Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[AdrianX]

AD advertising has met with a lot of criticism, I agree I can't see much benefit to advertising it.

BU is still the most consistent Bitcoin implementation when looking at maintaining bitcoin's empirical historic transaction and block size limit behavior. **The way BU functions is more consistent with the Bitcoin Network as described in the Bitcoin white paper, than Core**. people will take time to accept it, we need to give time to question and come to understand how bitcoin works, -

The models of how bitcoin works in the heads of experienced bitcoin proponents needs a tune up. Bitcoin is still consistent with the white paper and if it's going to change, irrefutable reasons need to be criticaly examined before any changes are made - One of the more costly lessons I've learned over time is: don't fix something if its not broken, and when problems start fix them before something breaks. I'm talking about my experiences in project management, not lawnmowers, although the principals are consistent at any scale.

BU has been consistent on decentralized derision making since inception in 2015, we've lost all popularity contests, the reason BU will be adopted is because it is consistent with preserving the inherent bitcoin incentive design and doing so with scientific analysts. - It's like bitcoin is fighting for legitimacy all over again. - the first time I was just an observer, this time I'm participating. - Decentralization of development and control is what give me energy to keep participating and holding BTC.

If anything we just need to refine the BU image - make it more transparent and understandable - address all criticisms in an objective meaner, - the ones I find most useful are the well presented articles - Peter has a presentation style I find effective we need to keep support competing ideas to remove transaction limits.
[doublepost=1490902501][/doublepost]

what about the "bitcoin-infinity" patches? They're available for core 0.12.1 (does that have segwit?)

 

[go1111111]

@Mengerian, no economically significant node will UASF. It's a paper tiger.
[doublepost=1490894386,1490893483][/doublepost]@Mengerian, I'm down with trying to reframe the discussion of EC but I think it would be a mistake to start meddling with the BU mechanism at this point. Some would see it as a sign of weakness, others would try and exploit a "they don't know what they're doing" narrative

IMO, pushing AD was a terrible mistake by BU. There is some risk of the drawbacks you mention, but on the other side, AD is a pretty lame setting, and continuing to promote it does continuous damage to the BU brand. It'd be one thing if users were clamoring for AD, but as far as I can tell, AD is just some random idea by one BU dev which became popular because people associate it with the idea of user choice.

The way that block size will actually be determined is via coordination outside of the protocol. People who want a particular max block size will coordinate and try to enforce it. There may be hard forks, causing market governance to do its work. People who don't care about max block size will set their limit super high. AD is just a distraction from how emergent consensus (no caps) would actually work.

EDIT: another advantage to removing AD or at least not pushing it with the UI is that it would show that BU actually listens to the community instead of trying to force their unpopular pet features on people like Core does.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

AD as default-off and presented as an "advanced" option seems fine to me. When I drill down to what people's real opposition to having an option is, it seems to usually be that the user might accidentally or unwittingly use it. Having it default on makes this even more of an issue. I don't think it will be seen as a backpedal, but even if it is, so what? To make it even less of a backpedal, the user can be presented with the initial choice of

□ Core-suggested settings

□ BU-suggested settings

□ Choose your own (advance users only!)

Then BU-suggested settings can have AD on or off; it doesn't matter as much because clearly they are just settings, not fundamental to BU. People could then attack the promotion of BU-suggested settings without attacking BU.

 

[go1111111]

This survey of "influencers" by 21.co looks like evidence against the wisdom of BU continuing to push AD: https://medium.com/@21/using-21-to-survey-blockchain-personalities-on-the-bitcoin-hard-fork-1953c9bcb8ed

TL;DR:

-49% of the respondents identified as "big blockers", vs. 34% "small blockers"
-Despite this, only 23% of respondents wanted BU to activate.

This suggests to me that BU is doing something wrong. They're losing about half of their potential "target market." My guess is that most of it is from the combination of their pro-AD and anti-SegWit stance.

 

[solex]

I'm down with trying to reframe the discussion of EC but I think it would be a mistake to start meddling with the BU mechanism at this point. Some would see it as a sign of weakness, others would try and exploit a "they don't know what they're doing" narrative ...

Exactly right.

Excessive block size is very clear, and it makes sense to focus on the meaning of EB in the debate. This is a common feature in the different implementations which support larger blocks.
I don't see how adjustable block size terminology helps much because it takes us back 20 months to the bitcointalk GCBU thread when we first discussed how a user maintainable block limit could work in practice. The first objection was how to deal with "network splits" and the AD (acceptance depth) concept came to the rescue.

The message I have heard since from users and business owners (e.g. the founder of Local Bitcoins) is that they don't want to mess with settings all the time. They want something that "just works". It's fine to play-down AD in armchair discussions of EC theory, but in practice many users need something that runs on auto-pilot. The scenario is that users should not have to worry too much about the settings, and some users need the facility to quickly follow the largest PoW chain if their EB happens to be too low for a while (until they adjust it).

 

[lunar]

Here are some ideas

Great post as usual. We are in danger of all singing from the same hymn sheet today, which usually gives me pause for reflection. So i'll try an be critical here, even though I think you might ABC right.

My background is in industrial physics, and one consistent problem over the years is explaining complicated topics on an interdisciplinary level, usually along the route. (Physicist-engineer-project managers-sales-client reps etc) Jargon overload / or Acronym awareness, can kill a concept dead, if it's not done right.

I particularly like @KoKansei term "security through inconvenience". * Well the point, i'm sure you all, already see, is that it's very easy to accidentally firewall knowledge through obscurity. Lawyers and bankers have been known to do this deliberately, for protectionism.

I enjoyed the @brucefenton slack conversation today. (Thanks Bruce, if you're reading) Still, it's glaring obvious that there's a huge knowledge asymmetry, if the one time president of the Bitcoin foundation is struggling with basic concepts, we take for granted. Don't misunderstand, the vast % of this problem has originated from, and counter to, the shifting definitions, of the incredible, NorthCorean, propaganda machine. Nevertheless acronyms and jargonism, something to keep in check.

Onto a little future planning. If we hide AD by default from all the economic/user nodes, and miners are unlikely to need anything publicly other than AD max, we need to consider the move to FGx@blockXX. ** My suspicion is this will happen organically out of necessity, once we move towards 75% signalling for larger blocks. However, it might be worth suggesting ViaBtc update their hardfork plan just in case. Something along the lines of - at 75% current block height FGx@+2016 to give the holdouts one last warning, that they need to update.

It will be incredible that Satoshi saw this one coming too, "it can be phased in at ..". I bet ze didn't think that it would be the miners having to rescue the ledger from economically illiterate developers? Or maybe he even saw that too and deliberately put the 1MB in, as a setup for hardfork, just to give the system one final acid test before primetime?

edit: FE-FG: Updated terminology above as Wow 30 mins post already out of date ...
459654 /pool.bitcoin.com/FG2/ /EB1/AD6/<fpkR

* I can't believe it's taken us so long to distill the argument down to such a rich concentrate.
** Can you keep up dear reader? thats 'future generative blocksize @ block xx? We desperately need a full code specification and standardisation of bitcoin terminology.

Ps @Tomothy you timed that post perfectly, I did indeed snort a little cold beer ;-)

 

[AdrianX]

AD is just some random idea by one BU dev which became popular because people associate it with the idea of user choice.

its not so random, it's a user definition for the longest chain, it also allows the user to always follow the longest bitcoin chain as defined by PoW.

It is for users not so much miners, miners work on the blocks they feel comfortable will enhance there chance of success - they will orphan blocks that are too big or take too long to validate - they can each come up with there own strategy, market forces will ensure they do not exceed the optimum capacity for the network. Miners wont use AD as they need to do PoW instantly not in 40 minutes time.
[doublepost=1490929419,1490928362][/doublepost]

AD as default-off and presented as an "advanced" option seems fine to me. When I drill down to what people's real opposition to having an option is, it seems to usually be that the user might accidentally or unwittingly use it. Having it default on makes this even more of an issue. I don't think it will be seen as a backpedal, but even if it is, so what? To make it even less of a backpedal, the user can be presented with the initial choice of

□ Core-suggested settings

□ BU-suggested settings

□ Choose your own (advance users only!)

Then BU-suggested settings can have AD on or off; it doesn't matter as much because clearly they are just settings, not fundamental to BU. People could then attack the promotion of BU-suggested settings without attacking BU.

we can re-brand it - call it - an advance setting - (safe) always follow the longest chain or (not safe) don't follow the longest chain if block size is >XMB.

I like what @go1111111 said - AD packaging needs to change

I also think if you enable MG Maximum Generation Size then AD is should be disabled. there is no risk to users having AD enabled. and if you are not solo mining you don't need to enable MG
[doublepost=1490929561][/doublepost]@go1111111 looks like FUD working to me, but you've already found the solution.

 

[AdrianX]

u/DeftNerd pulled some centralized control statistics.

If you look at the Participants in the Core planning meetings for 2017 you see that Blockstream affiliated developers dominate those meetings. Of the developers who attend over 80% of Planing meetings 60% are Blocksrtream affiliated developers.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YKBTIXdF6yF4XPp-3NeWxttUFytf8WFY1y8tZF7c17A/edit#gid=0

 

[go1111111]

its not so random, it's a user definition for the longest chain, it also allows the user to always follow the longest bitcoin chain as defined by PoW.

Setting max block size to infinity also lets users follow the most work chain. AD purports to do something more than this by acting as some sort of minor discouragement for blocks above your AD setting.

This 'discouragement' will be toothless in any real block size increase scenario, unless AD is extremely high.

The only helpful thing that AD does is protect the user against some rogue miners who try to slip in a large block or two without the support of the majority of hash power.

If the majority of hash power decides to increase the block size over, having an AD setting is actually worse than accepting arbitrarily large blocks from the start, because AD just tricks you into following a small block chain for a while that will eventually be orphaned.

The EC algorithm can be improved a lot by adding a third parameter, and slightly changing what parameters mean:

Expected Max Block Size = As long as blocks are lower than this, nothing "interesting" has happened. You'll assume any such block will be built on by the hash rate majority.

AD = like the current AD, but it operates off of EMBS. In this situation, AD is designed only to protect you against rogue miners who produce large blocks that won't be built upon by the majority hash power.

Absolute Max Block Size = the maximum size at which if the majority of hash power actually wanted blocks this big, you'd be OK with your node following this chain without manual intervention.

Ideally your EMBS would reset to the current "new normal" every time it was exceeded for long enough that it was clear that the hash majority was cool with blocks that large. This would allow AD to continue to protect you against rogue miners without you having to fiddle with your settings again.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

I like AD, but the current feedback of the community might be that a standard of 12 is too low.

 

[xhiggy]

Or too low, wouldn't an AD of 1 work just fine?

 

[molecular]

I noticed the term "hardfork" is used for 2 separate things:

* a weakening of consensus rules
* a chain split

I think a lot of energy is needlessly spent in discussions dealing with misunderstandings based on this ambiguity.

Maybe the following 2 terms could be used instead:

* hardforking change
* chain split

although I'm inclined to think "hardfork" is burned as a term for use in any sensible discussion... too many emotions attached.

I also think it might be a good move to introduce some distinctions regarding "consensus rules". The 21 million coin limit, ECDSA signature validity and such are a differnt category from the 1 MB blocksize limit. Any ideas as to good language that could be used to implant this?

My opinion on AD signaling: it should be removed.

 

[molecular]

Pissed off as I am at the fact that the propaganda machinery is working and after having withdrawn most energy from forum/reddit discussion for roughly 2-3 weeks now (for protection of my own well-being), I went back to the btctalk german crowd briefly using a hardliner approach, emphasizing the importance of what crypto can be about (freedom, sovereignity, stick it to the fascists,...) and presenting as absolute fact that the clinging to the 1mb limit is part of the establishments attack on bitcoin. I appealed to everyone thinking for themselves.

In response, I was asked to back up my outrageous claims, to consider the possibility that I was wrong and to understand that development of scaling solutions and new technologies was in the works but took time. Also my ego was attacked and my avatar (same one as here) was interpreted as indication I had made mistakes regarding belief in the past.

I reacted by proclaiming I was god and declaring this was not about my ego. I acknowledged the possibility of me being wrong and welcomed any work on scaling solutions while emphasizing the ridiculousness of the 1 MB limit. I argued some technicalities initially (such as UTXO being critical resource and LN not solving every user needing an entry in it and also not every user needing to run a full node (spv, fraud proofs)), but managed to avoid being drawn into such discussion afterwards.

The most important figureheads have not yet reacted and they probably wont, but I couldn't care less. The idea was to get the point across that I really believe the clingage to the limit is based on malicious intent and everything else was a distraction. I wanted to fight the narrative that all BU/bigblock supporters were paid shills and/or stupid. I had contributed to introducting quite a few of those germans to bitcoin by ways of helping the Spiegel with an article about bitcoin in 2011, so I have at least some standing with that crowd. Accusing me of being paid by Roger or some such nonsense is thus far-fetched and this hasn't been done by anyone. Also no allegations of my account having been hacked or sold were made.

If it wasn't such severe and fatal of an issue, i would be purely having fun with this ;-) Previously I had been very careful not to reveal too much of a radical bias in order to enable open discussion. I scratched that approach.

My plan is to not try to "back up my claims" or argue anything at all. I'll just be brutally honest. I don't give a shit about my btctalk account or "standing" in the german bitcoin community. I'll just simply be frank and my opinion is simply this: the 1 MB blocksize limit is a ridiculous bug. Any concerns against removing it can be addressed as the respective problems show up after the removal. We're a bunch of wizards, we can handle the load... ON-CHAIN.

If you guys want, I can keep you updated.

 

[SanchoPanza]

Don @molecular , you have my admiración. Do not exhaust yourself too much, and keep us updated please. Today, I've been trying to fight censorship and a windmilling list moderator.

At least two other persons with protonmail.com email addresses (praxeology_guy and SHAroshima Nakamati) have had absolutely no problem writing to the bitcoin-dev. SHAroshima is also a new contributor.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-March/013912.html

For some mysterious reason, my submission (and re-submission) concerned with improving on BIP9 have failed to appear without so much as a moderation reply (except Kanzure and Luke-jr say they never received it). And I've been told by a Core dev to look into submitting it as a BUIP. Why not?

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Maybe the following 2 terms could be used instead:

* hardforking change
* chain split

although I'm inclined to think "hardfork" is burned as a term for use in any sensible discussion... too many emotions attached.

Yes the terminology around everything has to be refined. As we dig deeper into any subject, we inevitably find that the terms first naively chosen lose their utility as finer distinctions are made, yet the "network effect" of language keeps the terms in service. It takes persistence against social pressure to introduce new terms. Yet the time it takes to insist on and popularize clear terms is never wasted.

In a related vein, /u/tomtomtom7 drills down on the concept of "consensus setting" and finds it to be full of holes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/62ixb6/eric_lombrozo_bitcoin_by_design_makes_it_much/dfneg9y/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/62ixb6/eric_lombrozo_bitcoin_by_design_makes_it_much/dfniwi2/

 

[molecular]

Don @molecular , you have my admiración. Do not exhaust yourself too much, and keep us updated please.

Thanks for your kind words, man. I'm prioritizing personal resources already and I'm watching my well-being. It's important. A walk in the woods can be hugely valuable.

As far as updates go: there's quite a central thread on the german btctalk subforum called "Der aktuelle Kursverlauf". It's akin to the famous "wall observer", kindof a lounge where everyone hangs out. Very high visibility, read by loads of people. What pisses me off to no end is the censorship going on there. The ususal "this is altcoin discussion", "offtopic" and whatnot. Moving of whole threads of discussion into seperate threads and the excuse that: "this is ok, everyone can freely discuss in their own space", completely negelecting the fact that those "segregated spaces" aren't read by "the masses" at all.

I took the liberty to point out the fact (elephant in the room) that moving unwanted opinions to "segregated" threads harms their efficacy on public opinion.

Let's see what comes of this... interestingly so far none of my "radical" posts have been deleted.

 

[albin]

@molecular

I like Satoshi's term, "incompatible" changes... zeroes in right at the essence of the situation.

 

[xhiggy]

I was reading at http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/#selection-33.0-59.63

The first reply Satoshi addressed was about scaling concerns, and they are still at it today.

 

[majamalu]

As far as updates go: there's quite a central thread on the german btctalk subforum called "Der aktuelle Kursverlauf". It's akin to the famous "wall observer", kindof a lounge where everyone hangs out. Very high visibility, read by loads of people. What pisses me off to no end is the censorship going on there. The ususal "this is altcoin discussion", "offtopic" and whatnot. Moving of whole threads of discussion into seperate threads and the excuse that: "this is ok, everyone can freely discuss in their own space", completely negelecting the fact that those "segregated spaces" aren't read by "the masses" at all.

I took the liberty to point out the fact (elephant in the room) that moving unwanted opinions to "segregated" threads harms their efficacy on public opinion.

Same shit going on in the Spanish subforum -- I think that's one of the reasons it has became irrelevant.

Don't let the useful idiots disturb you, just respond with a couple of sentences pointing at the obvious and let them do the heavy lifting. You will not change their minds, but you never know how many people are / will be watching.

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Pissed off as I am at the fact that the propaganda machinery is working and after having withdrawn most energy from forum/reddit discussion for roughly 2-3 weeks now (for protection of my own well-being), I went back to the btctalk german crowd briefly using a hardliner approach, emphasizing the importance of what crypto can be about (freedom, sovereignity, stick it to the fascists,...) and presenting as absolute fact that the clinging to the 1mb limit is part of the establishments attack on bitcoin. I appealed to everyone thinking for themselves.

In response, I was asked to back up my outrageous claims, to consider the possibility that I was wrong and to understand that development of scaling solutions and new technologies was in the works but took time. Also my ego was attacked and my avatar (same one as here) was interpreted as indication I had made mistakes regarding belief in the past.

I reacted by proclaiming I was god and declaring this was not about my ego. I acknowledged the possibility of me being wrong and welcomed any work on scaling solutions while emphasizing the ridiculousness of the 1 MB limit. I argued some technicalities initially (such as UTXO being critical resource and LN not solving every user needing an entry in it and also not every user needing to run a full node (spv, fraud proofs)), but managed to avoid being drawn into such discussion afterwards.

The most important figureheads have not yet reacted and they probably wont, but I couldn't care less. The idea was to get the point across that I really believe the clingage to the limit is based on malicious intent and everything else was a distraction. I wanted to fight the narrative that all BU/bigblock supporters were paid shills and/or stupid. I had contributed to introducting quite a few of those germans to bitcoin by ways of helping the Spiegel with an article about bitcoin in 2011, so I have at least some standing with that crowd. Accusing me of being paid by Roger or some such nonsense is thus far-fetched and this hasn't been done by anyone. Also no allegations of my account having been hacked or sold were made.

If it wasn't such severe and fatal of an issue, i would be purely having fun with this ;-) Previously I had been very careful not to reveal too much of a radical bias in order to enable open discussion. I scratched that approach.

My plan is to not try to "back up my claims" or argue anything at all. I'll just be brutally honest. I don't give a shit about my btctalk account or "standing" in the german bitcoin community. I'll just simply be frank and my opinion is simply this: the 1 MB blocksize limit is a ridiculous bug. Any concerns against removing it can be addressed as the respective problems show up after the removal. We're a bunch of wizards, we can handle the load... ON-CHAIN.

If you guys want, I can keep you updated.

I saw your post, enjoyed it and like alway, when you post something, I get new hope that not everybody is brainwashed by propaganda.

In germany things are extremely worse. At least that's my feeling. A new depressing low was this tweet of bitwa.la, which are a very cool and nice and open minded startup which voted two years ago clearly for bigger blocks


It's a shame. There was another tweet from BItwa.la saying "the innkeeper who says many smart things" (bad translation)


I guess that indicates the influence of Joe, who happens to be a small block warmonger who takes everybody as a terrorist who wants Bitcoin to grow onchain.

After all, the state of affairs is an insult to everybody with a free mind.

I again invite you to coinforum.com, where at least there is no censorship, and where we have more open discussions. Also maybe you should join the BU-slack. Or come from time to time to bitcoinblog.de, where we have also many good discussions (which, surprise surprise, get ad hominem and dumb when small block warriors step up).