Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[molecular]

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

no problem, I didn't listen to the whole thing either back then. But I *did* catch the relevant part.

what I find a little "disturbing" is you saying: "finally we have this" as if it would change anything and clear things up as if you were declaring to "have won" some fight or something. At least that's the impression I got from your post.

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 don't think it's "do what we want or fork off". It's hey: we've discussed this roadmap x amount of time ago. The time to discuss about it and be all concerned has passed, now we enact it. You have contributed to that roadmap and we've given it to investors who rightfully expect implementation. What impression does it make to pull out now? I can totally understand how ABC has acted here. I don't fully agree with the style, but what are you going to do? Cancel every upgrade because people voice concerns shortly before enacting?

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.

Then why did you split? In other words: this is not an "attitude", this is just how the world works. Like it or not.

Even core tried to present their solution, segwit, as a compromise.

lol, this is just a side-note but the key expression here is "tried to present as a compromise". The point is: it wasn't actually a compromise, it was a trap.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

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.

Why? ABC caused a split. We don't know what SV would have done when Jihan / Roger would just have mined the classic chain. As I explained, it would have made a split without sustainable hashpower majority impossible. You assume that SV would have added wipeout protection to offensively enforce their features (as ABC did), without having any indication that this was their plan. In no way do assumptions about what the other party might have done legitimize what one party actually has done.

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.

Oh, in my impression this is far from true. nChain invested in some of the greatest startups in BCH. You find a lot of enthusiastic people with the builder mentality on BSV, with a strong focus on usability. Just look at how many blockexplorer BSV has, one month after the fork ... Their whole point is that you need to get over protocol developers changing with Bitcoin, but that Bitcoin is ok, like it is, and that it is time to build on it. I see an ecosystem of interesting apps quickly emerging. What's missing at this point are users, unfortunately.
[doublepost=1545034965][/doublepost]

no problem, I didn't listen to the whole thing either back then. But I *did* catch the relevant part.

what I find a little "disturbing" is you saying: "finally we have this" as if it would change anything and clear things up as if you were declaring to "have won" some fight or something. At least that's the impression I got from your post.

Yes, maybe I exaggerated. But imho the relevant parts clearly debunked one major myth about Bangkok. Maybe this is just my impression, words are flexible ...

I don't think it's "do what we want or fork off". It's hey: we've discussed this roadmap x amount of time ago. The time to discuss about it and be all concerned has passed, now we enact it. You have contributed to that roadmap and we've given it to investors who rightfully expect implementation. What impression does it make to pull out now? I can totally understand how ABC has acted here. I don't fully agree with the style, but what are you going to do? Cancel every upgrade because people voice concerns shortly before enacting?

If the oposition is backed by significant hashpower and investment, yes. The other option is always worse: split. I mean - what would you prefer: A unified BCH - or a split BCH, but with CTOR / DSV?

Afaik the meeting was in September, month before the fork, and CoinGeek announced oposition shortly after the release of ABC on August 15th. That's not "shortly before" enacting. Even if it was - it is no excuse to not try to prevent the worst outcome.

Then why did you split? In other words: this is not an "attitude", this is just how the world works. Like it or not.

No. Splitting is a decision by developers to write hard forks with wipeout protection and by miners to activate the fork. It's not a law but a result of human action.

lol, this is just a side-note but the key expression here is "tried to present as a compromise". The point is: it wasn't actually a compromise, it was a trap.

Yes. But the presentation as a compromise - maybe they even thought it was - was more empathy for the market than ABC had. This is what I meant.

Edit: One more:

It's hey: we've discussed this roadmap x amount of time ago. The time to discuss about it and be all concerned has passed, now we enact it.

Remember Core: In 2016 they started to say "the discussion is over", after we had more than two years of discussion, conferences, scientific papers, after a majority of developers indeed voted for not risking a split for a blocksize increase.

With ABC ... discussion was no longer than 3month. No conference, no scientific papers, developers not agreeing. There was a developer online meeting in which a majority voted against CTOR. There was a BU membership voting in which the strong majority voted against CTOR. There have been legal concerns about DSV, maybe they have been made-up, but still, they have not been adressed by any legal paper or something like this. Also the reasons nChain take against DSV have been used by ABC in May to reject op-group, while nobody explained why they don't count for DSV.

Than, after having no agreement, after having it discussed for no longer than 3 month, ABC declares that the discussion is over and that we need to risk to split the chain for doing what they want. That is my impression of it.

 

[awemany]

Why? ABC caused a split. We don't know what SV would have done when Jihan / Roger would just have mined the classic chain.

How can they cause the split when they're mining with hash power majority relative to BSV?!
Especially when you believe in the superiority of POW?!
I don't get where your guys' dissonance stems from here, but it is there.

As I explained, it would have made a split without sustainable hashpower majority impossible.

But this very thing is happening before your eyes! Again, WHO has hashpower majority between BCH and BSV?

EDIT: Oh and to address one particular point from @Norway here:

The point is to lock down the protocol itself, and to develop on top of the protocol.

I don't think the point is to lock down the protocol.

I rather want the economics than the protocol locked down - due to incentives.

And recovering "lost treasuries" is not compatible with that vision!

Locking down the protocol is a natural occurence due to widespread adoption, not something one party forces through. Be that Block-the-stream or En-chain-the-BCH.

But I guess, to each their own. Seems like a repeat of history a bit.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

I wouldn't call this sustainable hashpower majority

https://cash.coin.dance/blocks/hashrate

The split was designed to survive even when the other side gets more hashpower.

 

[freetrader]

@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?

Nothing was "taken from my hands" - I'd just like to correct that conception.

If I had to retrospect what I would have done differently, then it would have been to forego CashAddr in favor of Bitpay's address change suggestion, which would have been much less radical, could have been implemented by November '17 and brought along more of the ecosystem much quicker. The CashAddr proposal is technically good, but I don't think the extra wait and effort imposed on others was made up for by its benefits.

Secondly, I would have stuck to the "Any Order" (AOR) first step that was initially ABC's preferred choice - as I believe that was also most of BU's choice. How things developed was unfortunate, and I don't feel it's fruitful to assign any blame here either. We can make good use of CTOR.

Thirdly, while I don't think there is much wrong with the existing roadmap as it stands, I would view finally eliminating fixed blocksize caps by moving to a dynamic blocksize at the top of the list. Emergent Consensus (as in the BU algorithm) just doesn't cut it as it is too unpredictable and disruptive for a ecosystem-wide blocksize increases.
Also, I'd put double spend proof relay ahead of any form of pre-consensus. Unfortunately people are now using the term "pre-consensus" for proposals that will affect regular consensus. Maybe we should re-think if we really want to do that.

 

[molecular]

The split was designed to survive even when the other side gets more hashpower.

ABC didn't "design a split". They just planned an upgrade. The "minority survival" was baked into BCH when it split from BTC. CSW wanted control without a split. Fine with me, nice try, didn't work. Risk. Finance. Now he has his own chain and his own infrastructure, ticker and community.

In most regards relevant to me, hashpower (comparison between 2 chains) doesn't even matter. I don't care if BSV gets more hashpower than BCH. I don't care that BTC has more hashpower than BCH. So what? It would be the stronger chain, more secure, ok fine. But it wouldn't make me support it. It wouldn't imply that it's somehow "better" than the weaker chain in my view. I would still stick with a lower-hahsrate-than-BSV BCH because BCH is something I can get behind, BSV is not. At least that's how I currently think. The exchanges would also stick with a minorty BCH chain and not switch around tickers based on hashrate.

If we see a fluppening or whatever of BSV vs. BCH then its hashrate will pick up and beat that of BCH. Fine. So be it. Then what will BSV be saying? That the BCH ticker should go to BSV and BCH should "die off"? I don't understand what they think the implications would be? Are they planning to make some kind of demands based on "BSV now hast most accumulated PoW (sustained hashrate)"? Are they planning to make accusations ("they stole the ticker by renting hash!"). I really don't get it.

 

[Richy_T]

Let me start off by stating, in case anyone was unclear, that I am certainly no fan of CSW.

The simple truth is though that nothing gave ABC the moral high ground in this. They are just another set of devs. They had a little credibility capital from being the originators of the fork but they then went about spending that like a hillbilly that won a scratch-off. Their radical approach to upgrades was unwarranted and was always bound to rankle some. Many people came along with the BCH fork for larger block sizes and nothing else. Certainly not so Amaury could assume control and ram through all the "really cool ideas" he had that would not play when he was a small fish in a big pond.

Consensus *is* a meeting of the minds. It is delicate and ABC had it and they blew it. "My way or the highway" is not a way to grow a community and a much more conservative approach to advancing BCH, at least in consensus related matters, was warranted. There is a word I am working towards and that is "arrogance". It was apparent in ABC's early actions (for whatever freetrader wants to call it) and it was obvious to me it was going to cause problems down the line. And here we are.

It takes two to split. You cannot say that it was BSV or ABC. Both went on their own path. The only question is, could broad consensus have been maintained and who was responsible for losing it? Is it not the responsibility of the one ostensibly steering the ship to try and keep things on an even keel, to be inclusive of the ideologies of your fellow passengers? If you appear to be steering to stormy seas, is it right to accuse those who flee to the lifeboats?

I would certainly have supported BSV if it didn't have that conman at the helm. Facepalms all-round, I think.

 

[cypherdoc]

https://www.coindesk.com/hong-kong-exchange-hesitant-to-approve-bitmain-ipo-says-source

 

[Zarathustra]

Again, WHO has hashpower majority between BCH and BSV?

The miners of the North Corean chain, unfortunately. The BSV miners lost majority hashpower on election day, when North Corean hashpower invaded the BCH territory.

 

[molecular]

@Richy_T

> It takes two to split.

technically no. Anyone can split off his own chain, only 1 agent needed.

> You cannot say that it was BSV or ABC.

That's true in this case because actually they *both* split off by making hardforking changes. The "original" chain didn't attract any hashrate. So I agree with the gist of what you're saying: you can't blame either player for the split.

I also agree with your other point about Amaury overdoing his management / leadership role. He didn't make many friends through his despotic at times coleric style. I had my own experience with that. Gladly it was about implementation detail in electron-cash (it was about which prefix to use for payment urls), so I was able to just ignore him and implement according to consensus with the other devs (we ended up using "bitcoincash:" while he favored "xbc:", I think). I can see how he lost more and more people this way.

I also agree with your point about CSW just being unacceptable as a leader also. For me the point was reached at his talk in Arnheim when he showed a code example of moving loop-invariant code outside the loop which seemed to be taken from a undergrad CS book and bullshitted people into thinking it was his solution for the quadratic hashing "bug" in Bitcoin.

So I have to agree with your conclusion: facepalms all around.

 

[wrstuv31]

I would certainly have supported BSV if it didn't have that conman at the helm. Facepalms all-round, I think.

The whole point of the split, as advertised by Jihan and Roger et al was to force this situation to happen. Of course, now the tune has changed and the thing they forced is the very reason why no one should join it. I guess people still think the split from Core was about the blocksize only.

I also agree with your point about CSW just being unacceptable as a leader also.

Proves this yet again.

ABC has done so much harm. The parasitic DAA, the cashadress garbage. Nothing they've done has helped. Eventually it was too much, if anything CSW was too cooperative with ABC.

 

[Norway]

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.

I was not accusing you of being ok with a split at all. But I understand that you may have read it that way. I was vague, and that was not a good idea.

I was refering to @deadalnix and his talk in Bangkok, where he say he is an investor and that the investors will win, regardless of a split. We both think the split is very bad, and I'd like to mention that @solex raised his concerns about a split in the same meeting.

I agree with most of what you write in this post. IMHO, the solution to governance of the consensus rules is not better communication between dev groups, a change in behaviour from ABC to a more inclusive style or an organization like Haipo Yang suggested.

The solution is to lock down the protocol ASAP. Bitcoin doesn't need to be "fixed" with pre consensus, new high level OP_CODES or CTOR. Protocol freeze prevents fragmentation and makes a predictable platform for others to build on top of.

A recent case showed us how effective and swift economic incentives fix problems compared to protocol developers. A guy figured out how he could identify the nodes closest to mining by probing many nodes with earmarked doublespends and see what transactions went through. This was a clever method to gain knowledge about the network. He then used his information to trick the doublespend alerts of POP by HandCash and doublespend successfully at the same time.

But the most interesting part is not his clever method, but what happened next. HandCash simply fixed the problem less than 48 hours later. I don't know if they used the "attacker"'s own method or just contacted the pools. Both would work. The point is that a small company fixed an attack vector that wasn't even discussed at the BU doublespend conference in lovely Italy very quickly.

I guess some nerds will close their eyes to this reality and keep pushing for Avalanche and pre consensus. The next shit fest will happen on the BCH chain, not the BSV chain.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Great to see a lot of great projects around BCH published on reddit these days.
Many great minds hard at work and smart investors, that is awesome to see!

 

[Zarathustra]

ABC didn't "design a split". They just planned an upgrade.

Hmm...

 

[Richy_T]

technically no. Anyone can split off his own chain, only 1 agent needed.

One to go, one to stay. Doubly so in this case since hard-forks are hard-coded in to ABC. There is no staying with the existing codebase.
[doublepost=1545076887,1545076055][/doublepost]

I guess people still think the split from Core was about the blocksize only.

I'm sure people had/have many reasons for supporting BCH. Giving control to Amaury was probably not high on anyone's list. Except for Amaury's, I suppose.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Great to see a lot of great projects around BCH published on reddit these days.
Many great minds hard at work and smart investors, that is awesome to see!

Agree. A lot of dynamic.

 

[Norway]

Hmm...

Chris Pacia use the word "we" a lot. But as long as he doesn't produce any evidence that he represent anything else but himself, it's good practice to swap the word "we" with "I".

In this case, the result is the following:

I didn't want to prevent a split. I didn't spend half the year writing hardfork code for it to not to activate. Splitting was the whole point.

[doublepost=1545089039,1545088095][/doublepost]

I also agree with your point about CSW just being unacceptable as a leader also.

No person is acceptable as a leader in bitcoin. Some people are prominent based on what they have done. Roger Ver and Craig Wright are in this category.

 

[freetrader]

 

[digitsu]

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.

Amaury has already commented here on his disingenuous comments in the BU slack. Basically it WAS an attack employed exactly once, on a BU node (production? or just testnet? he didn't say) and it was because the Xthin code didn't do the blocksize check in the middle of downloading, instead waiting for the end. Okay, IF THAT was what he said at Bangkok, then Amaury would be not guilty of anything, and the whole crowd would have been able to stay focused and perhaps discussed that fixing this problem in nodes is relatively simple (if it even affected other nodes at all), and CSW would have stayed, and then Roger would have been able keep the peace between Jihan and CSW, and maybe we wouldn't have had a split.

But Amaury didn't. He framed it as the "biggest problem with raising the blocksize now [by Nov 15th]", even when this problem is fixable, and WAS fixed by BU nodes, and isn't a forking change, that needs consensus. He phrased it in a way that made EVERYONE in the room (excluding CSW) believe that this was a real big issue.

That was disingenuous at best. At worst, it precipitated the breakup of the whole BCH community.

 

[Norway]

[doublepost=1545100066,1545099156][/doublepost]

Amaury has already commented here on his disingenuous comments in the BU slack. Basically it WAS an attack employed exactly once, on a BU node (production? or just testnet? he didn't say) and it was because the Xthin code didn't do the blocksize check in the middle of downloading, instead waiting for the end. Okay, IF THAT was what he said at Bangkok, then Amaury would be not guilty of anything, and the whole crowd would have been able to stay focused and perhaps discussed that fixing this problem in nodes is relatively simple (if it even affected other nodes at all), and CSW would have stayed, and then Roger would have been able keep the peace between Jihan and CSW, and maybe we wouldn't have had a split.

But Amaury didn't. He framed it as the "biggest problem with raising the blocksize now [by Nov 15th]", even when this problem is fixable, and WAS fixed by BU nodes, and isn't a forking change, that needs consensus. He phrased it in a way that made EVERYONE in the room (excluding CSW) believe that this was a real big issue.

That was disingenuous at best. At worst, it precipitated the breakup of the whole BCH community.

@deadalnix was certainly scaring miners with the horrible scenario where a node runs out of memory because of a very big block and a person has to flip the power button to "off" and then to "on".