Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[freetrader]

Meeting under Chatham House rules?

Yeah, that happens. (at the ECB)

 

[cypherdoc]

@AdrianX @jonny1000

let me take my crack at it.

he wants us to change BIP109 from 75 to 95% activation and change the 28 d grace period to 6 mo. if we do that, he says kore dev will happily go along and push this new 2MBHF into core. IOW, lessen our chances for success to increase our chances for success. problem is, i don't believe him.

he, in essence, wants large blockists to compromise yet again. nvm that we've gone from 20 to 8 to 2. my guess is that it's just another stalling tactic meant to waste all our time arguing and coding it up. only to then have it ignored with them laughing at us while they don't lift a finger.

also, he ignores that the more simpler, straightforward way to handle this is to take 109 directly to kore dev as is and have them push it into the core code as his dipshits promised. naw, that would be too easy.

 

[sickpig]

Link to the presentation?

this is the link to my talk: http://www.onchainscaling.com/#andrea-suisani

still there's plenty of good stuff in there, just an example from @theZerg's talk:

"Expedited forwarding dramatically reduces block propagation times, its 8 times faster on average than Xthin, which is 5-9 times faster than normal blocks" -- Andrew Stone

 

[xhiggy]

This is one of the key parts of the blocksize debate, large blockers, like Mike Hearn, tend to think miners care about their long term future and therefore will not keep adding transactions up to the point where the fee is equal to the marginal cost. Mike's thought process is that miners are businesses and are run by people, who will make judgment calls about the long term future, the "game of life" if you will, or as he puts it, "real life". In contrast, small blockers sometimes focus on short term profit maximization, strictly rational behavior or as I sometimes call it "next block game theory", under this model, miners do indeed keep adding transactions up until the point the marginal cost is equal to the fee. In this model miners do not care about the long term interests of the system and only want to benefit themselves, selfishly.


At the moment we still have a high block subsidy to defend against these concerns.

Hey thanks for the reply, Mike Hearn seems to have been unsure and maybe not the best source, at least from your explanation. I'm not sure the selfish block technique you are worried about is profitable in a big block ecosystem where there are many low fee transactions. Computing time spent ordering transactions to exclude some low tier ones would take away from your profit as you don't see the transaction until you receive it. Ordering transactions like this would take a ton of computing power to do every time, as you can't predict when the desirable transaction will come, and what the threshold for desirability will be at that time.

I think another aspect is how miners can set drastically different minimum fees. A large number of low hash power miners (10%) could also set a higher fee, and temporarily 'force' people to pay more if they don't want to skip every tenth block, as your fee gets lower the more you must deal with large swings in confirmation time, and it becomes a greater technical challenge.


21 is a company trying to realize this vision and they are a direct competitor of Blockstream. The fee market is the cause of the selfish mining attack. The block limit also depends on the notion that nodes must be able to be subsidized by the consumer computer industry, and available for free. Reliable large volumes of low fee txns set a predictable base, and act like a block subsidy. This is ideal scaling and it only happens with 'large enough' blocks set by the people who use bitcoin and establish this base, things that 21 enable today. Everything seems to be for their business, however I just got into this stuff so what do I know.

 

[jonny1000]

you think the solution to this is imposing a centrally planned limit by some all seeing kore dev as a way to mitigate that situation

No I do not think that. You keep repeating this, it is not true. I said I favor a dynamic market driven solution like BIP100
[doublepost=1468889936][/doublepost]

@jonny1000 No, I was responding to the argument you were making at the time, that the advantage you get from having a large mining pool that minimizes your orphan risk relative to other competitors I was making the point that it is insignificant.

That argument about the relative advantage for a larger pool/miner compared to a smaller one, follows on from my orphan risk / fee revenue point
[doublepost=1468890099][/doublepost]

Wouldn't it be more constructive to discuss with that people that hold this solution back?

I do try to discuss it with the other side.


It is both sides holding us back, not just one. Almost everyone is happy with a shift to 2MB, some want to do it only in a non confrontational way and even weirder, some people only want to do it in a confrontational way.
[doublepost=1468890245][/doublepost]

he wants us to change BIP109 from 75 to 95% activation and change the 28 d grace period to 6 mo. if we do that, he says kore dev will happily go along and push this new 2MBHF into core.

I do not know if all the Core team will go along with that. I do think the community and miners will go along with that. You may then have your wish of "destroying the Kore".

 

[freetrader]

It is both sides holding us back, not just one. Almost everyone is happy with a shift to 2MB, some want to do it only in a non confrontational way and even weirder, some people only want to do it in a confrontational way.

Perhaps what's holding a HF back is the precedent it could set, and endanger someone's business plan / promises made to people who should have thought twice, nay three times about it.

Sounds a little similar to the DAO situation to me.
It could certainly constitute a strong incentive - for several employees of Blockstream and top Core people at that, to NEVER let control slip into the hands of the wider development community.

With untold promises not delivered, Chinese miners not feeling happy, everyone hoping for on-chain scaling frustrated, it looks to me like this particular gamble is soon to burst, in a most spectacular way.
Unless of course, a deal has already been struck ahead of the coming dinner party. Gotta keep those miners happy somehow - after all, it's soft-forks or else.

 

[cypherdoc]

Note how /u/nullc didn't answer, as usual:

 

[AdrianX]

That argument about the relative advantage for a larger pool/miner compared to a smaller one, follows on from my orphan risk / fee revenue point

Ok so you still think it's valid but you don't need to provided any justification for how much influence it will have because you're frustrated? Well I'm frustrated too you've not addressed the issue or provided any reason to accept your argument. From where I stand you've talked in circles and have not resolved any justification for your feeling that orphan risk leads to centralization or a tragedy of the commons.

 

[jonny1000]

Ok so you still think it's valid but you don't need to provided any justification for how much influence it will have because you're frustrated

No, I have provided justification for why the impact is significant.

Let me explain it again:

If total orphan risk cost / total miner revenue > 50%

Then since total miner revenue is approximately the size of the mining industry, orphan risk cost is guaranteed to be significant and have a large impact.

 

[cypherdoc]

/u/nullc = /u/smartassbanking? wouldn't be surprised:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4tiivk/guys_just_a_heads_up/

 

[NashGuy]

I was asked to participate here by cypherdoc. Not sure we even agree on our views, and mine is not mainstream but I believe it is well founded. It has also traditionally been suppressed by the community that supports scaling and specifically scaling at all costs.

Please forgive me for generalizing the debate to save time...

Big block proponents often site the fact that bitcoin cannot reach its full value potential if it is not scaled to support a global scale transaction capacity, ie one that would allow bitcoin to be used to purchase coffee daily etc.

By this admission, they are suggesting that scaling necessarily effects the value, and I maintain that means that the markets will not be able to seek bitcoin as an inflation haven because the future value of it will not be assured/stable.

So for this reason I am suggesting that 1mb is the ultimate solution to our global financial system, which would cause bitcoin to be a new digital gold and force all nations onto a new gold standard that is politically incorruptible.

Because of this, I am suggesting that John Nash's ideal money is relevant because he explains how the world will evolve to have Ideal Money by exactly this process. In contrast, bitcoin itself cannot evolve to be ideal money in this context, or rather, no money can be designed to be ideal money, Ideal money, that is stable for all time must evolve by competition on the freest of markets, which bitcoin is the catalyst for, rather than the ultimate solution/implementation.

 

[Zarathustra]

I do not know if all the Core team will go along with that. I do think the community and miners will go along with that. You may then have your wish of "destroying the Kore".

When South Korea reunifies with totalitarian North Korea, the South Koreans (hopefully) won't compromise with the BS laws and behavior of North Korea. The same was true with the reunification in Germany and the same is true for the Bitcoin environment. Classic already made to many compromises with the Kore. That's the reason why the Classic side is compromised now. BU will not make the same mistake. We will not fall into your politely and civilly constructed trap. You can filibuster as much as you want. Totalitarian organisations sooner or later get destroyed by competition from outside and by the sickness of the rulers from inside.

Article V. — Eating at the same table with the priests of the stream blockers church ostracizes: one is excommunicated from honest society by doing so.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

@Christoph Bergmann I'm not talking for @jonny1000 but I do follow this thread and this is how I understand it. Although I don't start off most of my replies with how frustrating it is talking with jonny1000 I would like to express my feelings on the matter before replying in this case because it is some what frustrating.

I am going to paraphrase Jonny1000 when I say he would like to fork to 2MB as soon as practical however he believes we need 95% consensus to do so.

He has said that the resistance to the existing 2MB fork is fundamentally based on principal and that many developers would consent to it if it wasn't such a political issue.

He has pleaded with us using very kind language to stop supporting Classic or alternate forks to 2MB and he believes that as soon as we stop putting pressure on developers to fork to 2MB that they will consent to a 2MB fork.

It's worth noting that it's irrelevant that the developers opposed to the existing 2MB fork or any 2MB fork for that matter because they have no say in that 95% consensus he advocates as the vote only includes that of the miners that are under their influence.

So in all practicality he is asking us to stop supporting decentralized development and follow the advise of the centralized development BS/Core team by succumbing to political pressure so they may stop blocking the 2MB fork on principal and advise their clients (the miners) that they will in fact move to a 2MB fork.

So you may be able to see how frustrating it is for me knowing it's my support for a 2MB fork that's actually blocking the 2MB fork. And the irony is I dont support a 2MB fork, more over I support decentralized control over the bitcoin protocol and in time as understanding permits gradually removing the limit altogether.

Thanks for the summary. So @Jonny100 is for super-consensus and think 6 percent should be enough to block every kind of hardfork ... for me it seems like some kind of superstitious fear of the fork ...

And I still don't understand why Jonny100, if he wants 2 mb and a strong consensus for it, wastes his time persuading people to not voting for 2 mb instead of persuading people to vote for it. Sound like saying "I want Hillary Clinton for President" while advicing every democrat to vote for trump. Wouldn't it be better to help achieving a strong consensus instead of trying to lower support for 2 mb?
[doublepost=1468911134][/doublepost]

I was asked to participate here by cypherdoc. Not sure we even agree on our views, and mine is not mainstream but I believe it is well founded. It has also traditionally been suppressed by the community that supports scaling and specifically scaling at all costs.

Please forgive me for generalizing the debate to save time...

Big block proponents often site the fact that bitcoin cannot reach its full value potential if it is not scaled to support a global scale transaction capacity, ie one that would allow bitcoin to be used to purchase coffee daily etc.

By this admission, they are suggesting that scaling necessarily effects the value, and I maintain that means that the markets will not be able to seek bitcoin as an inflation haven because the future value of it will not be assured/stable.

So for this reason I am suggesting that 1mb is the ultimate solution to our global financial system, which would cause bitcoin to be a new digital gold and force all nations onto a new gold standard that is politically incorruptible.

Because of this, I am suggesting that John Nash's ideal money is relevant because he explains how the world will evolve to have Ideal Money by exactly this process. In contrast, bitcoin itself cannot evolve to be ideal money in this context, or rather, no money can be designed to be ideal money, Ideal money, that is stable for all time must evolve by competition on the freest of markets, which bitcoin is the catalyst for, rather than the ultimate solution/implementation.

please - say that you are not pokertravis from the reddits ... if you were, this would do sincere harm to this thread

 

[AdrianX]

@jonny1000
no you avoided quantifying the effect and ignored the pertinent points in my summary .

So you are saying that a big miner with 50% hashing power is going to run at a marginal operating cost of about 0.2% profit to stay competitive in order to out compete the rest of the miners and thus grow bigger.

If my understanding is incorrect please spell it out, how does orphan risk result in centralisation? I see the effect you're describing, I just don't see how it could have any impact at all as it's so small.

I want you to explain to me why such a miniscule impact can result in centralising of mining. I'll add I feel like you are trolling and it's very frustrating to watch you avoid the answer.

 

[AdrianX]

Big block proponents often site the fact that bitcoin cannot reach its full value potential if it is not scaled to support a global scale transaction capacity, ie one that would allow bitcoin to be used to purchase coffee daily etc.

I'd like to ftfy as its not representative of the a typical large block proponent.

Big block proponents often site the fact that bitcoin cannot reach its full value potential if it is not allowed to scale to support its maximum transaction capacity, ie one that would allow bitcoin to be used by anyone who valued it.

on that frivolity stab about using bitcoin to buy coffee it's probably worth noting if bitcoin was used for nothing else it would be bringing financial services to 7 million unbanked who support that industry and have a market cap 3 to 5 x its current capacity.

That aside the real reason you can buy a $2 coffee with bitcoin is because subsidies distort markets, prior to the halving and the 30% increase in price I estimated every transaction was being subsidised to the tune of about $5-$10 with the block reward given to miners for writing transactions to the blockchain. that subsidy being one we all pay as the hidden inflation tax - a result of increasing the money supply that's distributed to miners as a temporary security subsidy.

I like your conclusion, it may actually turn out to be true, but it seems obvious to me the problem with gold is it's too costly to settle, and limiting bitcoin in the same way is not going to solve any problems if it behaves like gold.

 

[jonny1000]

If my understanding is incorrect please spell it out, how does orphan risk result in centralisation? I see the effect you're describing, I just don't see how it could have any impact at all as it's so small.

The impact is not small.

Ok let me try to give you context again. There is this theory of "downward fee spiral" that may occur in the future, in the absence of a blocksize limit, which will be a problem when the block reward becomes small. Some people agree with this and some don't. Many people have come of with possible solutions to this or reasons why this will not be a problem:

• Gavin Andresen thought that "If transaction fees are driven to zero so miners start dropping out, then merchants have an incentive to step in and start mining themselves". Therefore merchants will solve the problem.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6284.msg94832#msg94832

• Mike Hearn thinks mining assurance contracts can solve this problem

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=67255.msg785122#msg785122

• Recently, a new idea to solve this problem has emerged, which is now far more popular than the others. It is that orphan risk costs will prevent fees falling in a spiral. Peter R appears to be the main proponent of this

I argue, along with others, that this latest idea is very dangerous and should be avoided as a soultion. It guarantees that orphan risk cost is large relative to mining revenue. Why do you keep saying this impact is small, when its guaranteed to be large (that is the whole point) and presumably you disagree with the logic as to how we got to this point anyway?

 

[Inca]

I was asked to participate here by cypherdoc. Not sure we even agree on our views, and mine is not mainstream but I believe it is well founded. It has also traditionally been suppressed by the community that supports scaling and specifically scaling at all costs.

Please forgive me for generalizing the debate to save time...

Big block proponents often site the fact that bitcoin cannot reach its full value potential if it is not scaled to support a global scale transaction capacity, ie one that would allow bitcoin to be used to purchase coffee daily etc.

By this admission, they are suggesting that scaling necessarily effects the value, and I maintain that means that the markets will not be able to seek bitcoin as an inflation haven because the future value of it will not be assured/stable.

So for this reason I am suggesting that 1mb is the ultimate solution to our global financial system, which would cause bitcoin to be a new digital gold and force all nations onto a new gold standard that is politically incorruptible.

Welcome!

You sound suspiciously like pokertravis.

It is somewhat difficult to follow the train of thought, what you seem to be saying is the 1mb limit forces bitcoin to be a settlement network for a gold-like digital asset.

A few thought experiments regarding that idea. Who do you think is going to be investing in bitcoin as the transaction fee rises from 15c to several dollars? What use in the world is a digital cash which cannot be used as a form of payment? What do you think will happen to those people (past, present and future) who want to use bitcoin as everything you discuss: a currency, a payment network and a store of value, especially when hundreds of other chains exist which are not hobbled by artificial limitations?

Actually if you think about it (and there are many on this thread other than me who have very deeply indeed) then you realise that vanilla bitcoin is probably approaching what constitutes ideal and sound money fairly closely. All a 1mb limit does is abrade the perfect money qualities of the network, whilst increasing costs, decreasing transactional performance and censoring access to just the lucky few (rich).

Because of this, I am suggesting that John Nash's ideal money is relevant because he explains how the world will evolve to have Ideal Money by exactly this process. In contrast, bitcoin itself cannot evolve to be ideal money in this context, or rather, no money can be designed to be ideal money, Ideal money, that is stable for all time must evolve by competition on the freest of markets, which bitcoin is the catalyst for, rather than the ultimate solution/implementation.

No money can be designed to be ideal money? Why not? After the emergence of bitcoin and 'the blockchain' design is far easier. Creating a monetary tool that has value derived from demand from the people all around the world - now that is a challenge. You could argue that bitcoin is amazing from this perspective alone - it is not given value by the end of a spear or because it is denominated on a tax form. But you are probably right it will not be the ultimate solution - why could it not become it though?

 

[jonny1000]

Thanks for the summary. So @Jonny100 is for super-consensus and think 6 percent should be enough to block every kind of hardfork ... for me it seems like some kind of superstitious fear of the fork ...

It may seem irrational to you, but I assure insisting on only doing a hardfork if there is not strong consensus seems even more irrational to me.

 

[freetrader]

Welcome to the forum.

In contrast, bitcoin itself cannot evolve to be ideal money in this context, or rather, no money can be designed to be ideal money, Ideal money, that is stable for all time must evolve by competition on the freest of markets, which bitcoin is the catalyst for, rather than the ultimate solution/implementation.

This would be a strong argument for all parties to cease to squabble over Bitcoin's capacity limit and instead let the free market sort it out. In that way, perhaps Bitcoin could still be asymptotically ideal in Nash's sense.

Keeping Bitcoin centralized in any meaningful way seems a hard thing to do, given that its source code and data (the ledger) are free and public. It would take repressive measures the world over to keep this private money from spreading.
[doublepost=1468916835,1468915873][/doublepost]

So @Jonny100 is for super-consensus and think 6 percent should be enough to block every kind of hardfork ... for me it seems like some kind of superstitious fear of the fork ...

I am beginning to think that what we believe to be irrational fears are often well-founded fears (e.g. in the case of Blockstreamers, having large timelocked transactions which they possibly cannot migrate forward since the private keys have been destroyed (assumption).
Whether some of the same rationale applies to @jonny1000 , he would have to clarify himself.
But I think there is a set of people who have genuinely reached the state of thinking described by @Zangelbert Bingledack in his "extreme consensus" analysis. There appears to be a cult of personalities around the Core which probably doesn't help foster critical thinking - censorship on their forums is a credible equivalent to excommunication from the church, and lack of resistance against it within these circles is a strong indicator that high levels of groupthink have been attained.
The origin myth around Bitcoin might have played a part in this - I look at the occasional posts wondering if Greg is Satoshi and think "every fringe belief will have its set of believers".

 

[Inca]

I have left it deliberately vague on fine details at the behest of @theZerg, but a workable BUIP is now ready for comments prior to voting.

BUIP21: Proposal for implementation of node performance testing and safe block size estimation and broadcast

Commentary please..