Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Zarathustra]

But the streamblockers@Blockstream are hyperventilating.

 

[Richy_T]

God forbid that those buying a service should negotiate with those selling a service. That's downright capitalistic.

Does anyone not see the urge for control that drives these people?

 

[Mengerian]

It strains credibility to believe Blockstream and their investors are innocent of a Segwit-locking deal.

That's the part I am still trying to figure out. Of the people who signed the deal, who are the ones pushing for Segwit activation/lock-in, and against block-size increase?

This idea of "compromise" seems strange, implies that some of the signatories are opposed to the block-size increase part of the agreement, but favor the Segwit activation part.

 

[Bagatell]

I'm thinking it's Larry brokering this "compromise" not Barry.

 

[Peter R]

That's the part I am still trying to figure out. Of the people who signed the deal, who are the ones pushing for Segwit activation/lock-in, and against block-size increase?

This idea of "compromise" seems strange, implies that some of the signatories are opposed to the block-size increase part of the agreement, but favor the Segwit activation part.

That is a mystery to me too. Most people I spoke with at Consensus either thought it was obvious that a simple block size limit is the way forward, or don't really care about Bitcoin and view it as a small piece of a larger emerging "blockchain" landscape.

However, I did finally meet four different people who were highly supportive of segwit and arguing with me about Bitcoin Unlimited. In all cases, I think their love for segwit is due to them not having the facts:

1. All of these people thought that segwit would immediately provide relief from high fees and unreliable confirmation times. When I explained that it requires a huge fraction of users upgrading their wallets to take advantage of the new TX type, it seemed as though they didn't understand this, or thought it was only a minor point. They also viewed a block size limit increase as something that would be much slower to implement while "segwit is ready today!"

2. All of these people parroted the "bigger blocks cause centralization" meme, somehow managing to ignore the fact that segwit increases the amount of transactional data too. I told each of them that in my opinion it was a myth -- that larger blocks would not materially effect decentralization (e.g., the distribution of hash power). I asked each of them why they thought that bigger blocks would lead to centralization and not a single person had a cohesive answer.

3. They were all under the impression that "we can't get to Visa level scaling without LN" so we'll need segwit eventually. I replied that SPV wallets are highly scalable and that existing hardware and existing (higher-end) internet connections can facilitate Visa level throughput today. This was normally met with a response that it's important for people to verify their transactions, to which I would reply that SPV does allow them to verify their transactions -- it was the rest of the world's transactions they weren't verifying. This made we realize that many people misunderstand the SPV security model.

 

[Bagatell]

@Peter R

Were those people from commercial organizations or government?

 

[Peter R]

@Bagatell: Two were from Deloitte, one was from some Bitcoin company, and the other I forget. Not that age matters, but all looked to be in their twenties, which is something I've noticed before: the mean age of a small blocker is less than that of a big blocker.

 

[Bagatell]

I think you could call Deloitte government proxies. The age thing is odd.

 

[AdrianX]

This one is without the BSCore devaluators. It's an agreement between the miners and all the main Bitcoin businesses. It's much more of a market consensus.

who can justify a 2MB hard fork after 6 years of debate that not kicking the can. that's just movin it with your foot - same problem I don't think it's a large enough capacity increase to even give us a break from the scaling debate.
[doublepost=1495649148,1495648532][/doublepost]

But the streamblockers@Blockstream are hyperventilating.

fake news

 

[awemany]

@Peter R.: The age thing is as I expected and as I've noted as well.

Their stance sounds to me like real world effects of BS/Core propaganda, in light of my own observations at meetups and in light of what Emin Gün Sirer said.

 

[lunar]

It's hard to know what to think here. Have we been stabbed in the back? I definitely wouldn't have signed that agreement, but then we certainly don't know all the details.

The solution to my mind would have been to put some serious pressure on f2pool or btc.com and get them to switch to BU or Classic. With 51% hash rate this thing would have been over, no more agreements necessary. Why, Why, why, is a simple blocksize increase so difficult?

The other thing that's bugging me, are the cloud mining contracts. There must be some very pissed people out there now, Bicoin.com and ViaBtc gone, who's left standing that wants a simple no frills blocksize increase? Where can they point hashpower now?

Is it finally time for a BU pool?

 

[lunar]

From @NewLiberty on BTC slack.

"Bitcoin has checks and balances of power in governance. Developers write code, users select which code to use, miners enforce by creating the blocks. Today, all are necessary.

But Segwit undermines the balance of governance powers between user/developer/miner.

After SegWit, any change can be developer soft fork, even changing 21m cap, but very many smaller problems too.

SegWit upsets the governance balance, it plants the seed for the end of bitcoin. The biggest problem of SegWit is that the end does not come soon, it can take years, but it will come. SegWit is insidious. When it comes, it will be too late. There is no backout plan for SegWit.

An increase in blocksize, if it would cause a problem, can be soft-forked smaller, or miners can just make smaller blocks. There is not a way to undo SegWit."

@Jihan @Rogerver you have been warned.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

the mean age of a small blocker is less than that of a big blocker.

It's funny, that's my impression for quite some time too.
It was the case for the core dev team as well with Gavin and Jeff being "big blockers".
And when I saw the pictures of the BU team it was another confirmation for that theory.

Maybe that explains some of the "my way or the highway" attitude most core devs have. In terms of CS, some of the really young guys are highly talented and apparently have a ton of experience in coding, at least as far as I can tell. With a better leadership they could have made a difference in the history of money.

So good to know, in big block years I'm still a baby.
[doublepost=1495656050][/doublepost]Another thing: Maybe it would be smart for the big blockers to let the problem solve itself. Wait with the SW2MB compromise until after August 1st, let the UASF guys fork the network. After that we could just implement Bip101 or something like that..

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake...

 

[freetrader]

From @NewLiberty on BTC slack.

[...]

There is not a way to undo SegWit."

I would very much like to hear a more detailed assessment from @Gavin Andresen on this topic.

 

[Zarathustra]

 

[lunar]

Not sure about this theory, but I found it amusing:

https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6d0qzl/legal_segwit_exploit_to_easy_riches/

Then you're going to love this post.

https://medium.com/@adam_selene/the-segwit-15-attack-b0ecbb926777

Segwit has just been lawyer'd.

"What is insidious is that the 51% now allows for the theft of funds. This cannot happen in Bitcoin. It can happen in segregated witness coin. In segregated witness coin, the 51% attacker does not just have the ability to reverse a transaction or block transactions, they have the ability to redirect them to their own payment address."

"There are many governments and there are many organisations that would like to see the end of Bitcoin, and with segregated witness we may just be handing them a gun, checking that it is loaded and holding it to our own heads as we put the trigger in their hands."

Seems theres also a 30 and 15% attack - it lost me a little here, i'll need to re read. Can someone explain this a little?

 

[Mengerian]

Not that age matters, but all looked to be in their twenties, which is something I've noticed before: the mean age of a small blocker is less than that of a big blocker

Yeah, I don't find that surprising. Older people, who have been around for a while, are more likely to see parallels in how other technical limits have been expanded.

The one I often think about is Linux in the late 90s / early 2000s. There were lots of people warning of scaling limitation, saying how it would be impossible to add features for high-end systems like mainframes, while also being able to run on very small systems. Everyone thought it would eventually have to branch into several more specialized projects optimized for different types of system. Now, 20 years later, it is still largely one codebase (adding code at an unbelievable rate), and it runs on everything from my phone, to large-scale data centers.

 

[go1111111]

yet another win for Core with final lock-in at a ridiculous 2MB.

The mistake is to somehow think there's some force making the 2MB "final." The same pressures that are causing the 2 MB HF will also cause future block size increases, only in the future the "omg hard forks are so scary" argument will fail because we will have already done one without much incident. So a 2 MB fork, far from being "final", will simply make further increases easier.

"What is insidious is that the 51% now allows for the theft of funds. This cannot happen in Bitcoin. It can happen in segregated witness coin. In segregated witness coin, the 51% attacker does not just have the ability to reverse a transaction or block transactions, they have the ability to redirect them to their own payment address."

This is misleading. A 51% attacker can only steal funds after SegWit activates on a chain where people agree that SegWit rules can be broken. But that doesn't add any new risks. A 51% majority of miners could similarly "steal funds" from any current address on any chain where people decided such theft was valid.

 

[Mengerian]

Another thing I wonder about this agreement. With the "Honk Kong" Agreement the miners committed to not do something, ie, not run Bitcoin Classic. With this agreement, they have committed to do something.

But as far as I can tell they haven't committed to not do anything. They haven't said, for example, that they won't fork to 8MB blocks within two months at 75% hash rate signalling.

So maybe these types of block-size increase initiatives are still worth keeping alive. Based on what BitPay was saying during the panel discussion, it seems they urgently need an on-chain capacity increase. They may not want to wait around for 6 months, as this agreement envisions.

 

[Norway]

WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE:
@cypherdoc
(Hopefully alive)

Can anybody here please help me to get in touch with @cypherdoc ?

Please post here or PM me if you can.​