Bitcoin Forum

Long has the development of bitcoin been slowed by the devs inability to agree on design decisions, it's time to put in place a system that ensures continued development / evaluation of the code base, in a low friction decentralized manner. Imagine a bitcoin where YOU as a user get a say in every design decision. we can do this today.

There is a design decision to be made, 3 possible implementations, each similar, impossible to say which way is the best way to go. Who ultimately makes the decision on which way to go? It is my belief that satoshi would want the decision to be made by community as a whole. we can achieve this today and use this process to put the block limit debate to rest.

We could have in place a system in which all the different BIP's ( design options ) can be voted on using hashing power and BTC. By having different version numbers attached to a block mined corresponding to the different proposed implementations (exactly how XT is gauging its support) we would quickly see where miners stand. We could also set up wallets corresponding to the different proposed implementations, people would send a tiny amount of BTC to the address they want to vote for, they could change their vote by sending another tiny amount to another address. This would prove they own X amount of bitcoin, and are in favor of  BIP XXX, and in that way we would gauge where the economic marjory stand.  This "Voting system" wouldn't be the deciding factor as to what BIP gets implemented, ultimately this is in the hands of the devs, but it would be hard for devs to continue to push for a BIP with very little support by the community, and it would be easier for the devs to agree to  BIPXXX after seeing an overwhelming majority of the community vote for BIPXXX. All this system would really do is give the devs and the community itself an accurate picture of what the community wants or doesn't want Before drastic measures are taken like BitcoinXT Vs BitcoinCore


From the white paper (paraphrased):
Nodes assemble valid transactions into a block and work to find a proof-of-work.
Nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it.
The longest chain composed of valid transactions is "Bitcoin."  
https://i.imgur.com/Xn4xFuv.png


Lets take this a step future and add the ability for miners and BTC to express their acceptance of a particular BIP, making it easier for the network to come to consensus according to the original design of Bitcoin.

Without this system, what do we see in times of disagreement? In this case we are faced with two extremist choices no block limit increase at all ( Core ) or a huge increase ( XT ), mean while most agree we should bump up the limit at least a little, most are unhappy with either camp, yet are voices are ignored, as ego and self interest fuel the devs decision making. i think we can all agree both not bumping the limit at all, or increasing it so much so that that becomes the solution to scalability are both not the best decision bitcoin should take at this time, why are we force to choose??


what do you think?

To be honest it sounds like a "popularity contest" rather than a well thought out technical solution to a problem (this has been my thinking about this whole issue ever since XT embarked on the alarmist idea that Bitcoin is going to die and that they are going to fork it by "convincing others" that they should follow them).

I'm yet to be convinced that Bitcoin is broken to the point that we need to suddenly rush in the change and abandon the core devs in the process.

Also in the middle of the "stress test" I actually sent BTC amounts with no fee and with no problem (as the UTXOs were well aged the txs confirmed very quickly) so the "panic" seems rather out of proportion to the reality.

you don't think the most popular solution would tend to be the one which appears to be well thought out technical solution to the problem??

If that were the case we'd have solved climate change through the election of politicians with well thought out technical solutions years ago. :D

A popular solution has absolutely nothing to do with being "sensible" or even "viable" for that matter.

having gavin fork the blockchain is a better way to government bitcoins development?

Exaclty. I believe the free market is the only one that can take the best decision for it. As long as it has choices.

Those who think they can overule the free market are agaisnt the very principles of decentralization and bitcoin as a whole and can go work for central banks that will share their views.

Would you then agree with the statement (in relation to the direction of Bitcoin's evolution):

   "Consensus is too important to be left to the people."

We all know politic is rigged by lobbies. The strongest ones are banking and petrolium consortium and those only care about their profits. The population have no real say.

I don't think we need a "personality" to govern the development (my preference would always be for a "figurehead" rather than a "benevolent dictator") but maybe we do need some more clearer ways of solving the consensus of development.

Again I don't see the need to rush this and allow Gavin and Mike to simply "take over control" because somehow we should trust them.

isnt that an oxymoron?

Yes - I think I would (he says feeling that he has just walked into a spring loaded trap).

That being said we do have the voting power of miners and of peers and IMO that should be used to determine the future (and I don't think 75% is enough of a majority for a hard fork which I was rather disappointed to discover XT has decided to use when initial communications had indicated that a 95% majority would be required).

To clarify the confusion - it should not be up to the "general population" to make a vote but up to those who actually are the key participants (in particular the miners).

it obviously wouldn't be the little poeple voting it would be the miners who has invested interest in seeing bitcoin grow in the best possible way. consider the alternative, Core Vs XT, while everyone is ready and willing to increase the block limit, egos and political BS turn a simple update into a full on war.

ultimately the will of the majority will win, this is the nature of bitcoin, try as they might devs will never be able to make changes that a big % of users do not agree with, why not streamline the process so thing happen in a calm and orderly fashion?
 

Thank you for the honest reply.  

Consensus is an interesting problem.  I would tend to agree that if every person loosely attached to Bitcoin had "one vote," then the results would be negative.  However, in reality each person has a vote that carries a weight in proportion to their influence.  If influence accrues to those who are wiser, then the decision of the "influence-weighted majority" will be the best decision IMO.

I would thus argue that the best approach to reaching consensus is to give the people the necessary tools to make expressing their free choice (e.g., BIP101 vs BIP100 vs no increase) as easy as possible.


Hahaha, I'm not sure.  What do others think?

A 95% consensus would indeed be preferable but on the other hand is a large group of poeple can reach such a consensus? I doubt it. If not, it could also lead to an impasse where consensus is impossible and block any development ( just like what is happening with Core)....

Personally I don't see we actually have an impasse (but it does appear that Gavin and Mike are trying to push this agenda) as there are BIPs from the Bitcoin Core devs about increasing the block size.

About the only good thing that has come of all this block size debate has been that the price of BTC has been going up and down making it a great time for day-trading.

i think we'd see poeple change camps purely to get consensus and have progress, lets face it BIP 100..105 are all the same with a twist, its only because ego's are at stake that the devs are unwilling to change their vote, without ego a clear runaway winner would emerge and at 75% everyone would change their vote, because they want progress above getting there way.

it would be interesting to say the least if we could put blocklimit to this "Decentralized decision making" process

The biggest concern I have is that maybe 75% is not putting the bar high enough - if we really end up with two competing forks (and from what I have read the 75% doesn't need to hold so the XT fork would keep going even if the support had dropped below 50%) then that could really cause problems (some forum members have been talking about getting pools to "pretend to support" XT so they can sell their coins twice).

Initially I had assumed that Gavin was not going to do anything so hastily and had assumed that rational minds would be led towards consensus by reason but unfortunately it does seem that now that is no longer the case.

There have already been issues in the past with soft forks and an accidental hard fork so I don't think it is actually very responsible for people to play political games with this.

Sorry adam, I don't like your idea. CIYAM is right here.

The main quality you need in order to develop something like bitcoin is expertise. The required expertise is in short supply. The inverse is the alternative; you can't develop sophisticated technology with the "everyone gets an A for effort" mentality.

And so, dare I say it, open source development teams have inherently socialistic characteristics. It's one of a few examples where socialism is preferable to free market decision making.

The wider free market is still free to reject the work of these communes, though. As it should be.

it would be the dev's responsibly to use their expertise to present to the miners viable options, not the other way around, your argument is invalid.

From what I have read recently miners can express their support for one of the BIPs in each block - this seems like a reasonable approach to me (although in one topic about this I read that miners might actually be confused as to what they are supposed to put in their block so that is perhaps the fault of the devs for not clearly communicating how they should do this).

The thing is, bitcoin not just code, it is money. The expertise here goes broader than just technical skills but should also take consideration of market makers expertise...

right its already happening, only we are force to chose between to extremes, other (possibly better) options are being ignored why? because the devs are driven by conflict of interest, etc blockstream want 1MB block...

I think the only thing that has "forced" things is Gavin and Mike trying to "rush things". If they didn't jump up and down claiming that Bitcoin was going to die then there wouldn't have been such a rush that has meant that other proposals are being ignored.

Really I don't see that people are using Bitcoin more and more (in fact I no longer use it for any regular spending at all and not one of my friends or family uses it at all) so the whole argument about Bitcoin running out of block space for txs seems rather odd to me (and Sergio's suggestion of using 5 minute blocks actually makes more sense than nearly anything else I've read).

All the "panic" was due to the "stress tests" of a bunch of spam txs that actually didn't stop me (or most other people) doing BTC txs anyway.

i think we all know this to be true, yet everyone still wants to see bigger blocks.
how do we pick a course of action when either option is viable and no one can agree.
we force the issue by putting it to a vote, one in which nothing will happen until 90% is in agreement.

what can we expect to see?

2 options become clearly dominate, the discussion gets more focused around those two options, the better of the two gets more hashing power, everyone changes their vote to this option because they are driven by the will to see progress not flatter their ego or individual conflict of interest.

Yes - I think something like 90% would stop the hastiness and actually force people to work together (rather than to try and "take over").

Having read various posts from Mike Hearn about supporting "black-lists" (or "red-lists" or whatever) and also the ridiculous effort put into adding support for x801 certs (that seemingly no-one is even using) I don't really think that Gavin and Mike have any credibility to "run the project".

Presumably both of them already have enough money to retire - I'd plead with them to think about just doing that and letting those that actually want to do the hard work get on with just that.

all code is written to perform a task. thankfully, the Core dev team are able to code, engineer and reason about market economics.

but they clearly cannot be made to agree

if bitcoin was a company there wouldn't be a problem, devs don't make decisions in a company the boss dose that, i propose we make the miners the boss, and force them to reach consensus, like a boss would listen to all the pros and cons weigh them respectively  and then make a decision, the community would do the same.

dev's are there to implement the will of the network, not decide what the network wants.

if your argument is the network is to stupid to know what it wants, i respectfully disagree, and nothing you can say will change my mind.

To a fair extent that should work, however, it should be realised that as Bitcoin mining has become more and more commercialised the "bosses" of said mining operations understand less and less about what it is that they are working with (i.e. they are becoming just "business men" that don't understand the tech at all).

a million dollar rig is setup clueless as to what bitcoin is and how it works? i'm sure mining operations have a team of poeple well verse in these technical issues. I dont think you paint an arcuate picture of the reality  

Ok. I agree that devs are there to implement the will of the network. But only they are placed to know how that can be achieved, in detail. They have the software design skills to do that. The users mostly don't.

Actually I do know something about the reality of rich Chinese that might be the "boss" of a Bitcoin mining company.

Most importantly they have a shitload of money and "guanxi" in order to get the mine set up with cheap electricity and no political issues. The technical know how is just people they employ and the business decisions are not at all "sourced from the technical employees".

Are you seriously telling me that the CEOs of power/telco/whatever companies would ask their engineers about advice for their business decisions (to make an analogy)?

fuck ya they would

they understand that they need bitcoin to grow in the best possible way to maximize their profit, most definitely they would ask there more knowledgeable staff what they think.

You have an interesting but IMO unrealistic view of the world (despite being much smarter than nearly any *boss* I had ever worked for they had they never asked nor accepted my advice about pretty much anything related to their business and that includes at least one company that I helped make rich).

In reality bosses don't care about the opinions of their technical staff - they actually care more about what their friends in high places think (because in general that is far more important to their success and possibly even their very survival if you are working in a corrupt environment).

What the fuck adam  ???

This is a slippery slope if I've ever seen one. Your scenario seemingly makes no mention of arguably the most vital players in the game : the nodes.

You're effectively saying they should be listening to the miners when one of their role is supposedly to put a check on them...

What's stupid is to pretend the will of the miners = will of the network.

And somehow you propose that Bitcoin is safe from these politics game?

well like it or not this is currently whats happening with XT, miners will determine weather or not bitcoin forks to XT.

is this the best way to vote on changes? probably not.

i like the hash rate idea, because it jives with what is currently going on, encourages more people to mine so they can participate in the voting. and weeds out non-tech poeple whose vote probably wouldn't have much thought behind it because they can't be bothered to have a mining rig. plus its easy to setup a lot of fake nodes while its impossible to fake hashing power.

maybe a better way would be to have the 1 BTC 1 Vote system in which, bitcoin wallets would cast votes by signing a msg with their wallet?

point is it would be really nice to have a more democratic and decentralized bitcoin dev decision making process, suddenly being thrown into a Core Vs XT war and being forced to pick one of the two extremist options isn't as elegant.

bitcoin is political, and the way it evolves will gr8ly reflect the political views of those making the decisions, so who gets to make these decisions?? i say, go the democratic way, and let the users vote on these decisions.

 ???

The XT decision will never end up to the miner if there is a node consensus against XT.

You seriously need to reconsider the whole democratic thing. I voted "I don't believe in democracy" because it has failed us times and times again and simply isn't an option. Democracy will have you pretend that every voice is equal. That is absolutely not the case in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is not a democracy and in the hopes it prospers it shall never be. You are even more confused than I thought my friend.

maybe it should be.

You make the classic mistake of assuming all miners are equal. This is somehow typical of classic socialist tendencies to group people of different background, resources, motives and intentions together as if there is somehow a way to generalize and predict their decisions. You need to get rid of that mindset immediately. Miners are individuals and therefore it is foolish to expect them to all share the same ideology as to how Bitcoin should grow.

The consensus nature of Bitcoin is precisely there to defend ourselves against "the willtyranny of the majority" and their master puppeteer.

Then you need better arguments because what you're essentially proposing is to have Bitcoin be governed by the rule of the mob. A surefire way to end up with totalitarian top down governance.

Brg444, do you agree with this statement (in relation to the direction of Bitcoin's evolution):

   "Consensus is too important to be left to the people."

 ::)

I don't know if you are a miner Adam hence why you proposed that only miners supposedly possess the technical understanding and implications behind Bitcoin related decisions but if you are and you actually can say with a straight face that "BIP 100...105" are all the same with a twist" then I should argue that you are the first and obvious example I can refer you to that some miners don't know WTF they're talking about.

no i'm just seeing a war break out ( XT Vs Core ) with hash rate as the determining factor, and saying COOL we should do this all the time! just without a "war" just politely polling the network to make a decision that reflect the majority hashing power, this whole network is based on the majority hashing power agreeing.

Who is "the people"?

I don't want to sound like a broken record but this is, again, meaningless socialist drivel.

There is no such thing as "the people". Only individuals. Now do I agree that some individuals have absolutely no say in the decision making of Bitcoin? Absolutely.

your right BIP 100...105 are all completely different  2MB 8MB   1MB with 5min block, all TOTALLY different!

nope not a miner. but i don't mind giving miners the power to vote on stuff because i know they have vested interest in making bitcoin the best it can be.

a small group of devs can be compromised and or be invested in other things which cloud their judgment

Did someone hit you on the head with a bat overnight? What is this nonsense!?

The whole network is based on the consensus software that is run by NODES

... i'm i being trolled?

answer me this, how is a fork resolved?

I agree.  This would simply be Bitcoin's consensus mechanism playing out before our eyes.  From the white paper (paraphrased):

- Nodes assemble valid transactions into a block and work to find a proof-of-work.

- Nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it.

- The longest chain composed of valid transactions is "Bitcoin."  

https://i.imgur.com/Xn4xFuv.png

By making it easier for nodes to "express their acceptance of a block" (e.g., for blocks larger than 1 MB), we are making it easier for the network to come to consensus according to the original design of Bitcoin.  
 

And that can't happen with miners?

Yes, there are some major differences in the BIP proposed. The most obvious one being growth rate. Sorry but that's just an absolutely stupid thing to say.

Yes, it can happen with miners too.  Presently, development is more centralized than mining, however:

https://i.imgur.com/bfBeGZb.gif

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3i37m6/centralization_in_bitcoin_nodes_mining_and/

exactly

+ each pool can allow its individual miners to choose their prefered BIP which make this decision making process Very decentralized

Agree, just reading thru all this. :) but 95% it may would never be reached and then nothing changes.

we'd have to test it out but my bet is people will gravitate toward consensus, as soon as we see 1 option  have over 51% it would quickly become 99.9% because everyone wants to see progress not a deadlock...

That is a disingenuous question which is better expressed as "How is an accidental fork resolved" which quite honestly is beside the point.

Now that I'm certain I am being trolled, I won't waste my time and quote directly:

k fine, how will the XT fork be resolved?

I see 53% of the network hashrate under a single point of failure: Chinese governement coercion. So much for decentralization heh!

That's not even considering that most of these a pools which can be gamed by miners to create an illusion of decentralization.

That's right, and as far as I know Slushes pool may be the only one offering a choice as to mine on core or XT. His pool found the first block and probably all 3 blocks that have been found thus far. But a miner can stop and switch back over to core mining.

Now put a system like that in place on most of the big pools and you would see within a few days which way people/miners are leaning, since nothing will happen until 750 XT of the last 1000 blocks occurs. (chain wise) So if the pool operators do not mind accommodating 2 or 3 different Bips for a popular vote per se'  then what you suggested in the beginning would work. With the onus being on the devs to produce Bips 1 2 3 and pool ops willing to accommodate.

Again, not to say changes are needed for future growth. But a larger voice in the decision/consensus making would always be nice :)

"Chinese governement coercion" ??? LOL

look 100% of the network is ran by humans, decentralized my ass.

troll on troll on.

By general consensus that XT was DOA and every simpleton running an XT node (or pretend ones https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3i1dra/psa_its_super_easy_to_manipulate_the_node_count_i/) coming back home to core with their heads down once the adults have carefully managed to put forward a sensible proposition that slowly but surely gains consensus.

I never thought I'd say this but it is obvious at that point that the dynamics at stake are well beyond your understanding.

Better keep quiet while everything sorts itself out.

right ya its all about getting voices heard, and seeing peoples opinion change as the debate rages on, to the inevitable conclusion where 90% of the network find itself in 1 camp

IMO had we done this from the start we'd see overwhelming support for 2MB increase on core. it does the trick without any major implications, most agree we want bigger blocks and this would be a small step everyone could get behind.

To adamstgBit's point:


Slush pool

August 19 at 10:37am.

We don't tell you if big or small. It's your choice!

Right now, every Slush Pool miner can vote for larger blocksize.
 Simply use one of following mining URL to do so:

stratum+tcp://stratum.bitcoin.cz:3301
 stratum+tcp://us-east.stratum.bitcoin.cz:3301
 stratum+tcp://eu.stratum.bitcoin.cz:3301

Please note that voting does not affect Bitcoin network in any way at least until 1.1.2016.

https://medium.com/@allenpiscitello/how-the-great-fork-will-occur-160f0e462371

in the end votes don't matter, when the fork happens it happens.

but you have to assume the marjoy of hashing power voting will do so to help reach consensus, once everyone is satisfied that everyone else is going to switch to wtv BIP gets 95% during the voting process, i think it safe to assume >51% of the network will actually make the switch.

and if you have control over a huge % of the votes, vote for wtv it is you want to vote for, and you'll probably get the majority on your side quickly...

So you understand that for the fork to happen it needs at least 75%* of nodes support... but a couple posts before you argue that miners are the ones calling the shot... ???

*That's in XT case. The 75% thresold is such a tragic mistake on Mike and Gavin's part it risks putting the whole ecosystem in danger if ever it triggers.

my understanding is you can fork the network with 0.1% of hashing power if you want, it will just be a useless fork no one uses

and i agree with you 75% threshold is dangerous, but i can see why once 75% is onboard the rest will fallow, which is why i think we should vote first and then try to fork, way less dangerous, more polite, and also fun! i'd own a mining rig just to cast a vote! ( and mine some bitcoin  too  ;D)

also as it stand we haven't many options, the vote could have been done on every single BIP, with maybe a few rounds of voting each round would eliminate the lowest BIP option?

And you are aware why it is so? Because nodes will simply reject their blocks, right?

So please explain why you would call me a troll for suggesting that

no one cares if some nodes are out of date and are rejecting the blocks that 99% of the hashing power is pumping out.

It seems to me what you want (miners voting) is actually happening as we speak. I'm not sure what difference you propose?

 ::)

Sure let's use hyperboles to try and support our points. My turn:

No one cares if 90% of the miners turn their hashing power to Aurora coins, the Bitcoin network remains although it witnesses a significant drop in its hash rate. The network doesn't fucking fork to Auroracoin does it?

it does!

bitpay public stated that it will use wtv blockchain has the most hashing power behind it.

idk what to tell you this is just an idea i have to make the forking process more tolerable, I like the idea that bitcoin can fork, and i'd like to see it happen more often, i like to think this is how bitcoin will progress,

i find it hilarious 2 poeple have voted they don't believe in democracy. oh le bitcoiner, a puzzle wrapped inside an enigma, he is.

What good has ever come out of democracy?

*facepalm*

TIL the miners = the network

Bitcoin will not progress by forking everytime a new issue or challenge comes up.

The difficulty in consensus you are witnessing will only grow larger as adoption increases. Ultimately you should want the Bitcoin core protocol to ossify and require little to no change once it is considered good enough.

Bitcoin will progress by building layers on top of it. Just like any economy grows.

I bet those people are the most rational among all of us (FWIW: I didn't vote for that). Democracy is just another dead word that describes a dead concept, in (an almost) dead ancient language. Theoretically it exists, but in practice it's very much dead. This is a pretty long conversation and let me remind you that the above text comes from a Greek.  :-\

i like the voting idea; i am just not sure if mining is the best way to vote.

maybe a mix with hashrate and coinage fits better (coinage and not just amount of bitcoins because i dont want people to BUY votes for only one purpose; still possible though. but harder).

imho the biggest problem with any cryptocurrency seems to be that it cant change.

the alternative seems to be just to accept this fact and if we/someone wants a change just use an altcoin for this: but with this approach cryptocurrency cant go mainstream.

edit: btw dont call this democratic voting. democracy means one person one vote. any solution for bitcoin-voting i can imagine means somehow: bigger pockets/bigger involvement has more voting power.

Enter sidechains and payment networks.

not sure how that will work. we'll see ;)

How is this appreciably different than the way it already works today? If 90% of the miners want to do whatever, no one's stopping them.

Bitcoin is not a democracy. It is a system of voluntary consensus. Miners are financially motivated to follow the rules and also to enforce those rules upon everyone else that wishes to participate.

You are free to go ahead and fork your own democraticoin at any time. No one can stop you; just as no one can force a change upon the bitcoin network against the will of the participants.
  

And how this voluntary consensus is different from democracy? Because I can't see much difference. In democracy people do what they want or what they think is good because it will gain them profit or better government or something, miners are doing exactly the same they seek profit. The only difference that live democracy is fiction because not everyone vote, therefore we have something like votes 30% of whole nation, and from that 30% of people who voted option with 51% votes wins. With bitcoin everyone MUST choose.

and one more for "I don't believe in democracy" !   ;D

in all seriousness Adam you seem like a good lad, just a little misguided. you're from Montreal aren't you? I wouldn't mind going over this with you over a pint  ;)

The difference is simple: stupid people don't get to have everyone in society shoulder the weight of their stupidity.

How do we (we = Bitcoin Community) come to "consensus"?  I wouldn't say it's a democracy in the sense that every person loosely attached to Bitcoin has precisely "one vote"--that's not how Bitcoin works.  But it's not that different either.  In reality, each person has a vote that carries a weight in proportion to their influence.  If influence accrues to those who are wiser, then the decision of the "influence-weighted majority" will be the best decision IMO.

I would thus argue that the best approach to reaching consensus is to give the people the necessary tools to make expressing their free choice (e.g., BIP101 vs BIP100 vs no increase) as easy as possible.  For this reason, I think the OP makes good sense.

As long as their free choice does not change the fundamental rules that the consensus network agrees on, they can run whatever client they like. XT, core, electrum, armory, etc... but when it comes to making a change to the fundamental rules of consensus, I would argue the best approach is to make this process as hard as possible.

Making a change like bip 101 that involves ballooning the block size to 8MB and eventually to 8GB is reckless and can bring about problems and attack vectors that we can't know or predict. They (Gavin and Hearn) are spreading fear and panic and preying on your fear of what might happen if we don't change [1] while they pay no heed to all to the consequences and real danger that could occur from such a drastic change to the fundamental rules that balance incentives and keep bitcoin secure.

[1]even though we've seen from the spam attacks that it's not a problem and bitcoin deals with full blocks just fine... In fact, it may even be desirable to be in a constant state of full blocks so that a fee market can emerge. Remember that the miners must continue to get paid as the reward continues to diminish)

Stop trying to nuance the discussion using "vote" as if this somehow ties it to democracy somewhere down the road.

It is not a vote. It is a decision. A show of strenght. Power. You might not like it expressed as such but that doesn't particularly matter. In short, it is the people with the most resources and, yes, the most influence amongst their wealthy and powerful peers who will ultimately decide where the ship sails. No, influence as in "popular amongst reddit derps" is not valued nor accounted for.


There are several public forums where people might want to "express their free choice". I'm not sure what's the point of somehow tying this into the system as if this would somehow legitimize the process.

To be fair I'm not even sure what it is OP is proposing. Seemed to me like a one hash, one vote miner governance which is quite honestly absurd.

Thank you for the polite reply.  

I agree that changing a consensus rule about what constitutes a valid transaction should be extremely hard.  We all agree that Alice shouldn't be able to move coins without a valid signature, Bob shouldn't be able to create coins out of thin air, and Charlie shouldn't be able to spend his coins twice.  

I disagree that this applies to the size of the block.  The reason I disagree is because Satoshi already designed a way for us to come to consensus on what "appropriately sized" blocks are.  From the white paper (paraphrased):

- Nodes assemble valid transactions into a block and work to find a proof-of-work.

- Nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it.

- The longest chain composed of valid transactions is "Bitcoin."  

https://i.imgur.com/Xn4xFuv.png

By making it easier for nodes to "express their acceptance of a block" (e.g., for blocks larger than 1 MB), we are making it easier for the network to come to consensus according to the original design of Bitcoin.  Thus Adam's proposal is simply Bitcoin playing out the way it was designed.

(There is no mention of a block size limit in the Bitcoin white paper.)
 
 

I think we're saying similar things but using different words.  You also seem to discredit the community at /r/bitcoin as "powerless," whereas I think their sentiment reflects the desires of the economic majority.  Time will tell, I suppose...

Economic majority reflects the ownership of important stakes in either Bitcoin, its mining network, and to a lesser extent the exchanges & services infrastructure.

As far as the two most important are concerned : owning a shitload of Bitcoin and or possessing a significant portion of the mining network I feel confident enough to say that those who share one or two of these criterias don't hang on reddit and therefore their "sentiment" is not reflected there.

To be quite honest I don't see how any smart person (I consider you are one) can view reddit as anything more than some group think cargo cult full of loud but absolutely irrelevant voices.

Thank you.  I also recognize that you are intelligent.  I also believe that you are young.  I think I may have had a view more inline with yours a decade ago. 

That's too bad.... Old dogs do indeed lose the will to fight  :'(

Hahaha.  Let's see how it all pans out, shall we?

By the way, the fork will be determined when 75% of the blocks found by miners (750) of the last 1000 found. Not 75% of the nodes.

If all miners tonight pointed to slushes pool offering XT core mining, the next 750 blocks its over. Well almost, but that will become the fork at that time. So yes miners do really control that. (vote) Now enough nodes should be in place as well to handle the work also on XT.  :)

From Gavin:

Deployment shall be controlled by hash-power supermajority vote (similar to the technique used in BIP34), but the earliest possible activation time is 2016-01-11 00:00:00 UTC.

Activation is achieved when 750 of 1,000 consecutive blocks in the best chain have a version number with bits 1,2,3 and 14 set (0x20000007 in hex). The activation time will be the timestamp of the 750'th block plus a two week (1,209,600 second) grace period to give any remaining miners or services time to upgrade to support larger blocks. If a supermajority is achieved more than two weeks before 2016-01-11 00:00:00 UTC, the activation time will be 2016-01-11 00:00:00 UTC.

Block version numbers are used only for activation; once activation is achieved, the maximum block size shall be as described in the specification section, regardless of the version number of the block.

I think you're gonna get your increase.  :)

Don't get your hopes up for any 8 mb blocks or exponential increase though  ;)

Definitely prepare to say goodbye to Gavin & Mike  ;D

@TerraMaster
But still miners need the majority of the nodes, and the nodes of exchanges, payment processors ecc ..

Even if the 99% of the miners will chose to be on BIP101, but the majority of nodes will still with the old block format, the 1% of miners are going to make a lot of money, because only their blocks will be validated from the network (the majority of nodes/services/users)

So miners have a lot of power, but still they need to follow the will of the market.

Anyway, I think that the market will converge on the BIP101 ;)

Yes that's true, and a real point,,, that's why I quickly mentioned there will have to be enough XT nodes to support that  ;D its like which would come first the nodes or the miners/hash lol chicken or the egg  ???

I think they would grow together....

That is not a question... No miners will make any significant switch unless they get equally significant node support

Larger blocks do not make it easier to come to consensus, they make it harder. An 8MB block will take longer to propagate, making it more likely that small forks and orphans occur. Also since you are now locked into exponential growth, in two years my well connected mine in northern Europe can mine and quickly propagate 16MB blocks which will take longer for the Chinese miners to download and validate, giving me an advantage (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) and also an incentive to pack blocks full of junk transactions (which is necessarily a bad thing) - if the nodes are all following the rules of bip101 they have to accept my garbage filled 16MB blocks, as they are perfectly valid. 

By allowing these much larger blocks to be created, you increase the effectiveness of selfish mining and thus, increase the incentive to act in a malicious manner.  Satoshi might not have realized a block size limit was necessary when he was drafting the white paper, but it sure didn't take him long to implement one once the network was up and running.

For anyone who is still struggling to understand why bigger blocks might not be such a good idea, I thought this was a nice, succinct, and humorous explanation of XT from a rather unlikely source.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-23/what-bitcoin-xt-primer-everyone

Enjoy.  :)

Switching to XT is the conservative decision, as illustrated in the figure below.

https://i.imgur.com/HOT1XfX.png

When the longest chain is then later abandoned, you can lose a lot of money being on the longest chain. You do remember the fork in 2013, don't you?

BIP101 activation requires support from 75% of the hash power (which itself requires broad support from network nodes, Bitcoin businesses and the user base). Do you think it is reasonable that >25% of hash power would "play games" by faking their support (assuming that's what you're getting at)?

That is if anyone actually plans to move to XT, which they don't.

Seriously wake up Peter, no one is buying it. XT is DOA and support only by a circle jerk of /r/bitcoin exilees running pretendnodes on 15$ VPS accounts.

It is fair to say only a very irrelevant amount of full nodes holding the entire Bitcoin blockchain are actually running XT as we speak

Big players that need scaling for their operations will and won't care about you and I opinions for their products to go mainstream.

14% of the nodes are buying it as of today.  That's up from 0% a little over a week ago.  Let's see how much of the hash power is buying it two months from now...

https://i.imgur.com/YLLpoK7.png

Refer to my edit


Take your eyes off the scoreboard for a second. It is meaningless and they put it there for a reason. You're playing right into their hands.

Watch the game won't you?

Voting is not the way to go, it will kill bitcoin

Consensus Decision Making model is the best choice:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1158988.msg12207921#msg12207921

.. you've conveniently missed out other risks on your decision matrix. Like minimally-reviewed, untested code, anti-privacy agendas of the developers involved in XT ... so conservative decision on an honest matrix, I'd say no.

"What's wrong with voting?

Working in a small group where everyone votes directly on important issues may feel like having democratic control. However, voting creates a majority and a minority - a situation in which there are winners and losers. If most people support an idea then it will be voted in, and the concerns of the people who opposed it can be ignored. This situation can foster conflict and distrust as the 'losers' feel disempowered by the process. The will of the majority is seen as the will of the whole group, with the minority expected to accept and carry out the decision, even if it is against their deeply held convictions and most basic needs. A majority will find it easy to steamroll an idea over a dissenting minority rather than looking for another solution that would suit all. People might sometimes choose to bow to the will of the majority, but, in a voting system, when people constantly find themselves in a minority they lose control over their own lives. A vivid example is the imprisonment, in many European 'democracies', of those refusing military service.

It's true that majority voting enables even controversial decisions to be taken in a minimum amount of time, but that doesn't mean to say that this decision will be a wise one, or even morally acceptable. After all, at one time, the majority of Europeans and North Americans supported the 'right' to hold slaves."

It would be helpful to have a version of Core + BIP101 released by an independent party (to calm the fears about the other changes in XT [although I believe those fears are baseless]).  This is what jonald_fyookball and jwinterm proposed a few minutes ago here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1159043.msg12224417#msg12224417

The OP is not proposing "voting" in the normal sense.  He is proposing that we simply make it very easy for node operators to download either BIP101, BIP100, 1-MB, etc.  If, for example, the majority of the hash power gets on board with larger blocks, then that's what Bitcoin will become.  He wants to give more power to the node operators (rather than to the developers of a particular implementation of the protocol (Core)).

this would be buying the good cop/bad cop false dilemma where somehow to erase the fright of a possible XT-induced fork war we "settle" for pulling the same broken proposition in core.

Forget 8MB & forget exponential growth.

That's still a vote, what if the minority of the hash power don't want to use larger blocks? You are still forcing a change on them. And those minorities might command much larger stake in bitcoin ecosystem than you can imagine, they could easily destroy your majority fork with the flip of a pen

Please read this article again if you are interested
http://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus

I suppose you can call it a sort of vote, but I respectfully disagree that it would be a negative.  In fact, IMO, what Adam described in the OP would simply be Bitcoin's consensus mechanism playing out before our eyes.  From the white paper (paraphrased):

- Nodes assemble valid transactions into a block and work to find a proof-of-work.

- Nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it.

- The longest chain composed of valid transactions is "Bitcoin."  

https://i.imgur.com/Xn4xFuv.png

By making it easier for nodes to "express their acceptance of a block" (e.g., for blocks larger than 1 MB), we are making it easier for the network to come to consensus according to the original design of Bitcoin.  
 

yea man I dig it! I think we should combine the Consensus Model JohnyJ is proposing with the Consensus Mechanism You and Adam are proposing.

If a consensus is reached, you don't need to vote. If you need to vote, you don't have consensus. Or to say, only a 100% passed vote can be called consensus

That's way vote always works much faster than consensus building, while consensus based decision will satisfy almost everyone. The key is to satisfy EVERYONE

This might be how the consensus will be reached. Maybe triggered simply with the help of a strong leader.





http://envlit.ifremer.fr/var/envlit/storage/documents/portfolios/portfolio20070601/zooms/photoz03.jpg

I sounds like we're arguing semantics.  My definition of "consensus" with regards to Bitcoin is empirical: the longest chain composed of valid transactions has "consensus."  It sounds like you view consensus as more like unanimity.  I'm not saying either of us is right or wrong in our definitions.  However, my definition seems more practical: we can measure the longest chain.  How can we tell if 100% of the network supports something?  Under what conditions is it reasonable to expect exactly 100% support for something?

Furthermore, isn't it clear that 100% of the network is not in favour of keeping the block size limited at 1 MB?  Why should stasis be the default in the case of a stalemate?

Step 5 of your model is to "Test The Proposal" in which there is a kind of "voting" that is going on. I think the consensus mechanism being discussed is the best way to implement step 5 of your consensus model. Ultimately a "voting" period is necessary, but the end result is 100% consensus with the best proposal.

Peter what you a proposing would more likely than not shatter bitcoin into a multitude a blockchain secured by fractions of hashing power. Your only hope is that somehow "free market" would eventually lead to a consensus, not before the network is broken to pieces by catastrophic consensus failure.

Here is what you actually propose to people is a "conservative choice":


from https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3hp190/charlie_lee_nuclear_option_of_forking_the/cu9e4tj

Get a grip won't you. Don't use your research to support a network attack. You've made your block size intentions clears but that doesn't mean you have to rally behind a governance coup just because they pretend to share your same ideals.

And please stop "developer centralization" concern trolling. Bitcoin XT is a one man show. If you sign up for this you are electing that Bitcoin development be headed by a notoriously controversial individual who has a rap sheet for being very pro-corporations and governments.

This attempt could seriously damage developer trust and discourage some much needed mind share from maintaining our infrastructure. Mike has repeatedly stated he prefers a very authoritarian method of development. In the event that core essentially becomes XT he has explicitly stated decisions would come down to him.

Think this through properly and figure out if this is preferable to an historically reliable group of core dev applying proven, consensus-based, improvement implementations.

I support increasing the block size limit.  Right now, showing support for XT seems to be the most efficient means of achieving that goal.

Longer term, I would like to see several implementations of the Bitcoin protocol controlled by different groups of developers.  In other words, I'd like the square on the right here to have several smaller squares inside it (and no square [including Core] > 30%), thereby decentralizing development:

https://i.imgur.com/VzqyqwR.gif

What in your opinion would be wrong with that longer-term goal of decentralizing development?

I don't exactly understand how longest chain can be a measure? when you have a fork, both chain is the longest in its own version of bitcoin

My understanding is that consensus building should involve everyone in bitcoin ecosystem. There are many large actors who don't even run bitcoin nodes, not even mention hash power, they also have their own interest and concern

One chain will have a greater cumulative work in it--this work is objectively measurable. This is what is meant by the longest chain (assuming both chains are composed of valid transactions, of course).  

According to the Bitcoin white paper (Section 5):

 "Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one and will keep working on extending it."


I completely agree!

Exactly, that article still involves some vote to test if everyone is satisfied with the decision. But it is a very abstract directive, how we should implement it in bitcoin community is to be seen

Anyway, in a consensus based decision making, we can at least say that we have made all the possible efforts to reach a 100% consensus, so no one feel that he is left over

For example we have solution A,B,C,D,E, after several rounds of evaluation we realized that solution D have the most support and the least resistance, so we could select D as the solution. In this way, the people originally against D will understand that D is the best consensus we can reach, so if he take consensus as the highest priority, he would accept D, although D is not his favorite. Of course D should not be strongly resisted by any one, that will not make it a suitable solution

We implement the "vote to test if everyone is satisfied with the decision" on the block chain as just "votes". Not actually forking. Isn't there a way to do like they are doing with XT and notate which proposal you support without actually forking the chain. This voting process would be a true "test" not an actual race to the final solution. After the "test period" we can all as a community decide if we should pull the trigger on a certain date to begin implementing the fork that gained the consensus.


You are absolutely correct and that is why I am so glad you brought this up, this is indeed exactly what bitcoin needed

FTFY

hash power != community will

Exactly, there are many people who do not run nodes or mining but still greatly concerned about bitcoin's health since they use it daily.

I think at least the participants should have some level of involvement. It is difficult for someone who does not own any bitcoin to make any decision because he simply don't understand the whole thing

Use node to vote can be misleading, since you can create thousands of SPV nodes on virtual server. Hash power is more reliable but that excludes most of the participants (I guess winkelvoss twins do not own any hash power), and as 2013 fork showed, it can be manipulated by large pool owner

Many clients, each (hard)forking blockchain. How great would it be?! ;D

Sadly, no. Because the majority of humans is not always right, in fact, it's often quite the opposite.

the idea is that the devs offer viable BIPs with more or less the same amount of "correctness" but they are in disagreement as to which one to pick, and so they politly poll the nework to see where the hashing power / enocomc marjorty stand. in hopes that this allows them to make the best decision for everyone invloded

after chatting and thinking about it, I have edited OP, hopefully this addresses some concerns you all have.

In this "voting system" there is no winner, it is simply informative, it actually jives with your Consensus Decision Making, the goal with be to get the network agreeing at 90%, first we might see 50/50 on 1MB vs 20MB then the devs make changes to there BIP say 8MB and get more of the network agreeing.

I really doubt this is the last of the disagreements devs will face when it comes to forking bitcoin soft or hard, there is clearly a demand for this "voting system"; already something like it has manifested itself in a half baked manner. see : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1160026.0

there no question development would benefit from being able to poll the network, and i believe everyone would appreciate being asked to vote.

here are a few thoughts about the details that might make this process more streamlined:

by default when a new set of BIPs are set up for voting, mining a block without making any change to the version number would indicate undecided or not voting, same would go for the BTC, and this hashing power / BTC would not be tallied on the pie charts. we could assume undecided votes would side with the voting majority.

all voting would have the option "none of the BIPs are acceptable, therefore there should be no change"

when a BIP is modified all votes for that BIP go back to undecided, a new version number / BTC address will be attributed to this modified BIP.

when consuseus appears to have been reached, devs are free to fork( soft or hard ) the software despite any disagreement they may still have internally ( this is in fact always possible, it would simply be more socially acceptable to fork to something the network is in full agreement with even tho some devs don't like it. )

to encourage consensus building, BIPs with the lowest approval rating would be periodically knocked off, and all its votes setback to  undecided. included the possibility of knocking off  "none of the BIPs are acceptable, therefore there should be no change" in which case it would become clear that SOME KIND of change is deemed necessary by all those voting.

This morning we had a broad show of support for BIP101 (Gavin's proposal) from several major Bitcoin companies.  Personally, I don't care whether they run XT or a BIP101 patch for Core---their commitment to implement BIP101-support by December is a big step towards consensus.  

https://i.imgur.com/P1LTrdV.png


Source: http://blog.blockchain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Industry-Block-Size-letter-All-Signed.pdf

Core devs "There is no need for bigger blocks!"  ::)

Bunch of idiots in their ivory tower...

All part of the little coordinated XT push. A good cop/bad cop trap for suckers to fall in. Unscrupulous lobbying of VC-backed companies willing to throw a bone to the investors for more funding rounds.

"Look Mr. Banker, we just upgraded the Bitcoin network to support 8X more transactions, that should get us some users! You all know Bitcoin users LOVE to make transactions right, right?"


Where is the research? Can we see the "tests"?

Can't these industry "leaders" wait until the actual industry has met for a final push to a resolution (Scaling Bitcoin) until picking sides?

Speaking of "ivory tower" what use should we, the community, make of this pathetic PR coup? Are we supposed to just swallow this and take it for granted these guys have done their research? Of course we shouldn't shame them with our suspicion or any reconsideration or validation of their actual motivations and reasoning.

These are the bankers of the Bitcoin world and you are sucking up them without any discretion because...they're VCs & entrepreneurs so they must know what they're doing and surely what they are doing is for the best of everyone in Bitcoin, right. Right?

Adam.

If you would have followed the dev list at all in the last year you would have realized a plethora of similar proposition have been suggested and would always be rejected with a consensual NACK for many obvious reasons. There is essentially no practical way to identify, qualify & quantify users in the network so as to "weight" their "votes".

hashing power And amount of BTC ??

when someone uses a 50BTC wallet to send 0.001BTC to an address associated with voting for BIPXXX add 50votes the to economic majority pie chart
when blocks are minted with a version associated with voting for BIPXXX add it to the Hashing power pie chart

easy as pie.

its happening one way or the other (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1160026.0).... why fight it?

As gool ol Romanian chap Mircea would say : read the logs.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/

and i'd tell him to look around.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1160026.0
people want this, why not its a pie chart!! who doesn't like pie charts  ???

"The people want this"  :-\

I'm so fucking tired of hearing this. I thought Bitcoin was exactly about putting a check on unreasonable people demand. Guess that was underestimating "the people"

you're being unreasonable.

bitcoin is about getting everyone to agree to the same rules.

this thread is about making that easier when changing the rules.

what other rules are up for debate .... ? shall we corral and brigade the mobs to clamour for permanent bitcoin inflation now that network fees are being rendered useless as a technology?

no, no one would agree to that, but it might be fun to put that to a vote and see how fast hashing power comes to the consensus that it shouldn't do this.

idk how about transaction manubility?

kinda hard to imagine there wont be anymore debating with the devs
maybe we wont have such a crazy debate as block size limit for a long time, but does not mean being able to poll the network couldn't help them make better decisions, maybe dev are going to run out of work once block size limit is implemented, who knows!

Yo, Adam, check it out. This guy totally stole your idea...

http://wallstreettechnologist.com/2015/08/23/articles-of-bitcoin-constitution-a-genesis-block-of-governance/