Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

so, this mornings announcement is a tacit admission by f2pool that they think Blockstream controls Core.

 

[AdrianX]

Actually that was the first think I thought, after I saw this ugly "consensus decision" from Hong Kong:
1. Hm. Maybe bitcoin is broken.
2. So should I start investing in altcoins instead?
3. If Bitcoin is broken, why should any of the altcoins not get into the same mess at same point, meaning the idea of cryptocurrencies as of today is flawed and not working.

But: The threat of using another POW on a blockchain fork is the weapon we need here. If we actually need a change in POW has yet to be shown, but the option for it should be existing.
Imho it would be great to have a working Fork of bitcoin with a new POW ready to start from Block X. Thus the governance of Bitcoin isn't broken, we are just not using all available tools.

(1)Besides the current mess, I really love the option of "altcoins" who are forking the existing blockchain. It is some kind of "risk free" competition to the existing currency. As a bitcoin user/holder you can comfortably watch the new currency and evaluate it neutrally.

When you say that (1 bold above) are you thinking of spin-offs as described here or are you thinking using the untill spent outputs as the genesis block or thinking of keeping the blockchain just launching an alt?

In response to the initial part of your post I often wonder how much of the Bitcoin design is by chance and how much is actually intuition.

The block size limit as described in your post infers it's a mistake that has highlighted a governance issue. Where as it's yet to materializes as a mistake. If anything I think it's teaching us more about Bitcoin governance at an early stage in the adoption cycle.

While I think it's possible that a lot of design outcomes are practical I think some are just lucky by chance. The block limit as a necessity will prove to be so by chance.

 

[VeritasSapere]

The proposal does not give up on POW governance. To understand this it is important to remember what POW mining governs.

POW mining is responsible for determining the order of transactions only, that is the only responsibility and the only control given to POW miners.

If that was true why are we now hanging on the words of the miners and losing confidence when they agree to go along with the Core roadmap. The truth is the miners do decide, they are supposed to decide in the interests of the economic majority.

This is based on the still unproven theory that the incentives acting upon the miners will make them follow the economic majority for their own economic self interest. You have probably seen me repeat this a few times:

Consensus is an emergent property which flows from the will of the economic majority. Proof of work is the best way to measure this consensus. The pools act as proxy for the miners, pools behave in a similar way to representatives within a representative democracy. Then in turn the miners act as a proxy for the economic majority. Since the miners are incentivized to follow the economic majority. In effect the economic majority rules Bitcoin, in other words the market rules Bitcoin. Bitcoin relies on the economic self-interest of the masses to govern consensus.

That is because I really believe in it. I would think it would even be hypocritical for me to give up on it to early as well. Its like believing in the principles of democracy but then not accepting the outcome of the vote, we should either reject democracy or accept the outcome of the vote. This is a simplified example but it highlights why I feel so strongly about this. It is a matter of principle and consistence as well.

What has happened is POW miners have taken for themselves additional rule making that is not a part of Bitcoin's governance structure and they have done this through soft forks which users never agreed to. The 1MB limit itself was a software that was not agreed to by the network, there are others.

Whatever rules are applied to the network are by definition accepted by the network. In regards to the miners having the ability of rule making, I do believe this is also part of the governance structure of Bitcoin. It even says so in the Bitcoin whitepaper:

They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.

Bitcoin's rules are determined by users in the form of what blocks users validate and accept.

I do agree with this, ultimately the users decide but it still happens through proxy, where the miners act like representatives for the users. This aspect of Bitcoins governance I think is still unproven and this blocksize debate is the perfect test for the governance of Bitcoin. An experiment in decentralized governance which is completely unprecedented in history, which is also in part why I would like to see the conclusion of this experiment sooner rather then later.

I am concerned that if we switch POW now, we might have to wait a long time before we go into the ASIC phase again and possibly phase some of these problems again, it would be a long time to wait for a lesson that we might have been able to learn sooner.

I also think and maybe this is a bit outside of the scope of this discussion, but POW resistant algorithms might actually be counterproductive for mining decentralization when they do go into the ASIC phase because of the of the increased cost and barrier to entry to actually develop such ASICs, especially considering that centralization of manufacturing is one of the main centralizing forces in mining, it might not make sense to have to go through that again when we have already come so far. We keep all of that progress by keeping the POW algorithm on this genesis fork, continueing the experiment in POW governance while also giving the market more choice.

Given that POW miners have taken for themselves the ability to create rules that are outside of their scope of responsibilities, users have every right to reject those miners and build a new set of miners that will adhere to Bitcoin's governance structure.

I suppose at this point maybe we can say that we disagree on what the governance structure of Bitcoin really is. It is true users have every right to reject the actions of the miners, though I think it is still to early for the users to take such an action. Part of why I am hesitant to make that jump is that I have to accept the outcome of this experiment. If we have reject the miners under these circumstances I would seriously consider this experiment in POW governance to have failed, and I do not see the point in repeating the experiment without much more radical changes.

I do need to stay intellectually honest and accept the outcome of the experiment without to much bias. To be a rational thinker I have to accept the conclusion of the empirical evidence, whether I like it or not.

There are clear reasons to be doubtful on this today, which is why preparing alternative options is a valid thing to explore. The market should not wait until bitcoin is falling apart due to congestion to prepare options because it will take time to put those options in place and build mind share.

I suppose I do agree with you that it is good to prepare an a genesis fork as competition to Core if the blocksize is not increased.

However I still feel strongly that in order to continue this experiment in governance it must have the same POW algorithm, otherwise we are just hitting the reset button instead of just giving the market another choice. We should continue with the experiment and a chain fork with the same POW algorithm can be considered a continuation of the same governance mechanism.

Having a chain fork option that bankrupts current POW investments also sends a very clear statement. That statement is POW miners should follow the governance parameters they are responsible for only, and should follow the interests of the market, and if they do not they will be dropped.

It certainly does send an even stronger statement, I suppose in my opinion, to strong for this time.

I would only consider this option if the situation was more akin to a type fifty one percent attack where it is clear that monopolies have developed that are acting maliciously towards the good of Bitcoin. I do not think that is the case now, at least we do not have sufficient evidence to support it. Which means the only other conclusion I can draw if we abandoned POW governance now is that it has fundamentally failed, I do not think we can draw that conclusion yet.

If it turns out that this theory of POW governance has failed it would be pointless resetting the experiment. Self funding blockchains, incentivized full nodes and more complex governance mechanism would most likely then be the answer.

Clients such as Bitcoin Unlimited are the friendly work together approach, and these should be tried first. Chain fork clients are the fall back, there should always be fall backs.

I agree with you in principle on this, I really do. I just do not think the situation justifies such a radical action yet.

It is good we have found some things to disagree on, it somewhat implies at least that we are free thinkers.

 

[rocks]

@VeritasSapere
If that was true then miners would be able to decide for themselves to increase the coinbase rewards to 100BTC per block. The reason they do not is user nodes would reject such blocks. Users decide what to accept.

So if users currently reject blocks with larger coinbase transactions, what is to stop them from rejecting block that are artificially small?

 

[VeritasSapere]

I agree entirely, the users, or what I like to call the economic majority are in charge of Bitcoin. That is why the miners can not do whatever they want. But the truth is that the miners are the ones with the vote and they are supposed to represent the interests of this economic majority, because of the incentive that are placed upon them. This is what the governance of Bitcoin is based on. Power flows from the pools, to the miners and then to the people.

You could say there is a more complex power play taking place. A balance of power even, many people do not even realize this about Bitcoin yet. When people do not realize how democratic and free Bitcoin truly is we lose that freedom, it is still dependent on peoples understanding, the same flaw modern democracies have, two sides of a coin though right, without that property it would also not be democratic.

It is also good to keep in mind that at this point it might even be difficult for the miners to know what the majority of users want. There are no clear metrics on this and there is a lot of misinformation. Essentially the miners have to attempt to guess the will of this economic majority, they might even earnestly guess wrong. It could be that many people are still coming to terms with understanding all of this and it might just take more time for us to see our desired outcome.

The incentives could continue to align and we will see Bitcoin scale, or the POW governance will prove itself fundamentally flawed and it will be overtaken and obsolesced by a different cryptocurrency which has solved these problems. I still think it is to early to tell what is going to happen, it could still go either way, my theories on Bitcoin governance tell me that this situation will be resolved and Bitcoin will scale, however I need to be open to the possibility that my theories are wrong.

 

[AdrianX]

We should give Classic a decent shot at succeeding. However, if it's clearly going nowhere in a month or two, then I think the POW fork is worthy serious

It's going to take time and pain to understand the truth that fees don't halve and will become more important than subsidies and depend on economies of scale.

Classic Unlimited XT are not going to solve Bitcoin issue if they are not available at the time of peek pain some time after halving.

 

[cypherdoc]

even BCT is coming around:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=700411.new;topicseen#new
[doublepost=1456338162,1456337446][/doublepost]

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

When you say that (1 bold above) are you thinking of spin-offs as described here or are you thinking using the untill spent outputs as the genesis block or thinking of keeping the blockchain just launching an alt?

In response to the initial part of your post I often wonder how much of the Bitcoin design is by chance and how much is actually intuition.

The block size limit as described in your post infers it's a mistake that has highlighted a governance issue. Where as it's yet to materializes as a mistake. If anything I think it's teaching us more about Bitcoin governance at an early stage in the adoption cycle.

While I think it's possible that a lot of design outcomes are practical I think some are just lucky by chance. The block limit as a necessity will prove to be so by chance.

In regards to the bold part I was thinking of spin-offs. But I rather see this as a chance for "normal competition" to a working Bitcoin blockchain. Referring to the current situation, I think a hardfork and keeping the existing blockchain is the right way to go.

I didn't mean the blocksize issue itself to be a design flaw of bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general but possibly the mining. I know think, that the realistic option of a PoW hard fork is the tool to get Bitcoin working again. Which makes the whole concept to look pretty flawless again

edit:

I think it is urgent for all bitcoin holders to make the option for a PoW fork of Bitcoin more visible before we see more and more movement towards altcoins.
Almost all altcoins are not fulfilling any meaningful role, as spin-offs are the way better option imho.

 

[Mengerian]

@lunar re. F2Pool flip flop. That's pretty funny. But now Back has flip flopped too, so I guess everything is OK Meanwhile we can add another datapoint to our assessment of miner steadfastness.

I have been getting the feeling lately that Adam Back's good-guy act is starting to wear thin. He is starting to be perceived less like a conciliator, and more like a consigliere.

This change in attitude is increasingly eating away at core's perceived moral authority. They risk an emperor-has-no-clothes moment where the miners wake up and realize that code is powerless without hashes behind it. (Of course hashes are also powerless without investors behind them, but that lesson may have come another day)

This is all part of a process. Bitcoin's development is path-dependent. In other words, it is not enough that a potential future state of Bitcoin is plausible, it is also necessary that the path from current state to future state is plausible. This development path necessarily has to follow an evolutionary type pattern where each incremental step along the way follows short/medium term incentives in the system.

This is one of the flaws of the Blocksteam/core vision. Whatever the merits of their desired end state, it seems to require a path that goes against the interests of miner and users in the short term by restricting block sizes and trying to force a fee market. But the only way this theory can be verified is by them trying and failing to force their vision. Or maybe they will succeed, in which case I will learn something.

 

[cypherdoc]

my name is Adam Backtrack and i'll Backtrack any Backtrack you care to have me sign.
[doublepost=1456339673][/doublepost]

@lunar re. F2Pool flip flop. That's pretty funny. But now Back has flip flopped too, so I guess everything is OK Meanwhile we can add another datapoint to our assessment of miner steadfastness.

I have been getting the feeling lately that Adam Back's good-guy act is starting to wear thin. He is starting to be perceived less like a conciliator, and more like a consigliere.

This change in attitude is increasingly eating away at core's perceived moral authority. They risk an emperor-has-no-clothes moment where the miners wake up and realize that code is powerless without hashes behind it. (Of course hashes are also powerless without investors behind them, but that lesson may have come another day)

This is all part of a process. Bitcoin's development is path-dependent. In other words, it is not enough that a potential future state of Bitcoin is plausible, it is also necessary that the path from current state to future state is plausible. This development path necessarily has to follow an evolutionary type pattern where each incremental step along the way follows short/medium term incentives in the system.

This is one of the flaws of the Blocksteam/core vision. Whatever the merits of their desired end state, it seems to require a path that goes against the interests of miner and users in the short term by restricting block sizes and trying to force a fee market. But the only way this theory can be verified is by them trying and failing to force their vision. Or maybe they will succeed, in which case I will learn something.

and we know that Blockstream's vision is flawed for the simple reason that 1MB cannot be a magic number divined out of thin air years ago when Satoshi merely picked a random round number to protect against some theoretical edge attack.

to believe that 1MB somehow represents some magical equilibrium point where user demand equals miner supply today and for the foreseeable future is to believe in fairy tales and unicorns. this also extends to 2MB, btw.

the only way to ever know where the equilbrium point exists is to lift the cap entirely and let the involved economic actors figure it out according to free mkt dynamics.

 

[AdrianX]

I didn't mean the blocksize issue itself to be a design flaw of bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general but possibly the mining. I know think, that the realistic option of a PoW hard fork is the tool to get Bitcoin working again. Which makes the whole concept to look pretty flawless again

agree with your other points, but just wanted to despond to the above.

it's not that the block size is or is not an issue, but the block size limit that has highlighted a governance issue. It's created a situation were miners who believe in growth but don't understand why or how bitcoin grows, but just belie it will that are agreeing to limit the block size out of ignorance and following the lead of an authority, Blockstream, who are working to increase fee pressure by limiting block space to increase revenue.

the problem is not with PoW it's that some PoW miners are working against there long term interests and the interests of a decentralized monetary system unknowingly because the Block size limit is a hard fork change.

it's the perfect storm for Altcoins. before the bitcoin governance problem is resolved. (F&!*k Crypcy for killing my alt coin enthusiasm and portfolio)

 

[rocks]

@lunar re. F2Pool flip flop. That's pretty funny. But now Back has flip flopped too, so I guess everything is OK Meanwhile we can add another datapoint to our assessment of miner steadfastness.

I have been getting the feeling lately that Adam Back's good-guy act is starting to wear thin. He is starting to be perceived less like a conciliator, and more like a consigliere.

This change in attitude is increasingly eating away at core's perceived moral authority. They risk an emperor-has-no-clothes moment where the miners wake up and realize that code is powerless without hashes behind it. (Of course hashes are also powerless without investors behind them, but that lesson may have come another day)

This is all part of a process. Bitcoin's development is path-dependent. In other words, it is not enough that a potential future state of Bitcoin is plausible, it is also necessary that the path from current state to future state is plausible. This development path necessarily has to follow an evolutionary type pattern where each incremental step along the way follows short/medium term incentives in the system.

This is one of the flaws of the Blocksteam/core vision. Whatever the merits of their desired end state, it seems to require a path that goes against the interests of miner and users in the short term by restricting block sizes and trying to force a fee market. But the only way this theory can be verified is by them trying and failing to force their vision. Or maybe they will succeed, in which case I will learn something.

The flip flopping and general refusal to say what they mean by F2Pool, BTCC and other miners comes across to me as a power play by immature individuals who think they are the bosses, are in control and want to push others around with that control. I have seen little evidence they will commit to anything and instead seem to like having others from Gavin to Adam suck up to them.

That is not a strong backing for a multi billion dollar ecosystem. There are strong players in Bitcoin on the services side, but on the mining side not so much. This is probably because on the services side leaders need to develop and put together real businesses that attract users, while on the mining side all you need is artificially cheap electricity. We are seeing the effect of that play out now.

 

[cypherdoc]

good idea:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/47dbeh/f2pool_why_not_take_a_cue_from_slush_and_offer/
[doublepost=1456342758][/doublepost]

The flip flopping and general refusal to say what they mean by F2Pool, BTCC and other miners comes across to me as a power play by immature individuals who think they are the bosses, are in control and want to push others around with that control. I have seen little evidence they will commit to anything and instead seem to like having others from Gavin to Adam suck up to them.

That is not a strong backing for a multi billion dollar ecosystem. There are strong players in Bitcoin on the services side, but on the mining side not so much. This is probably because on the services side leaders need to develop and put together real businesses that attract users, while on the mining side all you need is artificially cheap electricity. We are seeing the effect of that play out now.

great point. which doesn't bode well for Chinese miners and the centralization they bring in the long run. i've always said we're on the first iteration of international mining players. with time, the market will switch them out.

 

[lunar]

North Korea makes me feel dirty every time I visit. Nevertheless I do pop in for the occasional vote when the biggest misconceptions are on the line.

Perhaps its just me but I feel a wind of change blowing, and it's reassuring to see this sort of post flourishing.

 

[VeritasSapere]

This is good news, and it is indeed a power play by these pools. This also means that Core does not have the support they said they needed for segwit. Throwing their entire roadmap into question. While also revealing more of the character behind Block Stream to these pools. I can understand how they might not appreciate Block Stream going back on its word and agreement. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

@cypherdoc That is a good observation, miners come and go. Especially the ones that are not smart enough. The market will indeed switch them out.

 

[cypherdoc]

need to bookmark this.

Wang Chun on why he SPV mines:

https://t.co/eX4UH2SePD

 

[Norway]

What happened to stuff like this?

 

[Bagatell]

@Norway It was consumed by the love of money.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

North Korea makes me feel dirty every time I visit. Nevertheless I do pop in for the occasional vote when the biggest misconceptions are on the line.

Perhaps its just me but I feel a wind of change blowing, and it's reassuring to see this sort of post flourishing.

two observations

- the r/bitcoin crowd gets weak. The chorus continues to sing "1 mb blocks forever lightning network will free everybody" but they face more and more opposition. I think the post with the collection of core devs for a fee market was a game changer in the discussion.

-by all this anti core posts today I expected to find a lot of deleted comments by looking into unreddit. But on two threads I looked I found not a single one. Is unreddit broken - or does theymos soften the censorship?

 

[AdrianX]

@Christoph Bergmann most of us "don't limit bitcoin blockchain growth" proponents are banned from posting there. So nothing to delete.

I couldn't be bothered to head over there anymore. I occasionally visit when I am in the mood for Bitcoin cat videos though.