Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

@lunarboy

thx for that.

yeah, everyone is frustrated with core dev.
[doublepost=1446824619][/doublepost]yeah, Garzik shouldn't have said that. also, is he coding 100 or not? b/c it sure is one hell of a distraction for miners and other BIPS:

[doublepost=1446825059,1446824241][/doublepost]as long as gold and silver keep collapsing, you gotta hold your bitcoin.
[doublepost=1446825169][/doublepost]this is very bad for the metals. one of my leading indicator miners:

[doublepost=1446825776][/doublepost]the jaws of that open gap should close viciously just like they did in August. look back at the months of divergence prior to August. you can see how the $DJI would rally while the $DJT lagged behind. we have a similar situation right now except to an extreme. this is why i put on the DXD short. and yes, the primary trend is still the Dow Theory "confirmation" that hasn't yet been reversed. yes, we have a "non-confirmation" going back up the other way but it won't invalidate the primary trend unless the $DJT can get back above it's SL. we'll see:

[doublepost=1446825973][/doublepost][doublepost=1446826267][/doublepost][doublepost=1446826655][/doublepost]

 

[cypherdoc]

everyone here should ask all your mining related questions of Marshall Long in his AMA here:

https://forum.bitcoin.com/post5949.html#p5949
[doublepost=1446828861,1446828125][/doublepost]whimper, whimper. don't_look_back_cypher:

[doublepost=1446829846][/doublepost]see what holding the fig leaf of control out to ppl does? damnit, Jeff:

https://forum.bitcoin.com/post5949.html#p5966

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Marshall seems to not realize that "free fees" (meaning very low fees) multiplied by millions of transactions per block, equals a lot of profit.

It's just a basic semantic error of sloppily using "free" to mean "very low" in one case, then turning around and assuming "free" means "zero" in the next breath. The perception of Bitcoin is not "it's free," but "it's practically free." Practically free times many transactions can mean hefty revenue for miners

 

[AdrianX]

I've just learned something very valuable today. The Core developers do not understand the incentive design that makes Bitcoin work. They think building on the existing code is free game without maintaining the incentive system that makes it viable.

There are some contradictions below from jtoomim - in that he says more nodes are useless while his small block breather say we need small blocks so we can have more nodes for security.


Bitcoin is designed so that you can't build a block without knowing the previous block. Miners can't know that until the new block is finished propagating and the majority of nodes agree it's part of the longest chain. (This is a design feature in the proposal in 2008 - it's an important link in the incentive system.)

Matt Corallo's Relay Network, was implemented in 2014. It is a system that circumvents the need for the majority of nodes to agree on the longest blockchain.

As far as I know Ghash.io was the first to leverage this "hack" to gain a competitive advantage, to prevent them from orphaning their own blocks. Greg Maxwell called it "Great stuff"

Matt Corallo's Relay Network. circumvents the need for nodes to validate blocks and maintain the longest blockchain. But rather the relay network needs only the miner’s full nodes to decide which chain in the longest. The network of nodes just relay what the mining full nodes all agree on.

Matt Corallo's Relay Network, is like cocaine for miners. It’s not the network of nodes that determine the longest blockchain, but the nodes in the miners Relay Network. It’s going to be hard for them to give it up as they would have to incur more propagation risk. BU won't work in such an environment as there is no penalty for mining large blocks.

Returning to the original design will also meet with resistance because of the increased orphan risk. I know understand why Gavin has been working on IBLT, it has the potential to be superior solution to Matt Corallo's Relay Network, and at the same time to bring us back to a point where it’s the nodes that determine the longest chain not the miners.

Matt Corallo and his supporters have a very warped seance of consensus.

 

[cypherdoc]

Uh, I think I've been saying that shit for a long time about the relay network. It's a perversion hatched from Corallo's mind from fear of a large miner large block attack against small miners (from China). Until we found out from Wang Chun this ain't gonna happen due to GFC.

He and the relay network are part of the problem, not the solution especially since we now know that his partying is more important to him than keeping it up and running.

Watch the video of him I put up for a nice vomit regarding his bearishness on mining and Bitcoin.

 

[Peter R]

Matt Corallo's Relay Network, is like cocaine for miners. It’s not the network of nodes that determine the longest blockchain, but the nodes in the miners Relay Network. It’s going to be hard for them to give it up as they would have to incur more propagation risk. BU won't work in such an environment as there is no penalty for mining large blocks.

BU works fine in such an environment; the relay network just reduces the propagation impedance (by using coding gain to send 1 MB of block information with much less than 1 MB of data); it doesn't eliminate block-size dependent propagation risk. In other words, the equilibrium block size would be greater and the cost per TX would be lower if every mining node used the relay network but both would still be finite.

Returning to the original design will also meet with resistance because of the increased orphan risk. I know understand why Gavin has been working on IBLT, it has the potential to be superior solution to Matt Corallo's Relay Network, and at the same time to bring us back to a point where it’s the nodes that determine the longest chain not the miners.

Agreed that IBLT (or better yet "weak blocks") is a superior solution to the relay network.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

Returning to the original design will also meet with resistance because of the increased orphan risk. I know understand why Gavin has been working on IBLT, it has the potential to be superior solution to Matt Corallo's Relay Network, and at the same time to bring us back to a point where it’s the nodes that determine the longest chain not the miners.

The right way to make relay nodes relevant is to give them an easy (fast, compact) way to prove that the longest chain is invalid and efficiently share that proof among themselves.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

The relationship between miners and relay nodes is healthy if non-mining nodes need to expend fewer resources to reject an invalid block than a dishonest miner must expend to produce it, ideally by orders of magnitude.

As long as that condition is met, we don't need to worry very much about the exact composition of the miners.

If all the people who are constantly worrying about mining centralization would implement efficient fraud proofs instead, they could move on obsessing over that problem and find some other reason for hand wringing instead.

 

[cypherdoc]

BU works fine in such an environment; the relay network just reduces the propagation impedance (by using coding gain to send 1 MB of block information with much less than 1 MB of data); it doesn't eliminate block-size dependent propagation risk. In other words, the equilibrium block size would be greater and the cost per TX would be lower if every mining node used the relay network but both would still be finite.


Agreed that IBLT (or better yet "weak blocks") is a superior solution to the relay network.

Note that miner Marshall completely verifies our assumption that there is a huge propagation delay because of bandwidth issues from large miners mining in China.

edit: removed smart. helloworld is banging the hell out of Marshall in his thread

 

[AdrianX]

BU works fine in such an environment; the relay network just reduces the propagation impedance (by using coding gain to send 1 MB of block information with much less than 1 MB of data); it doesn't eliminate block-size dependent propagation risk. In other words, the equilibrium block size would be greater and the cost per TX would be lower if every mining node used the relay network but both would still be finite.

I think I understand what you're saying is, as long as the coding gain to send 1 MB of block information with much less than 1 MB of data but still proportional to the block size the cost is still a deterrent, although I'm still not totally convinced.

Is it not the greater the cost for bigger blocks the bigger the deterrent, if block size doesn't have a equal impact on propagation where is the deterrent for miners to optimize block size to network capacity and market demand?

In a scenario where miners can't send block headers or encoded small blocks, miners are governed by the available technology employed by the network to propagate blocks. But in a case where miners can send encoded small blocks what stops them from making such big blocks that don't propagate while still releasing encoded small blocks that can.


As I understand most of the small blocker - mining centralization arguments revolve around the understanding that miners don't mine on the longest blockchain as agreed by the majority of nodes. Instead miners don't depend on nodes. They just relay blocks themselves among each other and mine on the blocks in the relay network that they all agree on then propagate those blocks to the network of nodes.

That is a problem I'm sure both sides of the debate agree, I can't accept that miners can maintain there own relay network independent from the Bitcoin node network and the general consensus of nodes is governed by the block all miners have already agreed on. (knowing that this is how it's working now tells me the Core Blockstream Developers are clueless about the intensive design in bitcoin and have already broken Bitcoin and we're just lucky it's still running)

Why don't the Blockstream Developers seem to see the problem is in the relay network they helped develop that allow miners to use and then blame miners for centralizing.



.
[doublepost=1446848330][/doublepost]

The relationship between miners and relay nodes is healthy if non-mining nodes need to expend fewer resources to reject an invalid block than a dishonest miner must expend to produce it, ideally by orders of magnitude.

As long as that condition is met, we don't need to worry very much about the exact composition of the miners.

If all the people who are constantly worrying about mining centralization would implement efficient fraud proofs instead, they could move on obsessing over that problem and find some other reason for hand wringing instead.

my question is when did this understanding of how Bitcoin works fall out of the developers consciousness. As far as i can see there is only one who is expressing this concern indirectly and that is Gavin.
[doublepost=1446848540][/doublepost]

The right way to make relay nodes relevant is to give them an easy (fast, compact) way to prove that the longest chain is invalid and efficiently share that proof among themselves.

I thought this is how Bitcoin was designed to work.

 

[cypherdoc]

@AdrianX

as a practical note, Marshall is the 2nd Chinese miner besides Wang Chun (and probably more like Bobby Lee i think) whose told us they have bandwidth issues and can't propagate big blocks quickly. i believe this is why they SPV mine when blocks get full b/c they are afraid of orphans as a result. in that sense, the relay network doesn't matter for the majority of large miners and the majority of their hashrate. but that doesn't mean i don't think the relay network is a perversion from Corallo's irrational fear set and shouldn't be reigned in by something better like IBLT plus bigger blocks.

besides, we can't interrupt his partying.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

I thought this is how Bitcoin was designed to work.

No, that's never been true.

A node with a complete copy of the blockchain can prove to itself that the longest chain is invalid with a relatively low resource expenditure.

It is not presently possible for a node to share this proof with other nodes who do not have a complete copy of the blockchain (and so already know that chain is invalid).

It would take a relatively minor change to the block validity rules in order to make compact, transferable proofs possible:

https://gist.github.com/justusranvier/451616fa4697b5f25f60

Then anyone with a complete copy of the blockchain could make a proof that anyone with the block headers could verify.

 

[cypherdoc]

holy begeezuz! eragmus and mmeijeri talking about bigger blocks! (looks out window to see if pigs fly):

 

[cypherdoc]

Marshall seems to not realize that "free fees" (meaning very low fees) multiplied by millions of transactions per block, equals a lot of profit.

It's just a basic semantic error of sloppily using "free" to mean "very low" in one case, then turning around and assuming "free" means "zero" in the next breath. The perception of Bitcoin is not "it's free," but "it's practically free." Practically free times many transactions can mean hefty revenue for miners

Marshall also doesn't seem to understand the importance of updating his mining or core version code. They only do it if absolutely necessary. I saw this behavior back when I was mining especially from artforz.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Hmm.

 

[solex]

Roger Ver is succeeding with /r/btc

Lots of people moving over, including Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, and even the "To the Moon" guy , 100 people active. Once it gets critical mass /r/bitcoin should be reduced to a rump of thermos sycophants and BS shills.

 

[Zarathustra]

CENSORSHIP IS FREE DISCUSSION

TRUSTING US IS TRUSTLESSNESS

CENTRALIZATION IS DECENTRALIZATION


​

Im banned now.


You can call others 'parasites', but you are not allowed to answer.

 

[Inca]

Things going cray cray on /r/bitcoin again..

 

[cypherdoc]

impressive! aw shucks, can't see all the downvotes:

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

This guy really knows how to keep digging holes!

However, you have to laugh. All Theymos is really doing here is mildly delaying the implementation of bigger blocks while contributing massively toward the decentralization of Bitcoin discussion forums and ironically Core itself.

As JR said there, the notion that there are people that important in Bitcoin (Greg and Wladimir) is a repulsive one, and apparently at least 600 people agree.

If this guy had been a better mod we would be worse off because there would have been no decentralization pressure.

 

[cypherdoc]

as i've written before, i'm probably one of the only ones, if not the only one in the community, who has ever had the displeasure of verbally talking to theymos directly. i did this over Skype about Bitcoin.

back in early 2011 when i had just entered the rabbit hole, i paid him 4BTC for an hour of conversation about Bitcoin technicals over Skype. i think i also talked to him a second time for follow up questions, also with pay. initially he refused my overture b/c he said he wasn't comfortable with speech and was much better with a keyboard. problem is, i find speech to be much faster for my learning style as it allows instantaneous interjection and clarification while being able to stay on track and progress much more quickly to my satisfactory endpoints in conceptualizing complicated topics in a short amount of time. but that's just me. and at the time, i was in a multi-month deep dive investigative/research mode where sleep took a backseat to studying Bitcoin. there were a few conceptual hurdles i needed to resolve to continue to advance. as a busy guy with my day job, speed of information was important and worth the money. so after a bit of cajoling and bribing with the 4BTC, he agreed. well, he was right. he is a terrible communicator. you know those embarrassing situations where you're stuck having to talk to someone who is anti-social and you struggle to fill in their words for them since you feel so bad for them? well, there you have it. i found myself having to fill in the answers to my questions b/c he was almost mute. while certainly getting some major pearls in understanding, it wasn't worth the 4BTC i paid him, altho that's too easy for me to say now. i only remember 2 pearls from the discussions, altho i'm sure i'm only remembering that which stands out. first, the concept of using an incrementing nonce to progressively guess at the targeted hash when trying to solve for a block along with the concept of how a hash creates a random output. second, he said he foresaw the concept of mild centralization of full nodes towards datacenters with time; which is particularly ironic given the block size debate and his 180 degree turnaround objection in regards to increasing their size as a centralizing factor towards nodes. iirc, the number 7000 stands out in my mind as to what he said could be an acceptable number worldwide. obviously, the exact number is irrelevant. it's that he was more receptive of full node centralization due to growth in the system from what it was at the time.

anyways, i don't want to bang on theymos too much as i think in the big picture, he is pretty much irrelevant and making himself more so. after all, he's just a kid. i guess my point is that i've had the chance to observe many of these guys since early 2011 and i think perspective and history is important to understanding who they are and what their objectives might be. and i think it's fair to say i'm pretty involved as you can see from my posting history on BCT and the history of the gold thread. at least from the perspective of a forum poster for whatever that's worth. having said that, i've only ever been to one meeting, i don't talk verbally to many insiders, i'm not involved in any startups or companies at this point, i don't have any real friends on the inside of industry. i do have contacts that i can call though if i really need it. but still, i think you can get a pretty good view of who and what type of ppl the important figures are in Bitcoin by reading what they write and watching what they do on videos. the other aspect of this is that it is important to speak up and post what you think when you have something important to say. it really does feel like this censorship issue is coming to a boiling point. you can effect change from behind a keyboard. don't be afraid. just do it.