Bitcoin Unlimited - Ideas, arguments, and proposals

[Peter R]

I made the decision to capitalize the B in Blockchain because that is the convention we decided upon for articles in Ledger. The logic was that if the word "blockchain" was acting as a proper noun it should be capitalized, and if it was acting as a regular noun it should not be. There wasn't really a strong opinion either way on this one, however. More details:

Regarding @VeritasSapere proposed changes:

First paragraph:

- I prefer "monetary system" to "monetary protocol" because monetary system is already a widely-understood term and I think we want to piggy-back off this.

- I strongly prefer "unforgeable" to "unforgettable" because the second doesn't make sense to me.

- Capitalization: I aesthetically prefer no capitalization but I logically prefer capitalization. I don't have a strong opinion.

Second paragraph:

- I like all of these changes.

Third paragraph:

- I like the first change.

- I am mixed on whether the new sentence should be added (not strongly opposed or strongly for).

 

[solex]

I like the Cryptocurrency Syntax and Semantics. Very concise. Just wondering whether the "B" symbol should be the conventional one (with short bars) which has recently been accepted into unicode, rather than the single-bar workaround.

 

[Peter R]

@solex: the problem is that there are no fonts that include the new Bitcoin Unicode symbol yet. We'd need both a serifed and a sans-serifed version too. If this problem can somehow be solved easily in both MS Word and LaTeX then we would consider it.

 

[Peter R]

@theZerg: Minor formatting error: there is no space between the paragraphs in Article 2, Items VIII, IX and X (this is inconsistent with the rest of the document).

 

[VeritasSapere]

I made the decision to capitalize the B in Blockchain because that is the convention we decided upon for articles in Ledger. The logic was that if the word "blockchain" was acting as a proper noun it should be capitalized, and if it was acting as a regular noun it should not be. There wasn't really a strong opinion either way on this one, however. More details:

Regarding @VeritasSapere proposed changes:

First paragraph:

- I prefer "monetary system" to "monetary protocol" because monetary system is already a widely-understood term and I think we want to piggy-back off this.

- I strongly prefer "unforgeable" to "unforgettable" because the second doesn't make sense to me.

- Capitalization: I aesthetically prefer no capitalization but I logically prefer capitalization. I don't have a strong opinion.

Second paragraph:

- I like all of these changes.

Third paragraph:

- I like the first change.

- I am mixed on whether the new sentence should be added (not strongly opposed or strongly for).

- "I prefer "monetary system" to "monetary protocol" because monetary system is already a widely-understood term and I think we want to piggy-back off this." Fair enough, agreed.

- "I strongly prefer "unforgeable" to "unforgettable" because the second doesn't make sense to me." Ah, I had to look at that word closely again, I thought it was a spelling mistake, I read it wrong lol.

- "Capitalization: I aesthetically prefer no capitalization but I logically prefer capitalization. I don't have a strong opinion." I see it is spelled with a capital because we are inferring the Bitcoin blockchain. I am still leaning towards not spelling it with a capital, however you certainly have made a good case, curious to see what others think, I also do not have a strong opinion for this one.

I am glad you like my other changes. mainly stylistic as I have already said.

- "I am mixed on whether the new sentence should be added (not strongly opposed or strongly for)." I am again curious to see what other people think of these new principles I have introduced. I actually used these two principles for the article I wrote on the subject, in there I argued for increasing adoption while maximizing decentralization and financial freedom, I always thought they where good guiding principles for Bitcoin.

 

[theZerg]

where is your article?

 

[VeritasSapere]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164464.0

I am actually planning to rewrite it and add a lot of new material, I have developed my thinking much more over the last few months, so it is a work in progress. It has become outdated according to my own standards at least in such a short time, crypto indeed moves fast. The arguments are all still valid of course, I just think that I can now still improve on it a lot.

 

[theZerg]

Its very good, but you are right it needs a rewrite. It is valuable enough to warrant perfect spelling and sentence structure which is difficult to do in a forum context. If you rewrite it, I will create a section of the BitcoinUnlimited web site called "perspectives" and put it up there.

I like your careful distinction between technical and ideological arguments and how you begin your argument from the very beginning.

In your "adoption is important" paragraph I would add that we believe that offering our ideology (as implemented in bitcoin) to more users will result in a better society. What's the impact of an ideology shared by .000001% of the population? With certain exceptions, the impact of an ideology is greater if there are more people following it.

Its very interesting to compare pools to a representative democracy. So what's stopping XT mining?

I think you need to rethink or carefully rephrase the paragraph on solo mining. I mean I recently bought a 65Ghash $30 miner --for testing -- but I threw it on ghash.io and I calculated that I would ROI in a few months if my electricity was free. Its not free, but I do need to factor in the heat produced since it is winder here. Its also only a few cents one way or the other so its basically just for fun (and to vote). Also, solo miners might mine as a lottery ticket. So you might qualify your use of the term miner to mean reliably profiting miners.

I like seeing the idea that you ARE making a choice between 0% growth and N% growth. There is NO no-choice option here (except Bitcoin Unlimited configured to follow the mining majority, actually).

 

[VeritasSapere]

Thanks, glad you like it, I will definitely get around to rewriting it and making it more complete. Perspectives for posting sounds good after it is more complete.

The distinction between technical and ideological arguments are indeed important, like I said in the paper decentralization and financial freedom are subjective ideologies.

That is a great idea about the betterment of society, I will definitely need to add that as well, that most likely will spawn several paragraphs. I was intrigued actually when Bitcoin was described as a public good in the articles, I will incorporate that into the paper to, and the concept of consensus being an emergent phenomena, I think I heard that first from Peter R.

Pools being comparative to representative democracy is an important concept in my opinion.

In regards to how come we are not seeing more mining support for XT. I think it is because miners are highly risk adverse and also would like to avoid controversy, which in most cases is a good mentality. In this case I think they are waiting to see what Core will do before January. They are giving them a chance because they would rather avoid controversy, they want things to be smooth. However I suspect that after January and depending on the transaction volume and the actions of Core, the economic pressure to change sides will increase as Peter R has described. Over 75% of the miners are supporting an increased blocksize, though flagging support for a non existent Core increase proposal, this situation can not go on for ever especially when the network becomes more congested. I support XT but it has a bad image for many people even though undeserved. Another good reason for Bitcoin unlimited here as well, giving people another option even if it is just to support BIP101 but in a different way.

I think you are mistaken on the use of this term. When mining with Ghash like you did, you are pool mining, not solo mining. Since you are not running your own full node and finding the blocks yourself, you are pooling your hashing power together with other people in order to reduce variance, this is a good thing. Without pools we would be limited to maybe a hundred super mines max, since variance would most likely not allow more operations to exist. Therefore pools are good for decentralization, it is better to have thousands of miners on 10-20 pools compared to under a hundred super mines. I am a miner myself and I have been running over 12TH out of my home for the last year, and I have ROI'd. I do not think that increasing the blocksize would lead to increased mining centralization because as a home miner I do not run a full node for the purposes of mining. This counters the argument of mining centralization due to blocksize very effectively. There is a far greater risk of mining centralization presently due to centralization of manufacturing and economies of scale.

You are right about the pragmatic reality, there is no such thing as not making a choice as is often the case in political thought, even apathy has its consequences. Bitcoin unlimited is also another choice, just more configurable as far as I understand it, which is a concept that I need to explore more, that is fascinating. Ofcourse when I wrote the article there where still only two options, more options are now starting to appear, which is a great development which I have been advocating for a while now. I definitely applaud your efforts here which is in part why I am also very pleased to also contribute.

 

[theZerg]

I thought that I was the first to use the terminology of consensus being "emergent phenomena", but really Satoshi should get credit. But its a pretty common networking idea -- studying the emergent behavior of a network as a whole.

Cypherdoc first introduced the idea of Bitcoin as a "public good" AFAIK.

WRT mining I understand that what I am doing is pooled mining. I'm saying that solo miners may choose to mine for different reasons (hobby, voting, heat, excess electricity), or choose to do so for irrational financial reasons (lottery). You seemed to come on pretty strong that solo mining is obsolete but that may not be the case.

"Mining within Bitcoin is a self balancing system and it works, to think that small miners should be able to feasibly solo mine again is already so far removed from the reality today that to go back and rewind the clock so to speak and to go back to how mining used to be, would be to radical of a change to even attempt to enforce."

I would change this to say something like "feasibly solo mine as a business".

Also, in the paragraph above:

"I do realize that mining centralization has increased over the years, but this to a certain extend is to be expected because of economies of scale."

I do not think that we know if centralization is because of economies of scale, because of early access to next generation hardware, or because access to cheap electricity requires co-location with a generating plant which implies a business, separate facilities, etc -- all overhead that must be paid for with economies of scale. We will discover this in the next few years as the hardware upgrade cycle flattens out, and as energy like solar becomes deployed on top of family homes. Selling energy back to the grid or storing in batteries are both expensive. We may find that using that energy to mine is more cost efficient.

 

[VeritasSapere]

Good to know, silly of me about Satoshi, I did not know he coined the term first. It is also indeed a good conception of Bitcoin as a public good, well done Cypherdoc.

You make a good point about hobby and lottery, however for voting and heat it would make more sense to do pooled mining. It is a good point, I should lighten that statement. Solo mining is not dead. lol

"feasibly solo mine as a business" Stating it this way does indeed make it more accurate, you are correct.

There is a bit of confusion over these terms still I have found. Some people prefer to refer to what I call the miners and what I do myself as "hashing" and only the pools are "mining" and then conclude that mining is centralized. I have rejected this definition, since the relationship is more nuanced. Though referring to a small operation like my own and what you did as solo mining is confusing considering the other meaning for solo miner which others refer to as the "true" mining. So I would not take that definition so far, independent miner, home miner, small miner etc is probably better at least in terms of differentiating between different types of mining operations like the industrial miners.

I presently think that the greatest reason for centralization might be centralization of manufacturing, this is a real concern, however when the price increases like it recently has it should spur more competition among mining manufactures selling to the public.

I should also indeed widen that statement about mining centralization, include centralization of manufacturing and other possible factors, make it more nuanced. Thanks for the pointers.

I actually do agree with these points you are making about mining, I am also expecting the space to shift most likely necessitated with a price increase. At the present time I do not even have good and cheap access to the best ASICS, I hope that situation changes soon.

One interesting observation about my mining operation compared to the larger industrial mines is that I have much lower overheads, you know those big mines have lots of bills, I have just incorporated it into my already existing home and business. I also use the heat generated from the miners to heat my home. This also provides savings that most industrial operations most likely would have wasted.

 

[theZerg]

Just to clarify, IDK if Satoshi used the term "emergent phenonema" I just think that he must have understood the concept based on his design...

I'm applying your ideas to the articles now... BTW you can use github to look at the web page here: https://github.com/gandrewstone/BitcoinUnlimitedWeb/blob/master/bitcoinUnlimited/private/articles.html

 

[theZerg]

I took all the changes that you and Peter R agreed on except I'm struggling with this sentence

"This is in part why adoption is paramount, it also further aligns with the the principles of decentralization and financial freedom which should also be considered as important principles to be upheld."

I like the idea, but I am not enthused about the structure of the sentence. How about:

Focusing on adoption important so that the principles of decentralization and financial freedom embodied by the Bitcoin network can enact positive change in our society.

 

[VeritasSapere]

I have a modified version of the restructured sentence:

"Focusing on adoption is important so that the principles of decentralization and financial freedom embodied by the Bitcoin network can enact more positive change in our society."

Funny at first I was not sure about the restructuring, it has grown on me a lot now. It is very good.

 

[VeritasSapere]

I have another observation, in this sentence:

"The voices of scientists, developers, entrepreneurs, investors and users should all be heard and respected"

I feel like there is something missing here, more specifically the humanities are not represented, or also known as the arts, or the "social sciences". For instance using myself as an example, I have a background in political philosophy. I am not a scientist and I am also not a developer, the same goes for economics (depending on the school of thought maybe), history, philosophy, politics, law, anthropology and more. More generally concerned with the study of human culture, which in most cases is definitely not a science, this is my background as well. It should also be considered important for Bitcoin considering that Bitcoin does also have this human element which is crucial for its continued operation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities

I am somewhat stumped thinking of a good term for this however, brainstorm:

social scientists
philosophers
humanists
scholars
other scholars

example:

"The voices of scientists, developers, humanists, entrepreneurs, investors and users should all be heard and respected"

another example:

"The voices of scientists, scholars, developers, entrepreneurs, investors and users should all be heard and respected"

I am not sure about using the term humanist even though it is accurate, it is a bit of a rare word to use. There is also a philosophy which is known as humanism, which is maybe why I do not want to use that term, however that is not necessarily implied in this context. I am not quite sure about this in the moment at least, maybe I just need to sleep on it. We could possibly use a different word to describe this meaning or the entire sentence might need to be restructured, I will sleep on it anyway and see what I think tomorrow. Keep brainstorming, curious to see if anyone else can think of a better way to phrase this. I do think it is important to include this, it even relates to this distinction between ideological and technical we where discussing before.

After giving it more thought I think this one is good:

"The voices of scientists, scholars, developers, entrepreneurs, investors and users should all be heard and respected"

the definition of scholar being:"a specialist in a particular branch of study, especially the humanities."

So that does fit perfectly, I could pretty much delete the previous text of this post but I will leave it up so you can see the process of my thinking.

 

[VeritasSapere]

Just to be clear, I propose this change:

The voices of scientists, scholars, developers, entrepreneurs, investors and users should all be heard and respected.

 

[theZerg]

Yes that is a very important change. Thanks!

EDIT: change pushed to github (but you won't see it on the web yet, waiting for a few more issues)

 

[VeritasSapere]

It is an honor, thank you.

 

[Peter R]

I just wanted to say that I read through the Bitcoin Unlimited Articles (again) last night, and with all the help from everyone here, it reads very well! (It always read well, but now it seems quite polished.)

http://www.bitcoinunlimited.info/articlesOfFederation

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]