Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[lunar]

 

[bluemoon]

I am very prepared to be pragmatic about this, there is no demand for unanimous consent.

Why ever not?

Why should the 5% be expendable?

 

[albin]

I have mentioned many times, BU is outside the scope of consensus systems. Users all set their own limits (some with no limit at all) and there is no effort to reach consensus on one set of rules. Nodes therefore diverges onto different chains.

There is a very very critical aspect of BU's scheme that you appear to not understand, I would strongly recommend reading the actual documentation.

That is how Classic works, 25% opposition is locked in. Classic activates if and only if exactly 25% of the blocks in the last 1,000 do not support it. It is impossible for Classic to activate with 80% support, for example. This is the root cause of the strong opposition to Classic, because Classic doesn't even give strong consensus a chance. Classic guarantees strong consensus cannot occur.

Can you justify in any way at all how this little gem is not completely made up misinformation?

 

[sickpig]

Hmm, well respected zooko of zcash surprised at Thunder network. That's not good:

it seems to me that he's expressing his surprise in realizing the huge amount of work needed to make LN routing and keying work more than anything else.

edit: grammar

 

[bluemoon]

To many, if Bitcoin loses the unique characteristic, that changes cannot be imposed on a significant minority by a democratic majority, then it has nothing unique about it and Bitcoin is therefore essentially pointless and totally useless.

To many, if Bitcoin loses the characteristics of being a peer-to-peer digital cash whereby users directly and securely control their own money without reference to a third party and that their holdings cannot be diluted beyond their share in a total 21M Bitcoin, then it has nothing unique about it and Bitcoin is therefore essentially pointless and totally useless.

I think your new "strong consensus" rule is a proposed addition to the set of bitcoin's operating rules which risks killing bitcoin.

 

[cliff]

I am from the United Kingdom.

Doubtful.

I've been reading Jonny the last few days. He strikes me as either one of the "dipshits" or the dipshit identifier.

Be advised that the motive for the recent dialogue may not be apparent on the surface AND that Classic, XT, Unlimited, etc. have all compromised more than enough - there is no need to further weaken their bottom lines by adjusting fork-triggers (From 75% to 95%, for example).

Jonny has provided enough evidence to believe that he and his supporters would do anything to be on the right side of consensus (this includes sabotage of Gavin, etc.).

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Can you justify in any way at all how this little gem is not completely made up misinformation?

Yeah what the hell?
I somehow skipped the second part of that paragraph.
Is that what Chinese miners think? That Classic only activates at exactly 75%? Am I'm in fucking Bizarro world?
@jonny1000 How on earth do you explain saying these things? Is that really what you and others in the Core camp believe???

 

[bluemoon]

In conclusion, believe what you like about Blockstream and there incentives. I can promise you this, the Blockstream employees themselves, do not believe they have this malicious intent. Therefore the intent is not malicious. From your perspective maybe this makes no difference. However, claiming malicious intent achieves nothing and is simply false.

It is you that has characterised points raised about Blockstream Core as claiming malicious intent and used that as a reason not to enter into discussion.

To suggest Blockstream Core may have an interest in monetising off-chain scaling for which they require the adoption of Segwit does not in itself mean they have malicious intent.

Nor does the suggestion that they may have a commercial interest in restricting the blocksize limit or that they may wish to exploit their control of the reference client to help them do that.

It is something companies do all the time.

If there is a problem it arises with how they go about it.

Is it ethical, for example, to use control of the reference client together with intellectual domination of the miners to attempt to kill an alternative implementation (by making the granting of a blocksize limit increase contingent on the miners agreeing not to run Classic)?

There are, of course, other examples.

Are such ethical dilemmas not part and parcel of the politics of pursuing "strong consensus"?

 

[79b79aa8]

@Zangelbert Bingledack et alia

Have you thought about actually working towards building an exchange for single ledger fork arbitrage (Crypto Arbitrage TM)?

The simplest model has no fiat on-ramps, just a way to trade between a coin and its fork. But this assures no liquidity for the forked coin and hence necessarily disadvantages it, which in turn makes fork arbitrage moot.

So a full-blown exchange is required. But as (in most cases) value of coins on one fork is expected to drop fast, the quickest way to get out will be to directly exchange for dominant coin, which may in turn be exchangeable for fiat elsewhere.

In other words, liquidity requirements are not exorbitant and arbitrage occurs as long as all coins are paired with some fiat denomination. Thus (a prototype for) such an exchange could conceivably be set up in some favorable jurisdiction without tremendous resources. KYC/AML procedures are necessary but risk of money laundering seems low.

No?

 

[priestc]

That is how Classic works, 25% opposition is locked in. Classic activates if and only if exactly 25% of the blocks in the last 1,000 do not support it. It is impossible for Classic to activate with 80% support, for example. This is the root cause of the strong opposition to Classic, because Classic doesn't even give strong consensus a chance. Classic guarantees strong consensus cannot occur.

You are misinformed. Let me clarify. There isn't just one "activation point", there are actually three. The first "activation point" happens when 75% of hashpower has classic installed. The second activation point happens 28 days later. In that in-between phase between the first two activation points, nothing different happens on the network. After the second activation point occurs, miners are free to publish a block larger than 1MB, but smaller than 2MB on the network. When a miner actually does do this, that sets off the third "activation point". Anybody left mining on the old client after the third activation point will get "forked off the network", and their haspower will go to waste, mining a branch that will become abandoned.

The third activation point may not happen until weeks after the second activation point. Soft limits are still in play, and I expect many miners, even those who support classic, will keep their soft limits set to 1MB until everybody has switched over.

 

[Epilido]

That is how Classic works, 25% opposition is locked in. Classic activates if and only if exactly 25% of the blocks in the last 1,000 do not support it.

This is false on its face.

Something does not activate with a percent opposition. If activates with a percent approval.

 

[albin]

To suggest Blockstream Core may have an interest in monetising off-chain scaling for which they require the adoption of Segwit does not in itself mean they have malicious intent.

This is a super-important notion that I feel gets lost in all the goalpost-shifting.

Conflict of interest does not require malicious intent.

Suppose I'm in a certain job position where I supervise certain workers, and one of them is my spouse. The fact that this situation exists in the first place is the conflict of interest. I can consciously have the most noble of intentions and go out of my way to be as fair as possible in workplace conduct, employee evaluations, raise decisions, vacation scheduling, etc, but the conflict of interest lies in the fact that my conduct in dealing with my spouse as an employee is conflicted with the spousal relationship no matter how ethical I consciously want to be.

This is why conscientious people are often very very careful about recusing themselves of authority that they feel could be perceived as inappropriate.

 

[Richy_T]

Yeah what the hell?
I somehow skipped the second part of that paragraph.
Is that what Chinese miners think? That Classic only activates at exactly 75%? Am I'm in fucking Bizarro world?
@jonny1000 How on earth do you explain saying these things? Is that really what you and others in the Core camp believe???

Well, I as I understand things, it's technically correct. at 75% -1 block, it would be inactive and at 75%, it would activate. You can't get to 80% without going through 75%.

That's very disingenuous, however. Even with 100% hashing for classic, the exact same would apply. And there is a grace period too so anyone who cared to could get their ducks in order.

It's all a bit of a moot point right now anyway. Classic won't activate in time. What we need to be discussing is what steps should be taken should a catastrophic death spiral be triggered at the halving. If we're not on our toes, we'll end up with luke-jr's difficulty adjustment.

 

[cypherdoc]

There is a very very critical aspect of BU's scheme that you appear to not understand, I would strongly recommend reading the actual documentation.



Can you justify in any way at all how this little gem is not completely made up misinformation?

Yes, @jonny1000 appears to be totally misunderstanding how BU works.

Not only that, any remaining 25% miners who haven't yet activated to Classic may very well be lazy, not heard of the upgrade, or might be just plain waiting until the last minute to upgrade despite fully supporting it.

 

[lunar]

The idea is that with Bitcoin, a majority can not impose changes to the money, against the will of a significant minority of savers/holders.

I've disliked this quote since the moment I first heard Adam use it. (was he the first to say this?)

To me it represents a level of hypocrisy i've long suspected, but failed to notice due to highly evasive tactics. Moreover it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of money function and how the economic incentives combine with the game theory to make bitcoin work.

Long term the 'Majority' are the only people who can impose changes. It is by definition a majoritarian system; 51% make the rules. Let the free market make Bitcoin become the system that most accurately represents the value and needs of the majority of its users or it will be eaten by a system that can.
The problem we are facing is there is no good way to prioritise or measure what the majority actually require in advance. (Other than shouting matched on various forums). Until we see a redistribution of mining power back to a 1 CPU(embedded ASIC) 1 vote level, it falls on the developers to act responsibly and compromise. If it's not clear already with the metioric rise in ethereum and the toxic battlefield that has become of Bitcoin - The economic majority is unhappy. Onchain scaling, sound money and P2P cash voices have not been listened to.

It is time for ego and hubris to step aside and let the wisdom of the free market decide.

Prediction. If Core immediately merged code for an adaptive blocksize increase HF (Bitpay seems best option) combined with a SegWit HF The following 6 months would see a 10x increase in price, transaction volume and general good will to all in the community. Let the protocol decide what consensus is, that's what it was made for.

FFS it's time to compromise or die.

side note: thanks, @jonny1000 it's refreshing to have contradictory voices here even if it does mean rehashing many previously debunked myths.


Edit and as if to make it even more clear
Antpool Will Not Run SegWit Without Bitcoin Block Size Increase Hard Fork

 

[cypherdoc]

Really really good post. Polling miners, users, merchants and core devs is useless as we've seen with all the posturing and misdirection that inevitably occurs. @macbookair is a perfect example of someone who's constantly jockeying back and forth. Other miners won't reveal until the last possible moment.

The only way to know is to unleash the market by removing the limit and letting the market decide.

You can poll the miners all you like, but they cannot possibly signal a consensus among bitcoin's holders.

Holders and potential holders of bitcoin show their approval for the state of the coin by how much they value it and compete to hold it, which is a market phenonemon.

Bitcoin serves the market or it is nothing. The market is not interested in whether some of bitcoin's operators find their operations congenial or fair; so long as the block reward persists, the market rewards them to the extent they maintain or increase the value of the coin.

If the miners are causing bitcoin to fail to serve the market, for example by failing to process sufficient transactions, the market will move elsewhere, the miners' rewards will decline, and miners will go bankrupt. It is up to the miners to resolve the failure. The market is not interested in what majority of miners it takes.

Bitcoin is a very conservative system. It is not so very easy to cause changes to be adopted, even by the standard of a bare majority of hash power. It is not obvious that introducing new restrictive and arbitrary rules such as requiring "strong consensus" helps bitcoin respond appropriately to the market, particularly if "strong consensus" entails a lot of political manoeuvring as opposed to participants being free to make their own independent decisions in the context of fairly straightforward and automatic system rules and market and network constraints and dynamics.

 

[bluemoon]

Suppose I'm in a certain job position where I supervise certain workers, and one of them is my spouse. The fact that this situation exists in the first place is the conflict of interest. I can consciously have the most noble of intentions and go out of my way to be as fair as possible in workplace conduct, employee evaluations, raise decisions, vacation scheduling, etc, but the conflict of interest lies in the fact that my conduct in dealing with my spouse as an employee is conflicted with the spousal relationship no matter how ethical I consciously want to be.

This is why conscientious people are often very very careful about recusing themselves of authority that they feel could be perceived as inappropriate.

This may be why Blockstream and @jonny1000 are so sensitive about accusations of conflicts of interest.

Core, their priesthood, has control of the reference client in a relationship akin to a trust, while their company, Blockstream, employer of many priests, seeks to make a return for its investors in a highly competitive market many aspects of which are dominated by development of that same reference client.

It is probably why so many things associated with Blockstream Core are disownable by Blockstream. One example is of course the Hong Kong roundtable agreement, critical to maintaining Blockstream Core control of the reference client, which was negotiated on the Blockstream Core side not by Blockstream, but by 'a few individuals'.

 

[albin]

@bluemoon

Yet conveniently hosted by a quasi-governmental company with ties to HK SAR at their facility that just so happens to be a Blockstream investor!

 

[Norway]

Even though the hashrate increased 30%-40% the last two days (and therefore more frequent blocks), the system is having a hard time keeping up with all the transactions.

What will happen when the difficulty increases in 1-2 days, and real blocktime go back to 10 minutes? Massive congestion?

 

[bluemoon]

@bluemoon

Yet conveniently hosted by a quasi-governmental company with ties to HK SAR at their facility that just so happens to be a Blockstream investor!

Thank you, I'd forgotten that.

Really, you couldn't make it up!