> its is the miners agreeing to following a certain version of the consensus algorithm that makes a blockchain do what it does
You have cause and effect mixed up.
The miners that follow the same consensus rules that the merchants and exchanges do, get paid. The others do not.
A majority of miners following incompatible consensus would look like a huge drop off in mining capacity from the end users perspective. Similar things have happened multiple times.
There aren’t “merchants” in eth, really, there are dapps. Exchanges don’t care about protocols beyond send and receive. Still, I agree with your larger point: The value goes where the dapps go, and many will go to eth2. (But some will move to more stable and sustainable platforms.)
> But some will move to more stable and sustainable platforms.
This is why I refuse to hold ETH... when the financial big boys finally start moving to blockchain rails, they are going to look at ETH and think “WTF is this?” and pass it up for more principled designs like Cardano.
You have cause and effect mixed up.
The miners that follow the same consensus rules that the merchants and exchanges do, get paid. The others do not.
A majority of miners following incompatible consensus would look like a huge drop off in mining capacity from the end users perspective. Similar things have happened multiple times.