Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Justus Ranvier]

Can you explain how PoS weakens the ability to be sure about the supply?

With a proof of work system, your ability to identify the best chain is based entirely on the block contents. A node can join the system at any point in time and fully validate the ledger state with no trust in other nodes needed.

PoS doesn't have that property. Nodes that were not online for 100% of the chain history require some degree of trust in other node in order to identify the correct history.

 

[albin]

@Justus Ranvier

From what I understand, you could never be sure that the chain you're receiving isn't the product of a combination of buying old keys and stake-grinding, hence why Vitalik's solutions to the issue tend to revolve around punishing nodes that bet on the "wrong" chain in real time?

 

[Mengerian]

My latest article, discussing how we can view calls for "compromise", and the role of "experts" in Bitcoin: https://medium.com/@Mengerian/two-lenses-f3a6d7962da6

 

[Justus Ranvier]

@albin There are ways to tinker around at the margins with PoS, but an unalterable aspect of those systems is that degree to which you must trust other nodes is inversely proportional to your uptime.

 

[Matthew Light]

In Casper, all you need is a single valid hash and then you can check and see that the entire chain you are given is valid.

If you don't have any way to get a single valid hash, proof of work won't save you either.

 

[bitsein]

Dudes, is there any kind of telegram/slack/etc. chat to keep up with BU (rather than the forums, which can be a tad slow), PM is fine.

 

[_mr_e]

In Casper, all you need is a single valid hash and then you can check and see that the entire chain you are given is valid.

If you don't have any way to get a single valid hash, proof of work won't save you either.

How would you get that hash in an automated trustless way?

 

[Peter R]

Dudes, is there any kind of telegram/slack/etc. chat to keep up with BU (rather than the forums, which can be a tad slow), PM is fine.

PM me your email address and I'll send you a Slack invite.

(Same goes for any other regulars here)

 

[AdrianX]

@Peter R or anyone, can you please outline some high level advantages of the slack? - just looking at the anecdotal evidence it strikes me that it is now a more popular discussing medium.

Is it public? - I see it can be censored, Bruce Fenton just experienced that.

thanks.

 

[Norway]

The beautiful story about this very thread (not slack, lol) and Bitcoin Unlimited:

http://bitsonline.com/war-message-board-bitcoin-unlimited/

 

[Matthew Light]

How would you get that hash in an automated trustless way?​

How would you make sure your BU client doesn't get compromised in an automated and trustless way?

The answer is - human beings are good at some kinds of slower consensus and bad at fast and repeated consensus.

We can use human social consensus to tell us where to download our BU client, or what checksums we can use to validate the canonical Ethereum chain.

We can use software consensus to tell us who owns how many Bitcoin in
154s4EUetzjxgvh85QFXWKdzs9eExL6vce, or how many Ethereum in
0x3b4ca5956EF09EFebB5632AcF3ad77Ba2BE2bi4E

Both computers and human social networks have strengths and weaknesses, and cryptocurrency is at the intersection of both of them.

 

[AdrianX]

OOoo it gets a bit heavy

However, it was his final few minutes that were explosive. He sent a metaphorical shot across the bow of Core’s ship when he compared the group of developers to a command-and-control organization imposing a production quota, fighting Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand,” and enforcing censorship of competing opinions. For a community that idealizes free markets and decentralization it did not go unnoticed.

that's not what @Peter R said, he did make a provocative stalemate but he presided it with what might we expect to see. He was 100% correct he did not attack anyone other than those guilty of psychological projection he presented a strategy to attack bitcoin using censorship, and provided a motive.

very happy to see this quote from @cypherdoc

“It never fails to amaze me just how sheltered these guys are. which is why i also ride them about how ‘the geeks fail to understand that which Satoshi hath created.’ they don’t understand how, due to the massive money printings, bailouts, repetitive QE’s, and moral hazards perpetrated by gvts everywhere, there is a massive worldwide army of speculators that have been spawned over the decades that has literally tons of money looking for a return. this is how we get a $5T/day Forex mkt. These speculators are ruthless in their search for the next big thing as they know that their money is going to do nothing but devalue.”

And as the Rizun’s of the world work to reshape Bitcoin in their image,

and another BS angle, I see Peter defending the bitcoin described in the bitcoin white paper, the one with 8 years of empirical history, @Peter R can confirm if he is trying to reshape Bitcoin in his image, to me it looks like he is defending and preserving it.

there will be the tech purists — like Greg Maxwell — resisting such changes, desiring to keep the protocol pristine and true to its original form.

I role my eyes, he is wanting to change bitcoin in a radical way and move fee paying transactions off the blockchain - ignoring the degrading effect that will have on security. hardly a purists. more like a control freak. - nothing about keep the protocol pristine and true to its original form.

 

[xhiggy]

How would you get that hash in an automated trustless way?​

How would you make sure your BU client doesn't get compromised in an automated and trustless way?

The answer is - human beings are good at some kinds of slower consensus and bad at fast and repeated consensus.

I disagree with this, but think it's an interesting discussion to have. It is possible to take apart the code and make sure it works how bitcoin is supposed to, that it's generating signatures correctly etc. Most won't but it is possible. Furthermore the way to do it is known and can be verified by each user independently if they need to, it's important that the way to verify your software is publicly known.


There is no known way to be sure that your hash is the right one, short of comparing it to the complete record. The complete record being the greatest valid proof of work chain. You need the whole chain, and everyone needs to know where to access it.

 

[AdrianX]

It is possible to take apart the code and make sure it works how bitcoin is supposed to, that it's generating signatures correctly etc. Most won't but it is possible.

It is possible to take apart the code and make sure it works how bitcoin is supposed to, if you reproduce it with an exact copy independently of subjective human consensus it will not solve the byzantine generals problem that makes bitcoin work.

Human are good at some kinds of consensus, like the one @Matthew Light describes, only if we converge on that consensus do we get to use the code and makes sure bitcoin works, incentives make the code work, technology enables the incentives.

 

[xhiggy]

@AdrianX It seems to me that trusting the social consensus on something like a UTXO hash or a software checksum is enabled because people know that it actually can be checked, and they could if they wanted to. Otherwise where does the accountability come from?

For example, people can verify that the BUsoftware they downloaded works like bitcoin should, and that it evaluates to a certain checksum, the one that other bitcoin users claim to be using. The fact that this software can produce transactions on the greatest POW chain, that can be seen by all, is the proof that enables social consensus. How does this happen, if no one can check the code, or if no one can check that the UTXO hash is correct. More importantly, it can't be that just one person can check it, anyone needs to be able to check it, if they want to put in the work.

Maybe I am missing some subtlety...

 

[AdrianX]

@xhiggy in the context of the UTXO hash yes I would not trust social consensus, at all - social consensus is not perfect, it got us the fiat central banking model we have to day, and may even be capable of disrupting bitcoin, but then on some levels we have to trust it, it is what gives bitcoin a market value.

 

[adamstgbit]

@molecular
Imagine this initial sync process:

1. You download the last 100 blocks under the assumption that they build on the valid chain.

2. You download the UTXO-set of, say the oldest block, 100 blocks deep, from somewhere on the internet.

3. You hash that UTXO-set and check if it matches the hash in the 100 old block.

4. Then you go through the next 100 blocks and verify that everything is correct while building an increasingly more updated UTXO that will also match the UTXO-hashes in each block on the way.

5. Presto! You have a updated, pruned node, in a world where nobody stores the whole chain!

I would trust a this... and if you dont want to thats fine, you can be a full archive node, with all the perks.

i believe this kind of thing could be soft forked in, a true softfork which has 0 impact on older nodes.

 

[AdrianX]

reflecting on the AD - discussion earlier I came across this idea. - it needs refinement but though i would put it out there.

Advertising AD tells a miners how much support is needed to activate a fork.

Someone who is better at maths could quantify the exact numbers using the statistics.

If AD is above 4, it would be impossible to fork with 51% and bring nodes along, 53% giving miners only a 4 block advantage in a 24 hour period.

an AD of 12 the BU dealt would require miners to have above 60% of the hash as a minimum, to find 12 extra blocks in a 24 hour period, and a much higher percentage if the wanted to find 12 in a row.

So AD is a decentralized user threshold for the preferred fork activation threshold - so maybe it does not need to be removed just better defined.

eg, users wanting to signal for a fork with a minimum of 95% support would signal with an AD of about 64.


if the smart people here could do some statistics of the percentage of hash-rate needed to find X number of blocks in a row, we could re-brand AD as a percentage setting.

a setting like, -

I want to follow the longest bitcoin chain if it is supported by 51% of the network, or
I want to follow the longest bitcoin chain if it is supported by 60% of the network hash rate.

 

[adamstgbit]

the core team is very clearly drawing a line in the sand here and forcing poeple to pick a side.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-April/013996.html

UASF is coming!

 

[Epilido]

What happens when the code to run the covert version of asicboost is released anonymously? Do all of the people with antminers world wide throw away a 20-30% free increase? Who is in violation of the patent if anyone? Just the person using the chip and the code in a patent enforceable area?