an extreme decision with enough consensus to write a legal empty block in a minority-supported chain (i.e., the minority must obey the majority) to cause its collapse, which is beneficial to the majority-supported network and their long-term interests.”

Nakamoto Consensus ensures that rules and incentive policies can be implemented

Gonzalez insists that Satoshi Nakamoto created the role of miners because the network’s governance model needed to be delegated to a higher entity more powerful than one person or a small group of developers; miners are rewarded for this, and Gonzalez believes their interests will always be aligned, and he also claims that understanding this predictable pattern and relationship is “a manifestation of Nakamoto consensus.”

“If this information is ignored, every dispute makes the blockchain more fragile — accepting the consensus mechanism means empowering miners to fully exercise their legal power over the blockchain,” the BMP creators’ paper explains. Likewise, accepting this reality guarantees compliance with the last line of the last page of Satoshi’s original paper indefinitely: