Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Richy_T]

Question - maybe this old thinking too:

Is it possible to ratchet up fees as unlimited blocks fill - like an increased load/weight fee. blocks would be theoretically unlimited in size, but after a certain point it costs more and more to ride the next block/ a certain block than to just wait for the next one/a later one. seems like this could solve a few different concerns on both sides of the blocksize debate - but I dunno, just thinking aloud more than anything.

One interesting option would be algorithm based fees. Get so much if the transaction is included in the next block, less if it takes longer.

 

[Nat-go]

@Inca
You believe that BS Kore keeps the ETHClassic fork alive?
I know that Greg Maxwell publicly supported the ETHClassic fork. But to present the ETHClassic fork asa failed hard fork at the wine&dine event at the end of July sounds like BS Kore has nothing else to do.

 

[freetrader]

Free market should kill the rump chain off quickly. Wouldn't surprise me if the usual suspects are linked to this. Make a big noise about a failed hard fork then meet with miners later this month. All smells very fishy to me.

They can spin either side (and have done in the past) to fit their narrative:

• ETHC quickly worthless: SHA256 hard fork has no chance against Core (if they can keep large majority of miners on their side)
• ETHC chain small but stable (look, risk of currency splitting! - this will make Bitcoin worth less in the long run! - shows how evil hard forks are!... even though the long-term value is not known but they might use short-term data to support their argument)

It seems more likely to me that the ETHC fork is supported by those among Core who see it as a useful tool to sustain / increase division in the ETH community. I don't really think they would want to be associated with either side publicly (too late, shouldn't be testing ETHC builds!)

 

[Inca]

@Nat-go: why else would Samson mao, drak, Maxwell be supportive of this dying chain.

You can argue easily that they are actively supporting the DAO hacker, too. Highly immoral stance.

I am hoping to see a response from the ethereum foundation. Just need a whale like that to dump millions of coins gradually until people lose interest.

The exchanges concerned both fell in my estimation massively.
[doublepost=1469379177][/doublepost]@Nat-go: why else would Samson mao, drak, Maxwell be supportive of this dying chain.

You can argue easily that they are actively supporting the DAO hacker, too. Highly immoral stance.

I am hoping to see a response from the ethereum foundation. Just need a whale like that to dump millions of coins gradually until people lose interest.

The exchanges concerned both fell in my estimation massively.

 

[freetrader]

The exchanges concerned both fell in my estimation massively.

I think those exchanges are doing exactly what we should expect of exchanges to do, if they are acting in their self-interest. I'm actually surprised and encouraged that they started supporting ETHC trading so quickly, given the usual technological caution and inertia (cf. @Christoph Bergmann 's description of bitcoin.de). An exchange that gets going on fork arbitrage this quickly has IMO seen the light of a new dawn.

As for the morality, the exchange offers you a good way to exercise your voting right:

 

[solex]

This Ethereum fork situation is a fascinating learning experience. One benefit of alts around is to test things out first.

Seeing ordinary users not sure what this means for their ETH holding, and others not sure whether transactions are still reliable. Loads of Bitcoiners (small-blockers allegedly) are enjoying a troll-fest.

Hat-tip to @Zangelbert Bingledack for predicting the fork arbitrage. I really did not expect exchanges to want to muddy the waters by listing fork coins and would stick to the majority hash-power coin. Now that ETC is listed on Polo and BitFinex reportedly about to do the same, a measure of longevity has been given to the fork. Interesting to see just how long the speculative value remains in it, currently at 6% of ETH. Both coins together worth less than ETH before the dual listing.

If this does not resolve well then it will be an even harder process to get the HF done in BTC.

Edit: Luck or foresight, Bitcoin's 10 minute blocks and 2-week retargeting may be the crucial difference as ETH's 15-second blocks and fast retargeting made the persistent fork far more likely.

 

[Roger_Murdock]

Kind of, but not really.

The biggest problem I have with that explanation is that "value" is a verb, not a noun. Just because in English we can form grammatically-correct sentences that turn arbitrary verbs into nouns doesn't mean those sentences meaningful. You can probably get away with it using that way if you always remember that value (noun) is a placeholder for some other, more coherent concept, but it's better to just stop using the word "value" as a noun to reduce the possibilities for errors in thinking.

Maybe we need a few more steps in order to get from the current understanding to @DanielKrawisz's explanation of monetary behaviour.

Most humans engage in social accounting. This is as simple as, "my neighbour helped me when I needed a favour, so I should probably help him when he requires a similar favour."

Humans are very good at this type of accounting and keeping track of the relative value of favours.

Monetary behaviour happens when a group of humans decide to start using a tool (currency) to universalize their social accounting.

Describing a movement of currency as a communication of value is terribly imprecise. The information being communicated is the fact that the spender of the currency has performed more favours for others than he has received, and so the recipient can safely give the spender a product or service without inadvertently helping a non-reciprocating parasite (free rider).

This explains why the cardinal sin of monetary behaviour is the creation of new currency units, and why the parasites love expanding currency supplies. An expanding money supply allows the free riders to consume without producing and thus circumvent the entire reason for having monetary behaviour in the first place.

@lunar Money is a measurement of yet-to-be-reciprocated altruism.

Based on your interactions with them, your friends and neighbours know if they can trust that if they do something for you today that you'll return the favour tomorrow, and that affects their willingness to provide you with resources.

Monetary behaviour expresses that knowledge in objective form (currency) so the information can be accurately transmitted to people outside the social circle from which it originated.

Two really nice summaries of what money is.

While we're on the topic of monetary theory, it occurred to me the other day that I could sort of unify my three fundamental requirements of good money -- reliable scarcity (store of value), transactional efficiency (medium of exchange), and network effects / widespread acceptability (unit of account). All three of these requirements are ultimately concerned with the accuracy of the monetary ledger that's keeping track of yet-to-be-reciprocated altruism. Scarcity is important because arbitrary expansion of the money supply undermines the integrity of the ledger by causing old information to fade and replacing it with new, false information. Transactional friction (e.g., high transaction fees) undermines the accuracy of the ledger by preventing the ledger from capturing certain information (because high fees price people out of writing to the ledger to record it). Finally, if a money has a small network effect, that means that a huge amount of information regarding yet-to-be-reciprocated altruism will not be captured by the ledger simply because most people aren't using it (and are instead using other monetary ledgers).

 

[freetrader]

Luck or foresight, Bitcoin's 10 minute blocks and 2-week retargeting may be the crucial difference as ETH's 15-second blocks and fast retargeting made the persistent fork far more likely.

The 2-week retargeting will be a thing of the past after the first real hard fork in Bitcoin.
Guaranteed.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

I think those exchanges are doing exactly what we should expect of exchanges to do, if they are acting in their self-interest. I'm actually surprised and encouraged that they started supporting ETHC trading so quickly, given the usual technological caution and inertia (cf. @Christoph Bergmann 's description of bitcoin.de). An exchange that gets going on fork arbitrage this quickly has IMO seen the light of a new dawn.

As for the morality, the exchange offers you a good way to exercise your voting right:

Poloniex is an altcoin-exchange. They don't care about Ethereum, neiter Ethereum nor Ethereum-Classic.They care about trades. That's maybe the main difference between them and a bitcoin-only exchange like bitcoin.de (along a lot of other things). But as long as there is money to made, neither be it bitcoin or any other coin, exchanges will allow trades. I wonder if Poloniex took some losses by Cross-Replay-Attacks (double-spends between the chains) or if they managed it to set their system around it. Technically I'm impressed, but the same techniques are what bitcoin.de considered in pre-consideration of a fork - how to deal with a forking ledger. But i'm sure they, poloniex, made a lot of money today.

In the end of the day I slightly tend to the interpretation that all this is to some part an attack on ethereum, conducted by hardcore "no-hard-fork"-people, the hacker and some shills. Wasn't there a good quote of GMaxwell about scammers, shills and their victims?

Maybe it''s also another attempt to diss classic by muddling it's name by associating it to a symbol why a fork could fail and why "classic" means supporting a thief ... don't know ... all speculation ... interesting days, and when you measure a coin's success by the drama it provides, ethereum is clearly on the rise

 

[freetrader]

That last bit about the name had been going through my mind as well.

If they manage to build it up they can also tear it down, besmirching the name. And probably damaging Ethereum's entire reputation in the process.

 

[Zarathustra]

Two really nice summaries of what money is.

While we're on the topic of monetary theory, it occurred to me the other day that I could sort of unify my three fundamental requirements of good money -- reliable scarcity (store of value), transactional efficiency (medium of exchange), and network effects / widespread acceptability (unit of account). All three of these requirements are ultimately concerned with the accuracy of the monetary ledger that's keeping track of yet-to-be-reciprocated altruism. Scarcity is important because arbitrary expansion of the money supply undermines the integrity of the ledger by causing old information to fade and replacing it with new, false information. Transactional friction (e.g., high transaction fees) undermines the accuracy of the ledger by preventing the ledger from capturing certain information (because high fees price people out of writing to the ledger to record it). Finally, if a money has a small network effect, that means that a huge amount of information regarding yet-to-be-reciprocated altruism will not be captured by the ledger simply because most people aren't using it (and are instead using other monetary ledgers).

Whether we like it or not. Money is backed by men with guns since its invention; a tool that enforces artificial altruism.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/the-flawed-foundations-of-austrian-economics.993/page-2#post-24901

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/the-flawed-foundations-of-austrian-economics.993/page-3#post-24943

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@Roger_Murdock

That's pretty concise.

Accuracy = Integrity + Resolution + Comprehensiveness

Perfect accuracy = No false data (about value provided) + No transaction too small to be reflected + No transaction not encompassed

[doublepost=1469396619,1469395813][/doublepost]Regarding Ethereum Classic, I am gratified to see the development. It's playing out exactly as it could have been expected to: there are some people who do not want to compromise on the original vision (immutability), because they believe it ultimately stands the best chance of success. These people now can buy the coin they thought they were buying when they originally invested in ETH, but now at fire sale prices. It must be awfully tempting. One could easily increase their holdings tenfold this way, in the proposition they originally believed they were investing in.

After all, by undoing TheDAO on the majority chain, the Ethereum community has already tacitly admitted that they are making things up as they go along and just hope that somehow the platform in this exploratory mode will become valuable some day (very different from Bitcoin, whose vision as an immutable ledger was never up for debate). Since that is the mindset, it makes no sense to discount ETC over ETH so much. ETC has a clear direction and policy, and is what, a tenth the price?

Besides the threat of a 51% attack, meaning they'd better change the PoW algorithm ASAP, I don't see how an original ETH investor feels too comfortable selling off all their ETC.

The trouble with Ethereum is, again, that it is so tightly held due to ICO/premine (in an effort to catch up to Bitcoin via vastly inflated market cap and "funding development") that the market is extremely manipulable and hence this kind of fork arbitrage is happening under circumstances far less favorable than it would in Bitcoin. For example, the founders could sell off a ton of ETC if they want it to die. Despite the extremely immature market, though, ETC may still survive (if it doesn't get 51% attacked; really should have changed PoW).

 

[priestc]

For example, the founders could sell off a ton of ETC if they want it to die.

Thats not how it works. There are actually three classes of Ether at this point in time. Pre-fork Ether, post-fork ETH, and post-fork ETC. Since the ETC fork is only 2 or 3 days old, there are only 3 or 4 days worth of ETC in existence. Same for post-fork ETH, the only people who hold that coin are the people who have in possession a coinbase mined after the fork with the new client. The overwhelming majority of ETH in existence is pre-fork ETH, which is valid on both chains.

Another thing people don't realize about "hard forks" is that it is only the currency that is forked, the payment protocol is not forked. This means if you make a TX that moves pre-fork ETH, that TX will end up on both forks. There is a slight possibility that it won't appear on both forks, but there is a high probability that it will. You really have to go out of your way to ensure one fork see's one TX, while the other fork sees another version. The amount of effort required to do this is the same amount of work required to perform a double spend on a blockchain not going through a hard fork.

 

[molecular]

@priestc:
you say: "There is a slight possibility that it won't appear on both forks, but there is a high probability that it will. You really have to go out of your way to ensure one fork see's one TX, while the other fork sees another version. The amount of effort required to do this is the same amount of work required to perform a double spend on a blockchain not going through a hard fork."

I just went through this with eth/eth_classic. Successfully split my prefork coins to different addresses on each fork. Needed multiple attempts. I don't think it's correct to say this amounts to the same effort as a double spend on a single chain. It's actually easier: just need to broadcast differing tx to both networks at roughly the same time. Any "user" can do it, no need to be a miner (or pay one explicitly for the purpose).

On a more general note I agree with many here: this ethereum debacle is extremely interesting. That's where altcoins are useful indeed.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@priestc

You're saying ETC isn't just the old chain? As long as ETC and ETH are just two copies of the same ledger (minus TheDAO transactions), my comments above should be applicable.
[doublepost=1469399408][/doublepost]Implications of accuracy of ledger on blocksize debate:

There are probably a few more arrows that could be drawn showing more of Bitcoin's many-sided network effect* and how tinyblocks gum it up.

*something like this:

 

[Roger_Murdock]

Accuracy = Integrity + Resolution + Comprehensiveness

Perfect accuracy = No false data (about value provided) + No transaction too small to be reflected + No transaction not encompassed

Perfectly summarized, thank you!

 

[lunar]

@molecular

I've been considering this situation to be like Schrödingers coins. - with prefork coins until you spend them they can be either ETH ot ETC ? is this the correct way to think about it?

 

[priestc]

I just went through this with eth/eth_classic. Successfully split my prefork coins to different addresses on each fork. Needed multiple attempts. I don't think it's correct to say this amounts to the same effort as a double spend on a single chain.

It can very easily be made harder. Its probably only easy now because the fork is still very new. The way to make it harder is t set up a "bridge" that sends all transactions directly to miners on both forks. It seems to me that miners of both forks have an incentive to make sure the ledgers on both forks agree as much as possible. The more they diverge, the more likely neither fork will "win" and the entire currency collapses.

It probably doesn't matter since this ETH fork is so tiny (5%), but if the fork was 50/50, you would be shooting yourself in the foot by moving your coins into different addresses on each fork. If I were a merchant, and you tried to pay me with coins that don't exist in the other fork, I wouldn't accept the payment as valid.

 

[Richy_T]

Central planning is always bad, the term "central" imply a top-down monopolitisc plan.

But Hayek loves planning. He just want many competing plans. He is against one big monopolistic plan that prevents others from implementing their own competing plan. To put it shortly, it is way better to have many bottum-up plans, than to have only one top-down plan.

I believe he also specifically mentioned the "Central planning isn't necessarily bad, it just needs the right people to do it" (which the last lot weren't but I am, of course) argument and tears it apart.

 

[priestc]

You're saying ETC isn't just the old chain? As long as ETC and ETH are just two copies of the same ledger (minus TheDAO transactions), my comments above should be applicable.

If the coins you hold were mined before the fork, those coins are both ETH and ETC. The only coins that are either/or are the ones mined post fork.