Bitcoin Forum

Mike Hearn:
https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1

Reddit: Bitcoin is Forked
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h42cz/bitcoin_is_forked/


Maybe it should have read Bitcoin is FUCKED ? no joking. ;D

It happens.
why do you think this fork is so scary?

Honestly, I don't think its scary. I expected it and accept it. I was just adding some humor.

dont do this. noobs will be scared  :-\


for the new people here: bitcoin to the moon? support bigger blocks (XT)!  :)


Why is Bitcoin forking?

A long time ago, Satoshi put in place a temporary kludge: he limited the size of each block to one megabyte. He did this in order to keep the block chain small in the early days, until what we now call SPV wallets were built (‘client only mode’). As seen in the quote above, it was never meant to be permanent and he talked about phasing it out when the time came. In the end it wasn’t needed — I wrote the first SPV implementation in 2011 and with my esteemed colleague Andreas Schildbach, together we built the first and still most popular Android wallet. Since then SPV wallets have been made for every platform. So Satoshi’s reason for the temporary limit has been resolved a long time ago.

https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1

Hahaha sorry didn't mean to scare people! Was trying to interject some humor in all this drama.   Yes, bigger blocks = to the Moon!  ;D

Request for all wallet developers: Add the option to choose the fork in case of a hard fork!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1153684.0

RoadStress  thanks for letting us know about this option in case of the hard fork.

Good. I've got my node up and running. If you're reading this and run a node, you should as well.

to quote Mike:


Myself and many other early adopters and developers went down this rabbit hole because we wanted to support a world changing technology that takes power from the elite few and puts it back in our hands. The Bitcoin Core project is no longer aligning with these ideals.

This means nothing until a hard fork happens and we are still lightyears away from the nodes needed for the hard fork to actually occur, so Bitcoin is still the same.

Good news. Was about time!

How are you justifying your time claim "lightyears" away?

Do you always wait until your bank account hits $0 or EUR or whatever before getting a job to pay your bills?  ;D

It's called being proactive.

thanks to some smart devs we have a plan for the next big influx of users.

Yes, these kind of distributed projects and specially in how the bitcoin network operates everything has to be planned way ahead because it takes a long time for people to upgrade their nodes.

Hang on, do we actually have two competing chains right now? Or is this just a heads up that there is going to be a fork in the future?

AFAIK there is no fork yet. The fork will come when the conditions of "consensus" are reached to create a > 1 MB block while the core clients create blocks 1 MB or less...that is when the fork starts.

No competing chains, if Bitcoin XT gets adopted by the majority there will be a fork and the network will start to accept bigger blocks, until then nothing changes.

You can learn more about XT here:

https://bitcoinxt.software/
http://xtnodes.com/
http://gavinandresen.ninja/
https://medium.com/@octskyward

basically we are only waiting that the majority will embrace XT, i would say hoping as a better word...

but if merchants are pro it and miners also, this should not take too long, i guess

I believe this happens after 75 % consensus from miners.

Ah okay good. I used XT a few months ago, it "felt" just the same as core. I went back to core though since it didn't seem like a serious project then. Looks like it's getting a lot more serious. Should be interesting to watch this unfold. Things might get bumpy for a while, but I expect everything to be fine in the long run.

How do Hearn and Andresen profit from promoting Bitcoin XT? The fact that a full release of Bitcoin XT is now available does not mean Chinese miners will adopt; the large mining pool owners have already publicly stated they are against Bitcoin XT.

A reasonable way to increase block size has already been presented in BIP 100 by Jeff Garzik and open to vote. Anyone scared of hard forks should realize that any increase in the current block size will first require a hard fork to remove the static 1 MB block size limit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3a0n4m/why_upgrade_to_8mb_but_not_20mb/

https://i.imgur.com/JUnQcue.jpg (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3a0n4m/why_upgrade_to_8mb_but_not_20mb/)

I agree. Bitcoin is forking awesome  ;D

Satoshis thoughts on it ?
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010238.html

Or maybe someone else who stuck the Satoshi name on a random post. I think the odds of that being the case are just a teensy weensy bit higher.

Very probably just an imposter (not using the original email address), but nevertheless good thoughts.

satoshi at vistomail.com

same email address as his first post to the email list:
http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-October/014810.html

Well we need to put this block size debate behind us. No consensus has been reached for a while now and there is not one on a horizon, so they have just let the community decide. I see nothing wrong with this. The longer this debate lasts, worse it is for whole Bitcoin ecosystem.

Lol you really believe that hahhahahha go google : satoshi " I'm not Dorian"

Simple solution is to let the majority decide. At this point the few developers who continue to go against the current of miners and users should back off with their tail between their legs so that the people can make their choice and get this debate over with.

Yepp this is my opinion as well. This blocksize debate is kind of a never ending story. And the longer we see no progress the more stagnant we will get. This is pretty frustrating.

That's why bitcoin is forking and moving forward.

The fact that they even use such dirty tactic shows their plan is exposed ( Lighting Network) , the next thing to save their integrity is to resign from bitcoin core project.

What a disgrace

Right. And I support it!!
Bigger blocks are inevitable. And right now with that number of users the network right has we should use this chance before next wave of adoption will happen.

I agree. Now litigation threats ? This whole debate is no good for Bitcoin.

https://i.imgur.com/tKKEF6V.jpg

The debate is over now. It's time to act and fork.

Bitcoin evolution into something better (or the incentive to make it better) will rise questions and sparkle debates until the end of the time, because if you don't
debate and change it when it's needed, bitcoin will eventually become obsolete.

The most important thing is for us to remain civilized about it, and any other outstanding problem, so that we don't kill bitcoin by dividing it into xyz forks and therefore cripple it for everyone. Our strength should be in numbers that are rising constantly, rather than decreasing.

It's still small enough for a modest number of individuals to have massive sway. There's enough money in it right now for their best interests to  overrule the system's.

That's a pretty toxic combo. Whatever fork there may be it's better to get it over and done with rapidly.

Power over money are both very toxic things this is true. The quicker we move forward the better IHMO.

edit: ELI5 on this subject for people:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1153730.msg12150667#msg12150667

The debate was going on for a long time. So now, Bitcoin XT (what a crappy name, btw) is out of the box. So it is basically up to the active users to decide. That's an electronic form of democracy. If anybody wants to sue them because they give users a choice, I'd say: Let the guys who want to file a lawsuit do this.

And I totally disagree: The debate is good for Bitcoin. Most of the normal users won't even realise that something's going on. They simply don't care. They want to make their transactions, smoothly and cheap.

Of course a lot of people will use this debate to jump an their (bankers) chairs and cheer: "See, Bitcoin is dead". So what? Not the first time, not the last time.

As I said: Let the users decide.

I made a quick chart to keep track of Bitcoin XT adoption over time

http://www.blockchaincenter.de/

The chart will get updated daily at noon (GMT).

I don't think they just chose that name because they thought it was cool. If I recall correctly, XT was a build off of Bitcoin QT and the name is just a naming convention from previous versions.

Cool, thanks (and asking: Could an update be done more often? Just in the first few days....?)

Awesome, thank you for this.

Makes sense. I changed it so that the data gets updated every 30 minutes (Current day gets overwritten).
Bitcoin XT 0.11.0 gained 14 nodes in the last hour or so...

Thanks a lot - that's awesome!

If people, they learn that the BIP101 is in discussion between developpers for Bitcoin Core to adopt a strategy to raise the block size.

So, wait the september and it will be done for integration.  ;)

That's the modification that all the chinese pools and exchanges agreed to and signed on right? The 8MB limit?

Anyone wanting to stay in the loop can subscribe to the bitcoin-dev mailing list at https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev

Mike and Gavin exaggerate things to an unnecessary level. No one said that we should never raise the block size, and the difference between 8MB and 20MB is not that big. However, insisting on a private fork without reaching full consensus does make them more isolated to the rest of the community. I think their pride is hurt when they see the project won't go the way they want, as they are one of the oldest core developers. But a perfect life is just wishful thinking for most of us, sometimes we must make compromise

Surprisingly, the answer by "Satoshi" is very convincing, we should focus on how to make the mining as distributed as possible, the block size is a much less problem. Home miner and garage miner should command over 60% of hash power, that will require lots of change. And when that is done, the bitcoin network will become invincible

The previous dust spam test already proved that even every block is more than full, bitcoin network would still work if you put a higher transaction fee, so even the blocks were full, we still have some time to react

Actually this fork is a good test for the total decision making intelligence of bitcoin community, if majority of community members are just blind followers, then XT fork might receive enough support and become a hard fork, but if majority of the members can think independently, they are very unlikely to go with XT, which is a much higher risk road. Why take a higher risk decision when you can take a lower one??

Bullshit, in your pipe dream. Satoshi himself even acknowledge that naturally as bitcoin grow mining will belong to industrial business, not a hobby.

This blocksize increase wont affect mining as much as you made it out to be. If anything it would help to decentralize the mining industry as it brings bandwidth variable to the calculation. As of right now mining is way too energy focused.

Remember that many home miners have free electricity, and garage miners could use the heat to heat their home/water, which will also make the cost of mining close to zero. Industrial miners must make a profit, that's their weakness, they won't hold long if difficulty keeps going up

yeah great fork with only 206 nodes and 0 bitcoin from miners :P. Ok is official this will fail

http://www.xtnodes.com/

It's exceedingly early days. There'll be plenty of screaming and shouting before we know where it's headed.

There is no such thing as free energy, Someone has to pay for it. Bitcoin network can not rely on a handful of tenants abusing their lease contract.

If you even understand an ounce of the whole bitcoin movement, you would understand it must not have biased rules for a set of players.

Beside having bandwidth as another variable in mining calculation, it help eliminate the geographic centralization of bitcoin mining. This does not mean home mining will hold a candle, mining should be purely business driven not some ideal day dreaming shit.

Your logic is so old and flawed, i feel like i'm back to arguing with Litcoin supporters when it came out. Right...... ASIC resistent huh?

I've never understood why people never understand this aspect.

because thats how most bitcoin miners start, sucking money from their landlord. It was only a hobby until 2011 bubble. Then greed took over and ppl rent space with "utilities included", rack of GPUs came in. 2013 made them rich and they went big..... rent datacenter, warehouse, hook up high power line..... only to fail miserably. They realized they couldnt compete with the big players who actually sold them chips/miners. As big money can build farms with the most economical sense.

Now they cried , mining is centralized.

Had they have any clue of economy, they would have seen this is inevitable if Bitcoin grow to $XXX/btc. There is no such thing as easy money.

Why the blocksize limit keeps Bitcoin free and decentralized

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZp7UGgBR0I

Except that many more don't, and it's barely feasible to heat anything with your typical rig

While remaining useless and unscalable.

the idea is to keep a safe core and to built around this core an ecosystem with sidechains, colored coins, off chains  transcactions etc. I am not completely against the idea the bitcoin core to have a head to a new direction. I am afraid the idea that one or two developers have the power to fork the core.

Do you even understand the merits of this idea?

Let me explain, the video basically propose to have centralized networks(sidechain, offchain...) connecting thro a decentralized network (bitcoin blockchain) while the blockchain is basically at its infant state and thus would discourage any growth and become unsustainable.

Meanwhile, we need the blockchain to have enough economy backing to grow. Sidechain or offchain will discourage miner's economy incentives (unless you can convince Lighting Network to share their fees with miners  ::)). Essentially ppl dont even care or know bitcoin, they're using offchain services like paypal.

The ppl who rushed into this sidechain/offchain development are the same ppl who refused to let Bitcoin to scale. Frankly some of these projects got VC money, yet they say Gavin and Mike are "lobbying" Bitcoin service providers....yeah for what? so they can be proud lead developers again lol? because they dont have financial incentive to do so.

Stop repeating "one or two have power to fork the core"

Here is a newsflash for you: ANYONE can fork the core. But they only succeed if majority agree with them. Thats not weakness, thats strength of the network.

If you oppose that idea, then you see bitcoin is nothing but a cult.

Problems are not new to Bitcoin. Even if the fork is real, it must be over come from it and BTC have good future.

Imagine a new type of heater, with built in ASIC chips 2000W, only generate heat when connected with wifi network, downloadable app get your a wallet address for payout, plug in and auto connect to a p2pool to start mining. I guess you will have no problem selling more than 1 million units, because it is a heater that does not cost you electricity to run

Actually 21 inc is doing something similar right now, but their plan is a little bit less clear

No fear people. It is not the first time that this process happen. One months ago was another forked part of blockchain and after a few time it is regulated by the system again. So no panic. Nothing will happen. Everything will go ok after e few days.

NO their plan is nothing but novelty products.

The reason why your ideas are far from reality is the ASIC technology improves way faster than your return on investment. Thus the network difficulty would make such products obsolete.

Not to mention the inefficiency the system, as heat from burning gas (furnace ) is still the most energy efficient. Unless you have a proven prototype, you're only spitting horseshit.

Ever heard of "nirvana fallacy"



The issue with blockchain tps limit is NOW, and unless you have a system ready built to solve, all the arguments from you are pure fantasy.

And how do we or you measure the majority? By transaction volume? By size? By users?

Bitcoin has already been forked.  That's where Litecoin, etc. came from.  When you fork Bitcoin's existing economic majority, that by definition creates an alternative economic consensus (regardless of UXTO inheritance and blockchain).

I'm not sure why discussion of this particular new alt isn't in its proper forum here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1115016.0

If BitcoinXT is allowed in the main forum, it's time to start talking about the Bitcoin Scrypt (http://bitcoinscrypt.org/) project too!

Since anything with "Bitcoin" in the name goes, let's talk make BitcoinDark (http://bitcoindark.pw/) threads in the Bitcoin forums as well.

Anything less is censorship, book burning, and the epitome of authoritarianism.   ::)

The amount of fear and uncertainty on this site is mind-boggling.  Imagining all the FUD posters from this forum, in the same room, is hilarious: the second someone sneezes, five people are falsely accused and murdered.  Ten people commit suicide, thinking it a better option than contracting a cold.  One group begins selling magical anti-sneeze armor to another group, then buys their clothes back for twice the price because they're now cold and afraid of getting sick.  The group who profited argues amongst themselves over the TRUE value of a dollar, while the rest of the world moves on as normal because no one gives a rat's ass what some schizophrenic-sounding troll posts on a message board.

Except it would be useless to the majority of people, and besides there are already way better options in solar and in some cases geothermal. It would be more viable to heat your home with a camp fire than with a mining rig.

Yep, just an alt, like the 500+ other alts. If anything, inheriting the BTC blockchain and its unspent balances dooms an alt. After all, there are loads of people with coins who have the ability to dump (due to their BTC balances porting over) and incentive to dump (because it's a competing chain, but mostly just for immediate profit).

https://i.imgur.com/T5WLxcx.png

lol rekt

Here's what Heam doesn't want you to know about XT:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h5heu/so_what_exactly_are_the_changes_in_bitcoinxt/

It is obvious that Bitcoin Core is not achieving its objectives in forwarding technology, and therefore it is obsolete and should be superceded by a newer system that can promote more rapid innovations and changes.

It seems to me that Bitcoin Core has become stale and stagnant, and resistant to change. It is crucial that for an emergent technology to grow, the community needs to foster ways to provide some space for new ideas to take shape and grow. I don’t see why the Bitcoin developer group is having such a hard time in achieving this.

The real change in BitcoinXT is not the technology, but the opportunity to break the stalemate from making changes to the technology. In a sense, this is more about creating a more open system for adopting changes.

Did you even check the main github before posting?

The core devs have done and are still doing a great job of keeping Bitcoin technology moving forward.  EG, BIP66 is done.

And then there's these:

So where can we check the stats to see who is running what and in what percentage? This has become very interesting, but this also need to end as soon as possible so we can move forward with the development.

I saw someone had a webpage where you could but can't find the link. I'll look around.

Great! Where do I sign up to be an XT core developer?

Core vs XT nodes here

http://www.xtnodes.com/

Its sad the Bitcoin is splitting. I support the core devs. Ultimately in the long term things will work out tho in anycase.

Maybe there will be a 'liberterian' coin, and a 'corporate' coin. May the best coin win.

I think that you dont understand that if this fork success the next day we will not have a real decentralized open source system but a system with Gavin as a developer leader. The whole idea of the open and independence system will fail.

Thanks for the graphs.

Well it is sad, but what else can be done. This problem has to be closed and we have to move on. This debate has lasted tok long, and no consensus has be found. Now it's time to act and let the community decide for themselves.

I don't think there will be 2 coins, unless we get stuck at 50-50 which would be undecided. If there will be 75-25 at the end for one side, I think that the minority will join the majority and we will again have only 1 Bitcoin.

and if this fork success and we give such a big power to only one developer in the system who says that in the future this person will not decide to fork again the system and completely change it like to increase the bitcoins number, to change the mining system etc.
Is not good in the human history when one and only one person has the power to rule a system. If this happen this system is going to fail asap.

Well, it could be said that there are 2 developers, but I don't really like the second one (not personally, just what he stands for). Regardless I strongly feel this way too and I won't consider supporting XT until it is backed by a diverse group of developers, including a few with privacy conscious views.

How often does it have to be repeated to get into the mind of the stupid, that there is not one person, who could change Bitcoin and never will?
That is just not how Bitcoin works.

It's stupid statements like yours, that makes this whole debate so ridiculous. Statements that show, that a lot of people don't even understand the basics of how Bitcoin work.

Arlight, alright ... already on my way to stock up altcoins and cash in parts of my btc. Thanks for letting me know ...

Remove the link from the OP that says satoshi commented on this. It's a fake to please the idiots that need satoshi's view on this. Obvious fake due non signed message.

I completely agree with this. I think supporting XT right now is out of question. It is too early anyway.
My biggest concern is how things are being done: it is simply non sense to me to lead things this way.

I supposed that when mathematics is in command we don't need anything else: I was wrong because there are people who like to play even with this.

Why can't people have consensus around things ?

If you don't agree with the changes you don't have to adopt the particular software, ultimately it's our choice.

You can't find consensus amongst five people who run a suburban golf club. What are the odds of managing it among thousands spread across the globe all with their own idea of what they want this to be?

Consensus is impossible. Majority will win.

But if Bitcoin tanks wouldn't it take the alts with it?

Are you living in a world of talk and fantasy? Search the hardware sub forum, there are already people using ASIC miners to heat their house, and they are running them even it does not dig out any meaningful coins because they need heat anyway, and most likely they will upgrade to the new miner when they see a more attractive model

On the other hand, unless the big mining farms cooperate with distributed heating companies (which is extremely difficult due to their location), they will face huge loss when bitcoin difficulty is driven up by home miners by another fold

It has been proved that large mining operations are much more risky than distributed home miners, they either make big money or big loss, but their tolerance for a sustained loss is extremely low, many of them went down during the past year. Home miners and garage miners are not profit oriented, they could support the network regardless of bitcoin's price

At the end of 2011, when price had reached a level that mining is no longer profitable even for the most efficient GPU miners, many home miners and garage miners were still carrying on, because what they are interested is bitcoin, cost is irrelevant. But now, if the mining is no longer profitable even for the most efficient miners, I'm afraid that mining farms will shut down at large scale. A bitcoin network supported by speculative mining operations are extremely unstable, when there is no fiat money to make, those speculators will quit

Wouldn't think so. Quite the opposite. Depends on why BTC tanks. Does it tank because the BTC community made a mistake, does it tank because of stupidity and groupthink?
I think most alts can process already many times the tps that btc does. So if BTC tanks due to a very unwise hardfork LTC and his friends will go to the moon - they can handle much more txs already.
It's very predictable to me and this year i make a lot of money by just putting money on the alts that have solutions to BTC problems.
Basically alts are the solution to this problem with the throughput of txs - but apparently everyone is blind and biased. There is so much unused free space on all these alternative chains, it's more than anyone could ever use. Why people would want to put BTC at risk with controversial forks is beyond me. It's not rational. If BTC tanks due to such a stuuupid hardfork i'll be rich from altcoins for sure.
If BTC tanks at first alts would tank too but if BTC would be broken beyond possible repair alts would go berserk. BTC failing due to a problem that's not inherent to alts and is specific to BTC alone is the altcoin bagholders wet dream scenario. 

About Mike Hearn

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=333824.0

If this success many people will be out of the game in bitcoin community and the next day will be not the same

LOL, you must be too stupid to have reading comprehension, read my post again.

Thanks for this important link. That is ample reason not to support Bitcoin XT right there. Do you have any other links that prove Mike Hearn wants to take Bitcoin XT in a different direction than Satoshi Nakomoto intended?