Bitcoin Unlimited Membership -- Join us

johnyj

Member
Mar 3, 2016
89
189
I have a question about this membership voting mechanism, what is the criteria for a member to be able to vote on a technical issue? It may not be fully understandable to him?
 

Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
1,398
5,595
If you're a member then you have the right to vote on all issues, technical or otherwise. If you do not understand the issue then IMO you should abstain from voting on that particular BUIP (as many people did for certain BUIPs last time), but this is not enforced.

I think the system is working fine right now, but if it ever started to become problematic we could (try to) pass a BUIP to adjust it. I also believe that members can be voted out by BUIP, so there is an incentive to behave.
 
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johnyj

Member
Mar 3, 2016
89
189
Thanks Peter for clarify this

I think we strongly need some innovation in decision making mechanism instead of technology. E.g. who get to set the rules and how to make sure the rules represent the interest of economy majority, and how to prevent some powerful guys from just ignore the rules

I don't think the traditional democracy model helps here, since in that case, who is good at politics would gain major support, and combined with lots of technology smoke, they would get their agenda passed. Blockstream has demonstrated how to do it: on chain scaling BIPs can not pass the vote of core devs that is controlled by them

Maybe that is a problem of the universe itself: The increase of entropy is one way, not reversible

Even if you write something in stone like "limited total money supply of 21 million bitcoins". As long as humans are involved, they would change it sooner or later, just like they abandoned the gold standard, in the name of democracy (I guess that decision also passed vote in senate/house)

Of course the users can always vote with their feet, but that is not a optimal solution since they can't do long term commitment if they must prepare to run at any moment
 

cliff

Active Member
Dec 15, 2015
345
854
This is my request for membership.

I'd like to be a member b/c I like BU's approach for regular users who want to be a bit agnostic on various technological issues but still want to support the longest chain.
 

solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
1,558
4,693
Norway. Your support on this forum is more than enough evidence!
 
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tim potter

New Member
Sep 7, 2016
14
14
founding member application

1 - Explaining to /u/seweso why removing the temporary blocksize limit is safe. From what I can see this conversation is what gave the clarity needed to be confident that running BU on the network was safe, and they switched from being on the fence to fully launching right after this.

2 - I was the first to publish any code that had no limit. Yes, all I did was remove the notes and not the actual code. However, this helped kick-start the on-chain scaling movement.

3 - I'm forking the code. Not just a new implementation, a full fork. This will maintain the ledger intact at the time of the fork, yet have no temporary 1mb limit. I'm very grateful to have one developer helping with this. We forked successfully, but now need to re-do it in a way that maintains the code history bitcoin 1.0

I'm excited about bitcoin 1.0. No need to ask miner permission, just fork and remind everyone that bitcoin was designed to be run this way!
 

solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
1,558
4,693
Excellent to have your application Tim.
Your name will be included in the next membership BUIP which will coincide with the election for Secretary commencing Oct 5th.
 
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jcliff

New Member
Oct 28, 2016
1
8
Hello, my name is Jordan. Please consider this my application for BU membership. I am a die hard bitcoiner and want nothing more than to see Satoshi's vision come to fruition.

It kills me that Core has managed to hijack the project so utterly and completely. The dipshits in charge are too cynical to believe that Bitcoin can work, so they've added R&D project after R&D project to the roadmap, proclaiming that there's no need to worry or for the network to function today.

Satoshi knew allowing the blocksize to grow allows the network to grows larger, stronger and more diverse. Though running a full node will eventually becomes a specialty, and in many ways already is due to lack of common desire, individuals can always check their own transactions with trustless SPV.

I applaud this effort to wrest control of the network and return it to the original vision that inspired many of us to join Bitcoin in the first place. For the record, I am not a fan of attempting a minority fork. Let's keep Bitcoin whole!

Edit: Here's proof of ownership of my 8 year old reddit account /u/jcnike: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/5a3lrr/my_application_for_bitcoin_unlimited_membership/
 
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solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
1,558
4,693
Hi @jcliff
Thanks for your application and your point about keeping Bitcoin whole is noted. This is the first choice for many people, me included.
Can you please update your post with a link to another forum with a few years of your online history?
 

taxed4ever

New Member
May 31, 2016
20
118
@jcliff sometimes I wonder how it got to this in the first place over technology that has already helped such a small % of the world with much more help to be done.

One of the things that I despise the most is when bad people come and try to ruin a good thing, something meant to help people. When it comes to money, some people have no shame. It's like going into a charity and pillaging what you can :(
 

Richy_T

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2015
1,085
2,741
I would like to join for the cool t-shirt and the health plan.

And my friend, ChartBuddy too.
 
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AdrianX

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
2,097
5,797
bitco.in
I don't have any good formula for improving the screening process for new members, and I'd hate to see it deteriorate to the boys club run by BS/Core.

In all honesty I'd like BU governance to evolve into the best form of governance the world has ever seen, so we are going to need a competent and critical membership.

As a guiding principal I use something I read a long time ago on why good companies go bad: and it starts with the first bad hire.

So for new applicants, before I cast a vote on your membership I'd like you to confirm the flowing:
  1. you've read and comprehend the Bitcoin Unlimited: Articles of Federation
  2. can give some critical feedback on
    1. one principal you mostly agree with and why
    2. one principal you think can be improved on and why
  3. and an appropriate screening question to ask new applicants to prevent introducing bad apples to the membership.
;)
 

awemany

Well-Known Member
Aug 19, 2015
1,387
5,054
@solex: Yes, I think it is very important to be very careful with new members now, in these times! Absolutely!

So I took a look and here's what I found in jcnike's reddit posting history regarding Bitcoin's future direction:

- his first Bitcoin related post seems to be from Nov 4th 2013 (so arguably, it isn't a bought 8 year-old account reactivated just now)
- Bitcoin's overall direction isn't an issue in any of his posts until probably this one:

2015-06-01 20:44:21 I agree. I find Peter Todd somewhat insufferable. I do like his instinct for making sure we're getting the most bang for our buck out of resources like the block size limit, but in no way does that negate our need to nip obvious scaling issues in the bud right now.

Other posts I found that are pertinent to our cause or Bitcoin's general direction:

2015-08-25 21:17:36 I agree. Multiple implementations of Bitcoin is healthy for the ecosystem and protocol.

2015-10-13 02:57:18 Yes, and Coinbase has supported BIP101 in the past. I think we as a community need to bite the bullet and accept that BIP101 is the only solution that kicks the can down the road far enough. The other options will run into issues rather soon.

2015-11-05 01:54:22 I'm sick of the "higher fees solves everything" argument. No it doesn't. If you don't have enough space for new users, then you don't get to have new users. Fewer users means the network effect doesn't get to work its magic and it hurts the exchange value of BTC. All of this so we can protect an artificial arbitrary 1MB block constraint that was meant to be removed all along.

2015-11-07 06:54:45 I don't like it. My first impressions are that it complicates the blockchain with no clear win.

The claim is faster, more powerful first confirmations than bitcoin core does today. However, under bitcoin-ng, as I understand it, there's no way for a miner to close out his block. This implies that there's no way to know if any of the elected miner's microblocks will be included in the final chain. This is no more effective than 0-conf transactions today. In bitcoin-ng miners rely on the next "key" block to build off of their lastest microblock. Again, there's no way to guarantee they'll do this.

To me, bitcoin-ng hasn't demonstrated real benefit. Its "first confirmation" isn't much more than a 0-conf transaction of today.

2015-12-28 10:31:17 The con is that you no longer have signature data in the blockchain. At the very least, you now need data from more places to replay for yourself the whole truth of what happened. It hasn't been explained to my satisfactiom what risks this introduces into the system. Perhaps someone can clue me in. I estimate SegWit to be perhaps halfway through the dissertation preparation stage of a PhD. To take it for granted as the solution to an immediate threat of blockchain logjam is inappropriate, naive and nearsighted at best.

I think that once it's proven out, SegWit will be a welcome addition to the scaling bitcoin arsenal. It doesn't do nearly enough at the moment.

I believe Bitcoin can handle and was intended to handle much larger blocks. It's in everybody's best interest to have much larger blocks that can support many more users on Bitcoin proper.

2015-12-29 01:16:58 This just isn't true. The proposal removes signature data from affecting the merkle tree that ends up being hashed. This means the magical "block header hash" that has to meet the difficulty requirements no longer references signature data for SegWit transactions. With SegWit, you no longer have proof of *which set of signature data* was included when the block was verified.

The implications of this need to be studied carefully and explained to the community before it's deployed.

EDIT: I'm looking further at it now, and it appears that there is a a mirror merkle tree that is included in the block hash header after all. In any case, SegWit needs further study IMO, and won't help enough in the next 6-12 months.

2015-12-30 06:04:20 Finally, some people talking sense. Cheers to Jeff and Gavin!

I'm still in favor of BIP101 fwiw.

2015-12-31 11:06:02 In computer science we have a thing called the robustness principle. It basically states "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"

This is basically the mantra of bitcoin unlimited. I see nothing wrong with it. It's far from the chaos that will ensue when 1mb blocks fill up.

2015-12-31 22:25:09 Given the bip is just now being published in draft status, why are we counting on this as the solution to blocks filling up?

I believe SegWit is a silly way to increase the block size limit anyway. Let's just call it what it is, a malleablility fix and a first step towards pruning.

2016-01-02 20:20:25 my concern isn't them as much as the entirety of the network. degrading huge swaths of fully validating nodes to spv nodes seems like the opposite of what core should be suggesting.

2016-01-22 02:46:33 Count me (one technical mind) in the Jeff/Gavin Camp.

I think Core has some brilliant ideas, but they are way too afraid of hard forking. Hard forking is something that will need to be done many times. The cost of lessons learned is increasing, not decreasing as time goes on.

The fact that Core finds a softfork of SW as the most sensible and least risk capacity increase is very disheartening. SW, while theoretically very simple, is still an involved change that affects the Bitcoin block format and many systems at many layers. SW should not be rushed, and we shouldn't be counting on it for our near-term needs.

Btw, SW is a neat accounting trick, but really inappropriate as a scaling solution, IMO.

I'm of the belief that we should let the market decide the block limit, rather than a hard coded parameter. Believe me, miners won't publish blocks that are bigger than necessary, as they are the ones risking increased orphan rates. I'm actually really disappointed with the mining community for giving their voice and votes to Core.

Ultimately, Core has really done a poor job of listening to the community, and of giving businesses a clear roadmap of understanding (on-chain) Bitcoin capacity.

2016-02-03 19:06:45 They have outsized influence over Bitcoin Core, the reference implementation. They also have a much different vision for Bitcoin than the one laid out in the whitepaper.

Their biggest problems are poor communication and an unwillingness to compromise on the block size issue.

[.. stopped here, list is not comprehensive ...]


@jcliff: Sorry for this nosiness! Don't take it the wrong way, given all the shenanigans that went down, I think it is very important for BU to keep itself healthy and avoid infiltration from Blockstream minions or whoever else.

Personally, I am very happy with this posting history - that guy speaks my mind :D