Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[awemany]

@AdrianX: Pondering about the off-chain more and more.

This quote from the LN paper really sticks in my mind:

At the same time, it is desirable to create a system which does not actively use this timestamping system unless absolutely necessary, as it can become costly to the network.

In other words. They say basically it is "desirable to not use Bitcoin, it is desirable to not pay miner fees".

It is actually that simple and almost that honestly written in there. "We want to pay less fees for more use and we want control over the extra use". All the talk about 'on chain being soooo problematic' makes perfect sense when looking at the above quote as one of the most honest admissions of self-interest in this debate. The other part of course is that there is an option to place oneself as a fee collector, another toll road operator.

We are in situation with tension from all sides. I can understand that fancy advanced payment processors heck probably exchanges all want more functionality that they can control for less price. They also understandably want to get a piece of the transaction fee pie. And they are without doubt important for the ecosystem. But miners have the final say on this.

Who's signalling SegWit? BTCC. BTCC also runs an exchange. Bitfury might be the odd one here (but then they have ties to shady TLAs...)

Along similar lines, banks want to get interest from lending and from being private collectors of the inflation tax - and that's the reason why the Federal Reserve exists.

But meanwhile, miners and holders want to maximize the value of the Bitcoin they hold. I don't think that miners and holders are perfectly aligned either, but on this issue it looks like we are aligned to a large extend.

 

[bluemoon]

@awemany

Who's signalling SegWit? BTCC. BTCCalso runs an exchange.

BTCC are also a Blockstream partner for Liquid, which is designed to move funds between participating exchanges "instantly" for a fee (so who wants bitcoin zero-conf?).

 

[AdrianX]

Nice catch @awemany and conclusion - writing to the blockchain is the time stamp that's a very telling admission.

I wouldn't be surprised if that paper now gets an edit.

 

[Norway]

I'm late to the party, but:

BU 1.0.0!​

 

[adamstgbit]

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/how-bitcoin-unlimited-users-may-end-different-blockchains/
so.. what are BUs answers to those objections?

the best FUD in there is the idea that a small % of hashing power can create a blocksize that ~50% accept while the other 50% reject.

its unclear if this is a problem for BU to worry about, if 50% of the nodes set EB of 2MB while the other 50% of node set 3MB or bigger, then the network is literally threatening to split with only 50% hashing power should a 2.01MB block be mined, this is fine, its the network's choice to do / say this...

i think its very unlikely for the network to express such a statement. In reality this is how things will work out:

All mining nodes have an EB of 2MB, they have meeting they talk about increasing it to 3MB, non-minning nodes signal support for 3MB blocks, miners wait for some 90% of non-minning nodes to be signaling 3MB blocks, and then all minning nodes coordinate a move to 3MB EB.

i think BU didnt exactly expect this to happen, but it will. because its very unsafe for miners to set an EB value which is > then 50% of other EB values... if 65% of minning nodes have an EB of 2MB, setting an EB of 3MB is very dangerous for that miner, because if there ever is a >2MB block they will be fighting a losing battle. and so we will see miners kinda collectively coordinate an EB, while non-mining nodes are way more free to set whatever EB they want.

but the bottom line is, if the network sets itself up to split 50/50 on a 2.01MB block then thats what the network wants to do..... and it should be allowed to do so.

 

[Roger_Murdock]

so.. what are BUs answers to those objections?

Looks like the same jonny1000-style nonsense that's been beaten to death in this thread countless times. I was pretty unimpressed. The problem that BU's critics face is that BU is really hard to criticize convincingly -- and that's because it doesn't really "do" anything. It simply provides users with a set of tools; it's up to the miners and node operators to decide how to use those tools. (And note that these tools don't give the users any new power that they didn't already possess; they simply remove a paper-thin "inconvenience barrier" to actually exercising that power.) And so what BU's critics are forced to do is to ignore the economic incentives involved -- and instead imagine that people will use these tools in all sorts of arbitrary and economically-irrational ways.

And that's exactly what von Wirdum does in that article, although to his credit he sort of acknowledges this at the end, and promises to address the issue of Emergent Consensus and economic incentives in the next article:

While Bitcoin Unlimited arguably offers more personal autonomy to users, it does not ensure technical blockchain convergence. But this is not new. To some extent, it is even touched on in Bitcoin Unlimited’s FAQ.

Yet, Bitcoin Unlimited proponents do expect users to converge on a single blockchain. This is explained by what is perhaps best considered Bitcoin Unlimited’s underlying philosophy: “Emergent Consensus.”

Rather than a purely technical mechanism, Emergent Consensus is a conviction that all participants in the Bitcoin ecosystem have a strong enough (economic) incentive to find consensus on a single blockchain, even if their software does not do this automatically.

The next article will take a closer look at this Emergent Consensus philosophy.

Also, as an aside, his claim in that excerpt that Bitcoin Unlimited "does not ensure technical blockchain convergence" is pretty silly. It's not possible to ensure 100% "technical blockchain convergence" in a decentralized system where people can freely choose to diverge at any time. However, as I tried to explain to jonny1000 here (clearly it didn't take), Bitcoin Unlimited provides a stronger (as compared to Core) guarantee of converging on the longest chain because a Core client will continue following a shorter chain indefinitely if the longer chain contains any blocks larger than 1 MB.

 

[awemany]

With all the discussions on LN and UTXO set recently, there is lately an undercurrent of 'yeah maybe LN will be hub and spokes' emanating from some of its proponents. Especially when these guys are pressed on the UTXO issue.

Gladly, we have Greg Maxwell on record explicitly telling us that it is going to be a mesh network, and here's a reddit post of mine linking two examples of him saying that:


Just in case that comes up again. Note also that the UTXO growth will become worse with a mesh topology.

(Oh and also note the fancy-worded handwaving: 'The primary advance of lightning over prior proposals is that transitive payments avoid the need for a hub.'

I fail to see how the transitive property has anything to do with whether hubs are going to be used (EDIT: or needed!) or not.)

 

[bitsko]

Youre on to something there awemany!

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

We should stop talking about LN.

It is
- no even really alpha
- in its current version a privacy desaster
- it demands 200 percent reserve from exchanges
- demans people to be always on
- its economics regarding mining are flawed, as it steals fees from miners
- its economics regarding users are flawed, as it is nothing but a prepaid system
- it doesn't allow cold storage

It might be a nice system to handle micro- and nanopayments, maybe it will even be helpful when there is a need to accept immediate tx in adversarial conditions (while I think 10-30 seconds are enough for algorithms to reach a good security unless there is RBF). But there is zero sense discussing LN at this time as a substitute for onchain scaling. Maybe in one or two years, but I don't think so.

The more I learn about LN, the less I'm interested in it.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

We should stop talking about LN.

Yes. More so, the "other side". The problem is, that LN + sidechains is the answer from uneducated people for "Bitcoin without a blocksize increase".

Here is an idea: A quiz for every Bitcoiner about LN. LN proponents can check their knowledge against the actual truth.
Something like:

Question 1: How does one find a route in LN from A to B?
a) Sphinx Onion routing (I read that a lot). -- False
b) Through Greg Maxwells server. -- Kinda right. (possible hub-client system)
c) There is no known solution at this point. -- Correct

Question 2: Does LN allow to reduce the UTXO set while keeping current privacy levels?
...

and so on..

 

[bitsko]

Its supposed to be a panacea, so the more light can be shed on the realities the better.

I had a sneak peek of lukes bips and had mentioned to him that unless offchain solutions were fully working and able to take the volume needed that 300kb would be very contentious...

What did he do instead of wait? Point to LN as the solution, lol

 

[AdrianX]

FTFU @Christoph Bergmann "Stop promoting" not stop talking. - it's the proponents that keep over selling it and you shouldn't stop talking about the issues. Once the fundamentalist understand the issue they can normalize and work on fixing it.

 

[freetrader]

the best FUD in there is the idea that a small % of hashing power can create a blocksize that ~50% accept while the other 50% reject.

The whole "we just split the (BU) network indefinitely and can now continue to subdivide it with our ginormous hashpower while nothing happens" smells of bulldung to me now as it did before.

However, it does show that better public Bitcoin network intelligence - including on developing fork chains and network splits - could be a valuable thing to have. Right now, that's all left to private companies with hardly any material support by the protocol.
Maybe it's just my impression that they seem to be mostly getting their funding from places you wouldn't expect to have an interest in Bitcoin's overall wellbeing. I'm somewhat concerned because everyone claims to be the good guys. Not sure that's going to be enough to protect the security of the network going forward.

Looks like the same jonny1000-style nonsense that's been beaten to death in this thread countless times. I was pretty unimpressed. The problem that BU's critics face is that BU is really hard to criticize convincingly

I disagree with that conclusion on 2 levels.

First, I think that jonny1000's chain of argument looks extremely convincing to "people out there" who have not seen the myriad arguments in this thread and don't want to spend the time to ponder the issue on their own.

But it doesn't matter if we on this forum are generally unimpressed. What matters is the perception generated and promulgated a thousandfold.

The only thing that can help us is to try to present the counterarguments which must be intuitive and well formulated. BU is hard to criticize, and they've taken a long time to pore over it to find an angle of attack they can sell easily. I think they've pretty much done a good job at it, and we've not done such a great job at putting stuff in place to alleviate the raised concerns.

-- and that's because it doesn't really "do" anything. It simply provides users with a set of tools; it's up to the miners and node operators to decide how to use those tools. (And note that these tools don't give the users any new power that they didn't already possess; they simply remove a paper-thin "inconvenience barrier" to actually exercising that power.) And so what BU's critics are forced to do is to ignore the economic incentives involved -- and instead imagine that people will use these tools in all sorts of arbitrary and economically-irrational ways.

That's why the economic incentives must be demonstrated and argued for convincingly.
They must be shown to outweigh the claimed attacks. Maybe the cost-of-attack calculations done before for the sticky gate can help somewhat to push that one back, but they'd have to be put into "infographic" style.

For the "median EB attack", I think we need to consolidate the arguments further before they can be presented in a way that will sink in with Joe Random Bitcoiner.

 

[freetrader]

https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/01/28/balance-attack-novel-type-attack-pow-blockchains/

 

[Roger_Murdock]

@freetrader I don't disagree. I definitely see how it could sound convincing to someone who hasn't thought deeply about the issues involved. (Unfortunately that's probably most people.)

It seems to me that maybe the easiest way to cut through the fog of bullshit is to focus on the basics. What does Bitcoin Unlimited "do"? It provides three simple configurable settings. These allow a user to specify the maximum size block they'll accept (the EB setting) and the maximum size block they'll mine (the MG setting) -- rather than having these limits "hard coded" at 1 MB each as they are in Core, which forces a user who wants to change them to modify the source code and recompile. The third setting (AD) provides a simple and optional tool (optional because it can be set to an effectively infinite value) that allows you to prevent yourself from being permanently forked onto a minority chain in a scenario where it's become clear that the network as a whole has begun to accept blocks larger than your current EB setting.

That's... pretty much it.

I've quoted this comment from /u/d4d5c4e5 at least a dozen times now but I don't know a better way to say it:

BU is exactly the same situation as now, it's just that some friction is taken away by making the parameters configurable instead of requiring a recompile and the social illusion that devs are gatekeepers to these parameters. All the same negotiation and consensus-dialogue would have to happen under BU in order to come to standards about appropriate parameters (and it could even be a dynamic scheme simply by agreeing to limits set as a function of height or timestamp through reading data from RPC and scripting the CLI). Literally the only difference BU introduces is that it removes the illusion that devs should have power over this, and thus removes friction from actually coming to some kind of consensus among miners and node operators.
​

So this really shouldn't be that hard for people to get. And I'm still confident that the people whose opinions actually matter most will get it. Eventually.

 

[adamstgbit]

However, it does show that better public Bitcoin network intelligence - including on developing fork chains and network splits - could be a valuable thing to have. Right now, that's all left to private companies with hardly any material support by the protocol.

can you explain this a bit more, i dont get what your saying, like at all.

What matters is the perception generated and promulgated a thousandfold.
...
the economic incentives must be demonstrated
...
shown to outweigh the claimed attacks

maybe, its also worth considering some code changes which make these types of attacks less possible / more expensive?

BU is exactly the same situation as now, it's just that some friction is taken away by making the parameters configurable instead of requiring a recompile and the social illusion that devs are gatekeepers to these parameters. All the same negotiation and consensus-dialogue would have to happen under BU in order to come to standards about appropriate parameters (and it could even be a dynamic scheme simply by agreeing to limits set as a function of height or timestamp through reading data from RPC and scripting the CLI). Literally the only difference BU introduces is that it removes the illusion that devs should have power over this, and thus removes friction from actually coming to some kind of consensus among miners and node operators.

its hard to express this idea in only a few words, but the quote is well put.

how about this:

The security inherited by trusting a central authority to enforce consensus parameters, is only an illusion. BU makes the it clear whose responsibility it is to enforce consensus parameters, replacing the illusion with reality.

 

[freetrader]

@adamstgbit :

However, it does show that better public Bitcoin network intelligence - including on developing fork chains and network splits - could be a valuable thing to have. Right now, that's all left to private companies with hardly any material support by the protocol.

Ok, here's what I mean: if node operators had a pretty good overview of of the state of the network, they could conceivably quickly identify attacks such as the "median EB" one and take actions against it, rendering it ineffective. So I could see some value in having some statistics aggregated about the network.

Everyone's node has a little part of the "big picture", but the problem is how to bring it together without subjecting nodes to other risks, notably identification while also avoiding spoofing data which could look like an attack.

I wouldn't be opposed to add node p2p protocol features that could help aggregate a bigger picture about issues on the network (chain forks, banning of nodes etc.)
Obviously this would have to be done in a very careful way to avoid undesirable consequences.

Maybe this is me day-dreaming about something that isn't practical or worth the added risks.

 

[adamstgbit]

@freetrader
thanks.
I get it now, and I like it.

 

[sgbett]

Yes. More so, the "other side". The problem is, that LN + sidechains is the answer from uneducated people for "Bitcoin without a blocksize increase".

Here is an idea: A quiz for every Bitcoiner about LN. LN proponents can check their knowledge against the actual truth.
Something like:

Question 1: How does one find a route in LN from A to B?
a) Sphinx Onion routing (I read that a lot). -- False
b) Through Greg Maxwells server. -- Kinda right. (possible hub-client system)
c) There is no known solution at this point. -- Correct

Question 2: Does LN allow to reduce the UTXO set while keeping current privacy levels?
...

and so on..

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that trying to develop LN right now is like chasing a ghost. There is this notion that its going to be needed, but the need for LN seems to come from a perception of the network in its current state and maybe one or two hops down the line. However its not really clear what the actual problem is yet.

Its like trying decide what your kid should study at university, before they've even learned to walk.

The bitcoin network itself is so hugely immature, and (to quote gavin) still has lots of low hanging fruit. The most obvious of which is that we're bumping up against some legacy limit.

I can't get away from, what I feel, is the most brilliant invention. Which for me is the 'selfish miner'. Its exquisite.

I call it that as an homage to 'the selfish gene'. If one subscribes to the darwin theory of evolution, then the analogy is obvious. The whole of evolution relies on, and has come about, through the gene being 'selfish'. The desire to survive, to endure, to replicate, to live underpins everything.

What Nakamoto has done is replicate that. The miner's are the only ones (literally) making money. That is their raison d'être. They are (as is fundamentally programmed into their genes) selfish. The white paper calls it 'rational' but thats just a more palatable name for it.

Miners want *all the fucking money* to put it bluntly. But to do so they have to not kill the golden goose. This is perfectly analogous to how certain species realise have developed to an extent where they realise that they are stronger in a group.

An individual rogue miner will be shut down. Game over.

As a group miners are strongest. They know that, its innate in human understanding. The dolphins circle the tunafish. The penguins all huddle together in the north pole. The lionesses ambush the elephant. The humans divide the labour. etc

Anyway I've rambled off a bit their, but I think mostly you all already know what I am on about. We don't control bitcoin anymore than we control the evolution of the human race. Bitcoin is like no other monetary system that has gone before. They were all 'managed'. Bitcoin will do what it does. Whether we like it or not. Until a person can really see this, they cannot even begin to comprehend what bitcoin is. I'm still not even sure I know the half of it.

Yet Back, Maxwell et. al already know how to make it better!? pft.
[doublepost=1485733583][/doublepost]WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY SECOND POINT

There is an incentive mechanism in bitcoin. such that miners don't mess up because otherwise the market will punish them.

Specifically consider the case where miners ignore the market, and go ahead and do their own thing.

Some people understand this, some people don't.

It struck me earlier this evening, that this *type* of mechanism also applies to other things...

Consider the case where developers ignore the miners and go ahead and do their own thing.

It's less clear where the developers are getting 'paid', but if that pay depends on them being relevant, then surely making yourself *irrelevant* in the eyes of a miners is a disincentive.

Its speculation, I accept. But, if you continue to follow that line of reasoning, does it not follow that the people who most misunderstand this general concept, are the people who would also find it most difficult to understand how it works with regards nakomoto consensus. They would then also fail to understand how it applied to them with regards miner/implementation consensus, and as a result do outlandish things that upset miners, and not really have any clue why that was a Bad Thing(tm).

 

[xaero1]

...Sorry, I just had to create an account to reply to this

The penguins all huddle together in the north pole.

Great post btw!
..but I'm thinking of those penguins, and how they got there