I apologize for being anal retentive, but I keep hearing people use the term "spread" to refer to the price "premium" between exchanges. I thought that traders used the term "spread" to refer to the buy and sell price difference within the same exchange and the price difference between exchanges as the "premium"... thus the price premium of Chinese exchanges is 25 dollars higher than US exchanges.

...or is there something I am missing?

I suppose some people are using the term spread in a more generic sense (but correct ) where most professional currency investors always refer to it in a very narrow case. -- http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/spread.asp which is leading to a bit of the confusion?

There have been cryptsy warning signs that have grown recently which started ever since they got in bed with paycoin.

Luckily there are enough regulated and competing exchanges where price discovery cannot so easily be  manipulated like last time with mtGox.

I would be extremely skeptical with any centralized / unregulated exchange.... including btc-e/

Keep trying brother .... Scant evidence suggest they are releasing some BTC so may either have horrendous customer service or attempting to extend the scam.  


Yes, and if you choose to loan out your bitcoin for trading you should either do so in a decentralized platform where hacking risks exit scams are eliminated or a regulated exchange where more oversight and insurance exists.

Bubbles usually are 5-10x , so if this is one we have a way to go.
I justify holding by reminding myself the whole point of bitcoin is so I don't have to use fiat and I should just eventually use btc directly at a later point in time with my savings..... but I suppose this is a traders/speculators thread so others may be primarily profit driven.

Spend and accumulate daily, regardless of price if you want to support the ecosystem.

Just as many are drawn to bitcoin for ideological/political reasons, many oppose it likewise. Stolfi often appears to be a calm and reasonable skeptic but every now and again his ideological investment in bitcoin failing creeps out with an emotional outburst. These people will likely be the last to adopt bitcoin and may only start using it when they have no choice as their future devices will depend upon bitcoin with or without their knowledge.

Maslov's Hierarchy of needs at play here. He is ideologically opposed to bitcoin succeeding and thus investing in something much more important than money. Bitcoin is an interesting story to follow, but Stolfi's investment is more than a casual observer enjoying the drama from the sidelines as one can easily see how much research he does into bitcoin.

Financial gain is secondary for me, there are much bigger matters at stake here. I will happily sell all my bitcoin completely at a loss if it betrayed its principles. (I.E... excessive centralization, blacklists ruining fungibility, raising the 21 million bitcoin limit, mandated KYC at the protocol level)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2g_7tOwKIE

The spring was set, consolidation finished, and the walls started to crumble creating "irrational" panic buying. It will correct itself eventually , but may be another 5x-10xer..I'm not taking profits and will keep accumulating into 2016 as we are likely to see another double bubble.

Perhaps this rapid bubble is just what we need to increase transaction volume and place pressure upon the developers meeting in December to come to consensus on solving scalability for the 2016 bubble?

Scary , in a bad way nonetheless... not healthy ... but could have some nice consequences.

The beauty about bitcoin is that since it is disinflationary , all you need to have is confidence in is its short to mid term success. Buy now and in the future and never sell for a loss and you will be fine as there will be more rollercoasters to be seen, especially in 2016 with the havening.

Goal for November is to hit ~782+ usd as that will signify blowing past the previous alltime marketcap of 11.6 billion. No stops till we blow past that marker.

Shorting now is indeed a dangerous game as this could be a start of a real bubble. Buying a bit more isn't dangerous because worst comes to worst you wait till 2016 bubble.

I don't see this train stopping soon as there appears to be many factors feeding the beast and causing irrational panic buying feedback loops
... slight pull back on US exchanges , but look at the price in china! A few US investors taking profits but china will reverse that in short order.

China exchanges pulling back as well... this is actually somewhat of a relief as the current growth was unsustainable and unhealthy .. These corrections give me confidence the gains are real and less likely to completely dissolve.

I don't understand your reasoning with the shorts. The best way to convince developers that we need to find a scalability solution is for price to increase so volume increases by attracting new users to fill up the blocks. full blocks = more pressure. Are you playing a bulls role as well to increase volume or just bitter and attacking bitcoin?

440-470 at its current rate .... any correction will quickly get eaten up and likely recover in 30min to 1 hour . This volatility is very bad ... it reflects that bitcoin has reversed course and no longer becoming more stable year after year but still very immature and volatile ... hopefully this will change in 1-5 years.

edit... incoming correction,..

I'm not a day trader so never was discouraged during capitulation or stability... in fact I was enthralled as it allowed me to accumulate and I saw consolidation and efficiency enter the ecosystem by weaker startups being removed.

30min - 1 hour correction... damn... this bull is even wilder than I thought ... there is no way to predict or outsmart this one... better just grab on and hold.

You can at least wait out this bubble , and hop back on during the large crash afterwards (@700 to 2k??) and wait for another bubble in 2016.  

more likely a DDOS from traders clicking f5

Agreed. Even if he believes it is likely , one should reframe from suggesting it and act more like Andreas Antonopoulos. I try and focus on the utility with new users like saving 15-30% off amazon and being able to send money with minimal to no fees.


No , this is unhealthy and violent rise... I would be happier with 1-2% steady gains a day for the next year

Define "Bitcoiners" as coinbase has 2.7 million KYC verified clients and 4.2 million accounts and they fall outside the jurisdiction of the largest bitcoin userbase. A conservative estimate would be 4-5 million minimum.

https://www.coinbase.com/about

That's just coinbase off the chain though.... what about all the other exchanges, "banks" and services like changetip?

If you consider a "bitcoiner" as actively using it almost daily than I will take half a million users and suggest that is really healthy. All those passive users who I gifted 30-50 dollars through coinbase , now have hundreds of dollars worth btc , will soon become active again.


Many people that purchased near the peak were and are still disappointing and sold at a loss because they didn't follow advice from people like me which discourage speculation and focus on short term utility and insist if they do speculate that they are in it for the longterm and do their research first. Thousands sold at a loss, and turned their back on bitcoin and won't be returning for many years.

The price of any stock, currency, or commodity is entirely "speculative." That is how markets work. Intrinsic value is dynamic and found within anything of value/utility. Bitcoin has tremendous utility and value and its assets can be considered both the collective IP, userbase, and hardware that supports our ecosystem.

I understand market psychology and that these bubbles are unavoidable... I just look forward to more stability in the future when inflation is low and market cap high.

Of course 1% a day is unlikely and an insane amount of growth.... I was simply suggesting that would be better for adoption than 10x gains within 1.5 months and violent crashes over and over... the bubbles are indeed unavoidable , especially since inflation is designed to radically decrease in steps and because of market psychology ..

It would be interesting to see in a parallel universe if there was steadier growth with more gradual disinflation as you are only dealing with media feedbackloops and market hysteria.

Agreed... but stock owners are speculating on future dividend gains that may or may not be realized when they purchase stock. Just like with bitcoin. But unlike bitcoin, stocks have little use or utility while you own them. A lot of stock doesn't even allow you any voting power.

There is no doubt that private permission blockchain ledgers will provide a some efficiency gains with their accounting vs other RDBMS merely by forcing the hand of financial institutions to compete and re-evaluate fintech and their processes. I am glad Satoshi could invigorate this evolution in fintech where those that prefer fiat will indirectly benefit.

This doesn't concern me much as to competition with bitcoin as this isn't a zero sum game and there likley will be many competing payment rails networks and currencies.

Ignoring the economic advantages of disinflationary currencies as keynsians would disagree, one thing these permissioned ledgers will never be able to compete with bitcoin on is with bitcoins advantages of being open, KYC free (within the protocol), decentralized, and offering regulatory arbitrage.  The costs of PoW are a fraction compared to the cost of regulation and fraud which would need to be managed within permissioned ledgers.

Their digital tokens will be represented in USD and Euros primarily. For the time being these provide relatively stable forms of currency with low volatility(although the euro was more volatile than bitcoin week to week for the first 2.5 months 15' when it radically dropped in value) but just make sure you spend those currencies quickly as they aren't stable long term stores of value.

I'm absolutely positive Fiat will remain dominant for certain tasks like paying taxes and bitcoin has very little chance of ever replacing that role so these currencies are not at risk of being discontinued.... although some would argue the USD has failed and been replaced 2-3 times already so it is likely to continue failing like most forms of fiat historically.

While this is true, the fact that they are investing in new fintech and re-evaluating processes due to bitcoin will likely lead to both some short term losses from investing in their infrastructure and long term improvements in efficiency.

Even if detractors despise bitcoin like JorgeStolfi, they should be grateful that competition has led to banks re-evaluating their inefficiencies.

Fiat is already primarily (99%) represented by digital tokens with shared permission ledgers. Banks are merely being conned by developers and startups into promised efficiencies to be found with "blockchain" tech over their old permissioned ledgers or are trying to co-opt the market buzz over bitcoin.

Either way , some banks will lose alot of money and never see a return from their "blockchain" investments , others will lose a lot of money and eventually return a profit of their investments due to very slight improvements in processes, and none will be able to co-opt some of the more interesting aspects of bitcoin.

Based upon this precedent - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102  which is far more egregious than simply stopping printing their own virtual token I think you have a realistic fear. This is one of many reasons bitcoin will have a important future for all.

Bitcoin is Regulatory Arbitrage and no one should underestimate how important of a role that fulfills.

It is always interesting to hear people compartmentalize certain unethical actions to make distinctions between what is acceptable in society based upon whether expected groups of criminals commit crimes vs when petty criminals commit crimes.

Thus your comment acknowledges the benefits of certain procedures on reducing petty crimes but actually allows for more institutionalized crimes to occur. You would think that the priority should be placed upon the largest crimes, right?

I am more interested in discovering solutions that involve reducing all these crimes and programmable currency like bitcoin that allows ricardian contracts, mutisig and arbitration fulfills that role.

They are still discussing it ---
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-11-20/bitcoin-is-better-than-cash-for-keeping-track-of-terrorists
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-07/ban-physical-cash-coming-soon


And soon teaching math in Australia without certain permissions will be illegal-
http://bitcoinist.net/teaching-encryption-soon-illegal-australia/

Was not expecting this level of stupidity and corruption.

Delaying payments allows banks to unfairly profit off fees and interest, fractional reserve lending, and leverage their clients assets to money launder for profit with terrorists and dangerous drug dealers. These delays also allow them to assist states in committing multiple crimes of asset seizurement and other institutionalized forms of theft. Some of these crimes are well intentioned but misguided and unethical , and some are done with the greatest form of moral disregard that only the worst psychopaths can muster.

What is obscene about Fiat is states usually refuse to allow for the choice in a competing currency (if they can get away with it, ). Currency is a form of expression and a contract of value that we all should have a right to choose. If the USD or Euro is superior under permission private blockchains than allow for it prove itself with competition.

It will be interesting to see the future unfold when a more resilient currency exists allowing regulatory arbitrage to benefit consumers is available. The previous examples that were attacked and shutdown were a fraction of the market cap bitcoin has so we are exploring uncharted waters.

I hate to defend those criminals but to be fair the 2.3 trillion didn't go "missing" but was simply not "properly" documented or audited. Thus some of it falls in the category of sloppy accounting, some of it for secret government programs(funding terrorists for example), and some of it perhaps stolen with corruption. This "accounting" crime covering up other crimes being announced the day after 9/11 is of high suspicion and completely understandable why they would hold off for an opportune time to admit such irresponsible lapse in accounting which should be considered criminal.

This huge accounting error makes me question how efficient states are at war and killing people as I used to assume they were very good at these tasks. It is a tough call whether this sloppiness is deliberate and doesn't take away from their efficiency at destruction or just incompetent. My guess would be a mixture of the two.

Either way ... here is a way to earn some BTC and show solidarity against state corruption -

http://www.bitcoinnotbombs.com/antiwar-haiku-contest/

Well, I am not a 9/11 truther but that is one hell of a scary coincidence. Either way the US government has admitted to enough crimes where we don't need to waste time arguing over whether 9/11 was an inside job or not. It is better for us to focus our energy on projects like bitcoin which make these "accounting errors" of this magnitude more difficult to create.


90% efficiency at murdering innocent civilians.

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/


I really don't understand why people can ethically support and pay for this behavior.

The Moment when you know you are on the right path when bitter bitcoin skeptics strangely take sides in consensus changes when they have no stake in the battle.


Why so many emotional and bitter outbursts instead of cool, collective, or humored observances?

To those interested in a balanced and holistic way to scale and grow capacity here is a great outline--

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html

Bitcoin has a bright future indeed.

So did you pick a consensus side in matters which have no impact upon you merely out of academic interest or because of a bitter emotional reaction?


Ignoring the miners long term incentives to benefit the ecosystem and assuming short term selfish behavior only, the miners will be incentivized by more tx fees when the capacity more than doubles. When margins are extremely tight these incentives are more than enough to encourage the right behavior.

I don't pretend to assume how quickly bitcoin will scale, although I would rather have better optimised solutions like SW vs BIP101 to address capacity with a list of backstop hardfork options for  last minute solutions in un-expected growth spurts -




I believe it is quite likely capacity demand won't increase as quickly as some suggest as people are naturally resistant to trusting new and volatile currencies but in cases where this isn't true than having a slight delay in confirmations while a pretested hardfork is deployed isn't the end of the world. (Paypal and visa go down all the time after all and chaos doesn't ensue)



Lite wallets and SPV nodes will be upgraded automatically to take full advantage of SW and users will naturally upgrade without much thought. SatoshiDice will be constrained to compete with everyone else and have no advantages.


This is false as the average load for 100% full blocks would be around 2MB with only approaching short of 4MB for heavy multisig.

There are other technical nuances that benefit full nodes with SW such as-
Existing full nodes already do not validate signatures in the far past-- with SW they could also skip transferring them among other benefits .

Here is an example if you have any doubts as to why you are incorrect-

 Are you insinuating that SW isn't good for them? They will eventually change as most users do update their wallets regularly and this has 100% consensus with devs.



Users can decide to immediately use bitcoin core or wallets that have the upgrade if they want. You are assuming that we are already at 100% capacity and SatoshiDice is going to rush in to exploit the extra bandwidth. We aren't using our capacity now, what makes you think that building bigger capacity will insure that it immediately gets filled?

Its a bit odd that you are both so skeptical of bitcoin but so optimistic at the same time expecting huge growth in usage and tx's(whether you think those tx are legitimate or not is inconsequential as it represents growth in the ecosystem). Or perhaps you are hoping that blockstream and core fails to deliver scalable capacity improvements and bitcoin bloats from spam so it becomes technically unusable? This would explain a lot of your vitriol for them.


SW is indeed a piece of the puzzle to increase capacity along with the list of changes that are being outlined in the provided link that you appear to have ignored. ETA for SW moving over from sidechain testnet to main bitcoin testnet this month and deployment in late 15 or jan 16'

Why are you so interested in Bitcoin's well being and against the "fee market"? Why not be an impartial academic observer and watch as these events unfold? Do you have some sort of stake in large blocks being the primary means of growing capacity vs these more holistic approaches that take into consideration many variables ?

I suppose you could have been watching this drama for so long that you have built a natural preference for certain "teams" and irrationally invest in an outcome you have no stake in. Happens all the time with sports fanatics. Is this the case with you?

The development process is open, you can join the mailing list if you want to be in on their "secrets" , SW has been discussed to death since 2011.... where have you been?

I can certainly tell you haven't coded much, if any, before as the real reason devs prefer soft-fork is because of the possible bugs and complications that rolling out hard forks that aren't backwards compatible create.

You appear to be holding unfounded and irrational conspiracies which can easily be proven false.  


This assumption doesn't match the data. Nodes Upgrading to the newest softforks is actually increasing in velocity. http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/block_version/5y?c=block_version&r=week&t=a

BIP 65 already reach activation in short order. 0.11.2 was released only in Nov 13.

I suppose its easy to be critical and make armchair disagreements without much concern of their validity when you don't have a stake in bitcoin. I would love to see you short/daytrade bitcoin as it may bring more accuracy to your comments as it would incentivize you to better fact check.

Yes, compared to other currencies Bitcoin has been performing amazingly well for 5 of the 6 years. Bitcoin exemplifies the opposite of the Argentinian peso or Venezuelan Bolivar .


https://medium.com/@BambouClub/best-and-worst-performing-currencies-in-2015-d1e62088bc29#.sq19x6i2q

Since the scaling discussion is rolling over here, I would like everyone to consider this data -

Rusty is a talented and competent developer and I am grateful that he can contribute to our ecosystem. I really appreciate all the testing and data he has provided our community.


The core devs have little control. The miners can push through a hardfork without the developers. The miners have most of the keys to the kingdom and simply choose to trust the developers for the time being based upon their competence.

This really shouldn't be an us vs them debate... because we should always prepare for the worst and support all the implementations. Other implementations need a lot of help and I would personally welcome some of the competent core developers breaking off and leading other repositories.

Agreed. All side, tree, sub , separated chains should be dependent upon the longest chain. This is the way forward.

Rather than wasting time bikeshedding, infighting , or assuming intentions we should simply do our best to support all implementations to raise the bar of the whole ecosystem.

On that note ... I am off for today ...

Happy New Year to everyone.   Don't drink and drive and if you can avoid the roads by sleeping with the host/hostess of the party than take the opportunity.

Most new adoption will have to go through a bank or exchange anyways so they can simply make an economic choice to conduct a free off the chain tx with coinbase/circle/changetip/ect... vs making a 30 penny fee tx on the chain during a fee market event as defined by Garzik. This would buffer any overflow and prevent a crisis while a hard fork is implemented to raise the maxblocksize or other solutions.

I am not suggesting that I would prefer people to permanently use off the chain solutions or that I don't sympathize with those that suggest we need to kick the can either ....   I am merely indicating that the situation is not as dire as you seem to imply.

We should focus on conducting as much testing as possible on various hard fork capacity solutions in the next 6 months to prepare for this fantastic problem to dilemma to overcome. This includes all the implementations.

p.s... SepSig is also flexible insomuch as we can choose to use more multisig(a good thing to encourage) to increase capacity to 3-4x if needed , rather than simply 1.75x

Yes, fee market pressure could drive more to multisig which would increase capacity from 1.75x to somewhere between 2-3x as blocks will unlikely be mostly filled with SepSig.


A bit of crisis can be a good thing. New innovative ideas are created -I.E.. SepSig, decentralization of forums (done), decentralization of implementations (in the process) .




Neither do I , but it could act as a temporary buffer while a hardfork is rolled out. I'm merely suggesting that bitcoin will continue working and not be down like what occasionally happens with paypal and visa networks.

This is a fair point upon consideration ... thus we should assume SepSig increases capacity to 1.75-2MB.

Bitcoin Raison D'ętre reinforced - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/10819885/David-Cameron-Taxes-will-rise-unless-we-can-raid-bank-accounts.html

Stealing peoples fiat without due process or court order.,,, Nice new low. Reminds me of asset forfeiture in the US-- guilty until proven innocent.


Year is off to a good start--

What are people getting behind? There is no BIP, no whitepaper and no code yet .... Why not be reasonable and wait for the details to be released before agreeing to it and supporting it? All I can say right now is I support the idea of multiple implementations and respect some of the people working on that one ... that being said I cannot give an opinion till details are forthcoming. If it doesn't include segwit it is a no starter as well.

I'm undecided. Are you against Cores soft Fork proposal to increase capacity or are you a "forker" as well ?

Certainly interesting ... whatever "it" is ... who knows?...Somewhat irresponsible for them to back something that isn't even formulated yet.

Segwitt details are well understood, well documented , and with corresponding code and now is in the main testnet instead of just sidechain. Bitcoin Classic has none of that and has contradictory proposals right now as they attempt to formulate what it is.

I.E... https://bitcoinclassic.com/ it is represented as a BIP 102
within this merged pull request -it is a 2MB 4 MB proposal - https://bitcoinclassic.consider.it/merge-3-v0112-2mb-4mb?results=true
They are still voting and deciding upon whether to include Segwit or not and a whole other set of features like reversing RBF or not here -
https://bitcoinclassic.consider.it/

Basically, one is clear and the other is still being formulated so we should with-hold judgment.

  

Many people seem to allude that 2MB capacity increase would require simply changing maxBlockSize variable when this simply isn't true as other lines of code would need to be changed to prevent new attack vectors(I.E.. CVE-2013-2292. ). Some proposed code to mitigate these new attacks- https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/commit/cc1a7b53629b265e1be6e212d64524f709d27022

This being said... yes, segwit is more complicated ... but it is all worth it as the capacity increases within it are the least intresting aspects of what it provides us. Right now we don't know if Bitcoin Classic will implement Segwit or not, but if they do not and you truley understand the benefits of segwit than this should be an immediate dis qualifier.

The code is done and is in the main bitcoin testnet being tested. Might it be modified if a bug is found?... sure... but it has already been completed and tested for many months last year in sidechains and now it is being tested in the main testnet.

http://www.bitcoin.kn/2016/01/ciphrex-ceo-eric-lombrozo-discusses-the-live-segregated-witness-test-net/?utm_campaign=ciphrex-ceo-eric-lombrozo-discusses-the-live-segregated-witness-test-net&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-277-separating-signatures-with-segregated-witness

There is no way to know if changes will be made after testing and when RC is ready... that is somewhat of the point of the testnet. Bitcoin classic on the other hand doesn't even have a clear understanding of what the overall framework is , let alone the code, let alone testing.

Call me old school, but I prefer this order of development
1) Proposals
2) BIP or Whitepaper created
3) Initial draft coding and preliminary testing
4) Peer review , more testing , more debugging
5) Testnet , with more changes if needed and coordination with other wallet developers
6) RC release  


Bitcoin Classic is at step 1, Segwit is at step 5.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-January/012195.html

For source code, please look at sipa's github repo:
https://github.com/sipa/bitcoin/tree/segwit

And some example signing code at my repo:
https://github.com/CodeShark/BitcoinScriptExperiments/blob/master/src/signwitnesstx.cpp


This doesn't make Bitcoin Classic bad or one we should criticize... it merely is one that is immature and needs to go through those steps.
This being said, it can go through some of these steps fairly quickly as some of these concepts aren't new and have been tested on other BIPs.

Classic is not BIP102. When they finally figure things out my guess is 2-4 with segwit.


You should be fine, because you will be taking all those shorts. I encourage it.

The rest of us should be comfortable regardless what implementation gets adopted because we understand that bigger blocks don't spell sudden death and a fee market event doesn't either. There are trade offs with each but, at least in the short term, no big differences between the outcome for bitcoin this year.

If one of the other implementations gets 750/1000 blocks than there is still a 4 week grace period. People tend to act more rational when it involves their life savings and business investments. If those numbers grow within those 4 weeks a fork will ensue, otherwise others will run back to core even if they hate it out of fear of becoming a worthless alt.

I keep hearing these insinuations that Blockstream is going to control the payment channel layer (LN) . Do you guys really think that LN isn't going to be open source and available for any node to compete with Blockstream settlement nodes with? Do you really believe that any of us will bother touching any payment channel that isn't open source?

Sure, Like their product "Liquid"? Why Shouldn't hard work and innovation be rewarded whether its with Blockstream product liquid, Coinbases products like shift , or any other company. We all benefit from these competing products.

Your fears are completely misguided as you assume some sort of control or lock-in with developers or code when the reality is that we can go completely down the rabbit hole of core with LN framework and easily revert back to an XT model. The greater concern should be on the centralization of ASIC manufacturing, node count and Pool mining.

You are very confused. Core cannot force the miners , nodes, processors, and users what code to use. The veto is completely within our power. All I have to do I download a copy of Bitcoin XT or unlimited and I vetoed Core. A 12 year old child can create and alternative implementation and we can collectively veto core. Core only has power insomuch as we give them power and it can be taken away quickly in a moments notice.



They require consensus with adoption. If you don't upgrade you don't adopt segwit.



Sure... but let me guess a few of your disagreements. Segwit Soft fork is voluntary but than the old nodes won't get the lower fees and won't be able to verify properly new segwit txs making them obsolete. A soft fork forces nodes to upgrade to insure they get bug fixes otherwise they will be vulnerable.

Let me address these two concerns:

1) The tx fees comparing now to after segwit on non-upgraded nodes will remain the same unless a fee event occurs which is the exact same scenario with or without segwit. If you don't like the bundling of the other features with capacity improvement than that is what other implementations are for.

2) We are discussing open source code here, which means we can take all the bugfixes and backpatch them to previous versions so they remain segwit free and secure.

Goldman sachs and govcoin can never replicate some of bitcoins best attributes:soverign, immutable, no KYC. and extremely unlikely to replicate other features that make bitcoin so great : limited , disinflationary.

Once you know this , you will have no fear of these private blockchains.

How does a softfork break old nodes? The bugs exist with or without the new changes and one can backport any bugfixes to previous versions that don't want new features like segwit. Yes, segwit is indeed optional for full nodes, non-upgraded full nodes will continue to work and verify non segwit tx's,if and when you are the last non-segwit node than that is one of the most ideal examples of consensus we can have, where 99.99% of other nodes have switched over and you are the only one remaining , much fairer and flexible than a hard fork with lower consensus numbers.


Are you suggesting the miners aren't excited about the features and benefits of segwit and are instead merely salivating over the extra tx fees from a mere 0-0.3 MB in capacity increase that classic is possibly proposing above segwit?  

Hopefully you are not suggesting that only the variable maxBlockSize needs to be changed for Classic either- CVE-2013-2292.

 

Yes this is what I explained, but they will still verify tx from non-upgraded nodes.
The bugs I refer to are in reference to concerns of some that may prefer security patches and not some features like segwit /or RBF.

https://bitcoinclassic.consider.it/ gives the appearance of consensus forming through democracy but in the end  there is little difference as jtoomim or gavin has veto power or can push through a change the community disagrees with -

Small sample..


    #6438 2531438 openssl: avoid config file load/race
    #6571 100ac4e libbitcoinconsensus: avoid a crash in multi-threaded environments
    #6694 834e299 [QT] fix thin space word wrap line break issue
    #6703 1cd7952 Backport bugfixes to 0.11
    #6750 5ed8d0b Recent rejects backport to v0.11
    #6769 71cc9d9 Test LowS in standardness, removes nuisance malleability vector.
    #6789 b4ad73f Update miniupnpc to 1.9.20151008
    #6785 b4dc33e Backport to v0.11: In (strCommand == “tx”), return if AlreadyHave()
    #6795 4dbcec0 net: Disable upnp by default

Not for many of us.



Fiat, bank coins, and gov alts do indeed have a future, but I won't touch those insecure premined alts. They can't and will never be able to replicate bitcoins best features (public or private blockchain based) ... and this is why Bitcoin is here to stay.

Bitcoin doesn't have to be everything to everyone to succeed. It has already succeeded and will continue to grow even if it is relegated to serving the grey and black markets. If bitcoin grows from covering 0.001% of the blackmarket to 1% it has a fantastic future. Do I believe bitcoin will be relegated to criminal free men use on the blackmarket? No. If it does will I be disappointed? No. Bitcoin was given birth from the cipherpunks and it won't give up its genetics so we can make friends with everyone.

I am proud bitcoin serves as a fungible currency for the deepweb, as well as retail stores. The power to do good or evil with a currency is a true test that it is indeed a real currency. Your non-immutable bankcoins and gov alts are simply coupon tokens that can be refused and reclaimed by the store owner at their discretion...  they aren't as fungible either: some currency (fiat held by the rich and well connected) is worth more than other fiat (fiat held by you which can be confiscated by asset forfeiture)

Hearn's immaturity and disloyalty isn't even worth our contempt. His contributions and reckless actions will be forgotten and we will move forward with this grand project. There is no stopping this; our efforts are being realized.

Problems -
A pool with 20% hashing power can be split in 4 , appoint separate managers in separate locations and have a single owner or company control all 4 pools through convoluted shell companies

or

4 pools of 5% collude together

Either way the better solution is to focus on getting users back into mining(there are natural incentives that can accomplish this) and to improve p2p pools

Encouraging a more combative environment instead of a collaborative environment can lead to potential consequences. I>E> Right now bitfury has indicted they are going to sell their new chips to the widest group of people to insure decentralization, similarly some chinese mines will lease hashing power to their competitors in solidarity without profit if there is a power outage.

Encouraging DDOS attacks will break these bonds of solidarity that lead to greater security.

There are other incentives that naturally promote decentralization that we can focus on -

1) The costs to secure a large mining farm are much more than 10k routers with mining chips in many homes. One requires no extra security, and the other is a target

2) Centralized mining farms have to deal with excessive heat which requires cooling and elaborate ventilation costs while thousands of individuals with small miners can recycle the heat and not worry about excessive heat

3) The liability of fire and damage from failed cooling systems is large with a mining farm , vs almost no liability for millions of small utility miners

ect...

Solidarity exists within the "wildwest" as we are speaking about humans with complex incentives and needs. Solidarity is a form of selfishness practiced by rational actors(and yes, humans can sometimes be reasonable)

Bear whales taking advantage of negative news to juke the markets in an attempt to steal from weak hands. Don't fall for it and penalize their insolence by taking their coins.


No faith is necessary, as the complexity you cite is what gives birth to moments of solidarity.

It appears to be too much of a coincidence the timing of it all with this --
https://youtu.be/R0iArSIU0Z8?t=47m16s

Looks to me to be a coordinated attack by R3.(42 banks against bitcoin)

Yes, I am glad he contributed so little to core , so we don't have to re-audit all his code.

Whether this is merely an opportunistic bearwhale shaking the weak hands to buy more, a deliberate attack by r3 which invested in some coins a 2months ago in order to dump them now and shake the faith of the community, or just some scared investors reading the NYT rag doesn't ultimately matter ... I'm picking up the carnage along with others and we are moving forward.

Bitcoin classic is BIP 102

Summary of differences between core+segwit and classic now -

Classic - BIP102
Effective 2MB block capacity + possibly removing RBF + possibly versionbits
5 developers maintaining

Core
Effective 1.75-2MB Block capacity
Version bits , future fraud proofs, signature pruning, simpler script updates, fixing malleability allowing future payment channels.
45 developers maintaining

Both are good.... but Classic isn't that exciting now that they decided to remove 2-4 + segwit as an option.

Agreed. Classic is between 0-0.25 MB more capacity without all the other benefits so I fail to see a large enough differentiation between them. The choice becomes almost a no brainer.

49% of the hashing power said "Ack" to to the idea of 2MB(which segwit essentially does). They are still all running core. We cannot assume their intentions towards acking Bitcoin classic 2MB until they actually change their code. My guess is there will be some consensus made between Core and Classic or some of that hashing power will just except Core + segwit if it gets rolled out ontime and merely acked classic because they wanted to reach consensus and move forward and would be happy with either classic or core + segwit.

If you have evidence that those miners oppose segwit and simply want BIP102 without segwit than please let me know.

I personally would be happy with either proposal , but am slightly inclined to core for obvious technical reasons. Can you explain to me why BIP102 is technically better than core + segwit?


Gavin is not only supportive of the settlement layers and the lightning network but believes they are absolutely necessary for bitcoin.
Stop creating wedges where none exist... Unlike Hearn, Gavin is a respected and reasonable person.

Most are just frustrated at the infighting , politics, bikeshedding , and lack of consensus. I seriously doubt it has anything to do with the roadmap. They want an increase like everyone else.


If you have evidence that those miners oppose segwit and simply want BIP102 without segwit than please let me know. Otherwise there is essentially is no difference in capacity between classic and core. Under certain circumstances Classic will have a slight amount of higher capacity , under others Core +segwit will have more capacity.

There are reasons where I can criticize segwit with , but am waiting to hear them from you to see if you understand segwit properly(and I believe the upsides outweigh the downsides)  

Clarifications...

1) Bitcoin classic is not simply changing maxBlockSize, doing so , even to 2MB would introduce dangerous attack vectors -CVE-2013-2292  The Classic devs are aware of this and thankfully making many more changes for sigop protections.

2) Development has already been decentralized with multiple implementations. We do need to support other implemenentations like libbitcoin and bitcore. There is a distinction to be made between having multiple implemenatations that break consensus rules and ones that do not . There can be multiple implementations that have different developers, written in different code/languages, and with different unique features all working cooperatively (This is recommended), but some would argue that always having implementations that are attempting to usurp consensus rules decreases user and investor confidence as ultimately there can only be one set of consensus rules that is considered bitcoin.

3) Segwit provides an effective 2MB increase in capacity , is already in testnet, has wide support - https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/ and will go live in april, IMHO before Classic can get deployed

4) In other news a planned hard fork increasing to an effective 4MB capacity is already being organized-

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-core-dev/

wangchun from F2Pool is planning with some core devs yesterday for a planned 2MB hard fork and adding extra nonce space in feb/march 2017 to increase effective capacity up to ~4MB.

Technically all that is needed for a hard fork is 51% of sustained hashing power, any number above that is completely arbitrary, but does change the social contract a bit IMHO... when devs choose 75% of the last 1k blocks to execute a countdown for deployment it is more democratic in nature where a majority can coerce or ostracize a minority. Selecting a higher threshold of 95% is much more anarchistic in nature where one needs near complete consensus before the consensus rules are changed in a hardfork.

What I find troubling is I keep hearing many misinformed users who are under the impression that the miners decide on consensus rules when in fact it is the nodes that vote on consensus rules.

The Vote is = The longest valid PoW chain, with an emphasis on valid and only nodes deciding what is and isn't valid. The miners can hash all they want on an invalid chain , but they won't be necessarily following the nodes or economic majority.

This matters because when you look at how the hardforks are rolled out they are not polling the nodes but miners for an rough and indirect means of determining node support. There very well could be a dangerous situation where 75% of miners decide to fork , but over 75% of nodes and the economic consensus decides not to which would be very dangerous.  This is why I recommend that all hardforks have at least 95% consensus of blocks within the last 1k to activate a countdown. Luckily Bitcoin classic still has time to change their minds from 75% to 95% as they have yet to release code.

It all depends on if the 2 implementations follow the same consensus rules. There can only be one set of consensus rules per chain and as soon as an implementation has active code that is following different consensus rules a fork occurs and alt created because all nodes no longer consider those tx's as valid.

The miners are ultimately at the mercy of the nodes and economic majority.

You are generally a troll and "cunt" that I ignore but I will make an exception because this appears to be a valid question :

What is of importance is the economic majority that backs those nodes. A node is only as secure and useful to the network insomuch as it has unique and active users behind such nodes. Thus nodes that are in control of exchanges/merchants/processors/Wallets are typically more important than regular nodes and nodes without active users can be malicious.

Case in point -  A certain btc company recently decided to assist the community with a PR stunt by deploying hundreds of nodes with multiple amazon Ec2 instances without users actively securing them and using them. This type of deployment hurts the bitcoin ecosystem and makes it less decentralized.

Another way to understand the power dynamic is what good or mined coins from 75% of the mining community if the other 75% of the economic majority doesn't except them in their stores, exchanges , or in person. Their currency would suddenly become worthless in a short while.

I said the exact opposite.... but to answer your insinuation: the answer is in understanding the fundementals of bitcoin -

Full nodes check for the --- The longest valid PoW chain, so a "51% attack" would need to be carried out along side a Sybil attack.

If a majority of the economic majority or nodes broke away from the majority of the hash power than they better quickly switch PoW algo's as they would indeed be susceptible to a 51% attack.


Here is an example of a backup plan devs have if miners ever go rogue or do something stupid-

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/41aocn/httpsbitcoinorgenbitcoincorecapacityincreases_why/cz0z9ym
https://github.com/luke-jr/bitcoin/commit/8d3a84c242598ef3cdc733e99dddebfecdad84a6

Keccak with a Nf15 appears extremely ASIC resistant.
***Clarification***  This is just an prepared idea and not a plan. The core devs obviously are prepared for the worst case scenarios like miners being compromised or doing something idiotic like raising the 21 million limit. Luckily most mining pools are intelligent and have our best interests in mind like most of the developers and these drastic steps likely will never be needed.

 

Yes, devs and people who actually understand bitcoin corrected the company and educated the errors in their ways. Simply deploying hundreds of nodes without active users securing them with economic interests isn't extremely dangerous in itself because wallets still check for the longest PoW chain and not just the rules from the corresponding nodes. It is dangerous in a sense that those nodes could falsely give the impression that our ecosystem was more decentralized and it could introduce some potential non-consensus bugs but any nodes that were compromised and didn't follow the consensus rules would simply be an ignored alt.


You aren't realizing that full nodes validate both the longest PoW chain and if the valid rules are being followed. What you are describing is the creation of an alt , which is fine and has no direct impact on bitcoin. Nodes that don't have economic interests behind them are of little value. Not all nodes are equal!

Here is an analogy to consider:

What is worth more: 5 large fortune 500 companies and their userbase that enjoys their products and services or 100 shell companies with no capital, no products, and no users? What happens in an ecosystem when these 100 shell companies are introduced to a location and the general public chooses to ignore them because they don't like their product?

The security of our ecosystem is dependent upon all of us, not just the devs. This goes the same for security on the internet and in meatspace.

Your question is generic and open ended and can be interpreted in multiple ways. So I will take a stab at explaining different aspects. A node is indeed relatively cheap to produce and maintain, but nodes without economic intrest are valueless just like anything in life - fiat, assets, stocks, ect..).The reason why certain nodes are more valuable than others is because the network effect. A single user behind a full node with an active wallet is more valuable than a userless ec2 node because the node is being tested for bugs and has a real economic actor behind it that can make both economic decisions as to assigning value to items and the consensus rules within his wallet. A node controlled by a processor /wallet/ merchant has a greater value as they have a pool of users interacting with their node and thus conforming to their consensus rules.

Appears to be china news or stock market getting slammed due to uncertainty and a small amount of capital flight... when consensus is reached or other competing implementations give up I expect a much higher bump.

Hopefully you aren't presenting a false dichotomy... as core is soft forking higher to an effective 2MB with Segwit , and classic is HF higher to 2MB with BIP 102. Your statement above is misleading as it insinuates that core needs to fold to increase capacity when they already decided to increase the blocksize with segwit last year.

The one exception to a huge rise is if there is a great split in the community... as there are many large stakeholders who are core supporters and have different agendas than just going mainstream and making a big profit that others have. This is why any proposal that doesn't at least attempt to get 95% consensus of the last 1k blocks (because this merely represents a indirect rough estimate of economic node support ) is dangerous and can potentially leave us in a situation of uncertainty and during a hard fork one might see massive sell offs on both chains.  It does make for some interesting game theory as many whales are conservative large bag holders and can do things like make massive investments in ASIC's or dump their all their coins on one fork in an attempt to devalue the other chain. It would be better if they can work together especially since I don't see any real capacity differences between core and classic...but , never a dull moment, like always.

When there are human beings on the other end of the nodes , those human beings have agency to value one node over another. They can value a full node or a SPV node differently because one offers better security and the other requires less resources(Fraud proofs and pruned full nodes will offer a greater variety.) Nodes that are controlled by merchants/exchanges ect have more value because the users and businesses value them.

The Code doesn't have any AI in it that makes a conscious assessment as to its relative value. The humans at the other end of the nodes are merely an extension of the network that place value on the nodes and the rules behind the code.

Sighhh..... ok, I will try one last time to explain a very simple concept.

There are at least 4 choices that can be made in the event of a hardfork between competing chains -

1) Quickly move over to the longest chain with the most hashing power out of security fears

2) Stay on their chain with less hashing power and hope the other chain doesn't become hostile and conduct a 51% attack. Notice there are now two chains , each with equal length , and each following the same principle of the logest valid PoW chain. One simply has more hashing power over the other, which can quickly and dynamically adjust as miners move back and forth between chains or one group ramps up ASICs that use their consensus code.

3) Nodes can choose to give up the PoW algo altogether and fork off with one of many PoS / or hybrid algos.

4) Nodes can choose another PoW algo and make the existing miners irrelevant to themselves.(There is already code in place ready for this if needed).


Ultimately it is the nodes controlled by the exchanges / merchants / processors / wallets / and large bag holders (or economic majority) that control the fate of the value of the coin as they can all make a decision to make all the miners obsolete in a moments notice if they so chose to. All that hashing power is merely a very expensive liability if the economic majority doesn't support their version of the consensus rules and taking a 75% miner vote on and assumed direction of the economic majority doesn't necessarily dictate if that reflects upon the opinions and will of the true economic majority. This is why bitcoin classic and core  is reflecting and amassing a list of signatures from wallets, exchanges, merchants , users, ect ...

What is intresting to also restate is that single large whales can have a dramatic impact upon which coins succeeds as there are multiple attacks or ways they can support their own implementation to consider, so one should consider the risk and value of some really early bagholders(luckily Hearn sold his btc already in chunks)


I have repeatedly stated that we should design a system to anticipate the worst attacks , even from the core devs themselves... The core devs themselves have been specifically working on this to make bitcoin more modular to support multiple implementations. Have you not been following libbitcoinconsensus?

I don't believe you have really thought things through with regards to the possible attack vectors that large btc holders can have. First of all a 51% attack created by 75% of the hashing fork cannot steal individuals coins that are not being spent on the minority chain and the hashing majority has no idea which wallets are friend or foe. Large bagholders (almost all the core team and early crypto-anarchists who tend to prefer conservative implementations that prioritize security and privacy above mainstream adoption) can carry out some pretty nasty attacks where they can quickly devalue the chain with the most hashing power scaring all the miners to support their chain or they can simply quickly and secretly buy up mining farms and ASIC's and attack the main chain without risking any of their investments.

In fact, this course is a much more likely course that could occur over them changing the PoW algo.

Do I want any of this to occur?... of course not, I am not bitter and believe that our values are more similar than different and we will indeed find consensus soon. Our priorities are probably slightly different as all and there can be eventual reconciliation. It would be better to insure for everyone's sake that their isn't a civil war, which is why the 95% threshold is so important as it almost guarantees consensus will follow.

Why not millions of nodes wasting money?... It still doesn't change the fact that everyone will ignore those nodes. You are talking about weaknesses that apply more to PoS than PoW ... and I'm tired of educating you ... as it is apparent you are incapable of understanding the distinctions or just trolling.

Agree they are unlikely possibilities (although not completely off the table because some of us, really , really do not want a paypal 2.0 and will make great sacrifices in order to insure this doesn't happen) which is why I suggested this more likely attack vector :


The question one must ask , is who really is indeed the greatest economic majority?



Yes, I was wondering about that when I read Bitfury's post which appeared to contradict all the principles of Bitcoin Classic.

Yes, I am aware that Adam doesn't have many coins, as he wouldn't fit the description being that he joined in 2013 with his first coin being purchased at ~180.

Look around you a bit and pay attention and don't merely select an exception to the rule that fits your agenda. I'll admit there are indeed some large bagholders which I can name that support bitcoin classic. Are you suggesting that a majority of bagholders support classic over core? If this is true you are delusional. For one thing, the core devs are almost all extremely large bagholders as they have been around since the beginning. Why do you think they are so interested in bitcoin succeeding and thus volunteering their efforts?

Which I why I phrased it in the form of a question. I did indeed bring it up, but not as a threat but to clarify to others the dangers of a minor majority fork of 75%  and how such a low number can cause a civil war where the apparent chain with the advantage can quickly becomes the losing chain. Once Bitcoin classic releases code I warn users to pay attention and be ready to pull their coins out of exchanges and store them in cold storage during any network split.


How so? I don't think you understand the nature of the attack clearly. Let me elaborate...

1) Either individually or collectively the economic majority on the chain with less hash power spends their coin on the chain that isn't being attacked and/or has the greatest value associated with a corresponding exchange. If they spend the coins on the chain with greater hashing power they remove any risk of a 51% attack.

2) The coins are sold for fiat, driving the Bitcoin classic coin down in value dramatically

3) The fiat is used to invest in asic companies , buy asics and/or mining pools in order to quickly recover the majority of hashing power

4) The investment simply strengthens their coin and is not wasted as they return a profit off the newfound mining operation.  


Whether the ddos attacks where orchestrated by opponents or Hearn himself to garner sympathy I am against this behavior. That form of censorship harms us all. People should have a fair choice to accurately hear the technical details of classic and cores proposals and make an informed decision.


I completely agree with this statement, but for very different reasons. There are deals being made as we speak to end this and come to consensus. The miners tend to be highly conservative by nature unlike some of the btc banks and processors who are biased towards prioritizing volume and adoption. While the miners want adoption like we all do, they have other considerations that exchanges/banks/processors don't have.

It is rather sad that you are so political that you assume that discussing hypothetical attack vectors, which I would happily discuss if the shoe was on the other foot and I preferred Classic, makes you assume that I am threatening you. What I care about is a strong and healthy bitcoin ecosystem so we have to be mindful of all attacks internally and externally.

You suggest that the chain with 25% hash power is in the economic minority which is just flatly inaccurate. The sunk costs in previous generations of ASICs aren't worth much more than a doorstop with a flood of new money buying the latest generation of ASICs. 75% of Miners are not necessarily the economic majority. What is interesting about this attack is even if 95%+miners temporarily support the new coin (I.E.. Bitcoin classic) and every exchange supports bitcoin classic and refuses to accept bitcoin core coins, the attack can come unannounced as the ASIC manufactures can have a shell company or investors buy them out and use their own coin to simultaneously dump the price and gain a majority of the hashpower. To those that oppose a coup, they wouldn't even see this as underhanded but protecting the interests of the ecosystem and increasing the hash power.

Now you are creating a false dichotomy and insinuating a capacity difference between core and classic when they are both ~2MB. Are you also ignoring the deals being made between core and miners right now for April 2MB segwit + 2 Mb hardfork (for an effective 4MB capacity) in Feb/march 17?

Let me make it clear that it isn't a threat and that attack and others ones I discussed aren't likely .... but specifically for the reason the miners aren't idiots and want to have the support of core and their valuable contributions.  

Statements of support to leverage power and hedge bets doesn't mean any of the miners will follow through either. Since Classic really isn't offering any distinct technical differences besides being less , it is clearly a political coup.... and with politics many businesses will court both sides which we see here.

Lets wait and see them start to mine those blocks in march.

Take a look at the Stock markets today and the price of oil. Bitcoin is becoming the new "gold" where investors park their assets in times of economic uncertainty and a hedge against the other investments.  


Mostly agreed , the discussed attack is best served during the transition and quickly after the fork occurs. which is precisely why contentious hard forks should have 95% of miner support to insure this isn't a possibility.

LOL....   https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/41iw58/the_toomin_brothers_bitcoin_classics_main_devs/

To be fair that was the developers brother who helps with the consider.it site that manages all the Classic Voting. It is too early to suggest that the lead dev is getting stoned and dropping acid too.

He was stoned when talking to core , but admitted to dropping acid before.

It was a verified account and he followed up admitting it in reddit , with no retractions days later so extremely unlikely to be a hacked account trolling. Seems like a nice guy, and one that many could be friends with. Hopefully, his brother is much different as I prefer developer to be of the nerdy type that aren't potheads dropping acid.

Hmmm... Roger , Olivier , Garzik and gavin seem too levelheaded, and most the other Classic supporters don't have many coins . Peter may become a candidate and perhaps Jonathan might accidentally drink his brother LCD laced OJ causing an accidental sell order to donate to the dolphins in Hawaii... I think we might be stuck going up with Hearn being the last big ragequit.

You are right, They are playing politics and courting both sides but the article is clearly against almost every classic talking point.

https://twitter.com/AaronvanW/status/690120783281156097

Confirmed: Chinese mining pools are sticking with Bitcoin Core.

Context and more details? I knew it was coming from the conversations , but just didn't expect it this quickly.

You are incredulous or simply lack details of the announcement? Aaron van Wirdum is a respected journalist so I would give a little credence to his announcement and wait to verify.


I believe most miners are indeed in favor of 2MB capacity , but also understand that is what segwit provides.

Details and context being revealed ....(I look forward to more data confirming before making any judgments)

https://www.bikeji.com/t/3144
http://www.weibo.com/3884337005/De95fs0cx?from=page_1005053884337005_profile&wvr=6&mod=weibotime

The translation:

Yesterday, Jeff(Garzik?), a developer of Bitcoin Classic, took a flight to Beijing from New York, to attend a meeting with the Chinese Bitcoin businesses, including Haobtc, OKCoin, Bitmain, Bither, LIGHTNINGASIC, with the aim of gaining further support for Bitcoin Classic. When talking about Bitcoin Classic's releases, Jeff stated that a hard fork is needed for the upgrading and improvement of the source code(the original Chinese are weasel words and possibly syntactically incorrect), yet(and) without providing a clear long-term roadmap(about what lies ahead of the 2MB increase?), which led to almost universal dissatisfaction among those present, whom further expressed their withdrawal of support for Bitcoin Classic, and the need to reach a wider consensus within the community before a decision can be made.

Source? Hopefully you aren't basing this off of an unscientific Toomin like poll with small sample sizes and no controls of sample data.
I would also like to analyze the questions posed in the poll as that can greatly effect the responses.

I.E...  

1) Do you want to increase the block size for bitcoin to have very small fees for everyday tx's?

vs

2) Do you want the bitcoin chain to remain efficient and lean with a decentralized p2p payment layer that keeps tx's small for everyday purchases?

Users would likely say yes to both the above even when they are very different plans.

I believe many of these polls are worthless as they don't consider the nuances, timeframe, and dependencies.

Most everyone *wants* bigger blocks. In order for the lighting network to succeed, we must have much larger blocks!


We probably shouldn't jump to conclusions being that none of them are running classic nodes yet and the latest news indicate that they are sticking with core. The true vote is one that has commitment and resources behind it and not merely a nod of approval towards both core and classic.

This is in question as the miners are making political nods to both sides : Core and Classic. Additionally, this information along with Bitfury's article that strongly rejects all of classics principles lead me to doubt the sincerity of those commitments.

Technically , there is 0 miner support for Classic and 100% for Core right now. Until the miners start switch code , the vote hasn't happened.(Faking support like slush did with XT doesn't count either )

The context was Chinese mining pools. With the list above and F2Pool which already made a deal with core a couple days ago(evidence provided earlier)... I see BTCC and BW mining missing which is ~20% global hash rate or around 2/3rds of Chinese mining pools  indicating they are sticking with core(If we are to believe the sources) and the remaining Chinese pools having an unknown position.

--------------Disclaimer ... This is the speculation thread, therefore any nods of approval miners are making to both core and classic don't hold much weight, any tacit support that classic has on their homepage doesn't hold much weight, any rumors could be untrue and have to individually be weighed, any decisions companies make can be changed at the last moment. The only vote that truley counts is when the economic majority and miners start switching over code and validating tx's and mining blocks with one implementation or another.

I was quite clear with my statement and will not leave Wang chun and F2Pool as neutral because I am familiar with the wider context and how he prefers to stick with core and already negotiated a deal for maxBlockSize to increase in 2017. Additionally, he believes that a 75% threshold is dangerous and believes all hardforks should be set to 95%.

You must have skipped to the end of the article instead of reading the whole thing. Additionally , most of us want development to be more open. Stop creating false wedge issues where none exist ... we agree on this! Lets support Libbitcoinconsensus!

 https://medium.com/@BitFuryGroup/keep-calm-and-bitcoin-on-4f29d581276#.lsa4ml1p6



Do we hear XT/BU/Classic proponents stressing the importance for tx to be spent on payment channels or on the main chain? From what I hear the sentiment is high volume on the main chain to directly pay the miners instead of a settlement system like Bitfury and core propose.


Do we hear XT/BU/Classic proponents stressing the importance for tx fees be raised and a fee market being created? Notice how he stresses the cheap tx's will be on the sidechains and payment channels like LN , and not on the main chain like being proposed by XT/BU/Classic proponents .


Do we here this clarification from XT/BU/Classic proponents, or from Core proponents?


Could that Abrupt increase be referring to a hard fork?


This directly refutes the Bitcoin Classic And Bitcoin Unlimited governance model.

Yet, we should indeed have a neutral stance on bitfury at the moment because with one breath they give a nod to classic , and another long article they attack all of the principles that support classic.

So, you Support all the principles he defined in the article? Why do I hear the exact opposite statements from BU/XT/Classic proponents? Please read his statements below and indicate to me if you agree or disagree with them.

https://medium.com/@BitFuryGroup/keep-calm-and-bitcoin-on-4f29d581276#.lsa4ml1p6



Do we hear XT/BU/Classic proponents stressing the importance for tx to be spent on payment channels or on the main chain? From what I hear the sentiment is high volume on the main chain to directly pay the miners instead of a settlement system like Bitfury and core propose.


Do we hear XT/BU/Classic proponents stressing the importance for tx fees be raised and a fee market being created? Notice how he stresses the cheap tx's will be on the sidechains and payment channels like LN , and not on the main chain like being proposed by XT/BU/Classic proponents .


Do we here this clarification from XT/BU/Classic proponents, or from Core proponents?


Could that Abrupt increase be referring to a hard fork?


This directly refutes the Bitcoin Classic And Bitcoin Unlimited governance model.

Almost Everyone wants an effective 2MB block capacity. You aren't making any distinctions.

So You are you suggesting that Classic supports those statements from Bitfury?

Here is a hint-

1|Jonathan Toomim:2016-01-20 07:11:29:i have misgivings about the vision of the fee market as a way to pay for mining, and i think that fee market + lightning would be terrible for earning fees as a miner


What gives you that indication? A nod of support and a long article directly refuting most of Classic's principles?

P.S... yes, and Bitfury doesn't like XT or Bip 101 either.

I am not trolling you or insinuating that you know his mind. This is the speculation forum where we discuss data and speculate upon it. I am asking for your opinion on why Bitfury gives a nod of support and than shortly after attacks most of the principles that support the implementation he gave a nod of support to.

Do you have an opinion on this or do you believe the list of statements I laid out don't fundamentally undercut XT/BU/Classics principles?  

Or is this merely an issue you prefer not to discuss because you rather not acknowledge it? If so, I will happily leave you alone and apologize for upsetting you.

Ok, we either fundamentally disagree with the principles being contradictory or you simply do not want to discuss the details I outlined. I'll respect your position and move on to other topics.


Yes, Satoshi made many mistakes despite being a genius, he/she/they are human afterall. Right now the only incentive for running a full node is the extra security it brings . As we know in the wider security world people in general value convenience over security so this isn't enough of an incentive to increase node diversity. One of many things that excites me about the p2p decentralized Lightning network proposal is that it may give us an incentive to bring back more nodes by paying full nodes a portion of the tx fees they facilitate. The right balance would need to be made to incentivize LN nodes and Mining nodes but I believe it can be achieved.

This is just too good not to repost...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/41vhzz/im_jesse_powell_cofounder_ceo_at_kraken_ama/cz5wznz

So, closest I came to getting hacked:

My email account somehow got included in the Ashley Madison list. Seriously, no idea how that happened! I tell my girlfriend about it to preempt the rage. She says "I thought of a new BIP--Boyfriend Improvement Proposal" me: oh yeah? "yeah--it's called Segregated Penis. What do you think?" me: ... ... I better buy some more hashing power.

I don't know ... After some consideration I am more sympathetic to Guy Corem's position that competing coins post fork would be great . I would likely buy many GPU's and BTC Core coins as well with an ASICproof algo behind the coin.

http://pastebin.com/B8YQr5TQ

Both coins will surely take a large beating initially, but one would become more decentralized and one more corporate over time. In a way I am somewhat disappointed that the Chinese miners appear to be getting behind core. I may have to switch sides temporarily and support classic to insure this split happens for the good of the ecosystem.

Your game theory strategy only takes into consideration the maximization of profit in the short term. There are many libertarians and crypto-anarchists who value other goals slightly more than simply using Bitcoin as a highly volatile speculative asset. we also really don't like a path forward where a democratic majority votes upon each feature as that is a sharp change in bitcoins traditional governance model of anarchistic consensus building based upon evidence and meritocracy.

There are many things that motivate me , but I am definitely willing to risk or throw away my complete investment.
Study Maslov's Hierarchy of needs or research into the psychology of ideals or religion to understand what truly motivates many humans.


Yes, it clarifies the real differences at play are differences of governance and politics. Despite Toomin repeatedly claiming that the capacity increase is most important motivation, the clear distinction is democracy vs an open source anarchistic meritocracy.

I would suggest people consider where republics and democracies eventually lead in the longterm with their decision on the fork.

You don't seem to understand the attack or the p2p LN which will have many decentralized hubs without KYC/AML.
I agree , we will be using both chains temporarily, that is the nature of the attack, but you are insane for suggesting we would be happy with a centralized paypal 2.0 with AML/KYC.



Ahh, you clearly don't understand how consensus is found in anarchistic systems. It is a gross misrepresentation you are making to those unfamiliar with anarchistic politics. I don't have time to give you a whole lecture (and don't think you even care to learn) but for the edification of others-

Anarchism does not mean chaos. Most Anarchists believe in a society of laws. These laws are just devised through other consensus mechanisms than democratic or republic forms of representations. The minority doesn't prevail over the majority, as we are all individuals and a group/state/society doesn't actually exist in reality except as a concepts. This means we understand that there is no evil illuminati or group of lizard people controlling our own fate but we are collectively responsible for both the good deeds and crimes in society and we must have solidarity with each other.  

Its actually not hard to accomplish if you either perform a hardfork to a slightly different algo in a random way every year and use asic resistant algos. This can even be done in a automated way where there only needs to be one hardfork. There is a tremendous amount of investment and lead up time to creating ASICs where you only need to stay ahead to make their implementation impractical.

Huh?

It is great that there are many different schools of anarchism. There are similarities between all groups as well.


One does not need to switch to completely different algos with different risks to make something ASIC proof. Small changes to a variant of ASIC resistant SHA3 without compromising or changing the fundamentals of security could be implemented in a random matter. You understand that all ASIC's would be worthless if we switched to 3 rounds of SHA256(1 example of many) but a gpu would merely need to upgrade its software, right?

More details --
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=359323.0

It is still there - https://twitter.com/valeryvavilov/with_replies

Well some of us suspected Bitcoin Classic was a trojan horse meant to change governance and than switch to BIP101 and the numbers are indeed reflecting that --

Up at the highest rated approval we have BIP101

https://bitcoin.consider.it/BIP101

Democracy in action folks! Letting the mobs of idiots and people who want to destroy bitcoin vote for its future.... wonderful.

yes , you can see it's the most requested change to Bitcoin Classic at the top.

https://bitcoin.consider.it/

The ideas have been around long before the blocksize debate as a wish list -- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=359323.0

We really do not want democratic mob rule voting on the protocol design and centralized miners becoming compromised by states which is the direction we are heading. It is not a threat but a long held concern of ours and the  raison d'ętre of bitcoin. Part of me welcomes the split so I can dust off the gpu miners and another part of me sees hope in bitfury doing the right thing and selling their ASIC's to the wide public for reasonable fees to reverse the problem of mining centralization and node count drop off.

What scares us is this https://bitcoin.consider.it/

Bitcoin classic is looking like a trojan horse for BIP 101


Yes , it is controlled by the brothers Maintainer of the Bitcoin Classic so do not assume that the votes are impartial as its essentially a voting mechanism and disturbing governance model of Classic.

We pay people with heavy machinery to do that all without coercion and taxes. People like you pay a lot of money to vacation here as well so don't paint my community as some backwards anarchy-primitivist community where we have to build the roads with manual labor.


I like Peter Todd and LukeJR, as well as many of the developers and supporters of bitcoin classic. Yes, if Bitcoin loses its  cryptopunks/cypherpunks principles than it loses my support. This doesn't mean it cannot go mainstream , merely that we don't need a very inefficient paypal 2.0 that has democratic mob rule deciding on the features. May as well use fiat or Goldman sacks coin if bitcoin becomes to centralized and compromised. 

No hard feelings , You are always welcome comrade.

Democratic mob rule doesn't necessarily make bitcoin more centralized, but does fundamentally break the original governance and design of bitcoin. Will democratic rule make bitcoin more centralized? ... looks that way from the votes -- https://bitcoin.consider.it/ of course that could simply be an inaccurate representation of the mob with a consensus system not able to protect against sybil attacks.

*there is always a possibility that an exponential increase in the blocksize could lead to initial centralization than rapid decentralization with a black swan like event in technology. Possible, but unlikely, knowing what we know about propagation times, hardware and network limitations.

Some of the 45 would likely join classic. Some of the more talented ones , with much different principles and politics than the maintainers of classic are likely going to go elsewhere or start working on the new bitcoin chain. Some might sell their large investments like Hearn, many would likely slowly deinvest for maximum return while they volunteered to projects that they enjoy, where they aren't getting slandered and death threats, and which match their philosophy. I have seen this happen multiple times with open source projects. I have mixed feeling about staying together and splitting the chain... but it may all be for the best.  

Makes sense... Smart developers with any open source project prefer challenging and rewarding work that they can design without an angry mob demanding things against their conscience. It would be a quick and easy transition ... Blockstream could transition as well into a general purpose Crypto companies with talented devs working on multiple projects including eth which many banks and companies are interested in.

There will be some that stay behind of course but perhaps Bitcoin has to go in a different direction than its cryptoanarchist roots. Perhaps the majority of bitcoin users want reversibility/AML/KYC/Blacklists... it is hard to say as their isn't a very good way to accurately poll these numbers.

Nope bitcoin will thrive, Three more likely possibilities --

1) Core wins out or a compromise is reached and we move forward with an efficient an lean blockchain with a settlement payment channel  that is more secure and resistant to attacks but will likely grow at a slower rate

2) Classic takes control, there is a large drop off in development (at least temporarily ) bitcoin will grow at a much quicker rate of adoption than under core and investors will make more a return quicker, Node count will continue and escalate dropping off and mining will further centralize ... in 10 -20 years time expect all nodes to have AML/KYC/Blacklists and be controlled by large companies that can afford to maintain the large databases, and eventually the community decides to give up on PoW altogether for PoS/DPoS because when mining is that centralized than what is the point in wasting all that electricity?

3) A fork is created where a more libertarian/anarchist coin is created with the chain split and a few devs from core 5-10 contributing to it under an ASIC proof PoW algo (already discussed) that will be better suited for the grey /black market and long term stores of wealth . It will have a different sort of utility and supporters, thus could be valued at the same amount as the other fork. If the PoW algo is changed people will be able to spend their coins on 2 chains which will amount to somewhat of a stock split. Expect an initial huge drop in price on both chains and a quick recovery. Hard to say which chain will be more valuable in the longterm.


Either way , Bitcoin (either version) has a bright history at least from an investment perspective...For ethical reasons I will stop Buying the Centralized coin and likely slowly sell it off .... I'm not going to attack it , just allow it to run its course.

One more interesting thought that crossed my mind...

If Classic takes control and starts jacking up the block-size aggressively like many expect (Most of the proponents are XT/BIP101 refugees who believe in democracy guiding the development principles so this is an extremely likely future if Classic takes over).

Than that new big block fork better pray that satoshi either lost his keys or isn't an anarchist or libertarian sitting on 750k- 1.2 million coins. That is a frighting fact for everyone regardless which side we take. Anarchists tend to be ethically principled and may do rash actions against what many people consider as normal behavior. Everyone should support and follow their mind/heart ... and please don't take the above like a threat ... it is just an interesting dilemma and risk we all have.

There is no question a split in Bitcoin will cause some permanent damage to both coins longterm perceived value as a store of value... but it won't be that bad because:

1) A fork would essentially be a stock split where most of the value would be kept and possibly be profitable
2) All currencies fail and "fork/change" throughout history, why should bitcoin be any different?

There are alternative forks with different visions that are looking to jump at the opportunity with this hardfork and they are already working on the code---
https://medium.com/@vcorem/lesson-learned-from-the-classic-coup-attempt-or-why-core-needs-to-prepare-a-gpu-only-pow-6a9afe18e4b0#.gpzfq1qtw

 Looks like there might be multiple penitential chains created . Potentially a 3 for 1 "stock" split?  

Very interesting. I suppose this is all possible when you have a contentious HF and a low 75% fuse.

Check out the link, comrade. There is no competing over 25% remaining ASICs' with what is being discussed. It is both fascinating and encouraging and we shouldn't worry regardless the outcome. I am at peace with a potential HF and Classic. Either way, the future is great.

P.S.. 75% of hashing does not equal an economic majority or a majority of users. Appears to be more supporting Core, but who knows , such a difficult thing to measure. GPU only mining would bring in many new participants who left for other alts long ago , and casual gamers with good gpus as well .

Quite the opposite. I have repeatedly said I would attack core and blockstream if there was any betrayal to my ideals. Ethos takes precedence. Tribalism is to be despised.

Congrats comrade! I sincerely wish you no ill and the best of luck in your endeavors. Whatever the resolution we are prepared to move forward, together or apart, everyone will do fine.

Now, its time for me to leave and go and code. Good Night everyone. 

Classic is building off the 0.11.2 branch which is soon to be outdated with 0.12.0 coming out of RC. There are many significant improvements with 0.12.0 that you will be forgoing(It is unlikely that Classic will switch over to 0.12.0 within the next 2 months) . Classic only has 2 experienced developers maintaining it where Core has 45.

Segwit and classic have practically similar capacity upgrades, with segwit allowing for better longterm scaling by fixing tx malleability(something that is required for payment channels to progress) .

Logically, supporting Classic doesn't make much sense.

The great news about all this infighting , is if bitcoin can survive this, than it shows how resilient it is to politics changing the protocol on contentious issues. Once this chapter is behind us there will be no doubt that blacklists, KYC will have no place in the protocol or the 21 million limit would ever be changed.

2 more months and this will be behind us.

There are indeed more changes to Classic than you are implying... There necessarily has to be because simply changing maxBlockSize from 1,000,000 bytes to 2,000,000 bytes would be dangerously irresponsible and introduce new attack vectors.

Here is a list of the changes done -

https://github.com/gavinandresen/bips/blob/92e1efd0493c1cbde47304c9711f13f413cc9099/bip-bump2mb.mediawiki

What I find most deplorable about these changes is the 75% threshold and extremely small 28 day window which goes against the miners wishes of 90% . Even Bitmain's CEO believes this is too small. Softforks require 95% mining consensus for goodness sake and they want to push through a contentious hardfork at 75%.... This is essentially a political coup.

 

It is indeed a fact that Segwit testing is on schedule and the April deployment date is extremely likely.

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq#roadmap-dates

Segwit wallet support is growing and some wallets are already complete with the changes and ready 2 months ahead for deployment -

https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/

It appears that many classic supporters are now betting on if classic reaches the 75% threshold, Core will simply go against all their principles and add the bump2mb  changes to 0.12.1 and proceed with a <28 day HF. This is likely based upon the assumption that most core devs simply believe that segwit is a slightly better solution than BIP 102/bump2mb which isn't entirely true. In reality, many core devs see this HF as an attempt to remove consensus and replace it with democratic governance in which a majority can force the minority into adapting changes ... and see that as a complete failure of the project.

These aren't attempts at bluffing, we really do believe this, and thus what would likely happen if Classic activates at 75% is some core devs decide to join the classic team, some leave bitcoin entirely and slowly sell their large investments, some create an alt or leave to develop another alt, and some start making plans for the day of the fork with attack vectors on the new chain to wrestle back control..... or Bitcoin Core acknowledges Classic's accomplishment , make an announcement that they will set a planned 2MB HF 6-8 months from than* and the miners quickly turn their hashpower back to core forcing classic to quickly scramble at updating their nodes before the deadline is met and they fork off with a minority amount of hashpower.


* -- If certain conditions are met.

Its a nice ad , outside the fact that the photoshop work makes the can look like it just participated in a bukake gangbang. They should remove a bit of the white within the perspiration and some of the moisture in general.

If Classic doesn't fizzle out like XT , they likely will implement segwit, but the difference is they prefer to do it in a HF as the developers have explained.... The earliest possible Classic can fork the network is 2 months out because the 28 day grace period. This means that If Classic starts to work on integrating segwit right away and test right away than they might be able to HF a second time to roll out segwit in 5-8 months instead of April like Core is planning. This will significantly delay improvements and benefits of segwit and work on payment channels like LN which is focused on increasing capacity.


All the classic Devs really see Segwit as amazing and needed, they just prefer deploying it as a HF. Your statement is true of some classic supporters who don't understand Segwit, and have a low comprehension where they didn't realize the criticisms of Segwit from Cassic devs was aimed at it being deployed as a soft fork... which means the code is slightly more complex and less "clean".

I do indeed see more misinformation from forums and reddit locations that promote Classic. It isn't fair to label all classic supporters as naive however , there are many valid reasons I can argue to support their positions , even though I disagree with their direction and manner of deploying a hard fork.

I certainly have seen an inclination for cognitive dissonance where many automatically assume that everything coming from Core and Blockstream is evil or the wrong method. This doesn't apply to Classic devs who appear genuine and have nuanced arguments and opinions.
I don't assume bad faith in the classic devs or even some prominent classic supporters by default. The sooner we understand their objections the better we can clarify them and address their concerns.


Besides any potential Agent Provocateurs I would suggest that all of them do indeed want bigger blocks. Classic supporters are merely the immigrants from XT and unlimited failures. Their 2 main motivations from what I can tell are "Firing" blockstream devs out of spite and raising the blocksize.

Hopefully, they will get over any past grudges once this is over and understand that many of us do indeed want larger capacity improvements as well as them and most of our goals are aligned with theirs.

Bullish-- LN expected 3rd Q 2016

https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/eric-lombrozo-7-use-cases-lightning-network


http://bravetheworld.com/2016/02/09/faith-bitcoin-restored/

Partially true, but misleading.

Once 95% is reached , any nodes not upgrading will still be able to use bitcoin on their outdated implementations/wallets , but will no longer validate the new segwit signatures which they already would not create themselves or have paid to them, or pay attention to until confirmed.
So essentially those that choose not to upgrade to segwit, validation will remain the same with old tx's , they just cannot validate segwit tx's which they can accept but won't verify until confirmed.

I will gladly upgrade and you can stay on your old implementation and pay a higher fee than me , thus it is backwards compatible.... but be advised to wait for confirmations on segwit tx's as your old wallet will have degraded security with regards to those tx's.

Will you be creating an implementation to reject segwit tx that are even confirmed?

Have you ever been to Mardi Gras? The streets are absolutely disgusting and filled with piss, vomit, and shit. I would suggest you decline any shoes from Mardi Gras. I look forward to watching the video of your meal... may a suggest a Chianti as well?

Wow , you are just as ignorant about segwit as many classic supporters.

How do you intend to keep you un-tainted coins from accepting coins segwit free?
Are you going to create a new implementation to explicitly deny coins delivered via segwit thus hardforking yourself into an alt?
Or are you going to do your best to convince the miners to not adopt segwit?


Carnival and the jazz fest are much better. Mardi Gras is more for alchoholics and immature boys who are impressed by a set of tits.

Well Said. hdbuck has already let the public know he doesn't have a clue about how Bitcoin operates , especially segwit. He may be better off sticking with gold being mailed through the post office by the manner he thinks.

Well , I am glad this is over and we can move on to improving the bitcoin ecosystem?

https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/a-call-for-consensus-d96d5560d8d6#.3219xm7af

~67-70% hash power actually.


    F2Pool — 29%
    AntPool (Bitmain) — 20% Bitmainwarranty
    BitFury — 17%
    BTCC Pool — 14%
    BW — 8%




He was playing politics , while his CTO disagreed with him . From his own words he never switch to classic ... just deployed some classic node along side his core nodes-

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/697600458441887745


Good Idea to hodl, Bitcoin will do very well under Core's Scaling plan.


That is not helpful to move things forward. This is a moment to celebrate.

Don't let your feelings get in the way of facts -

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-February/012412.html
https://twitter.com/BitfuryGeorge/status/697707919241043968
https://twitter.com/excellion/status/697608149096771584
https://twitter.com/btcroundtable/status/697672824282939393

Bram Cohen , Inventor of bit-torrent, shares his opinion on the CEO of coinbase not listening to his CTO on technical manners:

https://twitter.com/bramcohen/status/697705876337995776




LN is scheduled to start rolling out 3rd quarter 2016 for more capacity layered ontop of segwit. We all want more capacity, we just want to insure it is done in a safe manner.

To be fair ... The reality distortion field was high within their community because outside trolls and agent provocateurs where actively supporting Bitcoin Classic to create division in our community and because adopting that implementation would lead to centralization and dis-empower all the "evil" crypt-anarchists and cipher-punks.

Take for example this well known troll/Buttcoiner actively supporting Classic-

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/44nc78/gavin_andresen_stubbornly_refuses_to_call_it/czrdrvy

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/446hth/americanbanker_blockchain_will_make_banks_more/czpcz7b

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/446hth/americanbanker_blockchain_will_make_banks_more/czo6kmf


We shouldn't hold any grudges against most Classic supporters and welcome them back in as our temporarily lost brothers in an act of solidarity.


I welcome other payment channel options and will happily run multiple versions of payment channels. The only cat fight should be in market competition with deploying more payment channel nodes instead of politics. Thankfully with Segwit, Circle/Bitpay/Coinbase can create their own payment channels as well instead of foolishly believing their mempool algo makes 0conf txs secure.

Have you been following LN Development ? Rusty, Joseph Poon, and Thaddeus Dryja have been making some real progress.
Most Code is already ready and being tested as we speak:

https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning
https://github.com/hashplex/Lightning
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning-dev/


To be clear, 3rd quarter 2016 is when LN will begin to roll out on the live network.


This has always been the case and continues to be the case . Core supports multiple implementations ... that is why they spend so much time fixing(lack of extensive modularity) Satoshi's code with libbitcoinconsensus.

More insight into Satoshi's code for the layman-
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3di6zc/nick_szabos_hidden_work/ct5j4wu

Unfortunately, I believe this drama will only temporarily go away. There were indeed many genuine XT/UL/Classic supporters but there were also many shills/trolls/  agent provocateurs supporting a contentious HF. Bitcoin is competing/undermining against some of the most powerful states and corporations and we should prepare for a vicious and difficult fight ahead.

Part of this is educating people towards the true principles of bitcoin, as many are still advocating code be written under the governance of democracy which would be tragic and goes against our current meritocracy consensus based development framework. As we grow our ecosystem this will remain a constant challenge we must overcome as most humans have been programmed to believe democracy is the best form of governance available.

Yes, this is an often ignored point drowned out by the critics, conspiracy theorists, and trolls of blockstream. LN is open source, was invented and primarily being developed outside of Blockstream, and is going to offer a viable solution to the dilemma of node centralization by incentivizing node operators.

Thank you for reinforcing my point. Most individuals are raised to believe in false dichotomies. No, I am not a communist, or collectivist, far from it.... I am advocating for the rights of the individual over the group. An individual classic supporter should have the right to voluntarily fork off, advocate for, or rejoin any other implementation, free from coercion. I am advocating for greater decentralization and more implementations. I have been consistent upon this. Regardless, of being clear and consistent, the moment I suggest anything negative about "democracies" one assumes the false narrative that I support centralization of governance or development. This is the same problem when core reminds the community that they don't have the authority to perform the hard fork as this is a decision for the economic majority to be made through a consensus process. I believe many are genuine in their belief that Core is saying this to stonewall, not because its true, but because they literally cannot think outside of their paradigm.

This is not to suggest that all aspects and use cases of democratic governance models of consensus are flawed or worthless. Let me remind you that some of the central principles and the raison d'ętre of bitcoin in the first place is in overcoming some of the limitations with republic or democratic governance within currencies.

Yes, building a decent node costs at least 90 dollars , and has a maintenance fee for hosting the bandwidth and electricity. Thus ideally a LN channel node should exceed 15 dollars a month to overcome this in tx fees revenue.


There will be many different competing models of nodes and their features. Some can act as escrow agents with higher level services and insurance programs, some will offer better anonymity through coinjoin/CT/mixing, some will merely have an advantage as they represent a unique hop for better connectivity between other nodes.

I wouldn't worry about free nodes as their are few miners who process free tx right now ... Free LN channels would quickly get filled with spam and people would use other channels.

I mostly agree with this, but there are some standards and norms which have come forth from both the code and the roots of the cipherpunk movement. This is why I was referring to development being decided upon mostly by meritocracy and consensus and not bitcoin as a whole. As Bitcoin as a whole the "governance" and control is far more complex and nuanced.


I.E... Rather than one person, one vote... the economic majority has greater influence on bitcoin balanced by the ability of developers and limitations of the technology. This is opposed to many democratic republics where the economic majority indirectly influences the majorities vote to remain dominant.


Please elaborate, specifically.

Momentum building behind Core Roadmap -

Greenaddress added -
https://twitter.com/btcroundtable/status/697767225155940352

Coinfloor added -
https://twitter.com/btcroundtable/status/697771059861331968

Rocktrading added-
https://twitter.com/btcroundtable/status/697773063274803200



A supermajority of the economy , developers, and mining power is now finding consensus.

This should put an end to Ethereum's pump and spam campaign and bolster Bitcoin.
It will be interesting to see a reversal in price, not just for the profits but because it will be a clear signal that the general investing ecosystem is now at ease that a contentious HF is no longer on the table.

How many times do we have to repeat? We want , need (for payment channels), and require bigger blocks. Core has been discussing and planning for a HF block size increase for months. Our disagreements with Classic have to deal with the timing , and way it was being deployed... as of which the statement indicates both a support of segwit as the temporary capacity bump and--



If you have been following the conversations between the miners and developers "long enough deployment timelines" means 1 year. This statement indicates that the signers want to plan for and get ready for a goal for a future HF a year from now. They want come up with a rough plan immediately(3 weeks) so  the HF does happen 1 year from now and doesn't get pushed off indefinitely.

Sure, they all have their problems. More importantly Eth is offering some ridiculous complexity that will lead to scaling problems and places it at risk for many future bugs. Most of its scripting ability can easily be replicated in bitcoin and there will be almost no use cases for a turing complete ineffecient blockchain database in the future when decentralized oracles working with the bitcoin blockchain will offer far greater efficiencies.

Why do people want to burn tokenized "fuel" on an extremely inefficient database? What use cases does Ethereum have that can't be better done with Bitcoin and decentralized oracles?

You must be oblivious to the development crisis's and mistakes in Ethereum and the flight of developers from that project.

There are advantages to multiple of the best development minds maintaining bitcoin in consensus. Ethereum investors are going to be in for a rollercoaster when the token starts being used in the wild and Vitalik sets off the bomb to switch from PoW to an untested (in the real world) PoS.

It is one hell of a gamble for a future in which there are no good use cases for the token.

You appear to be seriously confused about general anarchist thought. I am perfectly happy living and working besides other people with different politics and belief systems. If my neighbor to the left wants to start up a communist collective and not use currency, fine. If my neighbor to the right wants to live as a slave under a tyrannical government willingly ,** shudder**.... but fine ....There is a a difference between letting my opinion being known and imposing my opinions on others with violence and coercion. I do have a problem with people supporting and paying for the murder , torture and kidnapping of innocent non -violent people and will defend them if necessary.


From a developer perspective Satoshi is irrelevant. All of the prominent core devs are known and very transparent and bitcoin is open source.

You are trying to pigeon hole complex philosophies into a category.... but if you insist, principally agorsim and anarcho capitalism, but I am friendly to and have lived in many other types of anarchist collectives as well.

Another key piece of the Puzzle for Payment channels and Lightning network merged today = BIP 68  (sequence-locks)

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0068.mediawiki

On track for Greater capacity ... bullish!

I am ready to buy your discounted coins. Thank You, and happy to oblige your refund. Please tell us when and how much you are shorting as well.... or is this merely another bluff 

Thank you kind sir, my wallet is ready and transferring funds as we speak..


Yes we are in track for almost doubling capacity in April , with another solid increase in 4th quarter(starts to roll out in 5-6 months) this year with LN, and another HF early 2017.

I'm not attacking your investment strategies and sincerely wish you well. I am just thanking you for creating a small temporary discount before the next bubble. Thank you!

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/02/12/chinas-role-in-bitcoin-how-cultural-differences-are-affecting-the-technologys-progress

The Chinese miners are aligned with core, Italy and other countries facing fiat crisis, halving approaching.... you are a brave man , and I appreciate it!  

Which is what makes the statements from some Classic supporters so ridiculous, they first want to replace 45 developers from many backgrounds and many different companies with 5 devs from 2-3 companies, than when that fails they threaten to sell their BTC for ETH which is controlled completely by 1 dev ... all because they "distrust authority."  Perhaps the reality has nothing to do with decentralization of development (There always has been multiple implementations with different dev teams) , but a fixation of growing fast and ignoring all concerns along the way.

That is a false dichotomy as there is probably only 0.00002% of the ecosystem that wants 1MB block sizes. To answer your question , if we lived in an alternate reality (Classic is stillborn and now has no little chance due to the miners coming to consensus) where Classic convinced the economic majority and miners to use their implementation which proposes a 2MB capacity increase vs a 1.7-2MB (with other benefits)  one than the following would likely be the fallout-

1) Some devs would leave bitcoin altogether abruptly or just stop contributing and slowly selling off their large investments
2) Some devs would join classic and be equally motivated
3) Some devs may attack the HF or create a competing alt
4) Some devs may participate with classic but be less motivated

It would also set a dangerous precedent where a contentious HF's would start to become the norm and we have more to look forward to with regard to politics and arguing every year...

The idea is for Classic to get one HF in to test waters and than a HF becoming a regular exercise every few months
I'm not joking -- look at this --
https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/698202405532401664

They aren't talking about soft forks either but hard forks ... Classic devs even wanted to HF in segwit when a soft fork is available!

You mean that core adopts 3.7Mb to 4MB(2MB maxblockSize+ Segwit) capacity, right? Or are you suggesting Core delay SegWit? Or should Core redesign Segwit to remove the capacity increase within the new merkle tree so it doesn't incentivize people to reduce UTXO growth?

I know I am being nitpicky with language , but the details are important , and there is a tremendous difference between 2 and 4. Believe it or not , most core devs want big blocks , but are selecting a scaling proposal for very specific reasons. When a political coup rejects their ideas , it is a slap in their face and akin to a bunch of mostly non-engineering* Space enthusiasts demanding NASA Engineers to make critical design changes that could place their whole mission in jeopardy.

* -- Most of Core Devs do not agree with the design decisions of Classic and although Classic has 2 competent developers it is a similar slap in the face.

I don't recommend or advocate for censorship.

Thanks for the reminder .. I believe you are correct and the evidence now reflects that bitmainwarranty is merely a re seller with less than 1 %. so the signed hashing power is more like 68-70% ,.It was a bit confusing because the people signing directly worked for Bitmain at some time in the past. I corrected the post in fairness and accuracy, regardless of it not really changing the fact that Classic is DOA with the mining and economic majority opposing them. Cheers friend.  


You keep dumping and shorting and the price keeps going up ... still waiting for my discount. I am trusting you are a man of your word and actually are divesting and shorting.... or do you think there is so much demand that your shorts are a drop in the bucket?

https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-White-House-think-of-cryptocurrencies-such-as-bitcoin

Ed Felten, Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer of The US gvt has keenly watching the debate as they are interested in the outcome.
Claims there is no participation.

I don't know all about that purge non-sense ... we shouldn't stoop to their level and use violence, torture, kidnapping, and murder to effect change when we can write code and peacefully opt out of funding various crimes against humanity.

I think it would be a great for Core developers to set a date for a HF with certain conditions to be met so we have a goal. If not , It would be great if Classic could take some advice from the miners and Garzik who was denied changing the thresh-hold and perhaps deploy a new implementation based off of 0.12.0 that included a 1.5MB bump with segwit HF in, a 90% thresh-hold of the previous 12960 of blocks with a 3 month grace period. This proposal would be far more attractive.

P.S... The Ln will allow nodes to be incentivized and strengthens our ecosystem. This solves our dilemma of node drop off. Additionally, mining is so competitive that the cost of equipment and electricity is close to the total sum of reward+tx fees+extra fees from other services like selling virgin coins. This means that if all tx are handled directly through miners instead of on a caching layer the cost of equipment and electricity will increase likewise instead of it slowing down due nodes sharing tx fees with miners. This may solve the concern of the exponential increase of electricity consumed for PoW....

You were using the term Purge which was an odd attempt to by Fatman3001 to insinuate I advocated for technique used by Stalin and his followers. Take a Look at this deplorable moment in history that he was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge


You are always welcome to stay, leave, or advocate for change friend. No need to admit you were wrong either, as it really isn't about arguing over Satoshi's Whitepaper because he left and the direction of Bitcoin is in our hands now. You and Me.... we should work together in solidarity to make it better.

P.S... I believe their are many genuine bitcoin advocates who support Classic(including some prominent anarchists like Ver and Janssens so this isn't about Statists vs Anarchists), and that the trolls and agent provocateurs aren't just representing the classic side but multiple groups for various reasons. One likely reason is to subvert our ecosystem. Here is a good video giving you an overview on how states subvert organizations they oppose - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fQoGMtE0EY

I do think that it is possible that States are still ignoring and simply watching our ecosystem from the sidelines as they have already admitted towards...who knows? The beauty of subversion is that it is extremely difficult to avoid or identify and those that claim that it is happening are accused of being paranoid. The good thing is that we can avoid its effects by increasing education and trying not to automatically assume ill will , and sticking to the facts as best we can to avoid it if it is happening.

Here is a Great Article From Bruce Fenton that we all should consider -

https://medium.com/@brucefenton/holding-ourselves-to-a-higher-standard-seven-steps-to-mitigate-the-human-flaws-in-our-bitcoin-4197b7c0fa24#.55g3fubea


Looks that way.

Estimated Next Difficulty:    178,784,614,714 (+24.06%)
This is a clear sign of going up... miners investing more and burning more electricity in anticipation for bull run.


We don't necessarily have to choose between either. Perhaps competing payment channels could have different economic policies where some allowed higher txs by having a longer CLTV period before settlement, some could have stricter spam control, and others less volume with shorter settlement times. 

 Dipping in a fee market event if it proves harmful won't be disastrous as there are always temporary off the chain solutions to buffer the extra tx's (Ironically, those that support Classic), and it will merely sway miners and many other to support increasing the blocksize quickly.  If a fee market event proves to remove a lot of spam and create innovative other solutions like payment channels, we also all win. Basically we are discussing champagne problems that can be dealt with as we learn. The worst outcome is if a fee market isn't realized because tx volume stagnates.

Than the solution to this dilemma is to do more testing , grow our market share with users, write more software, startup more businesses faster than the other alts. Its still too early to know how to solve our problems or what a fee market event will look like... the only thing we can do is innovate and create redundancy plans.... This does mean we should try and strengthen other implementations(I don't know If I can ever agree on a low threshold for a HF though )

I understand , the above is easier said than done.

I'm not going to make assumptions about you but it is of interest the GCHQ just was given explicit permission to break the law where others would be jailed kidnapped and tortured for similar actions-

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35558349


They have been given the legal power to subvert, exploit, hack, spread trojans and viruses, introduce backdoors security vulnerabilities, and invade peoples privacy without a warrant. This double standard is highly offensive and we all should consider the GCHQ our enemy.

Meanwhile ... 21 releases better code using the new CLTV opcode to setup a micro-payments channel to dramatically increase capacity with no need for a blocksize limit increase, and no added network tradoffs. Works with any device and free to use.

https://medium.com/@21/true-micropayments-with-bitcoin-e64fec23ffd8#.t2iij7v71

This will not be as inexpensive and powerful as the lightning network but is a great solution to resolve current capacity "problems" immediately.

This is misleading. They are referring to High frequency micro transactions. a small business like a restaurant could have a micro transaction tab setup without any 21 Bitcoin Computers. This is free code that works with any device.


I don't think it is wise to conflate the Great Purge with the forms of ostricizations you are describing and find it very odd that you are reading into my statements intentions that just do not exist. I have explained very clearly what should be done with "shills/trolls/  agent provocateurs" --


To add to that we can ignore trolls that are abusive or constantly provide low level tripe simply by using the ignore feature.

In what way are my recommendations are akin to shutting people down and excluding them?

The code is based upon previous open source payment channels with some improvements. They are releasing the code free to use shortly but haven't clarified under what license. Regardless of what license it is released under any improvements can easily be backported into other open source payment channels that they built upon.  

Here are other solutions that existed before -

https://bitcore.io/api/channel/
https://bitcoinj.github.io/working-with-micropayments
https://github.com/streamium/streamium
https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#micropayment-channel

They just made some slight improvements --

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/45inzs/true_micropayments_with_bitcoin/czyav45

Now you are back-peddling and suggesting you were using the term Purge in a very generic sense and not referring to that horrible moment in history.  


It looks pretty clear to me... You suggest I am planning another "Great Purge" , Link to that horrible moment in history, than reference horrible communists as potential comrades of mine.

Why you would associate that moment in history with modern examples of ostracism on campus universities is odd and hyperbolic as well.

The "barman" is merely a payment channel script(not a human) that uses the bitcoin blockchain for an Extremely fine-grained realtime billing.

The consumer places the initial deposit in which the merchant can delay delivering a good/service or use other 0 Conf algo's to detect fraud in conjunction with the payment channel if a delay is not in their interest. Thus the risk is 1 US penny for the consumer. Yes, this is moving forward and very useful.

The lightning network will be superior , but this is much better than what existing payment processors are using.


Not that it matters ... but since you are such a Satoshi Fanboi here is another fact for you-

I love the false posturing of people threatening to buy Monero or Ether. This only is a valid threat if a real crisis is ongoing instead of a manufactured one. Any investment in these alts is a large gamble that people are free to make. The rest of us are focused on trying to improve bitcoin for the longterm success and not some sort term patch with strings attached.

I appreciate your honesty with being a troll... but we really do not need this distraction right now as we need to work together on finding solutions to increasing capacity and scalability.

There is no such thing as trust less solutions, all we can do is manage trust and mitigate risk. These payment channel are a great piece of the puzzle to the capacity problem.

Almost Everyone is working towards greater capacity, we just disagree on the priorities and methods. You are describing the Bitcoin Assets crowd that is 0.00002% of bitcoiners. It is misleading to suggest otherwise. Most want bigger blocks and more capacity and view 7tps as a problem.


My intention is not to offend you, and I am not trying to win any popularity contests, but merely correct false statements and working on reducing some unnecessary hostility by focusing on the facts instead of attacking individuals. I wouldn't have assumed you were a troll without you admitting it. It was worth mentioning because we have enough problems with confusion and people stiring up shit , that the added layer of trolling to get your rocks off isn't helpful.

I have noticed perhaps 2 that may fit that crowd on this forum off the top of my head. The MP crowd doesn't interact much here and typically stay on bitcoin assets. You realize the MP has made death threats against multiple people included Core devs, right? Core devs don't typically get along with that crowd, they have their own ecosystem and own implementation of bitcoin that is separately maintained.

While I didn't like how Gavin used the misleading metaphor of different implementations (with contrary consensus rules) = browsers, His response to being co-opted is perfectly reasonable. Its a silly question to ask in the first place and he has been accused for years of this and denied it many times. It is rather rude to ask it in a serious manner and thus why it was asked in jest eliciting a joke in response.  

It is almost impossible to know someone is a co-opted or an agent provocateur , and thus we should merely look at and review each others actions instead of assigning a likelihood. Hearn's actions are of high suspect, Gavin still appears to be genuine IMHO.


The moment I hear someone make appeals to  "OMG , kiddie porn" or "Terrorists" my guard is up and they are immediately discredited.  Using those appeals to emotion at minimum reflect someone who is acting hysterical and emotional and not properly logically reflecting upon the data.

Yes, there is some evidence, being that it was discussed as a means of attacking bitcoin in some research* and moderators on forums and social media sites have seen some good evidence representing such behavior. Using agent provocateurs is a common tool that states routinely use and we should expect this behavior to be occurring now , and if not in the near future. In the end it doesn't really matter if it is merely a troll, shill, aggressively disruptive advocate, or  agent provocateur siring up division in our ecosystem.... we should address these concerns head on by not feeding into the personal attacks, discussing the facts clearly, avoiding arguments when possible, and ignoring abusive individuals.

*   https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1200/RR1231/RAND_RR1231.pdf

Agent provocateurs don't have to work for the CIA. They could also be a troll from buttcoin who hates bitcoin , a former bitcoin user who has ragequit, a supporter or dev from a competing alt coin, a organized attack from one of many private blockchain startup, someone who politically hates Austrian economics, anarchists, libertarians, ect... there are many sources of "haters" that are trying to disrupt our ecosystem.

We should assume these attacks will continue and get worse as bitcoin matures and private blockchains start getting promoted.
Whether an Agent provocateur is merely a troll, works for a competing coin, or the state, matters not. The importance in studying subversion tactics  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fQoGMtE0EY  is critical because it will strengthen our community and allow us to deflect these attacks in the future. An attacker doesn't even have to be aware that they are subverting, they could merely be a troll will sadistic tendencies who naturally subverts for pleasure.... in either case or response and reaction should be the same.... so we need not waste effort identifying whether they are government agents or buttcoin trolls.

This doesn't mean we should ignore any criticisms of Bitcoin. We should welcome criticisms which are fact based regardless of how upsetting those facts can be or who they are coming from. We do not want to isolate ourselves with groupthink either. This makes individuals like Peter Todd very valuable to our ecosystem, because they don't mind pointing out the weaknesses within bitcoin(so we can fix them ) regardless of how many people they upset with the cold hard truths.

There is a sybil attack occuring as we speak , and the sad thing is that many Classic supporters that are participating in the sybil attack have good intentions and not aware that they are weakening the security of our network. This isn't a Core vs Classic disagreement , because Core devs criticised when an exchange spun up 100 Core nodes... and rightfully so.

The intentions of the person spinning up nodes is only is half the problem. If one person or company spins up many nodes that is indeed a sybil attack and weakens the security of our network regardless of their intentions. It centralizes nodes, gives a false signal to the network that its healthier and more decentralized than it actually is, an can be used as an attack vector if that individual is compromised(even if their intentions are well founded) . This has nothing to do with the implementation debate and everything to do with understanding the potential security implications of an individual spinning up more than one node. This should always be discouraged regardless of it being a core node, XT, node, Classic node, ect... 1 node per economic agent- whether it be a company, SPV wallet, individual, miner, ect.... 1 node each. There is no way of stopping someone creating more but this practice should be discouraged as it weakens bitcoin and is indeed a type of Sybil attack.


Those aren't mutually exclusive... in fact , transparency is one thing I'm advocating to deflect these types of attacks.

Quoted to lock in the fact that you are unaware of the importance of non-mining-nodes with security and the role they play. Please research this topic before spreading more misinformation. You are ignoring the fact that new nodes have to bootstrap from existing nodes and also ignoring the fact that SPV nodes that are dependent upon full nodes, also ignoring the fact that Juking the numbers gives us a false representation of how decentralized are the nodes we have, plus the fact that not having an economic agent on the other side of each of those nodes doesn't give developers crucial feedback to any potential bugs that are experienced to be reported... ect...

One must first understand the techniques:

https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

The ways to combat it mainly are trying to be as open and transparent as possible to prevent rumors and conspiracy theories. Try and be as clear and objective as possible to try and avoid the spread of misinformation. Try and avoid assuming bad faith among peers to avoid excessive paranoia from creating fear and distrust with a group(this can be difficult to do as there are individuals one may need to ignore and one needs to reasonably review the evidence), ignoring very unproductive and wasteful individuals who constantly troll or try and turn the conversation off-topic, and try and discuss the facts as much as possible without getting bogged down in spiteful attacks or personal attacks.

New nodes bootstrap ~randomly from multiple peers, therefore it is important for us to maximize honest and decentralized nodes (1 unique node per economic agent) as much as possible to reduce the probability of this attack vector. If there are enough dishonest full nodes and a new node bootstraps to an alternate history than that could be a problem.


It more complicated than this because different SPV wallets handle security differently. SPV wallets do not accept nodes randomly, but an SPV wallet can be convinced or tricked into trusting the wrong full node or the attacker can compromise the full node the SPV wallet depends upon... but it is more complicated than this as I said ... we really need to start discussing the individual wallets themselves to proceed further in the discussion.  

Yes , Todd, Back , and others like myself criticized them for spinning up 100 bitcoin core nodes. I already cited this... It doesn't matter who is doing it , it isn't a good idea and reflects a deep misunderstanding why we need individual humans on the other end of full nodes in a decentralized manner. Please don't take my word for it, ask someone you trust like Gavin if its a good idea for one person to spin up 100s of full nodes or not.

Users are part of the network. Many of these attacks are coordinated. Thus a compromised or malicious mining node coordinating with a pool of NMN could attack a user, or a malicious pool of NMN could coordinate a 0 conf attack, ect....There are many edge cases and fringe attacks that you aren't considering at all.... in network security you need to prepare for the edge cases (even if they are unlikely ) because an attacker will use an assortment of them or a specific one that is tailored to an attack during a vulnerable moment.

Additionally, you are ignoring the critical role a human plays in using the wallet, whether they know it or not they are playing the role or a "debugger" or "tester" to report problems to a developer. If you spin up 100 nodes that simultaneously gives a false sense of security and less people testing the software.


P.S...  Everyone should ignore the user "bargainbin" , look at his post history and you can see he constantly wastes people time by asking the same questions over and over, and trolls to create dissent. He/She isn't genuine and intends to do our ecosystem harm.

I was giving a list of problems malicious NMN can have with regards to attack vectors. If a NMN has a valid blockchain boostrapped they will reject a malicious mining node block. Thus a NMN matters specifically because this attack can occur in a coordinated fashion. They are dependent upon each other.


Yet most tx's are 0 conf... Until people start using payment channels this will continue to be a problem. This is wht segwit needs to be deployed ASAP, to fix most of the problems with malleability so payment channels can mature.


If the full node is bootstrapped from a pool of malicious nodes it can verify a false block. There is a good reason outbound is restricted to one IP address per /16 .

That is just one attack scenario... another one would be a scenario where a network is segregated off (deep packet filtering/firewalls/compromised routers/ect) so a new node , bootstrapped from malicious nodes had many blocks that could do harm , not just the first.
I could go on with other edge cases.... but yes, these are all rare , and weird cases .... but in security you have to prepare for these edge cases and do your best to mitigate them because

1) An attacker will specifically use edge cases or create them to conduct an attack
2) There are enough of these edge cases in existence that it makes some type of weakness not only possible but likely

Case in point -- Gavin has said in the past and just repeated himself on LTB that SPV mining is a perfectly reasonable solution for miners to use that have propagation or bandwidth problems with larger blocks due to the great firewall of china and lack of bandwidth there. He misled the listeners(probably unintentionally) into thinking this was just a problem for the miners themselves and posed no harm on the network , ignoring the fact that during the edge case of BIP 66 softforking users were instructed to wait for more conf , and some possible double spends could have occurred, and it became small crisis.... not just effecting the miners.

Nicolas is gathering some interesting data on the ongoing Sybil attack-

http://0bin.net/paste/Hk1ooypyQ7oxCLqV#JfIph4rAPpm-u6s37vb6s549qQkJa4o/hkZ8fa2UvEk

https://imgur.com/a/jweYf

Samson Mow offering to pay Armstrong 5k to commit to Classic and switch all coinbase nodes to Classic. 

https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/699509360678957056

Lets see if coinbase makes a commitment to circle.

Banks discover they can use shared merkle trees (git) to track and organize their data instead of excel spreadsheets.

https://www.hyperledger.org/news/announcement/2016/02/hyperledger-project-announces-30-founding-members

 

They still don't understand why they are fighting a losing game.

Those hackers are disgusting , but this has little to do with bitcoin as hackers do ask for W/U, Moneygram, greendot prepaid cards (cryptolocker) just the same as bitcoin. I would argue that any currency that does not empower the individual the freedom to spend it for good or bad, responsibly or irresponsibly isn't a currency at all but more akin to a restricted gift certificate or voucher rather than a currency.
This is why we should be cognizant of most criminals preferring the US dollar to other currencies but shouldn't hold contempt for US fiat for this reason alone(There are legitimate reasons to find fault within it) . The US dollar is merely easy to launder, physically forms are anonymous, its ubiquitous , and has high liquidity so is a well suited currency for criminals.

There are two criminals in this story :
1) the extortionists holding the data for ransom
2) The hospital management for not having an appropriate redundancy plan with backups

This goes far beyond any ransom as there are many reasons why one needs proper backups and contingency plans.  The fact that the hospital didn't place their printers on a isolated VLAN is a criminal level of irresponsibility and people need to be fired over this. Part of the backup process includes having a restoration strategy and verification process and regularly testing this. If this is not done you shouldn't trust your backup. For this not to be done in a hospital environment where a lack of patient data can jeopardize lives is criminally irresponsible.

This is also a disaster because regulations gave a false sense of security to management. HIPAA guidelines themselves may have given naive management a false sense of security.

Vitalik, along with other investors will need to make regular dumps to sustain development. The warning sign was all the spam we were seeing promoting ether and indicating a manipulated pump occurring to prepare for the dump. It will be interesting to see what Sergio Demian Lerner turing complete scripting softfork for bitcoin does to ethereum as well. It won't directly compete with Ethereum abilities but make much of it redundant and unnecessary.

There is a whole bunch of ether (over 77 million!!!) ready to get dumped on the market. I expect a slow and steady capitulation of ether from here because Vitalik needs to keep operations running , and early investors want to jump in Bitcoin because of FOMO on the next bitcoin appreciation bubble that is likely to happen this year..

fascinating new interview with Peter Todd-

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/the-bitcoin-game-34-bitcoin-core-dev-peter-todd

Everything is falling in line for extreme bullish outcome... only pessimism is a couple more months of uncertainty due to fork.... but that will pass once segwit starts rolling out. Everyone has 1.5-2 more months to buy at depressed prices...

Gold bugs that hated bitcoin are now coming around and advocating it -

http://financialsurvivalnetwork.com/2016/02/andrew-hoffman-current-financial-market-eye-of-the-hurricane/

Brian now backpeddling on classic?

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/700175287607164928

Perhaps 3 months depending upon how quickly segwit gets deployed and any last minute death throws of classic. My prediction is a slow , jagged , rise up to 500-550 in the next 2 months as well as being the depressed price before potential bubble. Keep in mind that even if the market has priced some of the halving in already there is a confluence of many factors creating a perfect storm.

1) Too many countries discussing negative interest rates
2) New bank scandals and doubts of liquidity and balance sheets
3) new bail ins being proposed
4) Oil , shipping crisis
5) Stock market unpredictable and volatile with expectations of another large crash
6) Financial uncertainty pervasive
7) Debt increasing and multiple concerns of hyperinflation
8 lack of trust in the yuan

ect...

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-277-separating-signatures-with-segregated-witness


Part of the FUD being circulated by those attempting a rushed Hard fork is the fact that the capacity increases of  1.7MB to 2MB found within segwit will never be deployed in April, or will falter from use or adoption and thus why we need an immediate rushed HF. Once Segwit rolls out than many classic supporters will naturally upgrade because they want a larger capacity and all the other included benefits and their concerns about capacity would be moot thus reducing market uncertainty and bringing more confidence to our ecosystem. Of course we should expect another HF attempt when 2MB sig blocks are full as well so this issue will re-appear but give some breather room before the next halving.

Appreciate your passion , but you appear to be in an irrational emotional state. What do you have against payment channels, specifically?


Many people , including Todd, believe that bitcoin is already too centralized. They want a conservative capacity increase to 1.7 to 2MB to buy more time for other improvements can be made so this trend reverses itself and a small or medium size miner could solo or p2p mine again. He is discussing the general centralization incentives.


The Official statement is pretty clear. Core developers have already made a compromise before making other improvements , and are rolling out an effective 1.7-2MB capacity change with segwit in April.

0.12 is awesome , I have been beta testing for a couple weeks now and have noticed up to +5x syncing with libsecp256k1, the new tools to reduce upload traffic to keep limited nodes from using too much bandwidth are great, mempool limit adjusting is good to keep raspberry pi nodes from crashing,  automated use of TOR, conf conflict detection ,  and more .

I haven't played around with pruned Full node features yet , and that is the next thing to test. 2GB ~full nodes is an amazing option for many people with limited disk space.

Last one I tested ...

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-February/012448.html

Candidate 5 ...

People are no longer cashing out on Eth and Bitcoin still going up aggressively... general sentiment bullish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EjpEqZt_AA&feature=youtu.be

Getting rid of physical cash ongoing ... to prepare for negative interest rates and more control of your assets.

Bills killed -
500 bill
1000 bill
5000 bill
10,000 bill

Next target to kill -

100 dollar bill ... all while the dollar keeps dropping in spending power due to inflation. If anything larger bills should be introduced.

For the last 14k years , anonymous currency has been the norm and an essential and important right for privacy and autonomy. They are trying to take this away and further enslave everyone.

He is being sarcastic and in the camp of lets blow up capacity as much as possible and dump all the spam on the main chain regardless of the consequences because I am impatient and want bitcoin to compete with visa Immediately , regardless of the consequences.

In reality we don't have to choose between either. There is a false dichotomy being painted.

Bitcoin already has a temporary surplus capacity with insured and regulated off the chain solutions for all those influx of new users like coinbase / circle/ and other exchanges... If a fee market starts to build up that will drive some of the spam off the network , encourage some new users to use off the chain solutions instead, and spur some innovation in use of payment channels like what 21 introduced.

The sky isn't falling. Bitcoin can take on much more overnight without any issues.
 

I understand that some may resent Brian for his recent trolling on twitter and thoughtless remarks, but I won't hold it against him. The reality is these off the chain solutions provide a temporary and valuable service to our community and new users are better at onramping onto them before they learn about the complexities of our ecosystem.

We don't want millions of new users simply downloading electrum and flooding our ecosystem with questions and mistakes and losing their passwords, forgetting to backup their wallets, ect... This would not only be a PR disaster but also create a negative impression of bitcoin that will make them think twice about using it for a long while.

You have to try and empathize with the mind of a new user being introduced to bitcoin and understand that many need to take incremental steps in learning and using it... onramp services like circle and coinbase are well suited to fill this role as they have better support, and handle the complex security for the clients, and the clients have to buy the bitcoins from them anyways so may as well setup a temporary wallet with them too.

***Sigh*** ... no wonder this discussion has been so "complicated"
Some are still under the misapprehension that miners are the ones who vote on the direction of bitcoin and "make the final call"

https://twitter.com/olivierjanss/status/700325846532362241

If this were true it would defeat the whole raison d'ętre of bitcoin in the first place and only would apply if we still were all mining on cpu's... when those days are long over. Economic Nodes now have a stake in the game and the power dynamics are split and a dynamic inter-relationship between miners, users, devs, exchanges/processors, and  merchants.

We need better educational materials to inform the confused... or perhaps we may learn the hard way with a contentious HF and many people learning that even one person has the right and ability to fork the chain at any given moment with or without the miners.  

There are many devs that will support the alternative chain as well -

https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/700316802853634048

https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/700317058102226944

While I typically advice people to avoid using off the chain solutions and centralized bitcoin banks, it isn't fair to compare Mtgox to Coinbase and circle. There is a world of difference between the two... and it isn't irresponsible for new users to temporarily use these services while they learn about bitcoin. You have to weigh risks , and a new user has far more risk at losing their btc with a personal mistake, technical problem or virus than the risks inherent with a regulated and insured institution where their largest risk is capital gains taxes theft.

New users should just be made aware of the tradeoffs.


Sorry to burst your shorts , I'm buying more and encouraging others to jump on this train , now....Buy, Buy, Buy!(all of which uses 0 tx's of capacity from most orders)

These are fair concerns although far more unlikely than Mtgox if you understand how thorough VC investors are with their due diligence , and reasons why we should educate new users to quickly switch to a hardware wallet after on ramping. It really doesn't address my point that these companies provide a valuable service and can buffer any influx of new users. You aren't advocating that we tell non -technical people who are completely new to bitcoin to immediately buy a hardware wallet and meet some stranger in local bitcoins instead are you. Its one thing helping out a family member and giving free 1 on 1 support , but what about all the new users that doesn't have this option?

Buying coins on Coinbase or Circle does not add to tx bloat on the main chain for every purchase. We can have millions of new users onramped overnight without any problems whatsoever.

The irony is Coinbase and circle have mixed incentives to go with a conservative approach and aggressive on the chain approach. In one sense they would temporarily benefit from an influx of new users choosing free tx's and using their wallet to buy btc , on the otherhand they must fear the long term implications p2p decentralized on the chain payment channels pose their centralized wallets ... They really don't want to compete with every node as another payment channel. This is why there is so much desperation in Brain's tweets despite how silly it makes him sound.... he has some legitimate concerns for the longterm profitability of his company. I believe he needs to slowly evolve and offer different services :I.E...  bitcoin atms,  insured and specialty payment channels, consultancy services, business software solutions, ect...

That is an interesting way to think about it.... but doesn't take into account the leveraged losses and income loss potential from merely just holding, but don't worry, you keep posting your shorts and I'll keep buying up your coins.


That is a nice thought , and one that I can get behind , but is unrealistic in the short term. There needs to be a transitional period where fiat leaks into bitcoin before bitcoin becomes so ubiquitous that the USD / Euro merely becomes a foreign currency ... and we are no where close to that moment.

One valid concern that centralized services have for their long term viability is competing with p2p decentralized on the chain payment channels(LN and many more) instead of controlling the ecosystem. If they are smart they will adapt their business model over time and keep up, if not than they should be aware:

1) There are many of us that won't give up on keeping bitcoin decentralized and p2p (we have somewhat veered off track but are looking to reverse this trend)
2) We aren't your enemies and aren't here to destroy your business. We appreciate the efforts made , contributions and sacrifices given in exchange for what we have contributed back in solidarity and are open to mutually growing together with the understanding that we won't compromise our values
3) In the future nodes will be incentivized by sharing tx fees with miners by becoming payment channels. You will need to adapt to this change with bitcoin becoming a settlement network where a market of p2p individuals can freely compete with no unfairly favored nodes or companies. Our allegiances can quickly turn on any company that tries to control these payment channels, they must remain free, open  and decentralized .

There are many of us that are so secure about this future that we are willing to make exceptional sacrifices to make it happen.

Why would violence even be an option if you know I follow the non-aggression principle ? You have a very odd perception of our values. We are very motivated to keep the true nature and purpose of bitcoin alive... This means we not principally motivated by short term profits but have long term goals and are willing to make sacrifices and work hard to achieve them. If the community forces a contentious hard fork , so be it, we will happily allow the community to go separate ways, but be aware we will not acquiescence on our values and join a majority hash rate. There may be a short term struggle and than potentially some changes which will allow both chains to exist securely.  This doesn't mean we cannot find a solution through consensus and make certain reasonable consolations that don't directly compromise our values. Adding 1.7-2Mb capacity to segwit was that compromise and we want to dramatically scale up capacity in the future the right way. It would be great if you would join us building something great , If not , I understand and won't interfere with your choices.

I am glad you can find humor out of this   If the byproduct is happiness that that is a consequence I can accept.

My words are being written without aggression and lack any emotional fervor. They are written with a calm and confident resolution attached to some well reasoned principles.

They aren't even intended for many of the individuals I am responding to but to educate other readers lurking to our perspective.


No one is willing to throw anyone under the bus. I empathize with your position and will not interfere with your choices or vision of bitcoin. That is the beauty of bitcoin, its voluntary nature of participation and involvement.

"We" principally refers to those that believe bitcoin should become a settlement network because of the cold hard reality that it cannot scale completely on the chain. "We" are those that believe we need to work together in solidarity and through consensus rather than democratic majority imposing their will upon minorities.

LoL..... tell me about the dangers of people who want to empower each other to have both sovereignty and solidarity in a voluntary manner.
Your insinuations are humorous and will not deter our goals. 70% of mining power is not enough ... we are looking to create consensus and solidarity with many more miners and in discussions with Bitmain.

I still love you and hope you find happiness sir!


Probably ... that guy creeps me out and not someone that I would associate with.

Agreed. Anarchists are like atheists, they have millions of unique voices and perspectives. I understand your perspective and respect it.


Who says I support Core or Blockstream technocratic hegemony? I have repeatedly supported a diverse set of implementations with separate developers, and separate repositories. This is why further work in libbitcoinconsenssus is so important. I will not make the sloppy and misleading assumption that implementations that break consensus rules are akin to choosing between different browsers on the internet. This is a flawed analogy and a dangerous one as well. Choosing between implementations that diverge on consensus rules is akin to choosing between protocols in a distributed consensus system which is dependent upon agreement.  I encourage experimentation in different coins and protocols and will never interfere with your right to HF at any moment, but lets not pretend that this is merely about creating a diverse set of developer communities when multiple implementations have existed peacefully for a long time now.


I wouldn't consider myself a libertarian , but you do realize that anarchists can and do have solidarity with other anarchists. I invite you to meet some in person.

If not intentionally misleading its is downright stupid when a perfectly good analogy is available . Gavin and Brian spouting that nonsense should know better and its disturbing to hear it from them.

To be clear ... this is a far better analogy--

Different browsers = Bitcoin Core, Bitcore, libbitcoin , ect....
Different protocols = TCP/IP and those that suggest we make some changes to make a new internet where existing browsers suddenly become incompatible with it.

Notice how standards that break the functionality of old browsers are rarely , if ever introduced on the internet. I can still run "mosaic-ck" and lynx browser on my linux computer with no problem and while I am unable to use all that fancy javascript/css/flash/ect I can use TCP/IP just fine as originally intended and surf the web, send emails, and read text. The internet was built with stacks and layers of technology to insure backward compatibility and a HF is the exact opposite of this. So no, it isn't just an imperfect analogy but one that is extremely misleading.


We are building a tank with hardened steal, exploding anti- tank missile panels, advanced engine and suspension components for maneuverability, and a more efficient engine to carry a larger capacity and more ammo...

You simply want to double the weight of the tank and throw a bigger cc diesel engine in her that guzzles more fuel.  

0.12.0 final source code tagged and released -

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases/tag/v0.12.0

Binaries will come soon.

Impressive list up upgrades -

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/v0.12.0/doc/release-notes.md


I will keep running a non pruned full node(to allow others to bootstrap from) but for the first time ever people will be able to fully validate with only ~2GB of Blockchain disk usage.

This is how I can tell you are insincere and just trolling. Even Classic Developers support 95% the improvements in 0.12.0 and have been testing a Classic variation for the Earlier Release candidates.(with a small possibility of not including opt in RBF)

I thought you already have what you need with classic? It has already been released. Meanwhile lets praise and congratulate the great accomplishments of core developers for a moment before getting back to work.


Agreed. My conversations with newcomers off this forum are much different. It is great that coinbase is integrated directly with purse.io and changetip because that means someone can buy bitcoins and immediately save 15-40% off amazon and start tipping all without tx fees and without adding any tx load to the blockchain. This is the first experience I want them to have before we start talking about hardware wallets and other technical details.

The difficult thing about this conversation is that we are repeatedly being misrepresented or misunderstood. Core has already agreed to compromise and kick the can by increasing capacity(they are slowly increasing the "bank" vault just like classic).... which means that you really aren't interested in 2MB, but something much bigger... which at this point in time(remember we want bigger blocks too) would be disastrous for bitcoin. Even by Gavin's own calculations Classic could cause a 40% node drop off (worse case scenario) , this is absolutely unacceptable and we need to start reversing this trend immediately.

It really isn't a choice between on the chain decentralized network with large blocks and a decentralized network of payment channels using the main chain as a settlement network. The first option is impossible to accomplish at Visa levels of tx's , It will never happen, not because of any choices we make , but because the technology is just incapable and any future projected technology is incapable of doing this in a decentralized manner. *

* I am open to the idea of unforeseen radical breakthroughs that completely change technology or black swan events... but lets modify bitcoin if these happen and not expect for them to occur.

Lol... that math doesn't add up. Paid article? They are still listing Miners and pools which specifically stated they will not be using Classic. Really dishonest.

Seriously? Lightning Depends upon radically  larger blocks in the future .... We are talking about 100-200MB blocks. Core has been planning to increase maxblocksize in early 2017... this is old news.

Yes, its in the Lightning Whitepaper and The Core HF has been discussed in the original scaling roadmap (flexcap) with ongoing discussions with another kick the can in Early 2017.

Any questions?


Not a fair analogy , because I am not committed to core or blockstream. Core isn't a company either but a dynamic set of developers contributing in an open source manner from many backgrounds and different interests.

The moment Core or blockstream betrays its principles , is the moment we push for a fork. LN isn;t controlled by blockstream , wasn't invented by blockstream, and is open source and freely available... so there is no need to start speculating on conspiracy theories. There is no code in LN that gives blockstream or core special privileges. Anyone will be able to easily run a LN node.

LN isn't a 1 to 1 scaling solution like simply increasing the blocksize , but a p2p on the chain caching layer which can dramatically increase the amount of txs .

Look at the whitepaper and slides.

LN will allow for 133MB blocks to have ~unlimited Tx's
Simply raising maxBlockSize to 133MB will only give us 931 TPS

and LN allows allows us to incentivize nodes as well.

We cannot compete with Visa by simply increasing maxBlockSize in TPS... impossible without some radically never thought of before technology. We can if we use smart payment channels. It really is that simple.

No , the LN is a extremely efficient caching layer that doesn't involve trusting third parties and can settle much higher txs.
To help you understand it I will use an analogy... You are playing a game of poker with your friends and instead of settling up between all 20 games in a tournament, you use a special program that automatically locks and remembers all debts in a trustless and secure manner between games so the only txs you need to perform is buying the chips initially and cashing out at the end of the night. At any time you can quickly look up and see your balance and be assured that it is impossible for others to take it or manipulate your earnings.

All Tx's happen instantly , do not depend upon trusted third parties or sidechains, or altcoins, but use bitcoin directly in a secure manner with the assumption there are adversarial parties trying to game the system. Ln also solves the problems payment processors have with double spends upon 0 conf which exist even without RBF enabled.

Miners are still needed because the LN is dependent upon the main chain. Most of the TX fees would be going to the miners as well .

Example - Lightning node handles 100k txs per hour, takes an extremely small cut of the txs amounting to a gross revenue of 30 dollars per month , 15-25 going towards expenses and the rest realized net profit. Most of the tx revenue has to be forwarded to the miners where they get extremely high tx fees revenues of eventually increasing to at least 6-7 dollars per tx once the block reward decreases to 0 while the users only pay a couple pennies per tx. Even with 6-7 (eventually) tx fees on the mainchain the consumer only pays a couple pennies per tx because each one of the settlement tx = more than ~350 LN txs.

https://lightning.network/


We are way past the whitepaper sir and have working code. Its open source and available for all to see.

https://github.com/ElementsProject/lightning
https://github.com/LightningNetwork/lnd

It is disingenuous to talk about technical limitations that don't exist or insinuate LN is vaporware when we already have code written that you can install yourself.


Alice, bob , and Eve are commonly used placeholder names in cryptography and game theory. Any questions in general?

The protocols , stacks of code, layers of scripting languages that make up the internet are far, far more complicated than the LN and the average grandmother can look at videos of cats on the internet just fine even though she doesn't have a clue how it happens.

When you do the math , the reality is , this isn't a question of choice... we either throw away bitcoin and create centralized databases to handle visa levels of txs or we change bitcoin into a settlement layer. Developers aren't choosing this because they can , they are simply realizing this is the only viable means to make bitcoin scale otherwise it can never go mainstream.

The user won't have to think about the LN ... to them they will be maiking a bitcoin payment and receiving the funds immediately just like now ... there will be no change to the user experience with buying coffee except they will have 2 benefits:
1) Tx conf will be instant ... no waiting every ~10min
2) Tx cannot be double spent like they can now with coinbase/bitpay

BTW ... ETA for LN is scheduled to begin roll out 3rd quarter this year (and only because Core likes to test everything extremely thoroughly)

I'm talking about the UI experience, of course what happens behind the scenes is different. This is the same as what will happen when segwit rolls out. All upgraded wallets will send and receive tx the same for the user perspective , but behind the scenes there are now 2 merkle trees. LN is intended to use existing technologies that have already been added to bitcoin . CLTV and multisig ... and wallet providers will be onboard with integrating wallets to process LN txs so there is no learning curve..

What don't you believe , specifically? Do you assume Wallet devs will make it unnecessarily complicated for no reason in order to confuse users?


Elaborate ..

Perhaps you guys are getting confused because in these presentations Poon is using terms like Alice, Bob, and Eve ... these terms do not refer to what the humans are actually thinking when a tx occurs, these presentations are intended for developers to understand the concepts .

All of that can be automated behind the scenes and the worst possible outcome is the consumer has to wait for the tx to be unfrozen if they want to make an antiquated direct Tx , or if they want to switch from the LN payment channel to Bitpays competing Impulse payment channel network, or they want to sell their BTC for an altcoin.

You understand that the example given of Bob and alice where the funds are locked with multisig and CLTV isn't going to really happen typically because it wouldn't be useful, right? These examples are merely simplified to easier understand. In reality there are going to be layers of multisig where ones funds are locked for 6 months to one person and one can tx with a very large group of people where some people come and go in ones payment channel.


I don't think its possible to explain it to you...based upon some of your comments you seem to ignore my explanations where I already answer them. No problem , keep shorting away your Bitcoins and we will see in late 2016 how the LN turns out.

No one is suggesting it being widely adopted in 2016, or 2017... I said it rolls out in 2016(from a sidechain testnet to a live bitcoin testnet). LN won't become useful until the capacity is much bigger (4-8MB at least) reinforcing my point why the blocksize needs to grow dramatically for the LN to be viable. Which kinda blows up the whole conspiracy theory that Blockstream is delaying the blocksize repeatedly as a stalling tactic because they never want it to grow.

Some people seem to be under the impression that Todd is married to keeping the maxBlockSize at 1MB . In reality that number has little importance in itself. Peter Todd, amir taaki and Luke Jr are indeed much more conservative than other developers when it comes to anything that can negatively effect security,.... but they aren't like any of those Bitcoin Assets Group* who seem to be married in the idea that the protocol never change.

Peter Todd sounds grumpy and pessimistic , but we need people like him to discover bugs and weaknesses to strengthen the protocol. Rasing the Blocksize for him isn't a problem if it can be done securely and node count doesn't keep dropping. Peter is well aware the LN needs much bigger blocks to be useful.



Here is an an example of 2 people I know of that fit in the category of Bitcoin perfectly fine never scaling. I and most (if not all) core developers don't agree because we are competing with other altcoins and cannot allow themto catchup and to dramatically surpass us in usability.

Where are you getting your data that we have seem a 1000x increase in bandwidth and network propagation times between 95 and 2015? A no , I don't want you to cite me theoretical peak numbers but real average bandwidth numbers and real propagation times. If anything Network bandwidth is becoming more limited in certain areas due to ISP softcaps from overselling their network.

It doesn't work that way ... the 2 are only related insomuch that increasing maxBlockSize to 2MB with segwit is even more dangerous in certain aspects and less in others vs simply changing the maxBlocksize to 4MB.

You just want a capacity of 28 TPS right away is all ... and there is nothing wrong with wanting more cake... I want more too.... but can we just hit the gym first before we load up on carbs?

The exception that breaks the rule.

Ok, well you were under a very specific circumstance of a country that didn't adopt the internet as quickly. Keep in mind that in other parts of the world things were much different. Broadband rolled out in 96 and going that far back isn't fair because the rate of progression has slowed and in some cases reversed (Softcaps limiting total bandwidth per month) while demand keeps increasing (HD video streaming)

There is a reason BIP 103 used 17.7 % per year ... because that is what matches todays data and is the most accurate forecast.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0103.mediawiki

This does include mobile bandwidth as well (In some areas , only mobile bandwidth is available)... so If we were to use just fixed bandwidth the numbers would be close to 50% per year... so would you be ok with a 50% a year blocksize increase? Of course , IMHO , we should be much more conservative than that because propagation time and network latency isn't also increasing at the same rates and really important networks like TOR are also not increasing at the same rates.

Are you reading into his comments ? Where did he say that solo miners would need to flee to pools at 2MB ?

Are you going to also accuse Gavin of lying when he suggests there could be up to a 40% node drop off (solo miners run full nodes too) worse possible outcome with 2MB blocksizes?

You sure have a funny way of reading between the lines. I didn't hear those insinuations at all.



Funny how you insinuate soft forks at a 95% threshold that don't boot anyone from the network is an imposition but a hardfork with a 75% threshold that does reject users upon activation is ok ...

Soft Forks cannot be contentious as core requires a 95 % threshold to activate. Soft Forks don't reject users from the network that don't want to update either. They can continue using bitcoin as normal with their old distro.

Let me clarify a few things :

1) User can still get the latest patches and releases and do not need to accept segwit ever .... Core is open source and another dev can pick and choose what they like out of future releases. In fact that is what classic has done and plans to do. So users can still be secure and never adopt segwit ever if they don't want its benefits.

2) Users who choose not to upgrade to segwit still validate not segwit transactions like normal... therefore nothing changes and them and their friends can continue to send txs to each other and fully validate all non segwit signatures. Older implementations that choose not to upgrade have absolutely no right to force those of us who do upgrade to give us our signatures of validation. If you don't like it than I suggest you reject our txs. By upgrading we acknowledge that we will only be relaying signatures for validation to upgraded nodes. There is no secret here , thats the way its designed.

I agree with you that quickly jacking up the blocksize to 2, 4, 8 Mb within short order will both:

1) Grow The network Faster in the short term
2) Likely grow the market cap of Bitcoin Faster in the short term

at the cost of ...

1) Setting a precedent that a small majority of 75% can impose changes on a minority
2) Setting a direction where the community finds simply increasing the blocksize whenever more capacity is needed is acceptable instead of finding more novel solutions that have less negative tradeoffs
3) Escalate node and mining centralization
4) Make using Bitcoin over TOR more difficult
5) Delaying or ignoring the need for better solutions where the main chain is treated like a settlement layer

You are insinuating that we oppose larger blocks , which is simply not true for many. We want larger blocks done right. Jacking up the blocksize prematurely , regardless of it eventually happening , will have the above tradeoffs.

These things aren't a secret and I am not ashamed to admit them.

It is surprisingly small ... He elaborates the number of lines of changes in the original XT proposal exceed Segwit changes .
This is a fair comparison because most of the XT supporters are now classic supporters insinuating that Segwit is a massive change when they were will to accept (in some regards- loc) a larger change before.


In many ways(not all) segwit is indeed safer than simply increasing maxBlockSize. It doesn't involve a contentious hardfork(99% of people support segwit in itself ) , it allows for signature pruning which reduces costs on the network = safer , Fixes most Malleability issues= safer, creates a Linear scaling of sighash operations = safer, allows for safer deployment of softforks in future, Reduces UTXO growth , ect....

This doesn't refute my statements. I agree that economic nodes have the final vote.... they don't have to follow 95% of miners in a SF or HF.



I believe you are being unreasonable by allowing segwit to be forced upon you if you believe it is wrong or sets a dangerous precedence. I support your right to reject segwit and find it completely unreasonable that you would ever acquiesce to anything you found dangerous or against your principles.

This being said.... most of the individuals , including myself , have been very nuanced about our objections of the HF and a 2MB maxblocksize increase. There are many circumstances where we would be happy to make further considerations towards and I have stated one in the past . Here is another to add to the list -

Past compromise proposal -
Deploy segwit in April as SF but lower signature size from 4x to 2x and adjust incentives as well
Plan for a 1.5MB max blocksize HF for 6 months from now with a 95% threshold and 28 day grace period

New compromise proposal -
Deploy segwit in April as SF but make signature merkle tree 1MB and remove incentives (unfortunately we lose some benefits here like Reducing UTXO growth but its a compromise)
Plan for a 2MB max blocksize HF for 6 months from now with a 95% threshold and 28 day grace period

I can be reasonable and cut down the HF window from normal 1year and offer a combined proposal.

No one is required to convince core of anything and can veto any decision they make simply through inaction ... the easiest form of voting = 0 effort. People have to actively go out of their way and choose to use core. It would be trivial for core to create automatic updates with their software or push updates but they refuse to for the expressed reason that they don't want to impose their decisions upon the community... ultimately a user needs to manually upgrading = the vote.

The consensus process within core isn't perfect but generally is a process of meritocracy , consensus , and where the developers attempt to carry out the will of the economic majority and users if their is an overwhelming majority of support for an idea. This is indeed a conservative approach(which is a good thing with this type of open source project) and means that if an idea is contentious it has little hope of being pushed through.

Poon and Thaddeus Dryja who invented Lightning network and doing most of the work on it have nothing to do with Blockstream and aren't payed by them. LN is on a sidechain right now - elements alpha... but only for testing and it isn't going to be an exclusive blockstream product or a side chains product. sidechains are also open source... you can setup a sidechains server without blockstreams permission and test the LN right now- also open source.



Well this is a lie, and not only goes against what Blockstream has indicated in their plans but is provably untrue right now. Anyone can run LN and a sidechain server right now ... there is no cost, and no permission needed.

Inside secret-
Here is how a LN payment will be made by a LN enabled wallet according to the devs I have spoken too (brace yourself for the complexity of the user experience)

1) scan qr code, enter in onename id , or select user from address book
2) type in amount of payment in btc or fiat (possibly skipped if QR code enters in amt for client)
3) Select priority level
4) enter in password or pin
5) Click send

and here is another way they plan in the future:

1) tap cell phone against product and nfc picks up payment amount
2) client clicks yes on phone with optional pin

The reason this was done is 2 fold.. incentivize adoption to segwit and more importantly Reduce UTXO growth.


How will bitcoin scale to the mainstream if it didn't act as a settlement layer for the main chain? It certainly cant get far by continually increasing the block side.

This is fine and reasonable and I don't want you to lose money ... I'll stop arguing , go and help segwit get tested more, and look forward to April release. Good night Bitcointalk.

 First, the conspiracy was that Blockstream was a unified cabal of developers with a vision to control bitcoin and a plan to force everyone to use their subscription sidechain products.

Now when the nutters find out that Blockstream has a contract which allows developers to independently express their thoughts without being coerced into following a unified company plan and are free to independently develop and contribute what they want with autonomy than they scream foul as if this is some attempt to further stall development.

f2pool could have been mature about this matter and simply emailed Adam a friendly email to clarify what the issue was , but instead they decided to stir up some really petty drama so they could appease the widest audience with their political games of using false nVersion's to give miners on their pool a false sense they are "voting" for classic when the nodes are really running core. These political games aren't that big of a deal in of themselves besides being unprofessional , but when they are done with the ignorance of the inherent risks that using false nVersion's creates, is really harmful to our ecosystem*.


* Using false nVersion's risk triggering safety warnings or potential forks.  

You forgot the link... reading now..

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

Initial Impression --

The Good - Thin blocks, Weak Blocks  (Also Found in Core's roadmap)

The Bad - Advocating for SPV mining , which is a problem exacerbated by their Validate Once proposal, and pushing off the many benefits of  Segwit till the end of the year

The Ugly - 3rd/4th Q 2016  adaptive rule for a block size limit that  heavily incentivizes those with better bandwidth which would drive miners from China to locations with better bandwidth and make many home mining operations obsolete because they cannot compete with the propagation times with larger operations who can afford better uplinks. There is no consideration for centralization concerns or the costs of nodes with this proposal which makes it a non-starter from the get go IMHO.

The devs that signed the proposal were some of the more pessimistic and cautious core devs regarding raising the blocksize . Most of the other devs will be easier to hear and convince to rally behind once the technical details are fully elaborated.


This is ridiculous statement to make. Devs have absolutely no control over the miners, merchants, payment processors, users. We all have to choose to run or upgrade to their software.... that is the VOTE! Their influence over our ecosystem is completely indirect because even those that hate them secretly respect their expertise and efforts. Do not become bitter that you cannot force devs to write and maintain code for you that goes against their advice or moral conscience.  

Many of us still mine at home , and even profitably because we have free electricity from Sunk costs (microhydro,solar)

There is also hope/expectations that products will start to be released in the future to recycle heat from ASICs, that will than incentivize more mining at home.

Amazing development work from Sean Bowe,  Pieter Wuille, Gregory Maxwell, and Madars Virza.

First successful Zero-Knowledge Contingent Payment (ZKCP) on Bitcoin network=

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/02/26/zero-knowledge-contingent-payments-announcement/

Who needs the competing zerocoin token when we can build CT , zk-SNARKs, and ZKCP's in Bitcoin directly?

Bullish!

ELI5 : An Individual can prove the authenticity of a digital item without disclosing the details to insure privacy or prove they actually have the information without giving away information before an agreement or sale is made.

Some applications off the top of my head:

• ZK-payment trustless* mixing without the need for third parties
• Removing many required escrow agents from the sale of digital goods or information
• More secure trustless* and verifiable auditing
• Proof of registered assets or properties that can independently be audited(property titles) without disclosing details (location) that could compromise privacy
• Smart contracts that can independently be audited for veracity but without disclosing the details therein for privacy

Example of use case from article--

"An example application would be the owners of a particular make of e-book reader cooperating to purchase the DRM master keys from a failing manufacturer, so that they could load their own documents on their readers after the vendor’s servers go offline. This type of sale is inherently irreversible, potentially crosses multiple jurisdictions, and involves parties whose financial stability is uncertain–meaning that both parties either take a great deal of risk or have to make difficult arrangement. Using a ZKCP avoids the significant transactional costs involved in a sale which can otherwise easily go wrong."

* Trustless within the constraints to a secure trust minimized block chain like bitcoin. Nothing is completely trustless.

 

There are many other methods of removing 3rd parties in mixing services , This allows one to both remove the third party and do so privately without outsiders knowing.

"Many other transaction types also use the same hash locked pattern, but privacy can be further improved: A ZK-payment can be transformed using the CoinSwap approach where they payer first pays into an ordinary 2-of-2 escrow+refund with the payee. The then would perform the ZK-payment transactions described above externally to the Bitcoin network, and if everything goes through without cheating the payer just signs a 2-of-2 release to pay the payee directly, without disclosing to the network that a hashlocked transaction was used. If the payer fails to release the escrow directly, the payee can just release it by announcing the hashlock and hashlock redeem. "

----------------------------------

Wrapping ones head around these concepts may be tricky at first but using them after the code is written can be so simple that your grandmother can execute a  zk-SNARKs without actually understanding the underlying code. This is going to have far reaching implications that is going to radically effect everyday life. There is a long list of implications and use cases that I could discuss ad naseum, Here are some more-

Hackers or security researchers could sell exploits/bugs with security bounties and privately and securely prove the information is legitimate without compromising their identity and risking litigation from an embarrassed organization.

Securely validate identities without disclosing the details

Authenticate data or passwords without disclosing the secret or password