Bitcoin Forum

This BitcoinXT thing seems like an interesting new project, and I think we should be discussing it here since two big former BTC contributors (Gavin and Mike) are backing it.

OK - lets put you on record.

Hypothetical: if 90% of the network ran BitcoinXT (or any other Bitcoin Core fork supporting larger block sizes), which side would you be on? Would you hold fast and stick to 'the original bitcoin' or would you go along with the supermajority?

Oh you mean there's gonna to be an album of this? How exciting. Oh terrific. Yeah sure. (clears throat) My name's Chris Peterson, Americano.   8)

XT's minimum participation threshold is 75%.  IDK where you got 90% from, but it sure is easier to defend that hypothetical, isn't it?

And do you mean putative "90%" (which is purely self-reported) or actual 90%?

You need to be clear because, as we saw with the BIP66 fork, self-reported numbers are often wildly and problematically optimistic.

BIP66's supposed "95%" turned out in reality to be 64%.  What makes you think XT's far more lower 75% (or your made-up 90%) will be any less of a shitstorm, especially given the fog of war and associated maliciousness Gavin's contentious hard fork will entail?

What part of "If you go on a Bitcoin fork, irrespective which scammer proposes it, you will lose your Bitcoins (http://trilema.com/2015/if-you-go-on-a-bitcoin-fork-irrespective-which-scammer-proposes-it-you-will-lose-your-bitcoins/)" do you not understand?

I won't contaminate my coins with Gavintaint unless MPEX's Gavincoin Short (http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/) somehow fails and #bitcoin-assets throws in the towel.

I said hypothetical because that's what it is - a hypothetical. BitcoinXT doesn't have any >1MB blocksize code yet, so there's no reason to assume that the final number is 75.

Regardless, you've said that you won't 'contaminate' your coins unless MPEX fails, which is fine. I seriously doubt you'll stick to that but hey, if we're going to play chicken we might as well have people that talk a good game - it would be boring otherwise.

Longest chain with the most users and the most coins wins - GL going against a supermajority if it comes to that.

Congrats canth, you said chikun, learn more at www.litecoin.com

Ha...so we've got another that's going to go against the flow? I think most people are liars when it comes down to this topic, but if you really are brave enough to stay on the short side of a PoW fork- you've got bigger balls than me.

Yes, the fact that "most people are liars when it comes down to this topic" is why I asked you to account for the vast, empirically problematically significant discrepancy between self-reported trigger thresholds and actual compliance.

All you did, by hedging with your weaselly "subject to change" squishiness, was admit "75%" is a terrible idea.

I think we both know that BIP66's example of "95%" theoretical translating into 64% actual, in a non-contentious soft-fork no less, indicates GavinCoin will be a complete shit show whether it uses an ostensible 75%, 90%, or 95%.

Did you read the qntra and trilema links in my post?

They explain why saying on the short side is the safest strategy.

My coins are perfectly safe sitting out the Grand Schism.

OTOH, coins moved to the bloat-fork are at risk of being lost or becoming worthless:


Bitcoin is not a democracy nor a popularity contest.  Blocksize will not be determined by Gavin's Redditard Army.

The fork will be decided by economic power.  Do you have more coins than MPEX and the #bitcoin-assets crowd, and the core devs, and btcdrak, etc.?  Do Gavin and Hearn?  No, I didn't think so either.   :D

To me, BIP66 shows that SPV wallets and SPV mining is a terrible way to secure any sort of meaningful transactions and requires running non-ancient versions of software. I'll agree, there is no way of knowing the difference between self-reporting thresholds and actual compliance except for when it comes down to maintaining consensus. Consensus is a very broad term, but for kicks lets say a supermajority of PoW hashing power, a supermajority of economic power including large holders, exchanges and wallet providers.

Since there's no way of knowing, the only way to find out is to offer software forks and let users choose to run what they will.


I've read them both in the past and I'm not terribly impressed. People talk a lot, MPEX/trilema more so. So he's got some coins - he speaks for the community no more than Gavin/Hearn do. I respect others opinions and they're welcome to do what they will with their coins.


My coins will be perfectly safe as well - like I say, I'll be on the longer fork and won't care what's going on with the shorter one.

Bitcoin is a democratic popularity contest, but I agree - not one with equal representation. It's determined by economic power indeed and that can't be measured by strong shouting on #bitcoin-assets or by MPEX or reddit. It'll be determined on the nodes. Run what software you like, sit on the fence, I don't care.

When the dust has settled, I'll be on the longer chain - whether that's 1MB, 100MB or if luke-jr gets his way, 100KB blocks.

"Some coins?"

Is that your subtle yet snotty way of conceding MPEX and associated #btc-a folk most probably do in fact posses far more economic influence than Team Gavin?

Or are you counting on Hearn's buddies at google.mil to throw some freely printed central bank fiat at the bloat-fork?

If so, you do realize the leverage provided by the Gavincoin Short mechanism provides MP & Co with commanding heights and a downhill battle, right?


"the community?"

Didn't we just agree the fork's fate will be decided by power, not (up)votes?   ???

Let's pretend MP and the core devs are vanquished by the Gavinista insurgency:

Now we all have XP, like it or not.

Then something breaks at 3am.  Who is going to fix it?  The spurned former core devs?  Gavin the Economist?  Mike 'Let's reduce fees by 10x and induce crapfloods (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3305)' Hearn?

Or do you imagine Gavin can simply post to r/bitcoin and crowdfund some new devs via Mechanical Turk and Fiverr?

Putting your coins on the longer chain won't save them, if that chain's blocks are invalid.  We just learned that lesson with BIP66.   :)

Has there been any statements from core devs lately?  Whats their current plan?

The core devs' current plan is to first scale Bitcoin to 1MB, then worry about what to do (and/or not do) next.

Source: https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/616027500561346560

But this is the Altcoin sub, so let's get back on topic and discuss Hearn's XT project.   ;D

I do not pretend to understand all this bitcoin fork talk, but am I to understand that  some type of change is going to take place that could put bitcoins at risk?

Could someone explain in simple terms what actions I would need to take to protect the small amount of bitcoins I do own? Is there a time period I should perhaps cash completely out and wait until this is settled?

Bitcoin's own former lead dev, Gavin, and his henchman Hearn are in the process of sabotaging Bitcoin from the inside.

You will hear about it when their XT trojan horse deploys its payload, and attempts to force us all to join their altcoin at Bitcoin's expense.

When that happens, simply keep your BTC offline until it's over and the dust settles (lol, blockchain pun!).

Read this http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/

and this http://trilema.com/2015/if-you-go-on-a-bitcoin-fork-irrespective-which-scammer-proposes-it-you-will-lose-your-bitcoins/

to understand why.

If the "insurgency" as you describe occurs, do you really think that the 'former core devs' will quit working for MIT, BitPay and Blockstream since they're no longer maintaining Bitcoin Core, an unused fiefdom? BitcoinXT might go nowhere - it might never get more than 10% of the network. However, as soon as it gets north of 40%, I predict that negotiations happen and all of a sudden the >1MB "gavin patch" goes into Bitcoin Core.

The core devs will continue to be core devs and XT will exist as a separate software fork, just the same as it is today.

This isn't Gavin/Hearn vs MPEX / #btc-assets - it's much bigger than that. Scroll to the bottom of this https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blocksize_debate (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blocksize_debate)

Of course the sides are bigger than the people I used to typify them.  But I still think MPEX & Co have more coins and (more importantly) are willing to spend more coins to win the civil war than anyone else.

And I have no idea what the core devs would or would not do about their careers if Hearn wins.  I just suspect they might be less enthusiastic about fixing and improving code imposed upon them without consent.

So far, Gavin is the only who's threatened to take his ball and go home (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1074701.0) if he doesn't get his way.  But it could be a trend...

Did you see cypherdoc asking gmax why his XT node has an unreasonably bloated swap file?  Classic!   :D

Honestly, if >1MB blocks are this controversial then BitcoinXT will just stay what it is - a minor fork of bitcoin core run by no one except testers.

Say what you will about one side or another, but the ideas discussed and the questions brought up are important.

How best to handle opposing views?
How to hard fork bitcoin intentionally?
What does consensus mean?

I don't think debating it ad nauseum is best. Debate, disagree and if both sides can't meet - put the software out and let the nodes/mining/coins (economic momentum) decide. Bitcoin is bigger than any 1-2 or even 20 developers to decide on their own, no matter how capable they may be in their own right.

The "economic momentum" will follow the economic power/majority, which belongs to those willing to spend/risk the most coins attacking the other side.  Effectiveness of the coins spent/risked also depends on relative position as defender or attacker.

BTC is designed to grant all possible advantages to defenders of its status quo.  Combine that fact with MPEX's Smaug-like hoarde of ancient coins, and then multiply the effect by the leverage the Gavincoin Short provides to the chain with smaller blocks:

I think debating it ad nauseum is best (for Bitcoin), precisely because "the ideas discussed and the questions brought up are important."

As the debate rages endlessly more people become informed about Bitcoin's properties, both at the internal crypto-magic (uxto/mempool/createnewblock/relay/RBF) and external systemic (consensus/opposition/controversy/Gavincoin Short) levels.

XT isn't run "by no one except testers."  That would have been the appropriate traditional approach, but Gavin and Mike decided to it was better to force the issue by prematurely escalating XT to a troll/attack fork, complete with its own core-dev-free github.  So XT is being run by Gavinistas determined to impose on the rest of us, external to the BIP/consensus process, their own pet hard fork.

The endless debate (which has gone on harmlessly for the past ~5 years) usefully creates something asymptotically approaching clarity, as well as counterplans.

Now instead of just XT, we have on the shelf and ready to go Plans B, C, etc. in the form of BIP100, 101, and so on.

I suspect we agree that should 1MB blocks become an undeniably urgent concern (EG, if we see actual congestion resulting in appropriate fees no longer prioritizing their tx) the controversy will rapidly dissipate and be replaced by emergent rough consensus.

As much as I believe in BTC's antifragility, Gavin's XT line in the sand (with its absurdly low, unverifiable "75%" opt-in trigger) has the potential to result in the kind of black swan chaos that may be the Kryptonite to BTC's nigh-invincible Superman.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I fail to see how this is relevant. If the majority of miners are creating longer chains of blocks which include > 1MB blocks and all of the participants that I care to business with agree that this is the valid chain to do transactions on, then what I do give a crap about whether or not MPEX or anyone else does with their coins? Whether they sit on them or spend them on both chains makes no difference to me.

Hard forks only matter to you if you're on the short (wrong) side of the fork, otherwise it just means a faster block rate until the next difficulty adjustment.

Uh-oh!  Trouble in Gavinista paradise.

https://i.imgur.com/TZewKdL.png


XT nodes have dropped from a high of 154 to 103 at present.

103 XT nodes / 6098 total = 1.7%


And then there's this:

https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org/msg00500.html


 :D

https://i.imgur.com/VZP59S2.jpg

Well, XT nodes or no XT nodes, taking zero conf transactions for instant digital payments with no identity or recourse is always a bad idea. Second, XT doesn't have bigger block code so at this point it's all conjecture.

Let's not add bigger block into the zero conf argument since that's a whole separate issue with RBF and first seen RBF arguments and it has nothing to do with a hard fork.

Ah, I see how this works.

When XT node count is declining in relative and absolute terms, you pooh-pooh their significance ("XT nodes or no XT nodes").

But we all know that if XT node count was still climbing, the Gavinistas would still rubbing it in Team Core's faces and using XT as a cudgel to beat the recalcitrant core devs into submission, under threat of contentious hard fork.

Do you see the hypocrisy there, or do I need to draw a picture and in excruciating detail ELI5 the self-serving inconsistency?   ;D

As for 0-confs, I agree they are nearly always a bad idea.  If you could successfully convince Frap.doc, Justus, and the rest of the Yet-Another-Centralized-Realtime-Retail-Payment-Rail camp of that, I'd appreciate it.

I don't recall nor plan on rubbing XT in anyone's face. My preference is for larger blocks and my hope is that the majority of the community (devs, users, miners, holders) supports this. If a supermajority supports a hard fork, then I'm supportive of that too. If XT ends up being a minority fork and never gains traction then that's also a vote worth respecting.

My point is that I'm not going down with the ship on the short side. As we've been discussing, the economic supermajority will win out and I don't intend to fight upstream - I'm not that dogmatic. This isn't about winning and losing - it's about supporting what you think is the right way to go but listening to the feedback you get.

Since XT doesn't have any relevant code regarding larger blocks, why start counting XT nodes?

Your commendable (and expected) lack of personal involvement aside, did you really miss the wave of Gavinista goading/gloating around here and (especially) on reddit when their putsch began?  Why do you think XTnodes.com exists?  Please don't make me dive into r/bitcoin's sewer of idiocy to dredge up XT boasting threads!

"Supermajority" is a uselessly/harmfully confusing, subjective term which does not preclude contention.  See Bitcoin.org's Hard Fork Policy (https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy) for details!

Remember what happened with BIP66's uncontentious supposed "95%" supermajority, or did you miss that imbroglio as well?

IMO, Hearn@sigint.google.mil set up XTnodes.com to act as a Bad Cop in order to intimidate the core devs into submission w/r/t larger blocks.

If you disagree with my interpretation, please ask him for his version.   :D

I didn't lose a single satoshi from BIP66 and quite honestly, any SPV miner running that configuration and outdated software got exactly what they deserved. The same can be said for SPV users who put their faith in meaningful amounts of BTC on unverifiable chains.

If you want to use this as an example, I'me fine with that. I'm also fine with someone playing bad cop, if it moves off detente in this case. Bitcoin is decentralized, right? Why are you worrying about what 2 core devs do?

I'm glad you were not affected by the BIP66 forks, and agree the silly miners/pools brought it upon themselves by playing too fast/loose with the rules.  In a textbook example of antifragility, BTC came out stronger as a result.

My point about BIP66 is that even a non-contentious supposed "95%" hypermajority translated, upon state vector collapse, into 64% (sufficient to cause some FUD/chaos/drama).  And thus, your reliance on an even flimsier "75%" "supermajority" is not justified and ill-advised, especially given the existing contention (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/34y48z/mike_hearn_the_capacity_cliff_and_why_we_cant_use/cqzfj0t) and expected gamesmanship (http://qntra.net/2015/01/the-hard-fork-missile-crisis/) over larger blocks.

Hearn@sigint.google.mil is not a core dev, and I don't care what he does.  But I reserve to right to LULZ when his nefarious public shenanigans backfire spectacularly, as in the current case of XTnodes.com.   :)

Gavin@tla.mit.gov, OTOH, is of greater concern because he can revert core dev commits and even revoke their commit access.

And he has the keys to the alert system.  And people think he's the CEO of Bitcoin.   :-\

Speaking of supermajorities, do you think Bitcoin.org's Hard Fork Policy represents one?  Or are you in the Thermos-Is-An-Evil-Undemocratic-Dictator camp?

Agreed on Hearn not being a core dev. Your concerns about Gavin are unjustified since he's never shown an indication to roll out changes or revoke access on some sort of a whim. If anything, he's a conservative and deliberate developer who has done an amazing job being dedicated to improving Bitcoin since 2010, when it was relatively worthless. He's earned his role as a core dev and holding the keys to the alert system, similar to Thermos as you call him.

So what people think he's the CEO of bitcoin? Lots of people think it's a ponzi scheme and I've been told at least once that Bitcoin was created by the yakuza (for real) as a tool to evade taxes. Most people that think these things don't have any Bitcoin and can be dismissed.

Bitcoin.org can have whatever opinions it wants. If Theymos is the last holdout on hard fork wallets...well then we'll see what happens. This is the point - everyone gets to use whatever influence they like. I don't think that accusing Gavin/Hearn/Todd/Back/luke-jr/Theymos/etc of being dictatorial and harmful to 'the cause' is accurate or fair. Everyone for the most part is doing what they think is the right way to contribute. One of those ways may be offering a hard fork to users...if they embrace it then you get to be concerned. If not, then what's the big deal?

Perhaps Gavin is joking about being more dictatorial.  Perhaps not.  I'll judge him by his actions, many of which of late give cause for concern.

I'm straining to parse your post into a response to my question re: whether or not BTC.org's Hard Fork Policy represents one of the supermajorities of which you are so fond, and believe to be of such high utility in decision making processes.

You seem to be attempting to have it both ways, beginning with the wishy-washy platitude "Bitcoin.org can have whatever opinions it wants."

I'm sure you'll welcome the opportunity to answer the my question in a more direct (dare I hope, even Yes or No) manner, with less distracting truisms.   :)

bitcoin.org - I honestly haven't thought about it much.  It's a website/domain, ultimately run /controlled by one dude, theymos, no? If so, how can you call that a majority or even supermajority? The pirate bay isn't tied to a domain and neither is decentralized Bitcoin. If users want >1M blocks and Theymos refuses to host wallet software that respects it, will that be THE factor? I'm not sure - you're asking for a future prediction which i don't have.

I will say that it won't affect SPV wallets since they have no clue about blocks, as BIP66 helped remind users.  ;D Theymos won't likely start blocking breadwallet, blockchain.info, etc...

You want something definitive? I want to find out if a supermajority want larger blocks and unless we just trust 5 core devs to make the decision for everyone else, there will be a software fork allowing users to choose.

Bitcoin.org is controlled by a number of people including theymos.  Sorry, I assumed you were familiar with it, but shouldn't have as I wasn't either, until the recent brouhaha over their Hard Fork Policy.   :D

I think my point was that Gavin no more necessarily speaks for a (super)majority than theymos.

The "software fork allowing users to choose" may not be innocuous as your bland description makes it sound, and glosses over the dangers of a contentious hard fork.

Without asking you for a future prediction, let's acknowledge the possibility this "software fork allowing users to choose" may turn into "a tumultuous, costly, protracted civil war resulting in unprecedented FUD/chaos/drama, and possibly irreparable damage to both (or all) sides, if not e-cash in general."

We definitely agree - no single individual or even group of individuals 'speaks' for the (super) majority and no, I don't accept Theymos as having (veto) rights over what users can or can't do anymore than Gavin does.

I will agree that it's entirely possible that this the software fork proposed by Gavin/Hearn and supported by an unknown number of participants may indeed turn into a a costly and protracted civil war. I'm hopeful that it will be more sane, more amicable and shorter than might be the case, but I fully acknowledge that it could be *bad* short term for Bitcoin and e-cash and possibly long term. However, I also think that this is a problem that needs to be dealt with at some point.

On the one side, I don't think a minority of users (including devs/holders/miners/etc) should be able to veto changes desired by the super majority. On the other hand I also don't think that a couple of devs, even influential ones like Gavin, should be able to sink Bitcoin now or forever.

There has to be a way to reconcile these problems and perhaps now is the time to force the conversation away from hypotheticals. No one is asking for Bitcoin to be more compliant with LEOs, no one wants to move away from the 21m coin cap, no one wants to change the mining algo - the block size, while important, shouldn't be so contentious that the minorities will be able to break it for everyone else...

Please fix title.

It's funny that those who likely contribute very little to the community manage to disrespect someone like Gavin that committed thousands of lines of code improving the very thing that we all rely on. Rather pathetic, if you ask me.

If it's a joke, it's prolly an embittered one.

Really...because if you had accumulated enough BTC to (likely) be set for life, got paid by MIT to develop the thing that you enjoyed working on most, you'd be embittered? That's not a word that I'd use to describe Gavin.

Down to 83 Gavinista dead-enders.

https://i.imgur.com/MGAkv4l.png

Don't they know the war is over, and they lost?

https://i.imgur.com/IYd9v6B.jpg

Theymos isn't a fan of the blockchain.info wallet. It was removed from bitcoin.org some time ago.

Shows how much I'm paying attention to bitcoin.org. I'm not much of a fan of blockchain.info either - they were innovative in 2013, not so much now. No HD wallet is ridiculous in 2015.

In today's highly entertaining episode of All My Bitcoins:

u/bashco and u/theymos politely reminded (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gdad5/meta_on_hardforking_if_bitcoin_is_so_vulnerable/ctx6rgs) rabid, increasingly desperate Gavin fanboys XT is just another obscure (http://xtnodes.com) (albeit hostile) altcoin and therefore off-topic in r/Bitcoin:






Epic frothy buttrage ensues, including much hyperbole about "censorship."   :D

Here's the highlight reel of Level 10 Poutrage:












 ::)

Good news everyone!

XT is consigning Bitcoin's outdated and ineffective model of trust-free leaderless development to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.


Let's all welcome our new XT overlords.

If you see anyone post stuff like this:

https://i.imgur.com/81702z4.jpg

report them to Fatherland Security.  They are probably Tea Partiers, or (even worse) Libertarians, who seek to disrupt our benevolent status quo of central banking, zombie bailouts, deficit spending for warfare/welfare, and rock-solid settlement/clearinghouse networks.

Well now it does.  I guess there was a reason "to assume that the final number is 75."

So much for your optimistic, yet hollow, hypothetical hope for a more reasonable number like 90.   :-\

Got my 2 XT nodes running just fine. Next step, chat with Alan from Armory about getting XT supported. If it never gets to the 75% threshold, well, then there's nothing to argue about, is there? And if it does...I'll bet MPEX jumps to larger blocks just like you and everyone else will.

 ;D

75% and about two-fiddy might get you a cup of (crappy horrible tasting macro-roast) coffee.   :D

What happened to your more reasonable, yet hypothetical, "90%" figure?

Oh that's right, it dissipated into the aether like a dream upon waking.   ;D

Granted, I will be the first to declare my disappointment if MPEX "jumps to larger blocks" without a fight.   :P

It's all irrelevant anyway. Frontier has been released; all hail Vitalik's turing complete bitcoin killer. Skynet looms upon the horizon...or well, at least some fully verifiable pyramid schemes. ;)

http://www.coinbuzz.com/2015/08/10/ethereum-offers-first-verifiable-pyramid-schemes/

Why some people (x/core devs) try to kill Bitcoin real hard? I don't really understand.
Bitcoin economy is not that big to make 2 coins competition. We need consensus.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gdad5/meta_on_hardforking_if_bitcoin_is_so_vulnerable/

Censorship?

As in "the epitome of authoritarianism" and "book burning" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1115016.msg12100059#msg12100059) censorship? 

No?  Ah, I see.  You meant to say "moderation." 

I wonder why you avoided the proper, neutral term in favor of an inflammatory exaggeration.  Because buttburn?   :D

I don't think feeling sorry for yourself is a good argument in favor of allowing altcoin posts in /r/bitcoin.

1) It's not my language, although I am quoting it.
2) Cries of altcoin imply that to make changes is impossible and that bitcoin is immutable. Bitcoin is software and it will change.
3) Are people really afraid enough of Gavin, Hearn, reddit posts and open source software? Enough so that suppression (moderation) is worthwhile?

I think you know better - I'm not exactly feeling sorry, period, nevermind for myself. :)

Why would anyone be afraid of some silly altcoin with all of 3% of the interest Bitcoin enjoys?

As I've already said, La Serenissima is long accustomed to laughable failed sieges by stymied enemies, Gavincoin merely being the most recent.

Making fun of the hyperbolic language/framing being used by the poor, oppressed victims of thermos' "book burning" moderation is just rubbing the Gavinistas' faces in their tendency to exaggerate.   :)

The epitome of authoritarianism?  More like the epitome of poutrage!   :D

If you are not with Team XT, you are against them.  They represent the 3%, so you must bow to their authority.   ::)

44-60% of mining power already voting for 8 MB blocks:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3glfo1/44_of_bitcoin_mining_hash_power_is_currently/

Whether it's Gavincoin (as you derisively enjoy referring to XT) or another fork, larger blocks are going to happen, you and Martha Poopoo and MPex are just going to have to deal with it.

disaster waiting to happen  :o

 8)

XT = 3% of nodes.

8MB blocks != XT

XT only starts at 8MB, then goes crazy.  Plus it intentionally breaks TOR.

So it breaks TOR, who gives a shit.

You really think TOR even slows down most three letter US Gov agencies?

TOR has long been compromised.


~BCX~

I'm glad you asked:

How exactly does BitcoinXT break Tor/I2P? Seriously, I've not seen anything about that.

There's the fact that <1% of Bitcoin transactions actually use Tor, but that's another story.

No. I keep reading this over and over, and need to point out that it is wrong at the fundamental level.

"Consensus" is what happens AFTER a fork. Anyone can mine anything they want on top of the blockchain; then everyone decides which one they want to do business on.

The assumption that consensus is needed BEFORE a fork is flawed, because there is no methodology for participants to reliably (trustlessly) have consensus before a fork.

Even the whitepaper in it's single use of the word "consensus" uses it to describe an enforcing mechanism for forked chains. Not a pre-fork prerequisite. "They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism."

So claiming consensus is needed prefork is (a) impossible (b) contrary to the main definition of consensus (c) contrary to the definition of consensus in the whitepaper.

The more I think about it, the more I think that this obsession with pre-fork consensus to upgrades is what will doom Bitcoin. On the other hand maybe it is protecting it from chaos...

More like the disaster-of-the-month "waiting to happen."

Q: Why is Bitcoin better than cats? A: Because cats have only nine lives. Bitcoin has ninety!

Info + download:

http://www.xtnodes.com/ (http://www.xtnodes.com/)

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/bitcoin-xt/Iov4vcCOg9M/qOTSP07
Hearn has some weird relationship with Tor (https://groups.google.com/d/msg/bitcoin-xt/Iov4vcCOg9M/qOTSP07wQEUJ), the details of which are murky (much like the relationship between In-Q-Tel and A16z).

Current use statistics are not especially relevant.

What is critical is that the option of Tor be preserved and strengthened.


See what I did there?   :)

I dunno, Hearn seems to recommend Tor for certain things - not sure that I'd agree with his breaking things over Tor comment. Example of his suggestion to avoid the use of certificate authorities for using and SPV wallet to get traffic from your own trusted node here: http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010139.html

I think that anonymity/privacy is important - you know I'm an XMR believer. However, I think that Tor needs to be built to scale and be useful, not that products should be built to scale only to current Tor speeds. Is it nice if someone can solo mine bitcoin on a full node in North Korea running on Tor? Yeah, I guess so. Should we build it with that as our focus? I'm not convinced. I think that a product that 100m people use and rely on is much harder for governments to suppress than something which maybe 500K users regularly uses but that works over Tor on a bad network despite being banned.

That conclusion greatly depends on the product in question.

To be flippant (my specialty), of course we don't care if Netflix doesn't work over Tor.  That's a frilly luxury product, not a necessity (although experiencing Hinterland in 1080p is arguably a human right  :P).

Bitcoin, OTOH, restores the fundamental liberty of every person to be their own bank, maintain their economic freedom/financial privacy, etc.

What would it take to convince you that empowering (ie not abandoning to their fate) the lower bound of Bitcoin users (the proverbial bandwidth poor North Korean or Floridian trying to move funds for an eventual defection) is of greater concern than Joe Yuppie paying for his Jamaica Blue Mountain half-caff?


PS  Welcome to Monero, Brother Mustang!   8)

Which is the polar opposite of Bitcoin XT.



~BCX~

Not just a normal opposite, but a polar opposite?  Wow, polar opposite is the most opposative you can possible be!  Literally!  Because math.

 ::)

Hearn's XT fork shunts bandwidth-poor defecting North Korean/Floridian types (those with the highest marginal utility gained from Bitcoin) off the mainchain (and Tor) and onto SPV/pruned nodes or worse (Circle^®).  That is not acceptable.

Anyone with a $300 laptop and 1MB upstream should be able to *ACCESS, VERIFY, AND AMPLIFY* the world's first distributed quorum system, especially if that system may control our destiny for the next 100 years.

$300 laptops  :o....sounds like rich westerners to me  :-*

If anyone is allowed to take part with freedom and majority rule, how would they be able to control the network, become Czars and further the agenda of entities that want control?



~BCX~

A $300 laptop and 1mbit downstream is enough to ACCESS and VERIFY even 8MB blocks. It might take 2-3 minutes to download and verify a block, but it should keep up. AMPLIFY - I think that's better left to the so called power user.

It's a tradeoff - on the one hand with 1MB blocks perhaps more users can run full nodes. OTOH, with 8MB blocks some users won't be able to run a full node, however, many more users will be able to run an SPV wallet on their phone and be able to afford a low (or no fee) depending upon the priority of their transactions.

Not that the US should be the authority on what standards to use, I would point out that the FCC considers 25Mbit download speeds the new minimum for having a 'broadband' connection. http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-broadband-25mbps (http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-broadband-25mbps) It's not unreasonable to think of this as a target for a full node and still expect to have strong security for the network. Those with lower resources can still participate and don't need to turn to Coinbase equivalents as their only alternative.

Amplification is a absolutely critical, non-negotiable function of ~everyone who is independently accessing and verifying the blockchain.

Run the game theory and see what happens to the health of the distributed quorum system otherwise.

"Tit for tat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat#Peer-to-peer_file_sharing)" (IE amplification requirement for participants) is exactly why Bittorrent works so well at optimizing dynamic cooperative configurations.

Why are you still going on about "download speeds?"  They don't matter; upstream is the constraint.

8MB blocks will keep a 17Mb up pipe full (of cosmic background spam and real tx).  That's not realistic for most users, especially the bandwidth-poor who have the most to gain from Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin is going to rule the world, normal people damn well better be able to access the signal, verify its integrity, and amplify their findings to other like-minded Byzantine Generals.  Making the drooling masses trust SPV or Circle^® is no different than keeping fiat.

This is a global revolution against central banking and fiat, not a novel replacement for your fucking Paypal app.   :D

I don't think I need to run the game theory - it's already in action right now. How many bitcoin core / armory users run nodes at home that are only partially available (aka off when their laptop sleeps)? How many nodes live on DHCP addresses without much persistence? Or have nodesbehind NAT w/o ports opened? Users do not have identical resources, identical motives or identical incentives. If a user can't or won't accept incoming connections to their node, it doesn't mean that the system fails. If that were the case, then bitcoin would fail due to users who don't contribute back - do you think that this will happen?

Of course the system has excess capacity sufficient to subsidize free riders.  That's not the point.

The point is users should be able to contribute back if they see fit, so that option must be preserved (not precluded with 17Mb minimum upstream requirements).

The more people you force into being helpless free riders instead of contributing users, the less excess capacity exists for cosmic background leeches.

I think that force isn't the right word. 1MB doesn't force anyone to do anything anymore than 8MB forces anything. People contribute as they choose to or are capable of doing.

On this topic, if anything, 1MB blocks with greater fees might incentivize a greater number of participants to move entirely off chain to coinbase style solutions where blockchain fees are zero. The LN is great, but it's not available yet and it'll require greater capacity in the main chain to keep up with greater numbers of transactions.

If you're happy with BTC the way it is, that's fine, but most people want the ecosystem to grow much larger so as to make a 100m user base vs the maybe 500K-1m user base that exists today. No, it shouldn't centralize on a few servers, but there are minimum requirements as it stands. It's reasonable to expect them to grow in order to accommodate the larger user base.

Lastly, why do bitcoin nodes need to provide unlimited bandwidth to all requesting nodes? There should be user set limits since there are many users that can't run a full node even at 1M blocks due to ISP caps. Lots of room for improvement here.

Good idea, btw - I never caught this show. Downloading (and seeding) Hinterland as we speak since I have to use my excessive 1st world bandwidth for something while I wait for larger blocks and world domination to ensue.

Does anyone have any decent broadband speed reports worldwide? I found this report focused on Canadian speeds, but netindex seems to be a discontinued product.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/why-internet-upload-speed-in-canada-lags-behind-world-average-1.2578682

Comparing upload speeds

Global average: 7.6 Mbps
G8: 8.8 Mbps
OECD: 6.6 Mbps
Canada: 5.67 Mbps (53rd)
Global mobile average: 2.9 Mbps
Canada mobile average: 5 Mbps (14th)

G8 Countries
Japan: 28.75 Mbps
Russia: 19.84 Mbps
France: 8.54 Mbps
United States: 7.03 Mbps
United Kingdom: 6.03 Mbps
Canada: 5.67 Mbps
Germany: 4.2 Mbps
Italy: 1.7 Mbps

Nations faster than Canada
Kazakhstan 10.77 Mbps (27th)
Mongolia 9.93 Mbps (28th)
Kyrgyzstan 8.52 Mbps (34th)
Mexico 6.55 Mbps (45th)

Source: Ookla Net Index

Restores? When and where did every person have the fundamental liberty to be their own bank, maintain their economic freedom/financial privacy, etc.?

The answer depends on the person, jurisdiction, and period in question.  Try reading some economic history, like Braudel or Szabo.

Even if the right was never previously recognized, protected, or exercised, it still existed.

C'mon, don't tell me to read some books that you don't even specify. You said, "...restores the fundamental liberty of every person...", and I said, "When and where...?" The "every" is what particularly caught my eye. Of course wealthy people have had some economic freedom and autonomy, but I'd guess the vast majority of folks in most societies did/have not. So, was just curious if you could provide some locales and time periods where "every person" had such autonomy.

Sorry for off-topicish...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt%3A_The_First_5000_Years

Rejoice Gavinistas, for today Hearn has officially declared XT to be a (parasitic, hostile, malicious) altcoin (https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1) (IE a coin with an alternative economic consensus).

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin market has reacted with predictable negativity to Hearn's overhyped 8MB attack and the implied increased possibility of catastrophic consensus failure:

The traders decide what is bitcoin, and what is not bitcoin. (Adam Smith, The wealth of nations, 1776, page 1)

Heh...or it could just be trading in general. Last Saturday the market took a dump without any XT debate, so it's hard to say that this has anything to do with forks. Even so, let's say I agree - $4 is pretty trivial.

https://i.imgur.com/4WEqhSD.png

Bitcoin XT Update:

It's still Crypto-Paypal

1. Centralized
2. Blacklisting
3. Tracking
4. Banning

All at the whim of a select few.

Correct me if I am wrong.


~BCX~


Added: Let's not even get into the technical or exploit potential.

How so? I'm running an XT node (as well as a bitcoin core / armory node and several SPV wallets).

1. Centralized - My node is not centralized or under the control of any centralized company. Matter of fact, I rely upon ~ 4 different wallet maintainers.
2. Blacklisting - Other than luke-jr, who bloa
3. Tracking - Bitcoin works over Tor/I2p/VPN. Whether you use a full node or SPV, you can maintain privacy if you desire that.
4. Banning - huh? that's r/bitcoin maybe. Not Bitcoin.

You need a serious Koolaid detox intervention asap.

Banning or blacklisting for illegal activities or any activity any reason a select few deem so, is banning regardless of how you label it.


~BCX~

Who or what is being banned or blacklisted by whom? Srsly, I don't know what you're talking about.

My banker doesn't think so.  It's a public service.

I was gonna write some code for bitcoin-core, but then I got high. Oooh wee oooh. I was gonna go to a bitcoin meetup but then I got high. Now all I do is troll on bitcointalk and you know why? Because I got high, because I got high, because I got high. La la la la...

Haven't really bother in looking at Bitcoin XT beyond just downloading and running blindly I see.

Dig a little deeper then come back and talk.


~BCX~

Here you go; hope this helps answer your questions.

Five XT Secrets Mike Hearn Doesn't Want You To Know (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1153964.0)

Some deep analysis there. Not. C'mon...that's the best you've got?

Patience, my dear.  "Deep analysis" might take a day or two.   ;)

Meanwhile, any response to the immediately obvious red flags, like


?

You rushed out to join the trendy XT fad before knowing WTF is in it.  So much for respecting the precautionary principle ("the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action").  No wonder you are now so defensive about it!   ;D

"If 90% of /r/Bitcoin users find these policies to be intolerable, then I want these 90% of /r/Bitcoin users to leave."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/

If we as a community have come to needing to ban discussion on something that most of the community feels is important enough to talk about, something has seriously gone downhill. Want to call XT an altcoin? Gavincoin? CIACoin? Fine...bring it on. It is only reddit and only one subreddit at that, but this feels so wrong. How far has bitcoin fallen that censorship is justified?

There is no "censorship" here to justify.  Cut the "this feels so wrong" diva crap, Meryl Streep.   :D

That "90% of /r/Bitcoin users" is exactly the trendy faddish mob I was talking about, and their daft opinions in no way satisfy the precautionary principle.  Not that you GAF about that old thing!

Even *IF* thermos needed or wanted to justify his moderation, argumentum ad populum would be a poor way to do it.

Why not?  Because

So you say that and in the same sentence support a censorship within Bitcoin (blacklisting)? You don't make any sense at all. You can't be anti-censorship and support XT at the same time.

Focus people, focus. Point me to a piece of code in Bitcoin/BitcoinXT that involves blacklists rather than some conjecture about what evil Hearn is going to do in the future when he's got 'full control of Bitcoin Inc'.

Well, I'm unsubscribed, so I guess no - I don't GAF about r/bitcoin. The real question is why Theymos gives such a damn about people wanting to discuss things that impact, oh, Bitcoin.

Isn't that the one which - if it had been around as of the mid-1960s - would have nixed the Apollo moon-landing program?

No, it's the one of the good engineering practices that made Apollo a success.

I had a hunch that you'd move the goal posts...

...Anyhoo, this is the cryptocurrency frontier: I won't get captious over whatever principle you use to keep your own boat afloat. It's just that in the wide wide world of Big-Government Realville, the "precautionary principle" devolves quite easily into the "Nervous Nellie Principle" and/or the "EPA Shenanigan Principle." But as I stipulated, this observation ain't pertinent to the cryptocurrency frontier.

The XT Manifesto (https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/blob/0.11A/README.md) states the following:


Note that neither security nor decentralization feature *at all* in their list of principles.

That's one way to read into it. Another is that with more users able to experience on-chain transactions, their security and decentralization is greater than it would be if they were forced to choose off-chain transactions as a result of higher fees/less throughput.

I don't understand anything about this XT, bitcoin fork thing... Even if it looks like a big event..

Can anyone explain what is happening with simple words for non-english speakers ?

I would be really happy to be able to understand what's going on :D

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3gm3a6/can_someone_eli5/ctzcn11

Thank you for avoiding the obnoxious performative contradiction of continued participation in a subreddit to which you ostensibly object.

I appreciate the logical consistency, even if it is lost on most of your fellow Gavincoiners and/or anti-thermosists.   :P

Let us for the moment ignore the unpleasant implications of your continued participation in this (formerly?) esteemed venue, because I would would miss your company more than I would enjoy pressing that uncomfortable point.

Nevertheless, you have intentionally mischaracterized what Theymos does and does not give "such a damn about."

The issue is *HOW* some things impact Bitcoin, not merely the neutral fact of an impact and unavoidably ensuing discussion.

Theymos has already, on multiple occasions, explained with clarity the distinction he finds, in his prerogative as moderator, important:


Please consider taking this locally definitive advisory into account in your future posts.

If you cannot, or do not, I may have to escalate the matter of your (perhaps intentional) oversight, and refer you to his subsequent admonishment (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/).   :-\

Read in bold. That encompasses security and decentralization.

Please keep up. Thanks  ;D ;D ;D

Well said. Being forced off chain eventually to payment channels like block stream and lightning network is a form of centralization.

They claim "trustless" payment channels. But I have yet to see a system they develop that is truly TRUSTLESS.

I would never resort to moving goal posts.  What an offensive suggestion!  If anything, I am the Goal Post Police, and enforce the rules of rational debate upon this den of cybernetic inequity.

The source of your confusion and consequent aggression is your mistaken conflation of the "do no harm" deontological philosophic principle with a practical engineering heuristic (the precautionary principle).

Granted, the involved abstruse distinctions are nuanced and probably quite beyond your ken (IE education and aptitude) so you have every right to expect and demand an accounting on your own clumsy, ham-fisted terms.

Sorry about that!   :D

I'd dearly love to participate in the ensuing discussion, but honestly cannot read past the words "XT Manifesto" without snickering, giggling, and ultimately succumbing to hearty guffaws, belly laughs, and the like.

Bitcoin Manifesto is hilarious for the same reasons as the idea of an Internet Police.

I hope no mobility scooters were overloaded with neckbearded dwellers (http://www.hahastop.com/pictures/Save_The_Internet.jpg) during the production of the "XT Manifesto."  ROFLMAOPIMPIRL!

Well, I have to hand this to you: you're very good at word-spinning. It is noteworthy that you responded to my objection - written carefully so as not to imply a putdown of you - with a putdown of me. A putdown that's almost a cliché, it's so stereotypical these days.

FYI: your definition of the "precautionary principle", which you yourself voluntarily and affirmatively supplied before I jumped in, contained the four significant words "the burden of proof". If you choose to word-spin again by claiming that "the burden of proof" carries some recondite engineering-specific meaning unknown to all but a few specialists, for which it would be collegial to supply a link that backs up your fine words, those four words mean exactly what they say.

Fact: one of the worries about a moon shot that the worriers glommed onto was a real unknown: the level of cosmic background radiation (including those cosmic rays) beyond the protective sheath of the Van Allen belt. Had the "precautionary principle" been around, that objections - plus the complete lack of hard data on the real level of background radiation beyond the Van Allen Belt - would have nixed the Apollo moon shot, or at the minimum shelved it until enough unmanned spacecrafts had been sent up beyond the Van Allen Belt to provide enough measurements of the outside-the-Belt radiation level for a statistically valid gauge of the real radiation level. Including error bars, naturally.

But...thankfully for the human race, any such "precautionary principle" would have been laughed to the ground in the mid-late 1960s. NASA did take it slowly and methodically after Apollo 1 blew up, but that methodicalness was just ordinary prudence: nothing more.

As you can see, I am not good at your kind of word-spinning.

sorry for noob question but what would be effect of Bitcoin XT on original one. Are there gonna be two diff BTCs? Will BTCXT be copy of BTC network, so everyone that owns BTC also automaticaly owns BTCXT? or is it like altcoin? yeah Im definition of ignorant, I know.

It's all about adoption, as soon as more then 75% of the network switches to bitcoin xt, you will have bitcoin XT's, yet this sin't going to happen untill 2016 :)

So we shouldn't worry about what raising the 1mb 750k limit might break (http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010283.html), because of cosmic rays on the moon?   ???

Cool story bro.  Thanks for demonstrating I was correct to surmise the involved abstruse distinctions (software vs space medicine, Bitcoin vs Cold War rivalry, abstract global deontology vs concrete local heuristics) are nuanced beyond your education and aptitude.

I heard the crazy Soviets are experimenting with 50MB blocks at Baikonur.  Quick, we must close the blockchain gap and leapfrog them with a 100MB maximum!   ;D

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010284.html

You're obviously intelligent, but your selective quotes seem to point to a level of intellectual dishonesty. What proof do you have that miners are struggling with blocks vs just being lazy and choosing to SPV mine because it's easier than writing software that switches from SPV mining to full block mining 20 seconds after receiving the headers?

Note the next comment on the thread you reference: http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010284.html

"The traffic between the pool server and individual hashers is far busier
than 50kB/30s. If their bandwidth is so limited, hashers would have
switched to other pools already.

All these data may prove is they have very bad mining codes. For
example, their hashers may not be required to update the transaction
list regularly. I don't think they are struggling. They are just too
lazy or think that's too risky to improve their code. After all, they
are generating half million USD per day and a few seconds of downtime
would hurt.

By the way, vast majority of the full blocks (>0.99MB) on the blockchain
are generated by Chinese pools."

Reducing the block size isn't going to magically make mining decentralized. It's not going to make people run more nodes. Decentralation and block size have very little in common. Now, changing the proof of work, introducing items such as DECOR+++/ghost protocol should increase solo mining profitability since orphans no longer become as much of a concern. There are lots of things to work on to decentralize the network, the size of blocks just isn't one of them. Not when an ordinary person with an ordinary computer and ordinary broadband connection is capable of doing full node verification at reasonable performance.

I'm obviously trolling Nxtblg, for taking the precautionary principle as applied to block size and extrapolating a general position of 'no one should ever do anything dangerous, and especially not visit the moon.'

It's a better (more entertaining) response than the silence he deserved.  Why you are white knighting for him?  Butthurt about theymos taking XT out back and shooting it, or what?    :P

My troll/troll detection mastery is clearly lacking. One day I'll graduate.

http://www.interestingamerica.com/images/NC_images/Wilmington_NC/Fauni_Trolls/Fauni_Trolls_Trolldom_Diploma_412_426.png

It's possible he was (successfully) trolling me!

But would he know decontextualizing the Space Race from the Cold War is one of my pet peeves?   :D

Good news, a new feature has just been announced that makes XT even better!


What a nice surprise.  I love Easter eggs!  They show how much the dev cares for his work and its users.

This isn't a surprise. Hearn is going to push controversial changes, and XT supporters are not listening.
This isn't about DoS, it's the first step towards white-listing and blacklisting that would harm Bitcoin (if XT were to take over) to a great extend (possibly without repair). I'm still going to say that the users that are blindly following Hearn are worse than he is. Without the userbase he can't do anything. This is the 4th controversial change that I'm showing to some members, yet they chose to ignore evidence.

But...but...but...I was told XT was just Core, with 1MB changed to 8MB with find-and-replace.

This is all the core devs' fault.  They forced Heam to launch his Panopticoin by refusing to raise the limit when it became obvious /r/bitcoin thinks it's a good idea Because Free Transactions.

I figgered as much. To be honest, I think it's a flawed principle because it's much more restrictive than those good ol' maxims of prudence that automatically left wiggle room for "leaps of faith" and other kinds of risk-taking.

But that's me. I stand by what I wrote earlier: "whatever keeps your boat afloat." You're wise to stick with your criteria; I'll stick with mine.

To be honest, I did download the full-node XT QT but I stopped running it when I saws that the Chinese miners didn't want to sign on. By that decision criterion, I pegged XT as yet another fad destined for the Land of Forgotten Fads. The way things look now, I might well have been wrong - but I'm still waiting it out & using Multibit.


Well, I'll say one thing: my limited intellectual resources do make it feasible for me to recognize when I'm wrong.

been saying it all along, it's gavins coin not bitcoin.
and I'm purposely running core just to give my vote.

Bingo!  Thanks for playing along and being a good sport.   :)

With all the damn threads, it seems like half of them, I think we know the f#$&king status.

lol

Are there any exchanges with Bitcoin xt at the moment? ???

Big NACK for XT from the creator of Litecoin:

Any exchange that has bitcoin has XT.  Their still on the same chain.

Everyone's on the chain until Jan 2016. At the earliest.

BitcoinXT BIP 101 forks becomes a non-issue if the core devs decide to increase the blocksize, as Coinbase and Charlie Lee and many others believe it should be. They've got months until January rolls around - let's see if they can get it together before then.

The core devs have multiple BIPs for bigger blocks working their way through the proper channels.

Quick, move the goalposts again so as to make XT appear reasonable despite its checkpoints/spying/TorBlock/"final call"/weak "75%" threshold/etc.

This project can damage to Bitcoin network . how it is interesting ? .... Anyway
Now , We know problems and the question is what is the final solution ? Is there any possible solution ?

I'm so glad there's a proper channels police in bitcoin to save us all. ;)

Yes, I'm well aware there are BIPs although some of them are a joke and you know it. Pieter's unnumbered BIP doesn't increase the block size to 2MB until 4 years from now, Garza's 2MB BIP 102 seems a joke given how well it was accepted by the other core devs. Things are progressing really well - I'm sure they'll come to consensus any year now.

The project is interesting because it *might* damage Bitcoin.  Not many things can do that.

The solution is running and mining blocks with NotXT nodes.

Contact your favorite pool ops/devs and ask them to add a port for NotXT miners.

When XT is lulled into a false sense of security, we spring the trap and kill it.

It's the NoXT supporters who could do the most damage, actually. By itself XT either gets to 75% or it doesn't. With NoXT, it's more likely that we could get to a true 50/50 split for mining power and yet still trigger larger blocks. That'll cause all sorts of drama and for most of us will just mean that we won't do transactions for a few days while the mess sorts itself out. To use a classic movie quote:

"Konovalov Crewman: Torpedo, Dead Ahead!"

"Andrei Bonovia: [to Captain Tupolev] You arrogant ass! You've killed us!"

Your disdain for the value of the adversarial process (IE fighting features) is noted, as is your preference for controversial, dramatic "reckless" vanity forks.

The proper channels of the BIP process have kept Bitcoin going this long, and are based on time-tested FOSS best practices.

You disdain for them and eagerness to grant Mike "Final Call" Heam unlimited power are noted as well.   ;)

That would be an interesting experiment:

Set up an exchange such that before the fork all deposits of BTC credit the user's BTC and BXT accounts with the amount of the deposit. Then let the users trade BTC for BXT on a market. Forbid withdrawals until after the fork.

So I deposit 1 BTC today, get 1 BTC and 1 BXT in my exchange accounts, and sell the 1 BXT for 1 BTC. So I have 2 BTC and 2 BXT in my exchange accounts.

After the fork the exchange is careful to make sure that all withdrawals are valid only on the fork on which they belong, so I withdraw my 2 BTC and have doubled my money - so long as the BXT fork doesn't "win" (in which case I have lost 1 BTC, and the guy I traded with has doubled up).

There would need to be a rule about what happens if the fork doesn't happen by a certain date. I guess all trades would be cancelled and everyone would get their BTC back. Or alternatively it could be considered that since the fork didn't happen, all BXT account balances are worthless and BTC balances stand.

The exchange rate on such a market would be a much better indicator of how the economic majority feels about the BTC vs. BXT debate than anything we currently have.

I remember something similar happened after MtGox froze withdrawals, before it became obvious that MtGox dollars were worthless.

Great movie, bad analogy.   :D

So XT puts out a proposal requiring a vote. NoXT gambles with everyone's value using deceipt while hoping that it doesn't put the hashing power over the top. There can be no argument here - this is the riskiest part of the entire endeavor.

If Bitcoin forks in January and there isn't something close to a 50/50 split, you can be damn sure that miners, merchants, exchanges are going to pick the winner real fast, no matter which side it's on. The market you are talking about would evaporate nearly instantly.

Or put the NOTXT Nodes back on core and let XT sit at 5-7% until they give up and relize their shit isn't going anywhere and they find a better solution.

my friend say Bitcoin XT is a virus ???

Gavin and Hearn are the virus! Lies on the core front won't help the fight. Even though it's my belief they won't have THEIR  "consensus" to fork they will take any inch they can get to adanvce their agenda.

That would be more productive, more honest and less risky for all involved. I'm running XT but I have no problem if it goes nowhere - that will mean that the will of the economic supermajority will be observed.

Lol...my "friend" says that Jared from the Subway commercials is really Satoshi Nakamoto.

Ppl get bias and are thinking in the way they get used to. Until XT reaches consensus from the majority, will they still mining NotXT which will be altcoin? I doubt it!

Yes, but I'm talking about launching it now, so you can put your money where your mouth is when it matters. Really think XT stands a chance? I'll sell you some XTcoin for your BTC. The market would tell us what people really have faith in.

You've got it all wrong bro.  There is nothing we desire more than to see FakeXT+RealXT "put the [alleged] hashing power over the top."

Doing so creates a moment of maximized risk for first defectors, while (not merely coincidentally) maximizing opportunity/leverage for those shorting GavinCoins.

If NotXT had a slogan, it would be "resolution via escalation."    ;D 8) ;D

Don't blame NotXT ('just doing its job') for being the messenger.  As the basil00 (the PseudoNode guy) said:

Drama level at 11, patronising and obnoxious, with an out of context quote to co-opt another... business as usual I see.

That comment cuts both ways. It means your pseudo nodes are useless. 750/1000 of the last blocks mined are needed for >1MB blocks. Pseudo nodes aren't mining blocks. So pumping the 'node count' does nothing except make miners more likely to switch for fear of being on the smaller chain. Solid plan^TM.

Bit it's ok your saviour won't let that happen I'm sure. All MP needs to do is get 25% of miners to run NotXT and for the other 25% to not run XT. That way you can prematurely trigger bigger block creation and then try and do a 51% attack. Solid plan^TM.

You can't even see yourself.

And yet, we can't stop reading them. ::)

Yeah, I realize that's what you mean. Personally I wouldn't be interested since I don't think I have any more prescience than others about what view other users/miners/exchanges will take. Hell, the bitcoin core devs could just implement BIP 101 or something with reasonable growth and the XT arguments would go away.

I don't view XT as a gamble - it's a binary outcome. Either it takes hold and produces a longer PoW chain or it doesn't. If there is any sort of 50/50 split - I would park my coins and wait it out. Unfortunately for exchanges, miners and bitpay/coinbase, that's not a good outcome but the good news is that I imagine it wouldn't take more than a few days to sort itself at the worst.

You could not be more wrong about this. NoXT supporters are the only high stakes gamblers in this whole process. The good news is that I doubt ANY miners of any significant size will run NoXT because they're don't embrace those sorts of risks.

Perhaps my charitable assumption, that you understand NotXT may be used to mine blocks, is incorrect?  I hope not!   :P

Sputter, flail, characterize, critique, and deflect all you like my friend.  I take the sound of your howling objections to MP's long-standing Gavincoin Short stratagem (and subordinate NotXT decoys) as a minor victory-in-itself.  I understand it makes you feel better (at least temporarily) to lambast my position, aligned as it is with Evil Mircea Popescu, in order to shore up the increasingly untenable tactics of Heam.

If XT wins, I will admit defeat.  May we say the same of you, should XT be #rekt like Stannis at Winterfell?

NotXT is certainly capable of mining blocks and indicating support for BIP101 while actually not conforming to BIP101. To put it in simple terms so you understand, here is the problem.

Hashrate in January 2016:

25% - Core blocks
25% - NotXT blocks (indicating XT)
50% - XT blocks (indicating XT and allowing for BIP101 blocks)

In this case, 750  blocks will likely be mined at some point in 2016 triggering the allowance of larger blocks. If the NotXT nodes keep up the charade, the trigger commences and the first >1M block will be broadcast splitting the network essentially 50/50.

Please explain why you think that this is not essentially the worst possible outcome of any sort of hard fork.

M.A.D.
I think NotXT proponents know this. And hope that this perceived risk of "worst possible outcome" will convince XT nodes to "back off". And XT proponents likewise hope that NotXT proponents will back off.
Also situation can be 25:50:25 (or 25:35:40) instead of 25:25:50 in which case XT nodes will be hurt more. I suppose this is NotXT's plan B if XT won't diminish.
Also situation can be 25:10:65 in which case NotXT nodes and Core nodes will be hurt more.
There can also be "NotCore" Blocks that will switch to XT when the time comes.

People, we need some serious deescalation.

lol what happened with xtnodes.com?

Looks like it could use some more decentralization. Or funds.

DDoSed. https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3i2yvf/xtnodescom_request_for_ddos_protected_hosting/

The longer the core developers wait with (variabel) increased blocksize, the more confirmation opponnents of opensource software have, this is making al decentral initiatives look bad, because people can go --> DO YOU SEE or I TOLD YOU SO....

why we must upgrade from Core to XT ?

Right now, you don't have to. You have until January 2016 at least to push the core devs to consider BIP 101 or an alternative for increasing throughput. Keeping the block size at 1MB seems very unlikely given miner, industry and user support for larger blocks. The only question is how this gets implemented and whether or not a 'contentious' hard fork is the mechanism used to make the change.

You do not have to upgrade. Question whether to increase block size at all does not have "the only one valid" answer? (No matter what economic players, miners, XT developers, Core developers, Satoshi, etc. says.)
If there is a block size change (it do not have to be increase) there are multiple possible solutions to this issue (BIP100, BIP101, BIP102, BIP1XX, other BIPs, suggestions and solutions aspiring to BIP status and multiple ideas).
Bitcoin XT is one of possible implementations of BIP101, although most finished and popular one.

Agreed there are many possible solutions and the final one is far from assured at this point. However, the likelihood of not having an increase seems extremely unlikely at this point. Miners, industry, many core/xt devs and users want an increase.

Under what scenario would you see status quo or a decrease as possible? If there's anywhere that has this bet going, let me know - I'm happy to take someone's money who's on the "blocksize doesn't increase in 2016" bet.

so they using their key to scare ppl into updating their client to their codebase.
classy move gavincoin

Evidence? Otherwise stop talking crazy.

Now that was a quality post.  I knew you could be goaded into making a positive contribution, given sufficient ribbing.   :)

You've illustrated exactly what happens during the "moment of maximized risk for first defectors" I was talking about.

Hearn picked the least optimal 'magic number' with "75%" just like he went about creating XT in the least optimal way possible (Great Schism).

Cite: http://organofcorti.blogspot.com/2015/08/bip101-implementation-flaws.html

From the POV of Core defense, XT's idiotic choice of "75%" is great, as it minimizes XT's chances of success!   8)

Of course all this discussion of XT is moot now that f2pool, bitfury, btcchina, and eligius have given their NACKs.

Cite: http://bitcoinmagnates.com/updated-major-mining-pools-make-a-stand-against-bitcoin-xt-fork-support-for-bip-100-grows/

Nothing is over until the gmaxwell sings.

GMAX already sang a beautiful eulogy for hearn@sigint.google.mil's failed governance coup.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ilbit/mike_hearn_responds_to_xt_critics/cuiwqv6

On a scale of 1 to R3KT, how would you rate Mike's buttburn?   :D


PS KNCMiner changes position, now suports BIP100 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164214.0)

just open up a version of core that doesn't have gavins latest bullshit code in it.
there is your evidence.

Well, that's didn't last long.  The area under the line represents lulz proportional to the degree of Peter R's failure to convince anyone important that XT/101 was a good idea.

https://i.imgur.com/6e2ykTH.png

Thank fucking god! But it seems btc price is rising again, so who's gonna be the next idiot acting on his own and ripping the community apart, and convincing all the naysayers of opensource in general even more....

After all this drama in bitcoin world, cloud, scams, hardware issues, crash in december to allmost 100 dollar, we were allmost back at 350 euro's and then the community creates its own problem, an non-consent fork, and down to 150 again, unbelievable, mining is not only not profitable, you must be bad crazy or crazy rich to keep on doing it, I sure as shit cant mine anymore with this price. Sadly, because I didn't do it for the money, but I cant affort to invest this much to mine...

https://i.imgur.com/WYyxCGV.png

So much for that fad.  The Redditurd Army must have found a shiny new thing/cause/trend.

https://i.imgur.com/UxzAnXh.png

*** Le 5 months later ***

OK sgbett, are you ready to concede XT lost?

Or are integrity, grace, honor, and good sportsmanship not among the values prioritized in your culture?

Why are you so obsessed with XT winning or losing. Pinned your self worth on being right OTI? lol

I am more than happy to say that right now it doesn't look like XT is being used by any miners. You knew that though. If that means XT has "lost". Then it has lost.

BTW your 1MB rhetoric isn't aligned with MP anymore. Sorry to kill the romance ;)

That convoluted rant must be the most bitter, least graceful concession speech in Nixon in '62 (http://www.businessinsider.com/least-graceful-concession-speeches-2014-6).   ;D

Drama level at 11, patronizing and obnoxious, with plenty of deflection... business as usual I see.

Why is it like pulling teeth to get you to admit what has been for months entirely obvious?

Oh well, at least you managed to recover some semblance of integrity as you sulk in your self-made bed of poor sportsmanship.

I'd hoped you would learn something from the experience, as I would have if XT had similarly demolished my expectations.

Unfortunately you're not the teachable type, so instructive object lessons like the XT debacle do nothing to further your education.   :-\

Even that silly old troll smoothie manned up and voluntarily took full responsibility for being on the wrong side of history vis-à-vis XT and Core.

To his credit, I didn't have to shame and hound him into verbalizing an admission of defeat and falling prey to an inferior (albeit trendy) social movement.

What is your major malfunction?  Did your parents fail to properly educate you in matters of comity?

The gracious victor should always be sure to heckle the sore loser. Its proper form!

Not always, only in cases like your own.

Did you really think you could spend months blustering about how XT was going to win, then slink away without a word when that failed to happen?

To be fair, it seems XT has basically merged with classic, so there is still some possibility of larger blocks happening without the blessing of core. I haven't really been keeping up with the drama lately, but if they (still?) have significant support from businesses and bitfury rolls out a few dozen of these badboys http://bitfury.com/products#container-datacenter for "testing" in support of classic's fork...I mean, it could happen, right?

XT = BIP101, not Classic's withered rind of 2MB.

You can say the 'get theymos - kill Core' spirit of XT lives on in Classic, but that entails admitting its body is dead.   ;)

It's time for sgbett and the other Gavinstas to put on their big boy pants, admit XT failed, and share what they learned from the experience.

I'm pretty sure that if Classic fails that we are going to see at least another attempt at a fork (I hope that I'm wrong though). The block size debate is ridiculous and especially people who want Bitcoin to remain a single layer. I wonder what the internet would look like if it was built on a single layer instead of the 7 that we are currently using (if that was possible).

We absolutely will see Bitcoin Doubleplusgood or something else after Classic goes away.

The Gavinistas' precious governance coup matters more to them than any technological feature or tps improvement.

That's why the XT and Unlimited people can agree to Classic's 'smallest, least controversial change possible' thin wedge approach.

When Adam Back proposes 2MB, it's "absurdly small (https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/636569665284775937)."  When Classic does the exact same thing, the Gavinistas clap for joy.

The Gavinista movement is purely political.  They use the technological jibber jabber to impress the useful idiots at Reddit that bought in at $500-$1000 and desperately hope doubling the tps will double the price.

If this is true then there will be nothing to worry about, nothing to see here since 'idiots at Reddit that bought in at $500-$1000" aren't likely to garner > 75% hashing power before 2018.