There is no need for this to be in the whitepaper.
Following miners blindly a priori defeats Bitcoin's security, because this would mean also blindly following a majority of clearly malicious miners.
Following miners blindly a priori defeats Bitcoin's security, because this would mean also blindly following a majority of clearly malicious miners.
Explanation:
Consider a situation where a majority of malicious miners (so, 51% and up) would create a blockchain where even one transaction is reversed.
Now consider that every user can see this happening as it is being rewritten.
This leads to two possible scenarios:
Consider a situation where a majority of malicious miners (so, 51% and up) would create a blockchain where even one transaction is reversed.
Now consider that every user can see this happening as it is being rewritten.
This leads to two possible scenarios:
1) All Bitcoin nodes follow the longest chain with most cumulative work rule and accept this clearly tampered with chain as being Bitcoin
2) All Bitcoin nodes start rejecting this chain as being tampered with and no longer trustworthy.
2) All Bitcoin nodes start rejecting this chain as being tampered with and no longer trustworthy.
Which of the two scenarios do you think is a) desirable and b) likely?
If you hold to the assumption decisions are made by miners and no one else, then 1) is your default and there is no protection against this.
If you hold to the assumption decisions are made by miners and no one else, then 1) is your default and there is no protection against this.
I think this is silly in the extreme and furthermore such a stance goes against anything rational: it's not in your best interest to follow such a chain. It would be a completely untrustworthy chain that has completely done away with what Bitcoin stands for.
The reason why this is not in the whitepaper, is that nowadays we distinguish between "miners" and "full nodes", which made no sense in the days of the whitepaper: any node could mine and as such qualified as a miner in a real effective sense.
That doesn't mean that the whole premise of Bitcoin goes out of the window now that there is an effective split between nodes that have the resources that mine and those that don't: full nodes matter. Semantics do not change that.
Bottom line: blindly adhering to the longest chain rule, because the "whitepaper doesn't say otherwise" is passive and dangerous.
It's also irrational.
It's also irrational.
