Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[rocks]

What does this say about the wide open scripting system SW proposes?

Or RBF, or TIMELOCKVERIFY, or any of the other "soft forks" they've pushed in.

Peter Todd is unbelievable here saying "see Satoshi said only one locked version will work", while at the same time making multiple fundamental changes and deploying them as soft forks, which means multiple implementation running different rules (which is what a soft fork causes).

The hypocrisy is off the scale.

 

[albin]

Soft forks aren't even particularly soft if you're a miner. There's really no difference versus a hard fork.

 

[dill]

Maybe there is no such thing as the perfect embodiment of "bitcoin" as it is an idea/concept as well as software. Each software implementation is an attempt at expressing people's view on what "bitcoin" is. Like the Olympic flame the dominant software is the torch bearer who holds it until a competitor comes along with enough support and features that people are willing to do the extra work of forking and hand off the baton to the next party. Constantly a torch bearer (core) with someone nearby (classic/unlimited) when people are ready for a change.

 

[cypherdoc]

@Peter R

before i answer your question can you answer one for me? i've asked it before but can't remember if you or the others answered it of me so i apologize in advance if you did.

in BU we talk about returning the blocksize to the transport layer from the consensus layer according to Satoshi's WP. i interpret that to mean that a valid block is a valid block is a valid block, no matter it's size, and that it should only be rejected via transportation issues such as orphaning. and that size should not be autocratically determined by core dev. that's fine and good and i've argued the same. but then in the current BU offering, we decide to add a user config setting which allows full node operators to control the blocksize of their choice via a network "consensus" mechanism where individuals reject blocks based on their individual preferences. yes, i get that there are more full nodes out there run by more users than core devs making these decisions, so in that sense, it may be more representative of the network. but still, isn't this inconsistent and isn't this a confusing policy to miners that could prevent them from building bigger blocks? miners have enough uncertainty in just making blocks according to what their estimation of the BW capabilities are of the network. throwing in another variable based on issues other than just transport might not be such a good idea. also, how can an accurate broadcasting system by full nodes of their limits be built that is trusted if those views aren't built into the blockchain?

 

[cypherdoc]

i say "we decided" to add user config but remember i voted against it:

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip001-unlimited-inspired-extensions-to-the-bitcoin-client.222/page-2#post-5313

 

[theZerg]

@cypherdoc, I added the "excessive size" for the same reason I added the traffic shaping. Philosophically, I do not believe that the Bitcoin client should be able to hijack your internet connection consuming the entirety of your resources. I think it leads to people shutting off their nodes, although this is simply anecdotal.

But the arguments against it are specious. If I have 100MB bandwidth and am able to devote 20MB to Bitcoin, then this is still better than taking 100% of a 3MB connection. Especially because dropping bandwidth a bit is an easy way to get your node below a sys admin's "bandwidth hog" filters so your node can avoid being stopped.

By allowing a node to suggest the "excessive size", we let people control the resources we give to bitcoin, although its not in a very direct manner. Regardless, this is extremely important in an "unlimited" context. The first criticism everyone suggests is "what if there's a huge block?"

I would imagine that in the future, this explicit assignment may just be an override of an implicit size that is calculated by looking at a node's bandwidth and txn validation rate.

Or another option is to spawn a separate thread that independently executes the operations on this block and controls its own resource use (i.e. slows itself down).

And one last thought: The one argument I haven't heard against BU so far is that user config is bad.

 

[Aquent]

Yes, problem is a truly unlimited client would be dismissed out of hand. Even Mike Hearn (when he thought bitcoin unlimited meant no limit) made some comments to say that's a bad idea - let alone everyone else.

Now maybe he is wrong, but whether he is wrong or right doesn't matter in my view because bitcoin unlimited does not stop miners from generating blocks of a size they agree. As we expect miners to keep blocks small because of orphaning, yet above market demand because they want to increase the value of their holdings and hardware etc, having a limit above such demand is not any different than having no limit at all, except that it addresses the valid or invalid arguments about spam or big block attacks.

When things are going fine, there is no dispute etc, the choices that non-mining nodes make are irrelevant as they would simply be forking themselves off if they choose a size smaller than that chosen by miners. The non mining nodes would only come into play if there is a dispute, in my view, and in that case bitcoin unlimited gives the non mining nodes greater power than they currently have.

The only problem may be if miners say sorry we not increasing it anymore, but I'm sure miners like money and their value to increase so that's improbable as we have seen by their constant increase of the size in the past 7 years.

However, many are saying this is just theory etc, so, we probably want to create our own testnet and run it for quite some time with different parameters etc see how this would work in practice, if anything breaks etc. To make this more inclusive, perhaps we'd want to make it possible to connect to our testnet without having to download 70gb of data etc, so that anyone can just download a software and get it running on the test net straight away. We'd prob then want to advertise this on reddit, get many people to honestly choose a size and then try and break it etc and see how it goes.

 

[Aquent]

Hmm, interesting and overlooked paper https://scalingbitcoin.org/montreal2015/presentations/Day2/6-Sveinn-Valfellsmining-slides-montreal.pdf

which apparently suggests according to @dgenr8 that bitcoin has a powerful inbuilt incentives against miner centralisation.

I created a thread to discuss it https://bitco.in/forum/threads/bitcoin-has-powerful-built-in-incentives-against-miner-centralization.795/ but of course you're free to make comments here on your opinion about what I find to be very interesting formalised findings.

 

[cypherdoc]

@theZerg @Aquent @Peter R

is there an inconsistency in the claim that we've moved blocksizes to the transport layer while simultaneously allowing user config of the limit?

 

[AdrianX]

Here is a great explanation of the economic incentives behind the orphan rate risk to miners.

It's been obfuscated by Blockstream FUD and helping a select fiew circumvent it with the centralized relay network.

 

[JVWVU]

 

[albin]

I'm readying the popcorn in anticipation of the usual suspects coming out to dance on his grave.

 

[Inca]

Damn. Mike is a loss to the community. His post is completely sane and a nice summary of the ridiculous and precarious situation we find ourselves in.

I hope we move forward in some way soon. Core needs to be forked away from to a fresh start asap.

 

[JVWVU]

I think Core needs forked to remove their precieved ownership but imo Mike's stance screams I am a Diva and you should do what I think, and thus why I hated XT and believed a dictatorship there was a bad idea. Reminds me when David Seamans got mad when the Bear Whale cashed out and his dollar value of Bitcoin decreased.

Our side is finally coming together as a group, and I will be honestly it pains me to Read Reddit/BTC because most of the posters sound like pussies because they got banned. Organize sensibly and responsbility - I hate using this analogy because I hate unions but we need to unionize with Classic, Unlimited and XT.

He is truly taking his ball home but everyone still gets to play.

It also screams let the price drop as I am moving onto R3.


And a true voice of reason is here

 

[rocks]

If all you could see was Maxwell and their games and moves to limit and break bitcoin, then the smartest move would be to sell and move on. Since Mike was knee deep in pushing back on core, and losing, from his perspective it probably looked as if he was practically on his own and the Maxwell team won. If that was the case then Mike was the smart money leaving before the rest of the world saw what was happening.

For a while there I too almost gave up, sold and exited. There were two things that keep me hanging in:
1) was this thread and a few other sources, which helped to talk through the economic implications and how the market would have to fight back
2) was the understanding that there exist many well funded entities who cannot exit bitcoin and have to see it successfully grow, and that if these entities behaved rationally they would have to eventually mount an offensive. Mike could leave, but coinbase, bitstamp, etc. cannot.

I think this also shows how blockstream's attack has held back the price. I wouldn't be surprised if the faith of many others has been shaken to the point they have completely sold, or at least sold a good percentage.

My belief is if bitcoin successfully forks away from blockstream and increases the cap with BC, and removes all the uncertainty in the process, the price will finally explode higher. Couple this with the halving and we could see a great year in 2016.

 

[cypherdoc]

Damn. Mike is a loss to the community. His post is completely sane and a nice summary of the ridiculous and precarious situation we find ourselves in.

I hope we move forward in some way soon. Core needs to be forked away from to a fresh start asap.

Bitcoin bucks exceedingly hard.

but i see light at the end of the tunnel. and i think it happens in 2016. both Classic and BU are working hard to change and decentralize things. the community will have choices.
[doublepost=1452809281][/doublepost]

I'm readying the popcorn in anticipation of the usual suspects coming out to dance on his grave.

here you go:

 

[cypherdoc]

wow, and it gets better. time to sell :/

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.nzel6g8p8

 

[solex]

It is sad to see Mike make a complete exit like this. I am sure that he does not need the money from his BTC holding and could have kept it as a back-seat investor. I think he is making an error there, also that he is not giving enough credit to the power of the economic majority to take the ecosystem to a new client when Core has proven to have failed, i.e. by crippling tx throughput for normal and existing business flows.

Bitcoin Classic is a perfect fit with BU, for the reason that it can attract mining power where BU (and XT) can't. The major miners have a huge investment in their business so they are very conservative. They understand an increase to 2MB, whereas they might not understand BU's limit by emergent consensus. They know Gavin, Jeff and Jonathan, whereas they might not know the people behind BU.

Stealing from @Roger_Murdock's car analogy, we can consider a moving car to be big-blocks. Classic is the 12 volt battery to get the car started, BU is the internal combustion engine to keep it going permanently. The ICE can't be started without the battery. So, yes, miners will move to Classic in the short-term, but once the first >1MB block is mined it will be a straight choice between Classic, a hastily modified Core, a stalled XT, and BU for non-mining users.

Classic's 2MB limit is not good enough for more than a year or two, but that time is valuable for BU to prove itself, that it can attract more good devs, have a track record of democratic decisions on BUIPs, and will be safe choice for conservative miners to consider once Classic's 2MB maxes out.

 

[_mr_e]

wow, and it gets better. time to sell:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.nzel6g8p8

That is really depressing. I hope he's just trying to light fires under people's asses because this post really instills some fear...

 

[sickpig]

Also this daily decrypt episode is quite depressing: