Hello shills

[watashi-kokoto]

I'm really interested about the so called distributed governance. How does it work?

It's something like the illuminati, a secret invite only fraternity with whores and coke.

Or is it something much more deeper, something so fundamental and bound to make the world a far better place than it is now.

Most importantly how does Classic fit into the puzzle. Explain yourself, big blockers.

 

[freetrader]

Drats, you have uncovered our secrets and penetrated our hidden lair.

Welcome then.

What distributed governance are you referring to? I don't usually hear people talking about distributed governance, at least not around here.

Classic is an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin client derived from Core, and following this roadmap:

https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/documentation/blob/master/roadmap/roadmap2016.md

 

[watashi-kokoto]

This is nice, but perhaps more importantly, what is the consensus with respect to Segregated Witness. I need to hear your opinions on the issue.

The thing is, Segregated Witness is pretty much orthogonal to the 2MB bump and hard fork. We know that seg wit already "raises the cap". But this could (or couldn't) be done both. So I can imagine Segwit followed by a hard fork that makes Segwit less ugly and then Hard fork to 2MB. Or it could be in reverse order, First the hard fork to 2MB with segwit preparation, next actual Segwit done cleanly.


Again, we don't need to argue or insult each other. Even as a big blocker, I can see that your approach to the delicate problem has something on it. But what about the shills? Yes, the people who spread fear and misinformation. When will this be fixed.
[doublepost=1458504763][/doublepost]From some point of view Segwit doesn't raise anything. The 1MB cap is still there. But from a different point of view, Segwit is a scalability upgrade because the signatures are not anymore part of what in the original Satoshi vision is considered to be "The block". So the signatures become separate and are subject to a newly introduced rules, but not bound by the 1MB limitation.

 

[AdrianX]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1398994.msg14215904#msg14215904

don't worry about the lies, manipulation and misinformation, we're on it. we got it covered

 

[freetrader]

@watashi-kokoto : I have only seen a variety of opinions on topics such as Segregated Witness. Not everyone agrees with the characterization that SegWit "raises the cap" in any meaningful way, for example.

You may want to look at specific threads on this forum and discuss the points against or for SegWit with the members that are interested. You're not likely to find a single "consensus" on this issue on this site.

So far, no-one has argued or insulted each other, although your thread title "Hello shills" is bound to turn some of the more serious posters off responding to you. You may wish to consider that in future posts.

I am not entirely sure to which "delicate problem" you are referring. The Classic project seems to have SegWit on their roadmap, albeit perhaps not in the soft-fork variant currently planned by Core.

I am also not sure exactly whom specifically you are calling a shill and why, and what exactly the "fear and misinformation" is that you seem to want to fix. Perhaps you can elaborate, but I suggest that you refrain from such labelling terms and stick to the technical issues. Otherwise you may not find many people willing to discuss with you.

 

[VeritasSapere]

Welcome to the forum @watashi-kokoto, glad you decided to come join us here, though the title of this thread is a bit offensive, the way I see it does not matter who the shills are, especially considering that in most cases this can not be proven. What does matter is the content of our arguments, if we are being rational and civil and our arguments have merit then we are adding to the discussion, when people start insulting and fear mongering it can be seen as being counter productive.

Here is an explanation of my theory on the governance of Bitcoin:

I think that Bitcoin relies on the economic self-interest of the masses to govern consensus. I actually perceive Bitcoin as being the evolution of governance. Voluntary and decentralized non geographically bound governance, the evolution of the modern democracy if you will into something better and superior.

Bitcoin's governance mechanism is a form of democracy, not a democracy in the way that we know today. It is very different, I think better. However there are very democratic aspects to it, like reflecting the will of the economic majority. Which is not that dissimilar to reflecting the will of the people, which is what democracies are supposed to do in theory at least.

Bitcoin is interesting as a form of democracy, because it is different to modern state democracies in that it places positive incentives on a select group of people who essentially vote in the interests of the economic majority, almost the opposite of how modern state democracies work, since our representatives in modern state democracies often have perverse incentives acting upon them. Which is what makes decentralized proof of work blockchains arguably a superior form of governance.

Consensus is an emergent property which flows from the will of the economic majority. Proof of work is the best way to measure this consensus. The pools act as proxy for the miners, pools behave in a similar way to representatives within a representative democracy. Then in turn the miners act as a proxy for the economic majority. Since the miners are incentivized to follow the economic majority. In effect the economic majority rules Bitcoin, in other words the market rules Bitcoin. Bitcoin relies on the economic self-interest of the masses to govern consensus.

This only works however if we have multiple viable alternative implementations for people to choose from, since there need to be multiple options to choose from otherwise it is not really a choice. I can go into more depth about my conception of Bitcoin governance but this describes my position well in short form at least.
[doublepost=1458506318][/doublepost]To answer your question more specifically, Classic fits into this picture because it is providing an alternative vision and path for Bitcoin going into the future compared to Core. My own conception of the governance and economics of Bitcoin align much better with both Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited, which is why they get my vote. I am a critic of the road plan Core has laid out for Bitcoin, so having alternative implementations allows me to express this opinion on the network, both by running full nodes and mining. This is critical for the the governance mechanism of Bitcoin to fuction correctly. After all an election with only one party is not really an election at all.

 

[YarkoL]

Again, we don't need to argue or insult each other.

Says a guy who routinely throws insults like this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1330553.msg13617844#msg13617844

Even as a big blocker, I can see that your approach to the delicate problem has something on it. .

and no, big blocks is not innovation, it's simply attack on Bitcoin.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1330553.msg13882886#msg13882886

Nice try, troll.

 

[freetrader]

At least this image in one of your posts is mildly funny, OP:

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1330553.msg13883363#msg13883363

I'm going to have to go with irony on that though, which is something that is always appreciated around here.

 

[johnyj]

From some point of view Segwit doesn't raise anything. The 1MB cap is still there. But from a different point of view, Segwit is a scalability upgrade because the signatures are not anymore part of what in the original Satoshi vision is considered to be "The block". So the signatures become separate and are subject to a newly introduced rules, but not bound by the 1MB limitation.

My biggest concern with segwit is that it is a fundamental change to the most basic element of bitcoin : transactions. Just like Pieter said, "it pretty much changes every piece of software that has ever written for bitcoin". This level of change will make it very difficult for any dev/user to understand its implication and consequence. If they don't understand, how could they support it? In fact I have never met a dev who can really tell all the complexity it brings in a bitcoin nodes and segwit nodes mixed environment, and how to make sure those anyone-can-spend transactions will not cause chaos for bitcoin nodes

So in my view, first hard fork 2MB and then take enough time to analyze test and roll out segwit as a hard fork is a better approach

Here is an analysis around segwit
https://bitco.in/forum/threads/segregated-witness-sotf-fork-segwit-pros-and-cons.986/

 

[theZerg]

I think many of the so called "big blockers" support seg wit but not the seg wit proposed by core. I also have no confidence that core will subsequently hard fork to 2MB so the structure of the core proposal is not sufficient for a compromise.

Here are my concerns:
1. The soft fork (SF) mechanism is dangerous. It requires that miners be trusted and allows attackers with a minority of the hash power to temporarily spend any SW spent coins in non-upgraded nodes. Attackers with a majority of hash power can permanently spend any SW spent coins (which is why "must trust miners").

2. SW is MUCH more complicated than bigger blocks.

3. HF cleanly indicates an upgrade is necessary. SF fails to do so yet opens the attacks described in 1.

4. The SW vs normal block accounting is arbitrary and benefits Blockstream's business model. There is no reason to discount witness data since all full nodes need to download it. The data should simply be TX + Witness < N

5. Worse this discounting of witness SW gives only a 1MB TX space but allows a 4MB "attack" space -- spammers can create weird tx to fill the witness space. It you read Core's subsequent ideas on scaling, this ratio dramatically limits block space in the future as the attack space becomes 16MB or 32MB but the TX space remains just a few MB.

But a SW hard fork resolving the above and also containing SW features like no tx malleability, maybe the script versioning, and other features like fraud proofs would be great.


tl;dr; You'd be surprised at how many if not most of the "big blockers" are OK with a modified seg wit and support Lightning Network (we support it as a competitive option. We do not support being FORCED to use it due to artificially created main chain fees).

 

[67 speedqueen]

... it places positive incentives on a select group of people who essentially vote in the interests of the economic majority, ...

Could you define what you mean by "economic majority," and expand a bit on the mechanics of voting by economic majority?

 

[johnyj]

Could you define what you mean by "economic majority," and expand a bit on the mechanics of voting by economic majority?

So far it seems to be the miners, since miners control where the chain is extending, so you make a deal with all the major pools then you control bitcoin. There are other stake holders, they can vote with selling the coins, but they won't sell the coin if that's the only coin they have, so if we had a fork then it is very likely the economy majority will vote by selling the chain they don't like, and that's why core devs are desperately resist for a hard fork, since their chain will die following a hard fork

 

[VeritasSapere]

The miners are a part of the economic majority, though quite likely only a small part, I would define the economic majority as the collective will of the users, business, exchanges and merchants among many more actors that actually give Bitcoin value. The reason why the economic majority ultimately rules Bitcoin is because the miners who actually make the decisions are incentivized to follow this economic majority obviously compelled by their own self interest.

In the case of the blocksize limit, if it is not increased we can say that this is either the will of the economic majority, which from my perspective would represents a failure of the community, or the governance mechanism of Bitcoin has failed to reflect the will of the economic majority, in that case I would consider Bitcoin to be fundamentally flawed. Fortunately alternative cryptocurrencies do exist that have solved this problem.

 

[67 speedqueen]

>So far it seems to be the miners
Then "economic majority" is a pretty bad misnomer.
1. Miners don't have > $3.2 billion US invested in their gear. With $6.4 billion being Bitcoin's market cap, that's the minimum stake they would need for a majority, by definition.
I think.
2. BTC long-term value (important to hodlers) is only relevant to miners if they store all of their wealth in BTC. Which they do not -- they're able to sell the coins they mine. This is important, because Bitcoin model works only if miner's interests are perfectly aligned with the hodlers'. Since BTC is not the only store of value (there's money, real estate, gold, turnips, etc., etc.), they aren't.

 

[VeritasSapere]

The investment of the mining equipment itself is meant to be the investment that is supposed to align the interests of the miners towards the best of the network. This is the first real experiment in decentralized governance and it could very well be that this theory is flawed, however if it is it could well be that Bitcoin itself is therefore also fundamentally flawed.

The economic majority themselves are specifically the people that give Bitcoin value, which is not the miners, miners follow the value they do not create it.

 

[67 speedqueen]

The miners are a part of the economic majority, though quite likely only a small part, I would define the economic majority as the collective will of the users, business, exchanges and merchants among many more actors that actually give Bitcoin value.

So, ...zeitgeist? Gestalt? That ...Je ne sais quoi? You do understand what a definition is, correct?
I'm sure you have some personal, perhaps poetic, perhaps spiritual/mystical understanding of "economic majority," but unless it could be defined in lowly, secular terms, we can't access it via our mundane earthbound logic. If you can't define it (as in "necessary and sufficient"), you can't possibly address the second part of my question -- explain to me the voting mechanism by which this "economic majority" makes its will known. So it has no place in this discussions about code, crypto and money.
Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. --brainyquotes.com
[doublepost=1458695677,1458695039][/doublepost]

The investment of the mining equipment itself is meant to be the investment that is supposed to align the interests of the miners towards the best of the network. This is the first real experiment in decentralized governance and it could very well be that this theory is flawed, however if it is it could well be that Bitcoin itself is therefore also fundamentally flawed.

It may or may not be fundamentally flawed, but this notion of "economic majority" sure is. The true economic majority -- those with the greatest stake in BTC, those who actually hodl BTC -- have no voting mechanism beyond their feet, i.e. post-factum, sell if you don't like what happened to you; get out.
That's like telling people they have a voice in their country's leaders by letting them GTFO if they don't like the government in power.

The economic majority themselves are specifically the people that give Bitcoin value, which is not the miners, miners follow the value they do not create it.

Distilled poesy
[doublepost=1458696663][/doublepost]P.S. Sorry about the affected/bitchy tone, carryover from bitcointalk. Bad habits die hard

 

[johnyj]

>So far it seems to be the miners
Then "economic majority" is a pretty bad misnomer.
1. Miners don't have > $3.2 billion US invested in their gear. With $6.4 billion being Bitcoin's market cap, that's the minimum stake they would need for a majority, by definition.
I think.
2. BTC long-term value (important to hodlers) is only relevant to miners if they store all of their wealth in BTC. Which they do not -- they're able to sell the coins they mine. This is important, because Bitcoin model works only if miner's interests are perfectly aligned with the hodlers'. Since BTC is not the only store of value (there's money, real estate, gold, turnips, etc., etc.), they aren't.

Hodlers do nothing to maintain bitcoin's value, the value could just crash to 0 if there is no buyer, so I think hodlers do not represent economy majority: They have the power to destroy value, not construct. Those who constantly provide new user and new capital inflow should be considered economy majority. That's major payment processors, exchanges and merchants who accept bitcoin payment

 

[freetrader]

Hodlers do nothing to maintain bitcoin's value

I think hodlers are a check and balance that can help to maintain Bitcoin's value precisely when there are difficult choices to make and Bitcoin has to fork to let the market decide.

In this situation, hodlers play a very important role, as they will try to maximize the safety of their holdings by choosing one fork over others. In this way, they work to maintain the value of the currency - but perhaps most visibly in key moments.

 

[YarkoL]

To my knowledge "economic majority" is vague enough a term for anyone to suit to his own purposes.
I equate it with what the author of this excellent article calls "economic nodes", that is the set of nodes that are responsible for generating the majority of transactions.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@67 speedqueen

Holders can leave Bitcoin or they can just leave Core, but the latter of course requires the option to leave Core while staying with Bitcoin - i.e., a viable fork like Classic or BU, or a spinoff like what @rocks is working on. That way the two prices can move relative to one another. Corecoins vs. Classiccoins, for example, both being held in equal measure by all holders by default, including miners and just straight hodlers.

The question to me is why the exchanges haven't yet offered futures in Classiccoins and Corecoins for instance. The only answer that makes sense to me is that the market does not see the value disparity between what Bitcoin is and what Bitcoin could be (without the Core millstone around its neck) being big enough to bother with the fork arbitrage process. Yet. All hopes are pinned on Core doing the right thing and/or its outlandish solutions somehow working out - and in timely fashion. I do not really think most hodlers are as patient as they seem with Core; it's just that "sticking with what has worked so far" is an investor's first instinct.