Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[solex]

Luke's pool, Eligius, has a 100% empty block rate for the month of February.
All of 1 block
Expect him to get a free pass on it anyway...

 

[Roger_Murdock]

I was reading Aaron van Wirdum's latest article about the "user activated soft fork", and I noticed a talking point that I've seen cropping up lately:

"Like all soft forks, a UASF would still be an opt-in proposition for regular users, assuming it activates smoothly"

They keep touting this idea that soft forks are "opt-in". But as far as I can figure, this is total non-sequitur.

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing. But the idea that "soft forks" are "opt-in" strikes me as entirely backwards. Soft forks by their very nature involve what is effectively a 51% attack on anyone trying to stay behind on the old rule set. At the very least, it should be clear that some soft forks are not "opt-in" (e.g., a soft fork that reduced the block size limit to 5 kb). Of course what these people have in mind are soft forks that "merely" add new transaction types via the anyone-can-spend trick. And they'll claim that in these cases, the soft fork is "opt-in" because users aren't forced to make use of the new transaction type. ("If you like your current transaction type, you can keep it.") Well, ok... but what if you're someone who thinks that the change introduces systemic risk and who doesn't want to follow a chain that allows it? In that case you're forced to do a counter fork if you want to opt out. And with SegWit, the situation is even worse because the change would provide a substantial discount for SegWit-style transactions, effectively punishing users who don't use them. ("Hey, no one is forcing you to ride one of the three new 'SegWit-only' buses. You're perfectly free to continue fighting for a seat on the one tiny, 'legacy-transaction' bus.")

AntPool mines 16 empty blocks last month. - The mood out there is the empty blocks are the reason we have a transaction back log. The hypocrisy is the lynch mob should be paying higher fees to attract miners to include their transactions. Mining is its own reward, AntPool are contributing to the fee market in a positive way with empty blocks if the goal is higher fees, less spam (whatever spam is).

Yeah, pretty stupid. Bitcoin's capacity problem is obviously not caused by one pool voluntarily mining small or empty blocks when they deem it in their best interests to do so. It's not even caused by lots of pools voluntarily mining small or empty blocks. It's caused by a majority of the hash power enforcing a cartel-like, industry-wide production quota on block space by intentionally orphaning anyone else who tries to mine something other than a very small (i.e., <= 1MB) block.

 

[theZerg]

50k+ transactions. Looks like the backlog might persist through the weekend... permanent backlog might finally be on us. We should start tracking how much money in fees drop from the mempool as txs age out.

 

[solex]

@theZerg
Indeed. I watch tradeblock and on Sunday the backlog usually goes as low as 5k. Seeing 25k at present which is very high.
Twitter has erupted in the last 3 days. We get hundreds of notifications when it used to be just one or two. We are adding followers at the rate of one an hour, which is 10x the long-term rate.
An observation from twitter is that the size and diversity of the ecosystem is very large and many people have only a vague idea of the block limit issues and support the Core scaling strategy by default. They assume SegWit gives a 2MB uplift immediately (an alternative fact which does not get refuted enough on r/bitcoin).
[doublepost=1488698052][/doublepost]http://www.bunodes.com/ is a new site which graphically shows full-nodes' excessive block size and acceptance depth settings.
Kudos to reddit.com/user/steb2k

 

[freetrader]

Luke's pool, Eligius, has a 100% empty block rate for the month of February.
All of 1 block
Expect him to get a free pass on it anyway...

This would be worth mentioning, but he's distanced himself a couple of times from the operations of that pool. So unless there is evidence that he IS still involved with Eligius, I'd say it's not worth mentioning.

More topical is his reporting to Australia's cyber-crime agency people who want to run a fee-paying test of their voting system on Bitcoin:

 

[sickpig]

@lunar WRT btc.com accelerator:

it seems we've reached the last level double-thinking.

We have to pay via credit card if we want that our beloved trustless/decentralize/censorship resistant system being able to include our txn in the blockchain in the next 4 hours.

Let me rephrase it:

- you pay already a txn fee

- for whatever reason (*) your txn is not confirmed in a reasonable amount of time

- you need to beg for help (e.g. via accelerator) or

- you need to ask Visa/Mastecard for permission to have your transaction included in the next 6 to 24 blocks...

Good grief, I don't even now where to start to say how absurd the situation is.

What's worse the new small blockists narrative is that big blockers are the one blocking bitcoin scaling.


(*) the main reason is the the "de facto" Core's hard fork @Christoph Bergmann was mentioning here

 

[albin]

There's a certain amount of nuance I think involved here, because btc.com is Bitmain, so there is ammunition here to further characterize "big blockers" as "attackers", despite the fact that Jihan has done nothing whatsoever materially hostile to Core other than the occasional grumble on twitter or forums.

 

[awemany]

The more I think about it, the more I feel the idea of Core implementing and flag-day-ing UASFSW is just absolutely great. I think that is the best thing that can happen to all of us.

Including the small blockers: Because I think it will also be an awesome learning opportunity, it will be a great lesson about Bitcoin's mechanics for those frequenting rBitcoin.

Really, what is not to like about this proposal?

 

[albin]

@awemany

Part of me in the guts feels like this is a great reminder / wake-up call from the HF-bad/SF-good messaging beaten into the community relentlessly, that a softfork is actually a fork!

 

[xhiggy]

@8up It's a good idea but it's not worth destroying the network over.

There's a reason I keep bringing up the comparisons with PGP and the collective failure of cypherpunks to encrypt the world's mail: the way they are trying to achieve their goals doesn't work, never has worked, and if they're allowed to try they'll destroy our best chance of establishing an honest money standard in addition to failing to bring about financial privacy.

What do you mean? I'd love to hear about how that initiative failed, and what we can do differently.
[doublepost=1488744854][/doublepost]Also interesting

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/bitcoin-wright-patents/

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Hm, another week in Bitcoin world and if someone thought it couldn't get any more weird..well. I hope there will be some more news about C. Wright the next weeks to make the drama even more amusing.. Oh yeah and the ETF. lol

To recap:
- You can now pay the fees for your Bitcoin transaction with your credit card because the network is completely trash atm
- A core dev called the police because someone was planning to "make spam transactions".
- Core minions are at the same time so close and yet so far from finally understanding Bitcoin with the UASF bullshit.

@xhiggy afaik it's just about the fact, that PGP stayed pretty much a "nerd tool" because it wasn't easy enough to use by the standard user.

In regards to C. Wright: If he didn't come up with his weird ass website with pseudo-crypto stuff I would be sure that he was heavily involved in Bitcoin's creation. So, I still don't know what to think about
But the poker stuff in the original Bitcoin code is pretty interesting in this light imho.

Oh and I clicked through Bitcoin-related twitter stuff recently. Seems to be much shittier than even reddit in regards to personal attacks.
So, many thanks to the people who appear with their real name and promote BU etc. You are doing a great service to the free world!

Anybody having any doubts, that we will see a chain split in Bitcoin in 2017?

edit: And also weird but great: @cypherdoc showed up again. I hope we will see your old GCBU thread archives in history books someday.

edit2: Maybe I'm seeing ghosts, but /u/mypeterhasrizun sounds like a completely cracked up version of Greg lol

 

[Peter R]

edit2: Maybe I'm seeing ghosts, but /u/mypeterhasrizun sounds like a completely cracked up version of Greg lol -- @satoshis_sockpuppet

I guess I dodged a bullet that none of the kids in elementary school thought of that nick name for me.

I do agree it sounds like a cracked-up version Greg -- /u/quebqueb is possibly him as well.

The /u/nullc account has been conspicuously absent after its second banning. My hunch is that Blockstream investors had a chat with him.

 

[albin]

Just to play devil's advocate, that reddit handle sounds way too terse and too the point to be Greg. My guess based on the rapid-fire style and tone is Junseth.

 

[awemany]

@awemany

Part of me in the guts feels like this is a great reminder / wake-up call from the HF-bad/SF-good messaging beaten into the community relentlessly, that a softfork is actually a fork!

Absolutely. If implemented, it will be the best opportunity to confront all these idiotic trolls with pretty much *all* of their bullshit. It is just too much. I also think there won't be any need for further 'discussions', however. As I think the issue will be quickly settled by the miner folks:

I am not at all afraid. Core will lose this badly against the miners. It will be fireworks, it will likely include a nice meltdown of all our most 'loved' folks over in that Company.

If they implement this in Core, I'll certainly have my popcorn ready on flag day!

They should dare to do this. Really. I am waiting. Let the battle begin!

The best chance ever to finally get rid of them and their bullshit. And the great thing is: Many of the trolls on rBitcoin believe UASFSW is the right thing to do.

YES. YES. Please implement this in Core! Please go ahead and try to Sybil-attack the network with your bullshit. Really. Greg, I know you're reading all this. Dare to do this. ACK ACK ACK!

 

[awemany]

A lot, if not all of the small block propaganda seems to be revolve around repeatedly and knowingly making the category error of equating code with law and subsuming incentives under code or confusing the flow of causality here.

But incentives are strictly 100% and always above code in Bitcoin. Code flows from incentives, and not the other way around. That's simply just how it is, but this point is hated by the dipshits.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

A passage about cars in The Myth of Product Safety echos the blocksize debate (emphasis mine):

Many serious injuries from automobile accidents have been avoided at relatively low cost by installing seat belts in cars. Many more such injuries could be avoided by building cars like tanks, but this is a relatively expensive proposition. As the costs incurred to avoid injuries increase, the benefits of the safer products become affordable to a decreasing number of people. **At some point, the improvements in product safety completely consume the benefits of using the product.** How do we determine the point at which it costs too much to make a product safer?

The answer is the market determines it, but then the government steps in and requires all cars to have seatbelts right after the car companies already started equipping cars with seatbelts out of their own market-based self-interest. This results in (and is born out of) the kind of confusion of cause and effect @awemany mentioned in the previous comment.

"Where would we be without the government mandating that all cars have seatbelts, children can't work in coal mines, and appliances must not explode? The roads would be total carnage, everyone would be sending their kids to work in mines and get black lung, and we'd be getting our limbs blown off when we go to microwave a burrito. All thanks to those evil capitalists. We need to leave it to the selfless public servants to set the rules."

Compare:

"Where would we be without Core setting the blocksize limit? Those evil profit-driven miners would abuse the network in all sorts of wily ways."

However, unlike a government, Core ultimately has very little power to keep users under its thumb. Thus it can either try to play the "adept government" role and just chase the market by raising the blocksize on its own while pretending it was their idea all along, or it can play the "inept government" role and continue to stand defiantly in the way of the market but get swept away as users are not bound to Core very strongly.

Same old story: ape the market and try to maintain the illusion of control, or fritter away political capital by standing in the market's way. The latter is what we are seeing from Core now, and it is actually preferable in the long run as we don't want any such thing as political capital in Bitcoin. Let them erode their own power in a losing battle on something as petty as the blocksize so that they have no influence going forward.

 

[Justus Ranvier]

What do you mean? I'd love to hear about how that initiative failed, and what we can do differently.

https://www.philzimmermann.com/EN/essays/WhyIWrotePGP.html

From 1991 to the present, a consistent 0.0% of the world's email was successfully encrypted with PGP.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

why did nobody made a better system? Is this a problem of cryptographers in general?

 

[AdrianX]

Bitcoin is not depending on systems - it's depending on a network of cooperating individuals.

Incentives matter.

While there is a lot of disagreement at the moment both sides (holders) are agreeing to cooperate. (The Peter Todd's and Mike Hearn's of the world are not when they sell)

 

[albin]

Pretentious showerthought --

Flexcap creates 100% of the disadvantages to security of Dash masternodes, with 0% of the possible advantages.

Common criticism of Dash is diverting mining reward to network of masternodes undermines the security of the chain by making it easier to PoW attack.

Artificially pressing down blocksize with mathematical functions to create miner cost for producing bigger blocks:
- Creates a subsidy for nodes in the form of decreased operating cost
- Pays for this subsidy by reducing the fee portion of PoW reward proportional to the deadweight loss compared to market equillibrium for blockspace

Even results in net disutility compared to Dash scheme because of one major difference:
- The manner in which the nodes are being subsidized does directly reduce cost, but the "unseen" effect is that it also reduces node utility.

I'm not sure Flexcap or other so-called "incentive compatible" blocksize encumbrances are fundamentally any different in principle than what Dash is doing just paying nodes a rate of return.