Bitcoin Forum

In the light of recent disagreements that is going on regarding consensus, I thought of if we can define a mathematically verifiable process to achieve the same. Hence I have put up my idea in details at http://upalc.com/bitcoin-constitution.php. The basic is as follows...

1. At least 21 bitcoin should support a hard fork proposal to be discussed. A poll, created on www.bitcoinocracy.com and backed by 21 bitcoins, will suffice for Hard Fork to be discussed by miners. Please note that, 21 is an arbitrary figure. The exact figure can be discussed or voted on by the community before accepting this proposal.

2. More than 50% hash power should support the proposal for at least 21 difficulty period. This can be determined using www.blocktrail.com/BTC/blocks/1 or www.coin.dance/blocks. Please note that, both 50% and 21 are arbitrary figure. The exact figure can be discussed or voted on by the community before accepting this proposal.

3. More than 50% coin must support the proposal, where the total amount of coins participating in the poll is more than 1% of the total supply. This can be determined using a poll on www.bitcoinocracy.com. Please note that, both 50% and 1% are arbitrary figure. The exact figure can be discussed or voted on by the community before accepting this proposal.

Any hard forking change should give the network enough time to be aware, test and upgrade. Hence, I propose, all hard forking changes are pushed together only at the time of block reward halving, i.e. once in every four year.

Please feel free to rationally criticize and provide your valuable feedback on this proposal.

You speak of blasphemy.

To contaminate the separation of mining and owning BTC is violation of the sacred PoW commandments

You will be called a PoS zealot if to require BTC. Next thing you know you would want it based on some sort of PoS basis. Only miners are supposed to have any powers to decide.

Why not require some special PoW calculations that cost 21BTC? That way the miners who keep selling all their BTC will still have the total power to decide everything

James

We should work to reduce the influence of miners. Selfish miners are part of the problem of long confirmation times. As block rewards move towards fees rather than the halving finders rewards, mining operations may return to a byproduct of running a full node.

A bit too late I am afraid.

Any new hard fork is chosen by the miners, so how exactly is there a path from a miner determined process to one that isnt?

I am not debating what is better, just about the reality of the math. It is usually best to not fight against the math.

Maybe you can trick them to adopt something that appears neutral or even in their favor, but it isnt but highly doubtful they will miss that. One possibility is a tradeoff of giving miners even more in the short term, in exchange for less influence after this bakshish period

James

I suggested that with the block generation time reduction,

Also BIP0009 could reduce the need for a hard fork.

This document specifies a proposed change to the semantics of the 'version' field in Bitcoin blocks, allowing multiple backward-compatible changes (further called "soft forks") to be deployed in parallel. It relies on interpreting the version field as a bit vector, where each bit can be used to track an independent change. These are tallied each retarget period. Once the consensus change succeeds or times out, there is a "fallow" pause after which the bit can be reused for later changes.

the issue is not the technical one of getting the hardfork, but an economic one of how to convince people to vote for something that is against their economic interest

One of the best proposal I have seen in recent times to end the consensus controversy. Have you tried to post it in the bitcoin-dev mailing list?

Are you on a high? Is this how u criticize a technical proposal?

sorry, just experienced a hard lesson in the controlling interests having and using that control

my post was intended to be humorous, but i guess i loses effect without the soundtrack

Miners create consensus. You suggest we move away from consensus, and into what? Divergent chaos?

I think it means to move the power away from the miners, towards some smart people ;)

So how exactly is this constitution suppose to be enforced?
Why would anyone obey it?

We need a proof of smart?

For many people it is same as proof of wealth

bitcoin-dev mailing list owner asked me to post it in bitcoin-discuss mailing list first. So, it is there - http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-discuss/2016-February/000080.html.

Neither it needs to be enforced, nor anyone needs to obey it. It'll do good as an unofficially defined process for consensus resolution. And once, a hard fork proposal passes through the process stated in this constitution, it'll have the majority of hash power with majority of coins backing it. The majority of hash power with the backing of the majority coins is what makes the longest chain ticking in bitcoin ecosystem. Everyone else 'obeys' it.

Define smart people.

Threats of state violence* naturally.

So what is the incentive for anyone to even follow or obey a constitution that, in your words, no one needs to obey and is unenforceable?

Do u understand that u just read the first sentence of a 3 line statement and made an arbitrary comment? He has already explained why the consensus does not require to be enforced. In fact, in bitcoin network, nothing can be enforced. People are part of it because it benefits them and this proposed constitution fits very well to this ideology.

Do you understand what arbitrary means?
If nothing can be enforced, in what universe is a "proposed constitution" practical?

I do.

In bitcoin universe. The conventional definition of enforcement as seen by centralized society does not apply here. People run nodes, not because they are enforced. They run it, because they want to voluntarily support the bitcoin network and enjoys a 'shared success'.

The start using the word correctly.
Follow up question. Do you understand what constitution means?

The conventional definition of a constitution is as a regulating mechanism of an entity through the use of violence or exclusionary methods (judicial system, LEA, exclusion.of membership, depriving access, etc), regardless of whether it is in a decentralized or centralized society. You talk about voluntary, shared success, etc like this is a 'constitution' for a My Little Pony clubhouse.

I am.

I do. Tell me what does Consensus mean?

You failed to understand bitcoin. Not unusual for people brought up and brainwashed in a centralized hierarchical society.

Oh, I see. Since you can no longer articulate an argument, you immediately hide behind "you are brainwashed so you don't understand", hoping desperately that no one will see that you actually have no clue to what is being discussed here. But it's not unusual to see people to talk about things they don't even understand, arrogantly at that. And then hiding behind words like shared success, voluntary and now, consensus. Oh, the irony.

The fact, is, if you understood the concept of constitution, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. Period.

As expected, you dodged the question, what does Consensus mean? Once you try to answer that logically, u'll start feeling where the concept of a Constitution coming from.