Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Norway]

If so, what is the problem?

It's a problem when you block out people you disagree with. Bigblockers have a history of being blocked from conferences.

Nchain does not want to talk to ABC

I think they wanted to come to the workshop.

their chief scientist is a raging idiot who is threatening to sue people left and right.

I don't think he is an idiot, but I totally agree he is threatning to sue people left and right. He is also a dick. EDIT: He is also raging, as you said.

They should not be invited to any conference or workshop

Yes, they absolutely should. They are very invested in smooth UX (zero-conf) and have a different perspective than other people attending the workshop.

they are BCH's blockstream.

No.

 

[freetrader]

@freetrader
- CSW turned out to be very good in giving vision, laying out general concepts and evangelizing BCH (while being a desaster in technical details, twitter and social things) and getting a vivid (but naive) community behind him;

Christoph, I'm going to give my view of these "facts". As you might expect I differ on some points.

CSW being a disaster in technical terms is a disaster for Bitcoin Cash.
He is "Chief Scientist" at nChain.
Putting aside the matter of whether he controls some Satoshi private keys - his public actions are a huge detriment to the image of Bitcoin Cash, or if you want to call it that, Bitcoin BCH.

If their company gets into a dominant position regarding mining or technical development on Bitcoin Cash, I have good reason to fear for the integrity and success of the coin.

Starting with their poorly thought-out "Miner's Pledge" about orphaning fraudulent double spends (according to mystical miner decisions which they could never specify), to their moves about introducing "Miner ID", to using patent-bound, non-open-source licenses and IP threats to try to control which chain is to be called "Bitcoin Cash" - they have shown numerous indications that their direction would be a practical disaster for Bitcoin Cash.

I'd like to limit that disaster only to those who follow CSW's wisdom.

- nChain turned out to hire a few developers which appear to be reasonable and by a multitude more polite than leading ABC devs;

They are reasonably polite, but not as polite as BU devs ;-p

Seriously, being polite is fairly low on my list of qualities I look for. It's about being honest, competent, and that remains to be seen. You don't see them speaking against the misleading advertisements for SV's capabilities, and you don't see them correcting blatant untruths put out by CSW or CG.

Technically, they didn't get off to an impressive start by cloning ABC and tweaking a few parameters while not delivering on their claims that they would provide evidence of the performance of their client (handling of 32mb and 128mb sustained block), nor the security audit they announced during beta phase and said it would be done before the release in October ...

My view is that the devs are pushed around by the marketing departments of CoinGeek / nChain.
nChain only recently put out job ads for more developers, in the past we were told how many engineers they supposedly already had working there. Things do not add up, but they multiply.

- nChain also turned out to be the only source of investments directed exclusively on BCH startups

As a general rule I never believe such a claim to be a fact unless and until I've seen a company's financial statements.

- CoinGeek turned out to be a sometimes good pro-BCH magazine

And they also printed the most horribly distorted lies and hit pieces I've ever seen.
They seriously topped the achievement of the Core supporting yellow press.
Once a media outlet goes so low, they drop off my list until they get new management.

- CoinGeek turned also out to become the biggest only-BCH mining-pool and saving BCH from being a complete joke hashratewise after our chinese mining-friends turned back to usual business

This is a PR move - other miners are supporting the price by mining BTC and buying BCH (as we could actually see in their financials). And it's going to be short lived now that they chose confrontation rather than cooperation. Despite their rhetoric they look short-sighted to me in every way.

- BitcoinSV turned out to be much less intrusive, disruptive, compatible with BU members vote and in line with the founding agreement of Bitcoin Cash than BitcoinABC.

I'm glad BU offers its users a way to choose.
On the 'less disruptive' I disagree again. Maybe we could have had a much more civil, rational conversation about ABC's proposed feature set (e.g. CTOR) if the waters had not been muddied with falsehoods from BitcoinSV supporters. I cannot blame nChain directly for this, but they don't refute falsehoods when put out via CoinGeek's site either.

This are the facts you should decide with whom BU should cooperate, not some r/bitcoin-like tactics of demonize a person to reject everything he suppoprts, because he's evil and so on.

Let's not ignore the fact that the driving force behind nChain has made it clear multiple times that they prefer running over the competition (whether it's BU, ABC, Bitmain, etc) to cooperation.

By now I think anyone hoping to cooperate with them on a level playing field or as equals is expecting something they will never get, same as from Core. They are here to dominate, and think we are all here to submit to their will or be conquered.

And taken all this into accout, it is ridiculous to wish nChain fork off. They add a lot of net value.

Again, I disagree. I think it's not ridiculous, what would be ridiculous is to let a proven fraud hold any position of technical authority or tolerate attacks by a company on other users of Bitcoin Cash.

They currently add controversy, fight every suggestion that wasn't invented by them or may collide with a patent (or application) they have, threaten others with their IP, threaten to attack companies via doublespending and chain reorgs, ...

Their "open source" vision is products developed behind closed doors. Look when Nakasendo got any updates - oh, it didn't, it's still closed source used by probably no-one.

SV didn't provide much value so far - a knock off of ABC who they disparage all the time - while they didn't bother to address any of the fixes needed to get TO or BEYOND 32mb yet, while claiming that 128mb is a feature of their client for November. THAT is ridiculous, but some people buy it.

One would think they add value by investing in startups. But I would not assume this to be a net value yet - if they do it to gain controlling stakes to realize their licensing dream of being able to dictate what the "Bitcoin Cash" chain is.
This would turn BCH into a permissioned protocol, effectively. A kind of long range killshot from 1 mile out.

Now, what when nChain does what they can do with their hashrate - attack the system? I don't think they will, because most of what CSW shouted is pure fraud and vandalism.

Ok, neither of us know what they will do, we only know what CSW has announced.

If they do I for sure will not promote cooperating with them. But I will also reject cooperating with any team that run into this announced situation for stupid childish power games.

Good, I can go along with that.
[doublepost=1540321610,1540320870][/doublepost]

@freetrader
It seems CTOR from what I've been told is a consensus rule that will enable effective ASICboost on BCH. It will benefit some miners at the expense of others.

I agree with you on nearly everything in that post, but this you should re-examine.

I don't see how CTOR improves ASICboost at all. Can you explain?
If not, feel free to point us at the source who told you so.

CTOR is an open proposal that's been on the table for many months.
Despite that I personally think it has no improvement potential for ASIC mining on BCH, even if that were the case - don't you think the competition would have considered it up to now?
I think the time period is long enough to allow such examination and remove competitive advantage.

It's not like Bitmain or other companies involved in ASICs don't apply for patents on optimizations like ASICboost. It's reasonable to expect they might seek patents on improvements following from CTOR, if there were any.
And ASIC companies do track what the competition is up to. c.f. Maxwell's drama about ASICboost, which imo showed that they were busy reverse engineering Bitmain firmware.

 

[Norway]

@freetrader

It feels like some people will take any position, as long as it's opposing nChain. This is cult behavior.

 

[AdrianX]

Understanding Externalities.

In 2011 I had enough confidence to believe bitcoin could evolve to be a thing. I had dedicated responses to mining Bitcoin. I did not follow any forums or, development I drew my conclusions independently.

As a miner, I became aware of a tension developing between BIP16 and BIP17 and I was being encouraged to choose one way or the other. I did not care, I believed bitcoin was almost infallible either one would work. My attitude was, just make the change and move on. (my mindset then is somewhat reminiscent of the attitude I see in mines today) I cast a vote to enable a change I understood nothing about.

The debate was over multisig,

The very first question at the start is a pertinent one, the discussion that follows telling. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61125.msg712877#msg712877

​

It is typical of debates today. There are many levels of understanding and insight in that conversation, the benefits of multisig were the reasons to add it, it just became a debate about which is the best way to do it.

No one attempted to understand the ramifications of the question "what lasting changes can this have on the blockchain?" it would have been heresy to predict where it actually ended up, not even the most creative but-coiner could make up a story that would rival what's actually happened.

Mainly because no one had a clue. Well, the results are in. We now know.

What have we learned from this? Apparently, almost nothing I'm in a small minority and my opinion dismisses because the one other I've identified as a sympathizer in my minority is CSW.

I was unknowingly complicit in Fucking up Bitcoin BTC. (sorry)

I was very excited about this feature I thought it would make Bitcoin better. I'd like to ignore the benefits for the sake of this post. But they are numerous, many businesses who provide valuable services use it, many investors depend on it. If you ignore the elephant in the room, and I won't, it's a great idea.

Just a quick recap, BIP 16 Pay-to-script hash or (P2SH) came to be the favoured solution, us miners pushed it through because it was the right thing to do.

This change is significant on many levels.

It's the first time a developer used his authority to make a change to the rules miners use to enforce the bitcoin protocol.
It's set a template for future upgrades (soft forks) allowing developers control over future changes.
It set the bar for 95% consensus on future changes (to protect users from making mistakes).
It introduced the notion that non-mining nodes not having to upgrade were to be prioritised over mining nodes, who were to follow the developers of the reference client and upgrade once all miners had all signaled they have the latest version ready.
It quantified the mindset developers are in control and miners just mine.​

The video below is recommended watching it is an interview with Thomas Voegtlin, the developer of Electron one of the oldest, most trusted and feature-rich bitcoin wallets. He's been in the bitcoin space since 2010, and Electrum has been securing bitcoin since 2011 (@2.00min).

​

So you are wondering what does P2SH have to do with this? P2SH enables new behaviours some predictable other not so predictable.

It moves what would be a function in the economy were authority, trust and risk are managed by users and moves it out of the economy where it is managed by people to being managed by the money just being money. An amazing feat if you think about it, People have not learned to think this way as it's never been possible to do such things. There is no president.

When P2SH interacts with other supposedly benign features, more complexities emerge, some have very large Economic Externalities.

One behaviour it enabled was Payment Channels managed by automated systems. This led to developing payment networks that can compete with Bitcoin's payment network.

In short, Bitcoin enables and subsidizes feature that undermines its utility by enabling a competing system and incentivizes developers in a way that is hostile to bitcoin's growth.

Lightning Network, (LN) for short, is the dominating version of this payment network today, it is a separate network of payment channels secured with Bitcoin's P2SH.

One negative externality is: Transaction Fees that would otherwise be used to pay for securing the Bitcoin's payment network, don't go to securing bitcoins payment network.

Here are some examples of others, while not expressed as problems but rather new and exciting challenges and opportunity to solve for developers.

@06: 07: the other component is that with Lightning Network you also need to have an entity that watches your channels unless you can do it yourself

P2SH has made it necessary to not use bitcoin in the future (limiting transaction capacity to 1MB), or always be online monitoring your money to ensure it is safe, off chain, or trusting 3rd part serveses.
​

@08:52: Electrum is a deterministic wallet and our user base has learned that they can always restore the Bitcoin from the seed,... our users expect that. Restoring the wallet from seed is no longer possible with Lightning that's something we cannot change because it's a feature of Lightning since you cannot use the blockchain as you don't send your payments over the blockchain

P2SH has enabled a future where you can't make a backup of your wallet.​

09:52: I think the best way to address that is we [Electrun] are going to provide a service that is also going to backup user data

I kid you not, P2SH in a brawd way is moving Bitcoin from decentralisd to centralized custodians of your data. (BitGo and CoinBase use it as an atractive feature, LN the opposite)​

11:15 we are actually trying to not be user-friendly at the beginning because we don't want too many people to use this

P2SH has enabled a future where negative adoption after 9 years is the less risky way to proseed with adoption.
​

If in 2012 the question asked at the beginning of this post was answered like this:

P2SH could introduce a risk of enabling a competing payment network that would be used to prevent Bitcoin fulfiling its ability to scale and be used as payment while removing a users ability to back up their wallet. While developers actively discourage use until after 2020, so we shouldn't enable it. I would have called them a troll. Yet here we are.

I don't buy innovation for the sake of innovating. Bitcoin's biggest opportunity is being simple sound, digital money that can be used by autonomous programs independent of humans, (it is useful to programmers in the same way aski is useful to programmers.,)

So, to say the least, I'm a little skeptical of enabling any OP-Codes until someone can present a reasonable black hat prediction on how they will be used in conjunction with all other OP-Codes 5 years into the future.

TL;DR. P2SH > enables LN > Justification for 1MB limit > no backups > Centralised Walet custodians > Technical useers only> Negative adoption > Low fees > less secure > ?

 

[Zarathustra]

This is a PR move - other miners are supporting the price by mining BTC and buying BCH (as we could actually see in their financials). And it's going to be short lived now that they chose confrontation rather than cooperation. Despite their rhetoric they look short-sighted to me in every way.

If all those Chinese miners had supported BU exclusively instead of the NY soft fraud, the North Corean chain would be history.
If all those Chinese miners would have gone "full Norway/Bagatell berserk/Coingeek berserk", the flippening would have happened last year already, instead of next year/never.

 

[freetrader]

@freetrader

For a long time, I was observing what CSW and nChain's action's were.
I am judging them by their actions.
I'm the sort of person who will quit and find another job if I find my employer to be conducting himself fraudulently.

It feels like some people will take any position, as long as it's opposing nChain. This is cult behavior.

Looks like you have no counterarguments to my post but to pull the cult card.
I don't think I've pulled that one before, but a lot of CSW supporters deserve it.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Christoph, I'm going to give my view of these "facts". As you might expect I differ on some points.

Oh, you really don't like nChain Not a fan too ... I'm not gonna go the quote-quote-quote-game ... maybe leaving it with: We agree that CSW is a technically incompetent dick, and nChain is a shell company to leverage patents to defraud the legal system with faketoshi's fake inventions. Or something like this.

I don't think he is a danger. Not for the larger public reputation - he is a good speaker, embracing a good vision of hard P2P cash ... not dangerous technically, because he is not competent enough, not dangerous legally, because his patents are junk, most likely produced to lure investors ... He is not a leader, he is a parody of a leader, I don't think he'll ever able to achieve something like "control" over Bitcoin Cash, no matter what he says. But he is a brillant conman, a one-in-a-generation-swindler, a men giving all for his mission to become the real Faketoshi ... his story has become connected with Bitcoin Cash, both symbolically, as materially with hashes and dollars, and I, as an interested observer, would really miss him if he was not there.

Everybody accepted it at the beginning. Most people in this thread didn't believed him to be Satoshi when he left the stage in Arnhem, but applauded heavily anyway, because what he said - and how he said it - made some sense. He was, despite all, somehow accepted; ABC even cooperated with nChain during the DAA selection and the May hardfork.
What happened now? CSW became owner of the largest only-bch-miningfarm, and he dares to fight for his opinion in the next hard fork.

@AdrianX

Great post, thank you! I didn't watched the interview with Voegtlin, but going for your quotes, he exactly expressed the core problems of LN. It seems to be his blind spot.

 

[AdrianX]

I don't see how CTOR improves ASICboost at all. Can you explain?

I've been told ASICboot mining is improved by CTOR for BCH

I can't trust the source either way. So I Like @Mengerian, @deadalnix, @micropresident, to confirm: whether this is true, or this is not true, or 3 they don't know.

I'd be very disappointed if I don't get an answer.

The development cycle for a state of the art ASIC can be over a year if you are a priority customer. Stalling your scheduled fab dates can cost you another year. Someone committing to a design befor CTOR was on the rodmap would be negativly impacted by a manufacurer who has had it on their roadmap and is pushing to change the consensus rules to add CTOR for a competitive advantage.

Developers claiming to be independent should not be picking winners and losers in the mining space.

 

[Norway]

@AdrianX
Epic post.

EDIT: Not post above. But your other post above that.
[doublepost=1540330495,1540329859][/doublepost]@Mengerian wants to create a class of kings of bitcoin experts. A technocracy. Not what Carl Menger would do.

EDIT: I guess people working in the war industry for many years are hardened.

 

[freetrader]

I don't think he is a danger. Not for the larger public reputation - he is a good speaker, embracing a good vision of hard P2P cash

The vision of hard p2p cash for everyone is all I agree on, and why I thought "let's see where this goes" when he latched on to Bitcoin Cash. The more I see the more I believe that is all swindle and I was being well deceived.

... not dangerous technically, because he is not competent enough,

He is advising Calvin & co - and his ideas stick with that, and Calvin seems to be someone who tells others to get it done, and so it will be done.

If you have that constellation, e.g. billionaire or a few (represented by an unknown private equity hedge fund) who see massive potential wealth gain, plus technically incompetent advisor/frontman who is clearly willing to do fraud, then a lot of technical damage becomes possible, because there is no shortage of willing & competent accomplices who will not challenge the technical details but implement them.

not dangerous legally, because his patents are junk

Junk patents are granted daily. They are expensive to fight, and even when patents are not technically junk, they are still monopoly powers and we've already had the threat from CSW of the infant ecosystem being split using this IP.

And I'll repeat it again: if an attempt succeeds to define "what is Bitcoin Cash" via IP threats on the layer above the protocol, preventing further forks from having a chance of success, then that is a danger to the future health of the Bitcoin protocol. Then whoever controls the patents also gets to say what happens (or doesn't) in the protocol and around it. cf. C/DSV and more recently, @theZerg's proposal on EBS

I don't think he'll ever able to achieve something like "control" over Bitcoin Cash, no matter what he says.

This is my hope, but all we can do is fight for keeping it an open system as best we can.

I don't care if companies build their own proprietary clients, I think we will be able to outcompete them as long as they have a warped concept of open source development as some kind of 'socialism' instead of beneficial to their product. It's their decision. But they must not come with goods that don't live up to the hype they produce. We need our hype to be achievable and we need to achieve it.

I, as an interested observer, would really miss him if he was not there.

It's as entertaining to me as a car crash in slow motion (think Deadpool).

ABC even cooperated with nChain during the DAA selection

This was the precise moment that I got really suspicious of nChain's claimed competency.
Sadly, the episode resulted in me believing nChain had provided fabricated data in their assessment.

CSW became owner of the largest only-bch-miningfarm

Again, this is the sort of thing that I believe only when I see (non-faked) signatures on deeds / contracts etc. Otherwise its tulips, rainbows and unicorns.

 

[Norway]

We can't wait forever for this. I have to ask this direct question:

@solex

Is this true?

 

[Mengerian]

I've been told ASICboot mining is improved by CTOR for BCH

Did whoever told you this explain why? As far as I can figure, it seems like the opposite should be the case. CTOR would make "Covert" ASIC Boost more difficult.

But as Solex noted, it seems with the Bitmain announcement that everyone is using "overt" ASIC Boost now anyway. So I'm not sure the ease of doing the "covert" version matters anymore.

(Needs better naming the overt/covert... gets confusing)

Take the following with a grain of salt, I'm not an expert in this, but I'll try to explain my understanding of ASIC Boost.

The easiest and most straightforward way to do ASIC Boost is to do the version-rolling method that we see being used today. Basically, the way it works is you want to be able to independently change bits in the first 64 bytes of the block header, while keeping the last 16 bytes the same (Block headers are 80 bytes total). Because of the way SHA256 works on 64-byte chunks this allows a more efficient calculation (I forget all the details, it has something to do with switching an inner loop for an outer loop. It effectively means you can "re-use" the second chunk for several hash attempts).

The recent Bitmain announcement uses this version-rolling method. And I believe Slush Pool also currently allows people to do this on their pool. It's called "overt" because it's obvious when miners are doing this, since they create all kinds of random bits in the version field.

The way Covert ASIC Boost works is sort of a hack based on the fact that the Merkle Root spans the two 64-byte boundary in the block header. The first 28 bytes are in the first chunk, and the last 4 bytes are in the second. So if you can shuffle stuff around in the Merkle tree, you find several Merkle trees where the last 4-bytes of the Merkle root are the same. A fairly easy way to do this is by shuffling around the order of the last few transactions in a block, allowing you to easily calculate new Merkle Roots without having to re-calculate the whole tree. So CTOR would prevent that specific method. I guess you could change other stuff around through, like adding and removing different combinations of transactions near the right side of the tree maybe (not sure how practical that would be).

@Mengerian wants to create a class of kings of bitcoin experts. A technocracy. Not what Carl Menger would do.

What would give you that idea @Norway ?

 

[Norway]

@Mengerian
You have been working in the weapon industry large parts of your life. At what point did you become "Mengerian"?

 

[freetrader]

Someone committing to a design befor CTOR was on the rodmap would be negativly impacted by a manufacurer who has had it on their roadmap and is pushing to change the consensus rules to add CTOR for a competitive advantage.

Ok, where are the domain experts who will tell us how CTOR-influenced designs would outcompete their pending ASICs?

Why are the technical criticisms leveled against CTOR much weaker than what would be expected in such a case?

Can someone point to a patent registered anywhere in the world where SHA256 mining - or ASICboost - can be made more efficient through lexicographical sorting of transactions within a block?

I argue that you should not trust the judgment of anyone but yourself on this.
Not @Mengerian, @deadalnix, or @micropresident . Would they tell you the truth if they were, as you hypothesize, potentially supporting something that would result in the outcome you describe?

We should seek facts here, not opinions.

 

[AdrianX]

But as Solex noted, it seems with the Bitmain announcement that everyone is using "overt" ASIC Boost now anyway. So I'm not sure the ease of doing the "covert" version matters anymore.

Thanks, @Mengerian, for the explanation, however, I'd encourage you to please read my previous comments on ASICboost, as differentiating the two illustrates a lack of understanding of the potential conflict of interest.

Given I can't know definitively one way or the other and I'm not technically competent to be able to assess the answers, I'll need to trust those in the know.

I think I know your answer, but if you to confirm either 1,2 or 3 as I don't want to make an incorrect assessment.

1) CTOR does improve ASICboost performance
2) CTOR does not improve ASICboost performance
3) You don't have enough evidence to know either way.

 

[Norway]

Some people would not recognize Satoshi Nakamoto even when he piss right in your face.

 

[Mengerian]

1) CTOR does improve ASICboost performance
2) CTOR does not improve ASICboost performance
3) You don't have enough evidence to know either way.

2

Unless there's something I'm missing. I can't see how CTOR could help ASIC Boost.

 

[Norway]

Mengerian has become an ABC spokesperson.

His previous work was in the weapons industry.

Refute this, or shut the fuck up.

 

[OpenMind]

Please show Norway the door.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

@Norway
No idea if Mengerian's identity is known, buy what you are doing here goes in the direction of doxxing. (Apart from the ridiculous ad hominem)
[doublepost=1540365535][/doublepost]

BSV is an implementation mining block on the Bitcoin BCH Blockchain. It's quite another to uninvite/ exclude developers of that implementation. It is counterproductive and unnecessarily petty.

Maybe. But honestly I can very well understand that ABC devs don't want to have anything to do with nChain at this moment. I do not think that it is petty, I think it's a way of protecting yourself from an evil company that is out of control.

Also, nChain was present at the miners meeting in early fall, where their chief scientist left the room and tried to disgrace every honest person there. IIRC nChain tried to block ABC people from this conference as well. The way nChain discusses BCH development in the open on reddit or twitter also shows, that they don't want to or are not able to discuss solutions in a acceptable way.

The ABC people behave like dicks often enough. But they are not the ones threatening people or behaving like total lunatics.

To the people saying nChain is a net plus for BCH.. All I remember is
- Crazy patent claims left and right
- an evil impostor who leads his followers by using three word sentences with a lot of "Fuck you"'s in it
- a trillion claims about stuff that they will bring to the table that never happened

Honestly, how blind can you be at this point?