Bitcoin Forum

Hey guys, does anybody have any news from Montreal? Did anything interesting happen or been decided?

Please share this info here if you have any. I have been very busy this weekend so I couldn't watch the live broadcast or listen to it on the YouTube. I am very interested by this and can't find anything.

Thanks!

Nothing was decided but it was a fantastic opportunity for the industry, developers and miners to share concerns and ideas about Bitcoin moving forward.

Coindesk has a good article on the first day here:

http://www.coindesk.com/scaling-bitcoin-day-1-constructive-debate-shines/

You can find transcripts of most of the discussion here:

http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/

Most of the slides used by presenters:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xrnpadhhee26482/AAD1UYgVDXgYByGe4FnqIWBka?dl=0

My highlights:

- Ittay Eyal's tests and models

- Bram Cohen's talk on fees handling

- Miles Carlsten's work on the "mining gap"

- All of sunday morning sessions on payment channels and layer 2 as well as mining & network costs

Overall it was a great experience and I had a really good time.

Brg444, I'm not sure I got to meet you! Did we meet?

Well I'm sorry to hear that. Best of luck to you in your future.

I think this little exchange right here is a great indicator of character.

Scaling Bitcoin Day 1 - Afternoon Session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oefTRnM9SPY

Scaling Bitcoin Day 1 - Afternoon Session Wrap-up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6PnLSH40lQ

Scaling Bitcoin Day 2 - Morning Session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ

Scaling Bitcoin Day 2 - Afternoon Session:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SnjrdQtf8Y

Scaling Bitcoin Day 2 - Afternoon Session Wrap-up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZnYDtBJiY

What about the Day 1 morning session?

I can't find a video of the Day 1 Morning Session, post a link if you can.

oh.... you're afraid to meet in real life because it would show you know jack shit about bitcoin in general.

We get it....

it would be like me refusing to me meet Greg Maxwell because I disagree with what he is trying to do with blockstream.  you have a bad attitude IMO.  bct is one thing but you were at the same event and you refused to meet Peter because he made a blockstream joke.  kinda lame.  maybe you really are afraid.

interesting.  how is he misleading?

I really wish you two would have met and found some common ground. Here we have two people who were front row, in person, live action at the workshop that this thread is about, and instead of hearing your stories of who you met, what you saw, and if you think it was a productive with respect to the block size debate at large, we have to endure a bickering back and forth about hurt egos.  >:(

I've been reporting in the uncensored Bitcoin Forum http://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-26

************
This conference has really opened my eyes to what I see as a huge divide in ideology between the small-block camp and the large-block camp.

The small-block camp seem to want to create rules to micromanage every aspect of the system; the large-block camp want the consensus rules to be as simple as possible and allow the market to sort out the details.

Here's a perfect example from maaku:

https://i.imgur.com/NVGo7WE.png

Here he's arguing with Gavin that propagation time is too long to support 8 MB blocks.  However, just last night he was arguing with me that propagation time is too short to support a fee market.

At first I couldn't understand how they could argue from both sides of most topics: how can they honestly think that there are too many orphans AND not enough orphans?  Well, it's simply that they can't see how the market will come to an equilibrium.  They actually think they need to micromanage everything in order for the system not to break.   This is why orphans can be too high (for safety) but too low (for a fee market) in their minds.

************

Source: http://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-26#post-825

Other interesting observations:

I was involved in two "round tables" today: (1) communication without official structures, and (2) how to get 10x the number of devs involved in protocol development.

In the first round table, the problem of "trolling" and "low signal-to-noise" was brought up, especially as the number of people participating on (e.g.) the bitcoin-dev list had increased. I gave the XT fork as an example of how communication can be improved by splitting up into smaller groups full of people with better-aligned ideologies. As an example, I said the discourse here and on /r/bitcoinxt is much more friendly and positive now. I would say 75% of people agreed based on body language that this was good. However, there was at least one individual who appeared to strongly disagree with this suggestion. He said that although he agreed with the idea that people should "vote with their feet," that what XT did was wrong since it went against consensus. I said "well who defines consensus?" and then the moderator had to tell us both to shut up.

At the second round table (how to get more devs), I pointed out how XT had created a "vacuum" that sucked in new devs eager to play an important rule (that they couldn't with Core). I said that with even more friendly implementations that we could get even more programmers involved. Looking around the table, the idea was met with mostly smiles except for one heavily furrowed brow (a Core Dev) who quickly quizzed me on the number of GitHub pull requests to prove my claim. Someone else then reaffirmed that I was correct and I didn't have to answer the GitHub question :)

So again, there's this inconsistency with Core Dev: they want high SNR and more devs but they don't want to implement the obvious solution (more implementations each full of like-minded people)

I thought you didn't want to associate with me any longer.

After typing my previous post I have decided on deleting my posts not pertinent to the conference. I apologize for the distraction.

Peter, it would be great if you could do the same and in the spirit of the conference do respect Chatam house rules. I know you are always eager to attack characters but let's leave it to the content of the talks and round tables.

Thanks guys a lot for all of the materials and videos. I guess I have something to keep me busy the next several days! :) Overall, I am very encouraged by this conference. This is a step in the right direction and it goes to show that in the end we will beat the differences, reach the consensus and move on with the development.

I could not attend, but I watched the live streaming of the event. It was just a pity that we had problems with the streaming on the first day via Youtube. I also followed the conversations in the IRC channel, and that was even more interesting.

Overall impression : Very informative but like sex without a orgasm. I would have hoped for a final ruling on the whole Core vs XT thing.

Yes. And here:

"Lies, lies and lies. You have no shame!" And then?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1170385.msg12329974#msg12329974

Very new and interesting was the presentation about the "mining gap" I didn't really get it though/slides where in livestream a bit hard to read. What was the idea? Miners shutting their computers of to save electricity and just "jumping in" again when the estimated fee for the block is high enough to make it worth their electricity? But would not be very unlogical, since when you start later mining the block your chances of getting the right solution in time is lower as if you started from beginning. ???
You see i'm very confused if someone could clear that up that would be appreciated...

I've only managed to look at the livestream for a hour or so. I did not like the quality of it either, and occasionally there were some technical difficulties (no sound), which was not what I had expected. However, aside from that there were some great talks and some that we're not so great (with a controversial slide or two). The presentations were supposed to be not confrontational to the viewers, but okay.

The point of this workshop is (was) not for a decision to be found. It was rather more about presenting and discussing. Also, there is no concurrent problem and thus there is no need for a 'decision'. People will try to implement what they want. However, we've yet to see what the Core team is planning to do.

Well, I think it has something more to do with Peter R being a skilled and serial manipulator of basic facts, in order to bring about a corporate takeover of the Bitcoin network.

I don't like him either, for those reasons.

BTW, can't help but be reminded of bitcointalk user Elwar's description of how to avoid potential espionage agents at public meetups.... Peter R seems very keen to put names to faces and also appears to be unusually athletic for a computer science geek....

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COt11U3UcAAK3GK.jpg

Bitcoin NG is more exciting. I look forward of implementing it in live bitcoin network. Then, bitcoin transactions would be roughly 60 times faster than currently what we have. This means from my understanding there is no need of block size change. Do not know what our community vote for.

Yes, I've been watching the whole morning. I got the same feeling, many, many interesting things but like they know why did they come, more to discuss than to bring important decisions. Everybody are also very calm, looks to me that they are not pushed by time to bring a final decision.

I mean after all, they are probably right. The best is to think through stuff very throughly and not bring any fast decisions, the blocks are even now semi full. This doesn't meant that this can't change very fast. I think that the Hong Kong conference will be much different than this one. This conference will probably bring much more action.

Basically nothing new here, the ideas like NG has been discussed long time ago without any major breakthrough, because any split of the block and broadcasting will have security risk

I think the progress on those kind of meetings are much slower than forum, where all kinds of ideas can be exchanged and discussed in real time

I recently read Peter R's paper on supply and demand model without block size limit, I think he has done quite some research in writing that paper. And I want to point out that for each different miner on the network, he's view of supply and demand is not the same as another guy with a totally different set of hardware and network infrastructure

For example, a large group of chinese miners on very slow connections might choose to mine extremely small blocks to reduce their orphan rate. However since they command majority of the hash power, the whole network capacity will be limited by their choice, even others on high speed connections consider that mining larger block is profitable. So it is very difficult to get a supply demand picture for the whole network when the nodes have vastly different infrastructure. Notice that those slow connection area typically have the lowest electricity/labor cost

The supply and demand model works when every participants are following their best economy interest. However, if there are some actors intentionally causing problem for the network because they have some other interest beyond the bitcoin economy, for example banks who want to cripple the bitcoin network to reduce competition, then the security is the first priority. The latest spam attack simulated such a possibility. In fact banks can cripple bitcoin network if they want, but it is just too small to raise any concern for them right now

FTFY

Lol at Mr. "Money as Debt", who just so happens to be shilling BIP101 for Goldman Sachs. But free market though, right?  ::)


Said it before: you are a disgusting individual. Disgusting.

There was a guy called Mr Microphone who did a stand up comedy routine where he pretended his microphone was intermittently faulty. The intermittent lack of sound on the livestream made the conference technicians appear unprofessional at best, and Mr Microphone style comedic at worst. As most people choose to view the livestream rather than attend the conference the technical difficulties give the conference itself a bad appearance.

The discussion was a bit one sided in my opinion... there were no real engagement... just a little bit of.. "Listen this is what we working on, and why we would be going in that

direction. I would have wanted to see a real active 2 sided debate on the matter, stating the pro's and con's and in the end, a decision made about the matter.

Some of the stuff that was discussed was very informative though.  ::) {Peter / security} 

Small blocks are for Goldman Sachs exclusive settlement system and is the perfect system to keep fractional debt base money. Thank you sir for demonstrating that you actually have no clue of what you are talking about.

Will you run a node for them?

Except that Goldman Sachs literally are backing BIP101, so you're at least a massive hypocrite. But I find it hard to believe you're that stupid, you've demonstrated otherwise, and so you can only be a shill for Goldman Sachs themselves, really.

Confirmed disgusting manipulative shill, in other words. Sociopath on behalf of those that wish to increase their dominance. The total opposite of the image you present for yourself. Be gone.

lol really, they have hashing power mining BIP101 blocks? or do they just publicly state that it want BIP101?

Give me a break. Goldman Sachs don’t give a damn about bitcoin. I dare you to find a quote from a Goldman CEO supporting your claim.

Not giving up on your manipulative tactics, no?

How about the multiple rounds of investment that Goldman Sachs have put into, well what do you know, the companies that support BIP101? The same scaling proposal you've been advocating so strongly for? Hello?

It doesn't mean anything on their stance on BIP101 and they probably have no clue what it is. Do you know how much money is in the investment portfolio of a bank? This small investment is completely meaningless. They did it as an hedge of a potentially disruptive technology. Do you think they are part of any decision making of all their investments? No and they don’t have time to do so. They just invested in a bitcoin company than needs scaling like any other bitcoin company. 

Sounds like you know some pretty intimate details, any more?

Interesting how they didn't actually hedge their bets by investing in Blockstream also, any info for us about that, knight22?

You've lost it dude.

You used to post such intelligent stuff.

I was extremely invigorated by the talks. I was pleasantly surprised that many of my concerns were not only voiced but actively being discussed although was somewhat frustrated that the more obvious existing solutions to some concerns were not being considered. (Is Anysource, Multicast UDP being talked about?)

 I particularly resonated with Eric Lombrozo's talk which, to me, was pretty much the précis of all the issues of Bitcoin and encompassed all the the subjects of the two days. I think many people are very heavily focused on their narrow domain passion and it needs people to sometimes pop their head up, look around and also back to see where we've been.

It was also a confirmation for me because after the two days of listening to some great talks, my conviction that pretty much all the ills of Bitcoin start and end with the miners' human component in a system originally designed to not be reliant on human rationalities; is stronger than ever.

Another head of the hydra speaks, and it's the same disgraceful conduct that can now be relied upon; I call you creatures out for what you are, and all you can do is point your finger and cast aspersions.  

I invite you all warmly, you, Peter R and knight22 and the rest of the cronies, to leave this community and the deceptions you are peddling. You will always be remembered in exactly the way I have exposed you. And you will all have to live with it.

Bank managers have very little understanding on the technical functioning of bitcoin and where this technology is heading. The fact that they didn’t invest in Blockstream only demonstrate that (thank God). Very few have hedge their bets with some bitcoin comapny but no more. Of course they have little interest of deeper understanding because we all know this technology can render their very lucrative business model into an almost obsolete one. However, keeping small blocks is a great way to push users into potential proprietary off-chain systems controlled by banks which can be used for fractional reserve, cooking books and all the great things they love doing. On the other hand allowing people to directly use the blockchain is a bigger threat to their business model.

So Goldman don't have a clue what they're doing, and you support the companies they invested in? Just a massive coincidence that dominant financial players only invested in companies that are now pushing BIP101?

I suppose it's also just a massive coincidence that you and the rest of your cohort all support BIP101 only, and have never entertained the various other ways of solving the problem. Sure.

So now everyone who has arguments supporting implementations other than Core is a secret service agent working in some hideous plan to destroy Bitcoin?
First it was Gavin and Hearn, and now even Peter R is one of them. Do you really believe this? ???

No, you are one of them. I don't like you and brg444 for those reasons.

Who said that?

All I'm doing is relaying what another user (who works in the intelligence services) told us to look out for. What you think of that is up to you. I was never one of the people who accused Hearn or Andresen of being plants, but it's highly likely given the circumstances. But no explicit evidence exists, and so making such allegations directly has no merit. And so I didn't do it. And haven't done so since.

Are you part of the contingent that likes to pretend that it's "all like it is in the movies", and that the intelligence services have no interest in something like steering the direction of bitcoin? Deluded position, you should learn something about the topic before you try to offer a credible view.

Every bitcoin company needs scalability of the blockchain itself for obvious reasons. Banks investing in some of them is irrelevant. Bitcoin is supposed to work with or without bad actors.

BIP101 solves the scalability issue once and for all and is currently the only "up and running" implementation. Time is money so time and money are running out for the $1G invested in the space. No one can afford waiting forever or another system (fork or altcoin) will take care of the scalability problem and bitcoin as we know it will be left behind. I don't care about various ways of scaling bitcoin if it means pushing users off the blockchain. While they can be useful at some extend, forcing people to these solutions is the wrong approach in my opinion because it complicates everything for applications/businesses to operate.

Banking investment is not irrelevant when the design proposals that banking investment backs have a direct centralising effect on the network.

You and your crew have zero credible arguments when it comes to this debate, but you keep repeating the same old nonsense over and over again, and it's all to serve the agenda of a bunch of highly intelligent psychopaths.


We do not want what you are selling, and so the free market ideology tells us: leave, peacefully. Go.

The free market wants bigger blocks and stay ON chain. Stop standing on its way.
Bigger blocks =! centralisation because the market has an incentive to run full nodes at low cost. The free market will come up with these kind of device so you can continue to run a node for cheap https://bitseed.org/

The small blockistans have no real argument apart overblown fear of centralisation simply because they don't trust that the free market will come up with capacity solutions.

lol are you having a period?

fcking cunt

I'm wondering whether it is even possible for Bitcoin to enforce a rule that goes against the will of the market.  I strongly suspect the answer is "no."

As an example, consider the block size limit.  When it was put in place five years ago by Satoshi, it served as an anti-spam measure.  It was actually 800x larger than Q* so the vertical line marked Q_max was actually 100 ft off the chart!  Since the production quota was to the left of the free-market equilibrium point, it didn't affect the market dynamics.  There was no economic pressure to change the limit.  

https://i.imgur.com/lNtgE7F.gif

However, Bitcoin has grown tremendously over the past five years and the limit is now serving as a political measure instead.  It is to the right of Q*, resulting in what economists call a "deadweight loss."  This is the total economic activity lost as a direct result of the quota.  It also represents the will of the market (people) clamouring for change.

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

If the market wants to be at Q*, but the production quota is forcing it to be at Q_max, what can a group do to continue to enforce the production quota against the will of the market?  How can the invisible hand be restrained?

Why isn't Morning Day 1 video on youtube?

I spoke with Pindar Wong (conference organizer); he assured me that they have a backup recording of the talks and will post them shortly (which I assume means within a day or two).  

If deadweight loss becomes large enough it forms a majority that will change the protocol as needed.
If not, then part of economy will exit the market.

My feeling is that if deadweight loss exists, then by definition the economic majority wants a change to the protocol.  My hunch is that as the area shaded brown increases, it just exerts more and more pressure until there is a "dam breaking" event and the protocol forks.  It is sort of like a phase change in physics (it takes a certain amount of "latent heat" to produce the change).  


(Of course it is difficult to know for sure on which side of the equilibrium point the quota (Q_max) is sitting.)

Yes, either the Politburo (core) is capable to steer the Bitcoin market - or the Bitcoin market is capable to kill the Politburo (the tragedy of the core) if they refuse to listen to the market. I still bet on the market.

As you state. The block limit was imposed to combat "spam". In fact. I don't agree with the term "spam" since they are still valid transactions but the system cannot cope so they were marginalised to protect the integrity of the system. I expect the limit to be removed once the system has been developed to cope with any number of large or small transactions and see that as the main design goal.

Anyway. The introduction was a hack. A band-aid to sort out properly later. I view it as a temporary technical limitation being exploited by economists  in an attempt to monetise the block chain directly. I take a very dim view of that in the same way I take a dim view of those alt-coins that attempt to pay the developers with the protocol. It's like gamblers finding something to bet on after they had their cards, coins and dice taken away. They have found a chink in the system that allows a market and are now trying to open it up for further exploitation.

More strawman sophistry: no one is making the arguments you are assembling.

They do resemble the position of those who oppose BIP101, but you're attaching those to wild distortions and caricatures to muddy the waters, as usual.


Can you ever conduct an honest argument? Seeing as the answer is no, I will suggest a solution: stop talking

What are the arguments of small blockists apart the fear of centralization again?

fear of being proven wrong.

They have no other arguments any longer.  The only remaining talking point they have is that if we raise the block size limit too much that it will result in centralization (without a clear definition for what this means).  

This is why I'm pushing my new talking point: how can a group enforce a production quota that fights the free market?

My point is that even if they are right (and they aren't) there is still nothing that can be done about it long term.  Bitcoin will break down dams erected by special interest groups attempting to block the river of transactions.  

So we don't have 1% orphan rates at 1MB blocks? So the orphan rates would not grow if we had e.g. 8 MB blocks right now? It really seems like they don't really have any arguments. You should really discuss this with other people (not if you're going to be closed-minded) before making slides that are incorrect (hint: Luke-Jr said something about one on IRC if I recall correctly).

They're not wrong. Centralization is already a problem.

I suggest a better solution. Just put him on ignore and you will have a better experience around here.

ok show me a part of the network that is Centralized and the problem it's causing.

Of course orphans would increase if miners published larger blocks [all other variables held constant].  That is what my talk was all about!  It is the risk of having a block orphaned that creates the cost.  Do you see what I mean?  If I'm a miner, why would I bother to make an 8 MB block if it had (e.g.) a 25% chance of being orphaned?  I would only do so if it included enough fees to offset this risk.  This is the essence of my fee market paper.  

There were 155 orphaned blocks in Q1 2015 and 97 in Q2.  The average orphan rate is about 1%.  It is the fact that block propagation is slow that makes it costly for a miner to even attempt to produce an 8 MB block.  I estimate that, given the current network propagation impedance, a miner would only be wise to attempt to publish an 8 MB block if it contained 3 to 6 BTC of fees (due to his increased risk of orphaning).  

https://i.imgur.com/K93u2BB.png

As block propagation improves, it gets cheaper for miners to build larger blocks.  There is a natural balance that occurs without the need for a tight limit.  This is how Bitcoin has always worked.  The free market solves the block size problem without centralized intervention.  

source: https://scalingbitcoin.org/papers/feemarket.pdf

I never said that it was causing any problems right now. Stop diverting the argument.
https://i.imgur.com/vb2sg0L.png
https://i.imgur.com/YMPlURn.jpg

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Yes, I'm aware of your talk. You were actually one of the few that I saw on livestream as I did not have enough time. Honestly I do not have time to asses your paper myself, nor am I that interested in it (papers about fees in general). I do have a question though. If there are no incentives for 8 MB blocks (since fees are lower than 3 to 6 BTC ) then why should we implement them at all? If there aren't going to be bigger blocks often (that would fit more transactions - one of the main arguments of big blockists and XT supporters; i.e. need for more room) then it is not worth the risk, or is it?

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People need to shift their focus towards making propagation times better rather than explaining potential situations relating to fees. If we had a better way of propagation right now, we would not be having this discussion.

wtf is wrong with you?

Centralization is a problem != centralization is causing problems. Stop grasping straws trying to undermine my arguments. If you do not want to properly contribute, then do not do so at all.

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Clarification update:
Centralization is a problem - In other words, the node count is going down and the mining is centralized via a few pools (China being the one with most hashrate). (bad) Example of centralization causing problems - Nodes are impossible to run on average hardware; i.e. they need a data center (might as well use Google). Decentralization is one of the main feats of Bitcoin. Rhetorical question: Would you feel comfortable if the whole network was running on Amazon and Google cloud services?

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Update 2:
No, that is not a datacenter. There is no incentive to run a node, what exactly are you talking about?

Totally agree with you. If we find a way to make propagation times better we will than be able to increase the block size. If not, block size increase, in my opinion, with make new nodes harder to exist and then result in a centralisation of the actuel node. There was a talk about that this week end, short and clear. We need to resolve propagation times before talking about block size.

Im curious to know what was said during the dev meet up during roundtable 2 of day 2.

Well maybe you should clarify how is this a problem if it's not causing any problem...

First there is no incentives for a mining pool to hijack the network. Second, the Slush and Ghash episodes demonstrated that the market badly react when a pool gets near of 50% hashrate until things rebalance.  I don't see why the actual situation should be considered as a problem based on past market dynamics.  

Very interesting. 

I feel this deserves this deserves its own thread.

Isn't pruned nodes supposed to help increasing propagation times?

Thanks! 

I think I need to write a more accessible version of my paper--more like my talk but with a bit more depth. 

thanks for that. and gavin made the right choice to release Bitcoin XT because that is our fallback system.

Suppose to but still not perfect. The communication with the china and there great firewall make propagation a big problem for big miner.
I was in scaling montreal and I did try to learn more about network problem with Matt Corallo and Rusty Russell and the network problem seems to be the place we should focus before working on bigger block size. A big farm ceo even said he created a node system to be sure to reach more node quickly to eliminate orphan.

By data center you mean this? https://bitseed.org/

I understand what you mean but I think this fear is overblown. There is an incentives for individuals, businesses and miners to run full nodes at the lowest price possible so the market will come up with cheap solutions.

You should go see Patrick Strateman talk about Initial Block Synchronization.
Show us that nodes will get harder to get the more the size increase.

I feel like you should do your research, or at least provide valid information behind your negatvie trust. I am not an account farmer, and now my reputation on here is wrecked because you have decided to lie on my trust.  In addition, it's ironic that I cannot provide negative trust back although you are clearly not trustworthy as you have lied in regards to my reputation. This place is gettin bad theymos, you should probably chill on the trigger pulling. I am no account farmer, and have done nothing wrong except create a post to gauge the communities input on your gold fist.

This proposition has never been more dead than after this weekend. It is now certain that no implementation proposing a set schedule for anything more than 1 or 2 years will not be considered.

XT, by the way, has its last remaining credibility shot after Mike's notable absence.

What is dead is Core releavence.

 ::)

Core is the motor of growth in Bitcoin.

No one takes you seriously trolled, you'd have gotten laughed out of the room saying such idiocy during the conference

Sorry but Core doesn't allow any growth at all. Hence my point.

 The level of hostile emotional appeal and logical fallacy in this thread is astounding.

Why is it so difficult for a group of intelligent people to discuss ideas on their own merit?


there is no tax on being respectful.

With respect, you are unaware of the level of contempt that the BIP101 pushers are showing for anyone who disillusions them of their idea. These people aren't attempting a reasonable discussion in the first instance, and so it is only appropriate to match their zeal with opprobrium.

Of course BIP101 is a technical proposal to be discussed on it's merits; it has been dissembled, disliked, and then ruled out already. But this very vocal minority doesn't seem to want to go away gracefully.

This is another pressure to centrlisation (they will own the production and consensus infrastructure). The issue is not to propagate faster since any solutions there will just cause them to co-locate further to reduce propagation times - don't forget that it is relative (to other miners)  propagation they are interested in; not absolute times. UDP vastly improves propagation (also improves anonymity and almost completely mitigates DDOS threats) but unless you can convince internet services to open up their UDP multicast routes, only huge farms with their own infrastructure will benefit - and benefit hugely at the expense of pools who will be wiped out! All these roads lead to colo datacenters and web wallets!

But I totally agree that bigger block sizes is a distraction. Then again. I think most people now realise it was always political argument rather than a technical one.

Expect pressure to keep building up over time as Core doesn't scale.

This is just the beginning.

pretty sure smallblockist are the vocal minority.

There are more evidence from this workshop showing that the blockchain does not scale at current technology, not even to 2MB if you want to have some safety margin

So the scaling is definitely going to need another layer. If you study the current monetary system of US, Fedwire system that handles settlement between thousands of member banks in US have a transaction capacity of 4 TPS, exactly like bitcoin

A network of thousands of nodes that each works as a small bank-like institution sounds enough decentralized to me. There will be bitcoin bank failures and no one is going to bailout them, but that's also the reason people should only put coffee and beer money in a bitcoin bank

I may have missed the contempt, but I assure you I've read as much as I can find on this subject. To date i'm not fully convinced of any argument. However I've seen very little evidence that leads me to think using the 1MB limit a good idea. It appears to be adding a new variable (a hard limit) where we have not previously needed one.  I see one argument for keeping it and that is to prevent 'centralization' although nowhere is this term quantified. Further, it also introduces a new centralization vector that previously didn't exist. ( namely increased fees.).

If you are going to argue keeping something reduces centralization, whilst introducing something else that increases centralization. The whole thesis breaks down, as it is self contradicting.

Now that keeping 1MB is ruled out, that leads to the conclusion; we must have a hard fork.  

Therefore if you put me on the spot today, i'd say removing the blocksize limit altogether ( in a gradual and predictable manner) Is the best solution.

Reading the paper by Peter R will help with the leap of faith, required here to trust in the free market. In my humble opinion that's what this whole debate boils down to. Attempting to control a vast and complex system of variables or simply letting supply and demand of the free market do what it does best.

If there is no incentives then why there is nodes on the network?

Here are your incentives:

Individuals - Fans that want to contribute to the network
                - Heavily financially invested individual that wants to contribute at securing the network
                - Others?

Businesses: - Perform analysis on the network
                 - Having a better control of the transactions they are performing
                 - Heavily financially invested businesses that wants to contribute at securing the network
                 - Others?

Miners: - Miners need to mine on a node at some extent


Since there is no financial gains to run a node, solutions must be cheap. Their is no doubt the free market will monetize on that.

There is no financial incentive to run a node. That was what I wanted to say. If what you say is correct, there is only a handful of people really involved with Bitcoin. Considering the huge amount of "incentives" to run a node, there should be many more than we have today, correct? I'm pretty sure that most of the supporters do not understand the importance of decentralized nodes.


It is pretty obvious who is doing this. One must never look at their solution as the perfect way of doing something. We can not have a normal discussion with most people who support XT or BIP101 that is. They complained about non existent censorship, and yet here they are again even after they created their own forum. Instead of actually having a good discussion, they chose to ignore decent (or better) arguments/questions and proceed to spread nonsense.

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I'm pretty sure what you have started doing could be considered trolling (looking at your other posts). I've shown you that centralization is a problem as requested, and you've chosen to ignore it and make posts as the quoted one.

I'm still waiting for a proper answer.

In your opinion, has there been censorship at /r/bitcoin or here?

There might have been censorship at /r/bitcoin. There has not been any censorship here. Threads were getting moved, not deleted, neither did anyone get punished for constructive posts about XT. Let me say this one more time: This is a privately owned forum. If you don't like it then you're free to start your own (as XT supporters did).

Regardless, this is completely off topic. Let's get back to your paper. Peter Todd (source = reddit):
Yet with a flawed paper you've managed to gather a group of 'followers' around here. That is interesting.

LaudaM against LaudaM:

"Yet with a flawed paper you've managed to gather a group of 'followers' around here."

"Honestly I do not have time to asses your paper, nor am I that interested in it (in general)."

Makes not much sense to discuss with people like that.

Anything else you would like to add to this personal attack? I didn't review his paper, others did. I never said that I would not discuss it based on the opinions/reviews of others. With (in general) I mean papers related to the fee market. I do not have time to read that. If you are not going to contribute properly, do not contribute at all. Anyone who does this next will be permanently ignored as well. I shall not waste my time with such people.

Instead of "Peter Todd is wrong because of XXX" you go for "let's attack Lauda because of XYZ". This bring us back to:

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Update: The said user was put on ignore because of zero value posts, attacks and trolling.

It's not overt at all, this is a sociopathic form of contempt. I'll use your next reply to explain...


Great stuff. What you've stated there is the premise of the debate, namely:

• 1MB is too small going forward, regardless of the overlay networks that might relieve that
• Changing that limit is part of the consensus rules, so hard fork needed

That's where everyone is starting the debate from.

Except the people arguing for BIP101. They have a highly consistent habit of labelling everyone who doesn't like it as "1MB'ers". It's a dishonest tactic, as it serves as an attempt to distort their opponents arguments in the most extreme way they can. They then use that unreality as the basis to argue against these imaginary positions.


This idea sounds tempting, but it isn't a good idea.

The supply and demand of blocksizes to the network doesn't work well with arbitrary limits, as you've identified yourself. But it also does not work if you remove the limit altogether; there exists an incentive to game the system. Creating algorithmic rules on the network to govern re-sizing will essentially fulfil what you're advocating; no prescribed limit. Scheduled caps (such as the scheme that Peter R advocates in his paper that you like) will not create that free market; the caps and the incentive to abuse them will still be there.

No, that says enough.

 ::)

TIL the free market doesn't answer to the laws of physics and will fit a datacenter into your pocket because.... incentives!!!

The free market has enough wisdom and knowledge to use the laws of physics and come up with cheap solutions to run a node because people like me are willing to pay for such device. 

I understand the importance of decentralized nodes very well. No need to remind it to me.

My point is that there is enough incentives to run a node to keep bitcoin secure and decentralized.

@Peter R: I really liked your presentatation, but i must say that the "bigger picture" of financing the security of the network is not appropriately addressed (at least in the presentation), imho it doesn' help that the market is fixing the size of blocks, if there is a more fundamental financing problem of the networks security, something i called the economic law of bitcoinsecurity: the cost of  the network = the fees for the consumers

Could you have a short look at it and till me where the mistake in this mysterious calculation are, because otherwise that (admittedly rough calculation/first primitive version of a thought) would show a financing problem for the next 4-5 years of bitcoin which puts the whole blocksize debate in a very different perspective:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1180471.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1180471.0)

Would like to hear your opinion about it!

Greetings!

 :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

I'd really love to have a Ferrari. Why the fuck can't this stupid free market come up with cheap solutions  >:(

God damn you are retarded.

The problem with Peter's paper is quite simple: it ignores reality. It is quite representative of traditional economist failures trying to paint real world issues in a vacuum relying on a bunch of spherical cows.

The zero value posts of the sad user LaudaM:

"Yet with a flawed paper you've managed to gather a group of 'followers' around here."

"Honestly I do not have time to asses your paper, nor am I that interested in it (in general)."

What's retarded is your comparison. Ferrari are not meant to be cheap. They are meant for the rich people market. Also, if Ferrari were nodes, there would be far enough to keep the network secure and decentralized  ;)

Computing resources and bandwidth are not "meant to be cheap" either, especially if your plan is to support all of the world's transactions.

Take a hike you clown, no one here takes you seriously.

btg444 I'm very much of the opposite opinion of pretty much everything you posted in the last Week or so. In this case also: I found Peters presentation pretty thought provoking. One NEEDS to undestand that this is at first a hypothesis which needs to be empirically tested, but its actually marvelous to try to develop models and maybe later test them instead of just screaming "centralization" and we all go under....

EDIT: and P.S. i find your way how you conduct yourself in this forum pretty annoying. Just because theymos gave you 1 free ticket to the "Show" (vor which no one else applied) doesn't at all mean you are somewhat of larger importance. After theymos gave you the ticket, how conducted yourself in the forum, i felt ashamed what a poor low life your are that is now feeling so important and you would be totally O.K. with censoring peoples opinions. You are beeing really aggressive to people that have a different opinion, putting people all the time in boxes, and fostering a hostile atmosphere.  You scream a lot "liar, liar" and in the end it turns out you didn't understand something right... And your thoughts about that the blockchain belongs to the 1% and the rest can go cry as much as they want i found pretty disgusting to be honest. That is totally not the spirit of bitcoin maybe you can join Fox news with your attitude... you would fit in there...

Models need to be based on real world dynamics. Yours and Peter's ignore those therefore they are of little use to help use make decisions going forward.

As for the rest of your post: I couldn't care less  ;)

that's putting it mildly...

He seems to believe that he can win the community with his ad hominems. Ridiculous that such dividers philosophize about consensus. Since he is more and more alone with his 'arguments', the community is suffering a spam attack of 50 or more of his 'posts'.

Yup and they are getting cheaper every years. Hence my point.

That's what Core team are proposing.

Was it not the original proposal from the architects of BIP101 that we should conduct a hard fork driven by popular opinion, so that we could test BIP101 out live on the network? Oh no, that's right we have Gavin and Peter to provide the "popular" argument with some fallacious research to support the live testing *ahem* strategy.... strange how unpopular that has proven among the actual bitcoin community

How do you test real market dynamics at large scale based on real incentives to collect empirical evidences?

I would be curious to hear your thoughts on this.

If Ferrari were nodes, Bitcoin would be centralized across a small % of a very wealthy elite, we already got fiat for that. With Bitcoin we want any regular joe to be able to run a node, this can't never be compromised.

there's a difference between decentralized and distributed...
http://cffn.ca/img/articles/Centralized-Decentralized-And-Distributed-System.jpg
regular joe, doesn't necessarily have to run a node to keep bitcoin decentralized.

Totally yes. the spirit is "consensus is when everybody has my opinion". Something is with the community not so right at the moment. I'm not all in on BIP101 another solution is O.K. too. And i do like lightening networks and sidechains, they promis a good way to make bitcoin the "backbone" and reserve currency of the financial system. But my point is i think the people supporting core are a bit to aggressive. It is not helping if you start censorship on reddit and Dos XT nodes.  Something is wrong with those people if they think "that's the right thing to do"....

Their argument is some of the kind that: "the network has been attacked and we fought back heroically"... But that's just bullshit... I believe what Gavin wants to do is to grow up bitcoin by having more alternative clients. Its more diverse and more stable, more anti-fragile to have more implementations.
The internet does not have only one browser neither... What was not good from XT was to mix the topic of alternative clients with the topic of the blocksize, which could lead to a fork of the blockchain. That's whats to be feared the fork of the chain! Not having an alternative implementation that is in the long term much safer and it even attracts more developers, something i'm a little concerned sometimes!! It didn't kill the internet to have besides netscape other browsers...

Regular joe cannot use Bitcoin as a peer and therefore without counterparty risk if he cannot run a node.

does that necessarily mean the bitcoin network is not Decentralized?

NO.

if you think joe is interested in running a full node because he fears counterparty risk you don't know joe.

Good, then what problem is there with having him transact on layer 2 protocols and not directly on the blockchain?

That said, Bitcoin being decentralized also mean regular joe needs to have easy access to running a node if they chose so.

No. Joe needs to have an easy access to the blockchain and running a node is irrelevant for him.

One does not truly access the blockchan without running a full node. Any other scenario involves reliance on a third party.

Do you understand what a peer-to-peer network is?

whats wrong with having a dumb peer that can't validate blocks and can only push TX's.

dumb peer-to-peer network  :D

What's wrong?

It can be cheated.

You do understand the security implications of relying on SPV do you?

maybe you should tell all merchants who use bitpay to process and convert BTC payments they are at risk of being cheated.

you're being overly paranoid, and your ivory tower is really high.

Joe does have access to all of the capabilities he needs directly on the blockchain without running a full node. Using a SPV wallet does not necessarily mean relying on a third party since some SPV wallets can connect to full nodes that are put up by anyone in a decentralized fashion. Having to use a layer two protocol however would translate into much greater reliance on third parties especially with increased adoption and limited blocksize space. Also Joe could run a full node on his average desktop computer with a average connection, even under a regime with much bigger blocks then we have today.

 ???

Do you know what a third-party is?

Except there is a conflation with those definitions that I think was intentional so as to simplify.
A) is certainly centralised.
B) is certainly decentralised.
C) is also decentralised but just a different organisation.

B) is a Hierarchical decentralisation - commonly used in military communications and c) is a Mesh decentralisation commonly used in ad-hoc wireless.

So where does distributed come in to it?
Distributed is used to describe how work or computation is partitioned within a network. Things like BOINC  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Open_Infrastructure_for_Network_Computing)are distributed and it is quite possible to have decentralised and distributed as well as centralised and distributed (where BOINC is the latter).

In a nutshell. Decentralised != Distributed in the same way a Road != a Car

As an example, lets take a mining pool. So in a mining pool,  the mining *work* is distributed to the participants but the network architecture is B) hierarchical decentralisation (around the work coordinator/ provider). All communications within the pool are worker to and from the admin and the admin communicates the results to the wider network and relays any benefits back to the workers. In the early days of Bitcoin, each client was a miner and was its own admin where block mining was distributed rather than distributed mining of a block. It was distributed computation within a mesh network.

The issue we have at present is there is that full node clients are mesh networked to create their view of the block chain but all mining is Hierarchically decentralised and as the number of full nodes (required for acceptance of the miners' blocks) decreases, miners will start up their own botnets to propagate their blocks faster. Therefore they will own the means of production and the means of distribution; centralisation will be complete and you will have large mining corporations sitting in Google Data-centers with everyone using webs wallets.

Because mining is no longer "distributed" as originally envisioned, a decentralised network is counter-productive to mining efficiency. In the old days, a client was a miner and thus all mining was distributed and decentralised and until that is the case again, we will see more and more centralisation unless its already too late.

multi layer is ok if it's still permissionless distributed consensus.  But is it?

if there is more than one node keeping track of the blockchain then we are still decentralized. period the end.
of course you want the system to be as decentralized as possible, but limiting functionally in order to get a little more decentralization???
i mean where do you draw the line
is 1MB the line why not 1.1 or 1.5MB
you going to argue 1.1MB would make a difference for decentralization?
where do you draw the line? that is the question, once that's defined everything falls into place

Yes I do, and you quoted what I said out of context. I said that some SPV wallets can connect to full nodes which can be put up by anyone in a decentralized fashion. I also argued that relying on layer two protocols would translate into much greater reliance on third parties especially with increased adoption and limited blocksize space.

What on earth are you talking about?

I pointed out that decentralisation isn't synonymous with distributed which is what the network images imply. The byte size of anything was never mentioned. Not even tangentially or incidentally.

oh nevermind.

SPV wallets connecting to full nodes = third party risk. no amount of spinning can get you out of this.

Layer two protocols like Lightning rely on no third-party custody therefore you don't have to trust anyone with you money to use them.

Layer two protocols are third parties as well. Not being able to practically transact on the Bitcoin blockchain directly because of it becoming prohibitively expensive after increased adoption would translate into a much greater reliance on third parties, compared to SPV wallets. I am not spinning anything since I never claimed that SPV wallets do not rely on third parties at all, even if it is decentralized in its execution.

You realize you are doing it again right, you are quoting me out of context. Since in the next sentence I clearly say that: "Having to use a layer two protocol however would translate into much greater reliance on third parties especially with increased adoption and limited blocksize space." The emboldened part of the text implies the acknowledgment that SPV wallets do also partially rely on third parties, in some of the same ways that a layer two protocol would as well. What are you trying to do here anyway trying to prove that I believe something that is factually incorrect while I am repeatedly stating the opposite? That is just silly.

Of course they are at risk. There is always a risk.

Bitcoin is made to be decentralized, apolitical, trustless.

Bigger block advocates often try to support that that Satoshi would be with them.
"Satoshi introduced the initial 1mb block limit as a measure to prevent spam.
He intended to remove it in the future and leave the market do its magic."

I won't tell you what he wanted, but I will only point on his initial paper and judge yourself.

Before reading, please ask youreself; Do you consider bitpay and coinbase "financial institutions" ??
If so, this will trouble you.


I would like to see bitcoin scaling to thousands of transactions per second, but not at the cost of any bit further centralization.
Bitcoin is apolitical, trustless, decentalised money. Any aberration would mark it as failed.
If you don't have a problem with relying on a third party financial institution/processor you can very well use paypal.
Be sure to check how reputable the US gov (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_United_States_government) is, backing the dollar.

Unfortunately that is wrong. Forcing SPV dependence by making full nodes too expensive for regular people to run is much worst than having them use an open payment protocol that cannot steal or censor their funds for casual transactions

Another straw man argument, I have never said that people will be forced to use SPV wallets because full nodes will become to expensive, actually I have stated the opposite of this. People will still be able to run full nodes from home even with eight megabyte blocks.

Do you have scientific data to prove this?

Consider this from Patrick Stateman this weekend:

Assuming yearly 20% increase blockchain size & 10% reduction in bandwidth costs, after 15-20 years no new nodes can enter system except maybe huge datacenter operations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=7331

Wouldn't have guessed this heh?

LMAO

He was telling you you were wrong, that was his point.


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

Hilarious another straw man argument lol. In this case I have not been arguing for a 20% increase per year. I was just saying that I can run a full node with eight megabytes today, and that most people within the developed world could also do so on their home desktop computers without that causing any major problems in terms of decentralization.

http://cffn.ca/img/articles/Centralized-Decentralized-And-Distributed-System.jpg

Interesting image.

If you look carefully at the graph (B) DECENTRALIZED, you may notice it may not be as decentralized as it looks: look carefully at the middle node, it's a single point of failure. Take him away and the "Decentralized" network is disrupted.

Decentralization is very difficult to define and mesure, and a "decentralized" system may seem decentralized but actually contain hidden points of failure.

yo, I can't be bothered with your simple ass anymore. who do you think you fooling trying to politic your way out of every discussions. are you running for president of the free shit army or something?

you really are coming at me with this stupid "most people within the developed world" bullshit after I just presented you with hard data that this would break Bitcoin?

 

I think you missed his point.

SPV is trivially risky compared to payment processers.  And even those are limited risk.  If they don't settle at the end of the day,
you've lost a day's revenue. 

Well spotted. You are absolutely right. I missed that.  ::) It's a clustered topology which is a form of centralised network.

The image in B is not really decentralized, a decentralized network would have many connections between those small local hubs, but the image has only one such connection between the top 2 nodes. This terrible picture shows that its author does not really know what he is talking about   ;D