Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Norway]

@cypherblock
I gave you my perspective last time.
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-1339#post-86061

 

[wrstuv31]

https://medium.com/@g.andrew.stone/bitcoin-cash-and-bitcoin-sv-stop-the-self-destruction-386ea3e09b6e

I thought this was a pretty good read. It seems to make one subtle assumption that gets to the heart of the recent split. The first being in paragraph 4, it is claimed...

By restricting additional functionality, you reject other people’s use cases and needs.

What I've learned in this past year, is that this is not necessarily true. Adding in 'functionality' can actually take away use cases, and that the basic restricted functionality is actually much more permissive than most people have realized. To put it differently it is much more permissive than most people have been conditioned to realize (by Core). The only solution in my mind is to clearly define what functionality you are looking for. Once that is done, you define the system. Allowing all functionality seems like a 'so open minded that your brain falls out' pitfall waiting to happen. I see the temptation to view Bitcoin as a general purpose tool, but I'm not sure it is. Another good phrase is "a camel is a horse designed by a committee" perhaps it applies here.

It's restated in a different way in paragraph 7.

I personally implemented CTOR in BU, because some people perceived a need, and it does not affect security, does not undermine coin value, and has a manageable albeit high (it touches tons of consensus code) risk of a bug that would cause an accidental fork.

It comes back to the idea of what is your desired functionality. Adding this change, this functionality, removes the ability of BCH to satisfy my needs. I want a chain that will do what I want it to well after my death. The risk may be manageable for a living person, but I suspect I will die one day and therefore be unable to manage the risk of the change. Interacting functionalities that aren't incorporated in the design from the ground up risk tipping the system into chaos. It doesn't matter how they act in isolation.

So I have a couple questions if you want to weigh in.

1) Do you think that a chain that adds all requested functionality wins over a chain that accepts all requested functionality that does not compromise it's reason to be? What if the blockchains were countries, instead?

2) Do you think there is a hidden power in Bitcoin script that isn't widely understood by the crypto developers hive mind due to the influence and anti-progress attitude of BTC?

Propagandists make public discussion impossible, maybe this is what has prompted the observations about the lack of activity in this thread. If I see these ideas being skewed/generalized by propagandists on other mediums, there won't be any reason for me to post here.

 

[majamalu]

Dissociation between value and price is the philosopher's stone that all investors seek, although very few believe their eyes when they find it.

 

[Windowly]

This is quite interesting.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

So, what's up? We finally have the audio source for the infamous bangkok meeting, which has been used over and over by the ABC side to explain the split... And now only sv people like it? Why can't everybody be happy that we can now validate what was claimed by both sides?

 

[Norway]

At 40 min 30 sec, @deadalnix claim that Compact Blocks (+ Xthin & Graphene) is only effective up to a certain limit because of increased collisions, and use this as a reason for introducing CTOR.

But the obvious solution to this is to increase the size of the short id (partial tx hash) to match the tx volume and avoid most collisions, right?

 

[Zarathustra]

 

[freetrader]

We finally have the audio source for the infamous bangkok meeting

@Christoph Bergmann Is it any different than the audio released 2 months ago?
Because that one already had the talks by Jimmy and Amaury, I remember listening to it then...

https://soundcloud.com/user-489394338

If you search Reddit you'll find a couple of links discussing it... maybe we don't like re-heating last month's dinner...

 

[molecular]

So, what's up? We finally have the audio source for the infamous bangkok meeting, which has been used over and over by the ABC side to explain the split... And now only sv people like it? Why can't everybody be happy that we can now validate what was claimed by both sides?

I remember listening to that audio pre-fork. Amaury doesn't use the words "fork off", btw (I re-listened to the relevant part). He wishes the best of luck jaddajadda, merely acknowledging the 2 visions are incompatible and saying a split wont hurt investors (which is not true, imo). I don't know wether this helps clear anything up. Fact is that this meeting didn't help avoid a split. Who's "responsible" for that? I don't know, but seem to me there need to be 2 concenting parties to make a baby, no?

 

[awemany]

@molecular: I like to point out here that putting the requirement of avoiding a split above everything else is as good as giving in to your opponent, who can then dictate the conditions of where to meet 'in the middle'.

"If you don't do as I say, we'll split"

Which is, I guess, part of the pull that keeps blockchains together and not split too often (maybe not too often, we'll see).

Now I did see unreasonableness from both sides.

I cannot get rid of my impression however, that the BSV side of things would have done a split and created havoc, no matter what. I also cannot get rid of the impression that the BSV side is not really keen on building things, on creation rather than destruction or confusion. I might be wrong, but that's my personal impression.

The requirement of hashpower majority (at least relative between BCH and BSV) has been so conveniently dropped under the table now. Whereas it was all 'there will be no split' before. Go fucking figure.

Finally, I like to point out that even though I guess I am still more conservative than others in this space, the incentive system in blockchains doesn't imply a code or feature freeze. It merely implies (if it works) that its sound money properties will be kept intact. Which in turn means that the 'core design' will ossify.

 

[Norway]

I agree with what you wrote, @molecular. But it's also very clear who's ok with a split (multicoiners) and who's not. I wouldn't be surprised if Amaury is ok with another split in may next year, and then another one november next year.

 

[awemany]

@Norway:

" But it's also very clear who's ok with a split (multicoiners) and who's not. I wouldn't be surprised if Amaury is ok with another split in may next year, and then another one november next year."

Eh, and what happened with "there will be no split"?

That just got conveniently dropped under the table, huh?


I can cause a split right now in my basement. And that means that ABC caused a split, apparently, in your eyes. This is the logic of you guys.

 

[Norway]

I also cannot get rid of the impression that the BSV side is not really keen on building things, on creation rather than destruction or confusion. I might be wrong, but that's my personal impression.

This is just absurd, looking at all the investments and initiatives coming from the BSV side. The point is to lock down the protocol itself, and to develop on top of the protocol.
[doublepost=1545000612][/doublepost]

Eh, and what happened with "there will be no split"?

That just got conveniently dropped under the table, huh?

They tried to prevent a split, but failed because someone rented a burst of hashpower.

I can cause a split right now in my basement.

Sure. Let me know how it goes.

 

[Norway]

@awemany, I know your intentions are good, but you fail to see the problems a constantly changing protocol with a group of developers without a voting system deciding the flavour of the month creates for the rest of the eco system.

 

[chriswilmer]

I've submitted a BUIP to reweigh Bitcoin Unlimited's funds by selling BCH for BSV. It's just a draft at the moment but after community feedback I'd like to submit it in time for the January election.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip-107-sell-the-bch-portion-of-bus-funds-for-bsv.23184/

I would be strongly against that idea.

 

[digitsu]

When will you start to learn?

nChain and friends appear to be honest with their goals, but when it comes to methods achieving them, they play games.

It reminds me on Go. Even an eternal beginner like me knows, that when you want to attack a structure, you don't put a stone close to it, but close to another structure, so that your opponent wants to defend there, while your stone helps you to build a wall, which enables the launch of the actual attack.

They have been very loud about all kind of attacks in the hashwar. When it started, they just kept on mining their chain, build a 64mb Block and announced nice things for the future - while ABC implemented chicken-changes like checkpoints and dispopulated themself by thinking fear of CSW is the answer on everything. All this fueled the real attack, which was economic and PR.

Now, the law suit is most likely not a direct attack, but a defensive mechanism against 51% attacks (SV chain is still highly vulnerable) - to thread companies and open source developers from doing it.

Also don't forget that in Go the most important skill that often separates a good player and a beginner is tsumego or the ability to tell the difference between life-and-death of a group.
If you already see that certain groups (or forks) are dead, there is no need to waste your efforts capturing them -- but better to spend your stones claiming more territory elsewhere.

 

[Richy_T]

a split wont hurt investors (which is not true, imo).

Well, it depends on what those investors do. Shorting might have been viable. I'd say it certainly hurt credibility and adoption. At this stage, I'm starting to think in terms of a fork of Segwit-encumbered BTC* because I'm getting the feeling that the BCH experiment is done.

I'm not holding any particular group more responsible. I think there's plenty of blame to go around.

@freetrader Just out of interest, and not to put you on the spot but if the fork had gone how you were expecting instead of "communication difficulties" taking it from your hands, what did you imagine the roadmap looking like once raising the block size limit had been achieved?

*Though obviously that would be a hard-sell at this point in time.

 

[wrstuv31]

If you search Reddit you'll find a couple of links discussing it... maybe we don't like re-heating last month's dinner...

I don't think many people would find the discussion on reddit very satisfying/complete. This is a Gmax style argument, but he used github instead of reddit. I think there is value in discussing things with the benefit of hindsight, after information has proliferated and been digested. You seem to greet the attempt with derision.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

I remember listening to that audio pre-fork. Amaury doesn't use the words "fork off", btw (I re-listened to the relevant part). He wishes the best of luck jaddajadda, merely acknowledging the 2 visions are incompatible and saying a split wont hurt investors (which is not true, imo). I don't know wether this helps clear anything up. Fact is that this meeting didn't help avoid a split. Who's "responsible" for that? I don't know, but seem to me there need to be 2 concenting parties to make a baby, no?

I didn't know, my fault, and I have not the time (or motivation) to listen to the entire thing.

What disturbs me is this: I heard so often things like 'the Bangkok meeting showed that you can't compromise with sv' or 'they would have forked anyway'. Now I hear Jimmy saying 'we want to stay united, to keep all this people in this room together', and Amaury saying 'I wish them best luck with their split' because visions are different. It's like 'do what we want or do your own thing' . Or 'fork off'

I, personally, find this 'let's split if visions are different' attitude highly irresponsible and damaging, and I think everybody who is interested in world money should too. Even core tried to present their solution, segwit, as a compromise. ABC doesn't give s shit. Do what we want, or go away.

I'm sure there is more to find in the record. @digitsu described behavior of ABC as some kind of filibustering away from the question how to prevent a split, and said Amaury lied about an attack. It would be nice to have people which participated (or listened to the whole thing) to provide timestamps for the interesting parts, so we can evaluate them.

 

[molecular]

I agree with what you wrote, @molecular. But it's also very clear who's ok with a split (multicoiners) and who's not. I wouldn't be surprised if Amaury is ok with another split in may next year, and then another one november next year.

I'm not ok with splits. I absolutely *hate* splits because of the huge cost and loss of resources / network effect and so on. Splits are sad to watch und gut-wrenching for the "investor". They almost always are a "step back" (or three). It also has a huge effect on value. Core boys like to argue the BTC/BCH split hasn't harmed value but I think it has. I think had BTC let go of the blocksize limit in 2017 or any time before that) it's value would've shot up even more. Talking 50k or more. I think had the BCH/BSV split not occurred we'd be around 0.2, maybe even 0.3 BCH/BTC now, talking about the flippening we all once wanted and the BTC mempool and fee levels.

The thing is: forking is the way governance (the way rules are changed) is currently implemented and lived in Bitcoin. I think Satoshis idea was that yes: PoW would be used for this purpose ("any rules and incentives can be enforced in this way") and not just for transaction ordering.

However I think Satoshi imagined the weaker chain would quickly die off and his original DAA pretty much guaranteed this. Too bad (or good? otherwise we wouldn't have BCH) the DAA itself can be changed as part of the forking changeset.

At that point (after BTC/BHC split) I thought another split was unlikely unless there was damn good reason. I didn't think "ego" or "timeline" would be damn good reasons for a split, but obviously they are and after the fact it seems the reasons might be more fundamental ("no change" policy on SV side)?

I'm trying to understand your side here. You seem to imply that you're "not ok" with splitting the chain. Ok well, that's kinda like not being ok with the cold weather outside, isn't it? It's outside of your control: anyone can fork off at any time (permissionlessness).

So *actually* if you want to re-enact a no-split policy, shouldn't you "fix" exactly one rule in SV (and put it at the top of the list in the "social contract" or "our vision" section?): the original satoshi DAA? It prevents splits, no? So it does what you want. Or maybe you're only "not ok" with a split if the rules you like are being kept? In that case: good luck forcing satoshi DAA or any other rule on the dissenting chain.

Satoshi DAA would also prevent the problem of "malicious attack by (repeated) split" (which we might or might not be looking at here, I don't know). To "fix" it we'd need the community to stand united behind it and well: I don't see that happening and it would be only as permanent as the idea is in the heads of the people.

So: how do we get out of this mess? I want "one coin" as much as any "maximalist", but how to achieve this in the light of technological experimentation / innnovation, malicious attacks, greed, scams and so on? Is patience the key? Persistent work in all coins to try to make it "the one" (competition)? Propaganda? The loha?

EDIT: wanted to add one more thing about governance by fork: I actually thought one chain would always be a clear winner in the "economic" arena. The fight would be fought on exchanges. Turns out most people don't do that: they'd rather safely wait on the sidelines and watch. It seems not only miners, but also "investors" are reluctant to execute their power to meaningful extent. I think this is pretty sad: if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.