Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[awemany]

It would be cool if there would be vote watching bot. In the course of the Bitcoin sockpuppet discussion, I made this analysis and kind of know now how the reddit API works.

Just plots of votes over time for the various well-known actors on reddit would be interesting - what do you think?

 

[cypherdoc]

somebody already did a shadow acct analysis a coupla months ago.

they're fun to look at but if you can't prove anything, which you really can't, they're kinda useless, imo.

 

[cypherdoc]

the very beginning of BIP 100:

Abstract

Replace static 1M block size hard limit with a hard limit that floats between 1M and 32M.
Motivation

1. Long term, wean the bitcoin protocol away from any block size limit; let the free market establish a natural size limit equilibrium.

https://github.com/jgarzik/bip100/blob/master/bip-0100.mediawiki

 

[Peter R]

That's a goal I can support. Has BIP 100 always read that? That seems new to me.

 

[cypherdoc]

slush considers this war.

he will be back stronger than ever.

 

[cypherdoc]

@Peter R

first time i've seen it too.

 

[Peter R]

> slush considers this war.

About a month ago I had hoped that the Core team would come to some compromise and that we could move forward as we had in the past.

Today, I no longer feel that way. Core is broken. I would like Core to ossify at 1 MB while XT and hopefully other new competing implementations fork away with a larger block size limit.

This would also allow a new group of talented programmers to take the reins of code development moving forward. Many of the Core developers have been here since 2011 or earlier, when Bitcoin was 10 to 100 times smaller. Just based on dumb luck, for every talented "Core" developer today there are surely 10 to 100 equally talented (or more talented) developers who would like a shot to contribute in a significant way.

If a future superstar Bitcoin coder is reading, now is your chance!

 

[solex]

Slush is right. I hope people like him and tsontar help to get a fresh dev team working with XT.

Jeff is also an ally. He was the first person to take issue with Satoshi about the 1MB. The goal of everyone who wants to see Bitcoin fulfil the original promise of the white-paper and become a currency and payment system of global significance is to see main-chain scaling. BIP101 allows this, but pragmatism warrants a consideration of BIP100 as well.

I think BIP100 pulled into XT could see Blockstream and the "settlement layer" dreamers marginalised to where they belong. If BS had spent as much time getting LN to work as they have spent FUD-mongering on the forums then LN would be much further advanced, and they would have some off-chain capability which would complement, rather than replace main-chain scaling..

 

[Peter R]

@solex

What if someone (perhaps Jeff) was to create another implementation that forked from Core (let's call it Bitcoin-100) that implemented some version of BIP100 (without the 21% attack). This team and the XT team would make it publicly known that they are both "friendly competitors." They would explain that the reason for the two versions is just to allow the community to directly express their free choice. Both teams would agree to make changes to ensure future compatabily between the two implementation when one of the proposals is activated.

Perhaps there's a third implementation that votes for BIP100 and BIP101 simultaneously even (that is programmed to switch to one or the other when a winner is chosen)...

 

[solex]

That's great point!
Provided all block limit changing solutions have a high activation threshold e.g. 75% or more, then it is possible to have a meta-patch which uses all the solutions and just activates with the one which reaches its threshold first, leaving the others permanently dormant. So a user could choose Bitcoin software which copes with any scaling solution.
The downside of multiple solutions is that 3 solutions could plateau at 30% each and the block limit remains unchanged, although I think that this would be unstable and many users+miners would change their implementation choice.

Another point to remember is that Gavin and Jeff retain commit access to Core, therefore if BIP100A gets implemented in XT then they could veto a BIP100B variant from going into Core (requiring a compatible BIP100A).

BTW. The latest draft for BIP100 uses the 80th percentage for a decrease in the limit, while the 20th percentile increases the limit, which stops the 21% shrinking limit threat, but not the 21% frozen limit threat.
IMHO just using the mean is best.

 

[theZerg]

We need to really think this XT thing and construct the social agreements that would allow us to resolve issues going forward. After all, we got into this mess because there is no process.

Gavin would be essential, but he seems to be a bit of a gentle soul and a believer in the essential honesty and goodness of every single person. For example, he never should have deferred his position of chief maintainer -- he just should have delegated the work . I'm guessing he realizes that now. So we'd need a group to hammer out something solid.

Problems:

1. Development conflict resolution


2. Development funding

 

[cypherdoc]

@theZerg

unfortunately for all of us, if you listen to Gavin in the last Epicenter Bitcoin podcast, you can tell he doesn't want the lead dev responsibility that goes with Bitcoin. our loss.

 

[cypherdoc]

nice pump...

 

[theZerg]

Yes, I'm not suggesting that. But as the development leader of XT, at this point its more important that he and MIT be involved in specifying some kind of conflict resolution process etc for use with XT so this doesn't happen again. Some document identifying voters, consisting of people with a stake in the success of the system: maybe proof-of-ownership, proof-of-mining, and github commits, and creating some formal mechanism where a BIP is proposed, discussed, and then voted on.

Due to the fact that currency only has value if others accept it, Bitcoin is very different than other OSS projects. You can't just fork it like emacs/xemacs or openoffice/libreoffice and grab a bunch of users... so we'd have to convince the majority that XT really is the future and that means creating a social construction where people can feel involved and empowered.

 

[Peter R]

@theZerg

In 5 years time, do you suspect nodes will primarily run one particular client implementation, or a mixture of a few forkwise-compatible implementations?

 

[Justus Ranvier]

creating a social construction where people can feel involved and empowered that their money is safe and competitive with other currencies.

ftfy

 

[molecular]

I think we can all agree that we need some mechanism to effect change in order to protect the value of our beloved network & currency.

Yes, I'm not suggesting that. But as the development leader of XT, at this point its more important that he and MIT be involved in specifying some kind of conflict resolution process etc for use with XT so this doesn't happen again.

If CPU mining had been the end of it, we might not have this mess now, namely that the bitcoin community now needs to involve itself with politics. On the other hand: we might still have to deal with this even with highly decentralized mining. It might even be uglier (with frequent forks and many bitcoins, for example, who knows)

Some document identifying voters, consisting of people with a stake in the success of the system:

The blockchain itself contains a nice list of stakeholders.

Some document identifying voters, consisting of people with a stake in the success of the system: maybe proof-of-ownership, proof-of-mining, and github commits, and creating some formal mechanism where a BIP is proposed, discussed, and then voted on.

And then? Then devs are forced to implement it and miners / node ops forced to deploy it?

 

[Zarathustra]

The Tragedy of the Core

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173943.new#new

 

[sickpig]

The Tragedy of the Core

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1173943.new#new

I lol'ed hard after reading the first sentence of your post: "Core collapsing – Bitcoin up?"

 

[Inca]

Every single one of my reddit accounts is now banned from /r/bitcoin.

Amazing how you can simply repost the great Theymos' words and get banned for it