Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

79b79aa8

Well-Known Member
Sep 22, 2015
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3,440
BitFury CEO: "I don't like the word 'mining'".
Opens $100M mining farm [1].
At a public forum I heard BitFury's Global Chief Communications Officer, Jamie Smith, say she did not like the word 'mining', as she did not feel she could explain it to non-technical audiences (she is a former White House spokesperson, etc.). Not clear how interested she was in understanding why Satoshi called it mining.

BitFury is simply staying on message on this front.
 

theZerg

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Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
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Im looking for links to the FUD about how its dangerous to run non core clients because core devs are best blah blah

Edit: not gavin bashing tho that comes close
 
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solex

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Aug 22, 2015
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Looking at xtnodes.com what is strange is the oscillation of Core nodes in a sinusoidal waveform; not seen if you look at the XT, Classic or Unlimited node count. Also there are occasionally rapid drops and rises in node count for both camps suggesting to me that perhaps there are fake nodes out there.
I think the sinusoidal plot for the Core node count is representative of a sub-population which is being brought online for a purpose and shut down soon after. Probably node owners who just want the wallet to move some BTC. Do the peaks correspond with EU-US daylight hours? Nodes which are running for the other implementations are deliberately started to try and create a permanent network for handling larger blocks so are less likely to be stopped and started for ad-hoc reasons.

edit: When and if another implementation goes sinusoidal and Core flattens out then this will be a sign that the ecosystem has largely moved across.
 
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cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
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[doublepost=1457739654][/doublepost]
Im looking for links to the FUD about how its dangerous to run non core clients because core devs are best blah blah

Edit: not gavin bashing tho that comes close
ask @SysMan
i'm sure he could give you an earful.
[doublepost=1457740038][/doublepost]
 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
931
4,008
Random thought here that popped into my head that's bothering me.

Bitcoin is hashcash extended with inflation control. Adam Back even lamented to Trace Mayer on the podcast a few months ago not thinking of difficulty re-targeting.

How on God's green Earth is that remotely possible?

The guy invented this particular proof-of-work scheme. There is exactly one parameter that tunes it, the hashing target. If you needed to slow down successful hashes, the only thing you could even think of in the first place is increasing the target. The notion of the target creating meaningful make-work is literally the only thing happening in this scheme!

Granted I might be suffering from some hindsight bias actually knowing what Bitcoin is at this point in time, but seriously, how is the claim that the inflation control was the missing link even remotely plausible?
 

megadeth

Member
Aug 28, 2015
60
212
Prepare for one of the greatest crashes in the history of cryptocurrencies in the alt that shall not be named.
Large scale wealth transfer in the BTC ecosystem, pre-halving.
Will be interesting to watch @cypherdoc's quote "most people will lose money in this space" come to life.
 

rocks

Active Member
Sep 24, 2015
586
2,284
Status update on the Satoshi's Bitcoin full fork project
(Note, I originally posted this under a new 'largerblocks' alias, but will use my standard ID "rocks" for now on)

Success!!! The initial coding work is complete and the first tests ran smoothly. The next set of tests are currently running on the main net and can be seen live here.
https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/?q=/SatoshisBitcoinFullFork_Trial_2_At402421:0.11.2/

Test 1 - Complete
This was a series of tests to make sure that a single node running on the main chain would fork at a specific height and then mine and build a new chain. This was done multiple times without issue. BTW it was really fun to run a node that was mining full blocks...

Test 2 - In Progress
This test is the same as above but now with a group of nodes (>10) to make sure that after forking a group of nodes will work together to build a single new chain that is a branch of the main chain. These nodes will run on the main net and fork at block height 402421 (estimated midnight Saturday eastern time).

Next set of coding
After Test 2 completes successfully, the only additional coding work needed is to create mechanisms to change to a new group of peers post-fork. After the fork the client needs to both drop peers not following the fork and to find new peers using the fork. This also requires setting up a new CDNSSeedData server to provide seed nodes that followed the fork.

Test 3 - To do
The final series of tests will test the new peer functionality above. Here nodes will fork and then use new seed lists to find clients following the fork. In Test 2 above I manually connect nodes to each other, in this test nodes will lose all of their peers post-fork and go to the seed server to find each other.

The codes
The code is on github and you can try to build and run this yourself. The project is forked from Classic 0.11.2 and you can verify every code change from the Classic repo. The fork height is currently set for mid-April, so the only change needed for you to test is to adjust the fork height to an earlier block.
https://github.com/satoshisbitcoin/satoshisbitcoin

Mining
The new PoW algorithm code and explanation is in the link below. It is the standard scrypt algorithm with two major changes, the first is a 128MB memory size which is large enough to not economically fit onto CMOS die (Litecoin used 128K), and the second is a new sequence of reads that are unpredictable and random in a manner which prevents a hardware pipeline from being built, ASIC implementations are possible, but a light-weight CPU core attached to DRAM will be just as effective and cheaper.
https://github.com/satoshisbitcoin/...11.2/src/crypto/modified_scrypt_smix.cpp#L193

Bitcoin is an open data structure, the market is free to build this data structure anyway it chooses. The idea that we depend on a few specific miners to make an open data structure is absurd. The reality is any group of miners is fine and the market can reject miners when needed.

The Plan
My goal is to complete the rest of the work and Test 3 within 2 weeks. After that there will be 3-4 weeks until the current fork height at the mid-April difficulty adjustment.

The plan is to use those 3-4 weeks to run real nodes that will fork on the main net and promote the client and others to join. So far /r/btc and /r/bitcoin have censored this project. I hope people here can understand how unacceptable that is. Well this time there will be hundreds of SatoshisBitcoin clients running on the main net and viewable by every on bitnodes.21.co, that will make it hard to censor the project.

Please join or help if you can.This project brings back CPU mining and there is zero risk to trying it at home. Run the client on your home computer and if the branch does not take off just delete it, but if the fork does take off you have the opportunity to miner early coins on you home computer starting in mid-April.

I am going run nodes that build a better block chain and preservers everyone's coins. Please join me.
 
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molecular

Active Member
Aug 31, 2015
372
1,391
Looking at xtnodes.com what is strange is the oscillation of Core nodes in a sinusoidal waveform; not seen if you look at the XT, Classic or Unlimited node count.
It's nodes that are used by people as wallets. bitcoin-qt. They only run during the users waking (or working) hours, maybe only at night for a couple of hours. Whatever that usage pattern is, it follows a circadian rythm, because man is an animal and those nodes are slaved to individual humans.

EDIT: an observation: seems the amplitute of osciallation seems to be increasing over time. Makes sense: serious, well-maintained nodes that are always-on upgrade sooner than those qt wallets.
 
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theZerg

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Staff member
Aug 28, 2015
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2,327
[doublepost=1457739654][/doublepost]
ask @SysMan
i'm sure he could give you an earful.
[doublepost=1457740038][/doublepost]
Its ok if the comments are by shills better if from more involved players. trying to establish that a perception was created -- an idea has been pushed.

I'm working on BU all night every night this week help me out here and please find the links if you know them dont send me off to do it. Thx!!
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
keep piling on the Classic 0.12 nodes guys; Austin's appearance & concerns are evidence this is causing a panic within Blockstream. afterall, we are the Economic Majority and we are voicing our preference thru this mechanism. miners won't be able to ignore this.