Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[AdrianX]

Looks like some smallblockers found that thread....sheesh.

just had a look and the amount of down votes for prompting decentralized anything but nodes is shocking.

 

[VeritasSapere]

This is incredibly important info. Thanks for illuminating this for everyone.

Agreed, I concur. I often say that there presently is a greater risk from the centralization of manufacturing compared to the centralization of pools. Mining centralization in this case is more important, which is effected more by centralization of manufacturing and economies of scale compared to anything else.

 

[cypherdoc]

Some of you might already be familiar with some of my politics on bitcointalk. I have tried to express my alternative opinion on that forum for quite some time now in the face of some pretty horrendous trolling.

Much to my surprise however gmaxwell himself actually responded to one of my posts. He was not doing himself any favors however by responding to this statement of mine: "Bitcoin should not have any leadership, which is why the development needs to become more distributed."

He responded to me saying this, somewhat implying that he did disagree with me. I do not expect him to respond again since I can not imagine him doing so without it reflecting badly on him or he would at the very least need to change his position. Here is the post anyway, I thought you might all find it interesting:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg13025363#msg13025363

I was rather pleased with my counter argument, I made sure it was water tight, not everyday I have a Core developer responding to me on that thread. lol

just finished browsing thru that #REKT shitfest of the miniblockists. brg444 is enjoying the attention i'm sure. @Zarathustra doing an admirable job just like you.

it should be clear who the immature one's are in that thread with all their memes and insults.
[doublepost=1448229213][/doublepost]

Shower thought: what's really the difference between these two scenarios?

1. Core devs recommend an updated version of Core with a 2MB cap.
2. Core devs simply recommend a 2MB cap (and people set it themselves in BU or whatever)

#1 lets core dev enforce a decision w/o user input or compliance

 

[VeritasSapere]

Yeah I like to think that it should be obvious for intelligent people which side has the most merit. I have been very civil in that thread, strictly so actually, unlike most of my ideological opponents. Zarathustra is definitely spot on with his comments as well.

I am glad to have found this forum, people are definitely much more friendly here.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

#1 lets core dev enforce a decision w/o user input or compliance

Well as Gmax said, there is no auto-update mechanism in Core.

So as long as multiple implementations exist, the only difference between the two scenarios seems to be convenience. Core's only authority is as a recommender, trusted by some.

So if, for example, users have a choice to download Core (upgraded to 2MB cap) or BU (say the only change from Core is the user-selectable cap), what's the difference between Core saying "download Core!" and them saying "Download Core or BU, but if you download BU set the blocksize cap to 2MB!"? In either case, as long as everyone is aware that those are the only changes, there should be no difference. After all, the reason people download Core instead of something else is that they trust the authority of the Core devs over others. If they could download BU and they had the Core dev's admissions that it was exactly the same except you could set the cap, then to have the exact same effect as downloading Core all they have to do is download BU and set the cap to 2MB.

 

[cypherdoc]

Btcd dev Dave Collins, sounds like he has BU-like leanings:

that's a big deal.

an already used and accepted working implementation going to big blocks. the beginning of the end for Core is nigh.

they've already done simulations with big blocks. 100MB blocks np comes to mind.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I wonder if one of these days an altcoin that wants to make a name for itself will create giant empty blocks just to show it can be done. Just like how the CoinValidation scare caused the altcoin narrative to shift toward anonymity resulting in Dash/Monero/Bytecoin/ Cloakcoin/BitcoinDark, the blocksize scare could eventually produce "BigBlockCoin." Maybe it will even be an existing coin like Litecoin or Doge.

 

[cypherdoc]

read this interchange btwn Hearn & gmax to get the latter's mindset. scroll down further in the thread as well for more:

[doublepost=1448231721,1448230816][/doublepost]the important part that reflects gmax's entrenchment in this debate is this:

"If a unwise rush to over expand blocks destroys the fundamental value of bitcoin I will merely lose /lot/ of value, but I along with many of the active developers will simply move on, and begin a new system either totally new or one-way pegged against the (perhaps pre-divergence Bitcoin system) which we would believe would upholds the qualities that make Bitcoin valuable in the first place."

 

[Peter R]

One more try with my animated pie chart since people are excited about the btcd news (every time this chart has made it near the top of the front page it's been deleted):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3tv7v8/deprecating_bitcoin_core_visualizing_the/

 

[cypherdoc]

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

"If a unwise rush to over expand blocks destroys the fundamental value of bitcoin I will merely lose /lot/ of value, but I along with many of the active developers will simply move on, and begin a new system either totally new or one-way pegged against the (perhaps pre-divergence Bitcoin system) which we would believe would upholds the qualities that make Bitcoin valuable in the first place."

Gmax is basically just saying if big blockers take over Bitcoin he and some other devs will just fork off, which is really the same as our argument (in reverse), isn't it?

 

[cypherdoc]

@Zangelbert Bingledack

yes, but it also tells me that he won't ever be convinced to come over to the bigger block camp. altho he could change his mind, but i doubt it.

 

[Peter R]

One more try with my animated pie chart since people are excited about the btcd news (every time this chart has made it near the top of the front page it's been deleted):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3tv7v8/deprecating_bitcoin_core_visualizing_the/

Thread go bye-bye (it no longer shows up under New or Rising)

 

[cypherdoc]

why did Chakra-Scientists first post get deleted?

 

[Peter R]

Probably for ad hominem: he called me a troll and as an experiment I reported it for breaking their "no ad hominem" rules.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@cypherdoc

Well Gmax did say "rush to over expand blocks," which to me sounds like he is willing to increase slowly over time. I remember him saying somewhere that he actually does think increasing is fine, but without the fee pressure there will be no optimizations made because there is nothing to motivate them. That's his view, whereas other at Core/BS seem to think large blocks are actively centralizing.

I've noticed Gmax plays an odd game with keeping silent or only tangentially hinting toward things like that, letting people like Peter Todd stick their noses out and make the less careful arguments he doesn't necessarily believe but would like people to think.

In fact there almost seems to be a pact among the Blockstreamers not to ever speak ill of almost* any small blocker argument, even if only some of them actually agree with it. The result is that it looks like they all agree that all these technical arguments are valid, even if only one or two of them do and the rest are keeping their mouths shut about the flaws in those arguments. I wouldn't be surprised if Gmax actually thinks 8MB would be perfectly safe. He might have even said as much somewhere, but you'd never know it from most of his comments.

*Obvious canards that will be blown away too easily or conclusively are an exception, but anything that's hard to really prove or disprove is fair game.

 

[cypherdoc]

[doublepost=1448236823,1448235889][/doublepost]this a16z podcast is not directly about Bitcoin, altho they do mention blockchains, but it is about FinTech in the UK and involves an investment fund's outlook:

listen at 24:00 where Alex quotes his favorite saying around his office, and i paraphrase, "the battle btwn the incumbent and the startup comes down to whether the incumbent can get innovation before the startup can get distribution". we see this right now in Bitcoin with the banks racing to innovate via R3 while trying to prevent Bitcoin's widespead distribution. with help from Blockstream.

http://a16z.com/2015/11/17/a16z-podcast-fintech-from-the-worlds-financial-capital-london/

 

[VeritasSapere]

Gmax:
EDIT: Now that I've read your (@VeritasSapere's) response, I notice you say a lot of the same things. The advent of real controversy makes forking as a governance mechanism a useful and necessary tool for the first time. This is a major paradigm shift for people to wrap their heads around and probably accounts for a lot of the confusion in the debate.

It is true, it really was the only point I wanted to make, I just elaborated and explained it very clearly. It is essentially what most of my arguments are focused on. Since I am also responding to people claiming that Bitcoin is being "hijacked" or that XT is an altcoin and such things. The community as a whole is going through some what of political realization with a reactionary and highly polarized response which in some cases includes a denial of this very political realization.

I find the concept of discovering the body politic of Bitcoin and it discovering itself rather interesting. I am sure we still have a long way to go and this is just the beginning of this process. Forking as a governance mechanism I also always found one of the most intriguing aspects of Bitcoin. In many ways it even solves the problem of tyranny of the majority. It is true freedom in an anarchistic fashion.

The consequences and opportunities this presents are very far reaching. I could spend lifetimes studying these things and not even come close to grasping the full meaning of this technology and what kind of world it will help enable us to create. It is indeed a major paradigm shift for people to wrap their heads around, especially considering that some people are still thinking about this as if it is purely a technical problem.

 

[theZerg]

@cypherdoc

but without the fee pressure there will be no optimizations made because there is nothing to motivate them.

Can you find this quote? It could be pretty important to debunk this.

RE: block size and flexcap: I have always advocated that supply side flexibility is important. If I was designing the block size evolution, I'd probably use a max(MIN_BLOCK, N*(average of last M blocks)) algorithm to handle the long term growth and then I'd use a hyperbolic (curve approaches linear as block size increases) fee function that allows expansion of a particular block beyond the baseline "maximum" to handle short term demand. Eliminating the creation of centrally-set-by-humans parameters (i.e. what are the constants of the fee function) is easy -- just like the block size expansion, base the hyperbola on the average fee paid in the last M blocks.

So really to synthesize these two ideas, the "fee-to-place a txn at offset X" hyperbola is calculated by stretching it so some well-defined point P on the parabola at byte offset max(MIN_BLOCK, N*(average of last M blocks)) and raising/lowering the slope of the limit line so that the fee at P = volume weighted average fee of last M transactions.

This can also automatically handle changes in the price of a bitcoin since these price changes will be reflected in what people are willing to pay in txn fees.

I think you could probably put together some nice graphs showing how these two functions interact over time based on different demand.


But BIP101 gets the job done.

 

[lunar]

without the fee pressure there will be no optimizations made because there is nothing to motivate them.

Does it need debunking if it has already been established that there will be fee pressure, even without a block size quota?

Have we had 'no optimizations' in the last 7 years?