Bitcoin Forum

seriously, do you trust what they tell you?

i don't trust who is supporting bitcoin only for his own business and profit, you can't trust chinese miners as they primarely reason to exist is to milk yuan from bitcoin

there fore you can't trust their signaling for BU, what is left to trust? only core, but i'm always open for better proposal like the extention block for example, which on paper look better than segwit+LN

Core is in the hands of Blockstream; attempting to promote off-chain centralization. Yes, Miners are greedy assholes who too want centralization, BUT at-least their vested interests coincide with that of bitcoin users and holders. Bitcoin is pseudo-decentralized so pick the lesser of 2 evils which coincides with Satoshis original vision of Bitcoin.

blockstream - 100% no
core - 95% no (theres only a couple people who defy the gmax whip, but you dont hear them speak much)

core have become too dependant on gmax CTO and founder of blockstream

evidence: if core was 'independent' there would be no:
'its not core its an altcoin'
'they just took core code and tweaked it so REKT them as an altcoin'

there would be
'anyone can independently tweak core code'

Bitcoin, a decentralized and trustless protocol ....

I suppose where money is concerned you cannot trust anyone  :'(

This is actually the best answer.
We don't have to trust neither Core, neither BU.
We have to read all we can and decide for ourselves.

From what I've read, what Core tell makes more sense to me than what BU team tells. But that doesn't mean I am right in my decision.

So, OP, let's make the question fair: do you trust Bitcoin Unlimited?

asic s9 chip design 2015
asicboost theory 2015
both in production 2015
public released spring 2016

segwit 2merkle envisioned december 2015
in production spring 2016
public release october 2016

feb-march 2017 gmax finds flaw in 2merkle soft segwit.
cant redesign 2merkle segwit.
april 2017 gmax call asics a attack that knew about segwit and was designed specifically to stop segwit

..
logic fail (unless time travel is possible)

I don't see any proven facts not to trust them, unlike Chinese, antpool,  Wu, Ver, Andressen

I think core (or at least the blockstream part of it) has created FUD around the dangers of a high level consensus planned hard fork. Soft forks on the segwit scale are just ugly kludges that create a two tiered network of nodes, and worst still represents a fundamental shift from the design of bitcoin.

BU I don't consider the best solution, but there are other big block nodes that can be run, so it is not core vs BU. I laughed when I looked at this authors prediction though:

https://steemit.com/fiction/@xwerk/cryptocurrency-market-cap-in-the-year-2020-or-bitcoin-ethereum-komodo-monero-bitcore-steem-decred-byteball-litecoin-lbry

The bad news is that either if it's one or another, Bitcoin is remaining the same without any solution and a important problem is persisting, a problem so big that is cappable of ruining a currency. That upgrade should had been done years ago, not when the problem started to be visible.

Yes, the problem of hitting maximum capacity for any extended period of time damages bitcoin user experience and hinders greater adoption. One team as shown they are not willing to address demand pressures in a timely fashion, instead fixating and promising future hopes. And some of these members think the block size should be reduced even further!

How can you trust someone who censors opinions they don't like? You can just hope they understand that what they do is perilous and change their ways.

You can't really trust any party that is doing the right stuff for the wrong reasons either.

As others said. No matter how big the block is, if somebody wants to, it will fill it. So the solution has to be .. something different.
I am not telling that SegWit is the best solution. I don't know.

Now.. from what I've read SegWit took quite a lot of time to be implemented and tested. The problem is indeed visible for long time, but it was not so serious and was revealed during spam tests. Also an interesting fact is that after such "high" period ends, the network clears itself in 1-2 days.

I still believe that somebody has interest in spamming the network, artificially making this problem big indeed.
Right now the mempool is the smallest I've seen in long time. https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx shows it at under 1MB!

You shouldn't have to trust either.  People should be able to not trust Core and also not want to go through with BU.  A while ago jonald_fyookball claimed that people will take any change to a corrupt status quo even if smart people tell them not to (in his signature), but my view is that people shouldn't have to to trust the status quo to believe that an alternative is dumb.

When neither choice is ideal and you're kind of unclear on the exact technical details of either because any attempt at an explanation is wrought with opinion (the situation I'm facing) I just think that the best solution is to go with the team that's established and doesn't require a hard fork which would be harmful to Bitcoin in the short term, especially with altcoins jumping at its sides for a permanent purpose.

Are you confusing hard fork with a bilateral spit? A high consensus hard fork does not result in two coins, it results in one long chain (that can have a re-org checkpoint coded in), and the other old chain is dead. No harm done.

From HODLers and general users, the HF wouldn't be that high consensus.  Miners supporting it doesn't necessarily represent Bitcoin in general, and you'd end up with a continued debate about scaling and potentially a lot of Core supporters holding on to BTC and selling the BTU.  Unless I'm understanding the fork wrong, everyone would have an equal number of BTC and BTU which could be sold/bought at will, right?

Uncertainty like that is never good for a market.

And yet again, you have changed high consensus hard fork into a core vs BU contentious fork argument. This irrational fear of hard forks that has been whipped up is detrimental to high consensus protocol development. Significant soft forks are dangerous kludges with high technical debt and a collection of nodes which are not following the same rules.

UASF is not very safe either:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/63pzmx/any_uasf_without_miner_majority_is_a_contentious/

UASF allows any resulting hard fork bilateral split to be blamed on the users for activating it without miner majority.

I hope any UASF advocates put there money where their mouth is and move all their funds to an anyonecanspend segwit key.

Do I trust what they say all the time, well no because I don't think that you can trust what anyone tells you 100% of the time and this is especially more so when money is involved.
Do I trust them to keep the network running, yes their history shows we have had a great thing for over 7 years now.

Do we have a choice?  So far Core had been the major group that make alot of commit to Bitcoin development, and we use it.  As a mere user, what else can we do?  We simply download the software and use it.  Regardless of any political intent, I just want to use a well functioning wallet and a stable bug free network and I believe Core have the capability to deliver it.

Do I Trust core? maybe not. Do I trust BU? absolutely not.  But so far core has done a fine work in running the network, I don't completed trust them but if it's comes to trusting either core or BU I would most likely trust core because they have experience and are running the network decently.

Core don't run the network, miners do.

How about their insane economic policies promoting full blocks and high fees?

How about their years-long saga of stalling, including breaking the HK agreement?

How about their censorship (openly addmited censorship on r/bitcoin and generally censoring elsewhere)?

How about their complete lack of communication with the community, except to pass down their one true scaling roadmap from up high?

How about their refusal to compromise with the community in the slightest bit when it comes to scaling, even rejecting 2MB/Segwit?

How about the huge conflict of interest that exists because Blockstream employs Greg Maxwell, Peter Wuille, Matt Corallo, and Luke-Jr?




 

I do not know if I am to believe their statements. I dont trust core at the same time I dont trust BU. I dont trust both of the parties at all since they are making up stories just to destroy each other with the selfish motives. They are creating stories to confuse the public and which make it hard for us as to whom to really believe. But one thing is for sure and that is I will stick with the core since the exchanger within our country have already made a statement that they will only accept bitcoin from the core.

This is the problem, for a currency that is said to be decentralized this is more centralized than it seems.

As long as I do not wait for confirmation and do not have to pay high fees... I will not have much to complain about.

This graph could also be used to show that lots of users are leaving... Put the market share of bitcoin vs rest of altcoins together.

Some may be leaving, most may not.

I think that you mean "leaving" by the price falling for a while. That was pure speculation, based on the fear of the hard fork and the uncertainty.
As SegWit direction seems to get more traction and BU seems to lose, the price started rising again.

I am not happy with the mempool getting full so often. I am not happy that it's not "fixed" after so many discussions. But there has to be a better solution than BU.
I advocated the "no limit at all" solution until I was proven to be wrong. Now I listen to the ones that seem to know what they are doing and advocating the solution that has a chance to be better than just postpone the problem for some more months.

The marker share comparison give us no information at all. Money flows between BTC and alts and back continuously, making some speculators rich and making the others wonder what's happening.

The last mempool crisis occurred around the time of the ETF decision. So some of it might have been caused by increased trading activity and arbitrage between exchanges. Maybe it was being spammed by people who did not want the ETF to be approved? Just an hypothesis without proof.

I always thought it should raise more eyebrows when one group repeatedly grows richer on the losses in trading. 

Bad premise for a thread.  People place far too much emphasis on trusting or distrusting developers.  It's far cleaner and healthier to see competing codebases as products fighting for market share.  Free and open competition, with everyone attempting to provide a superior product.  Developers can design their product however they like and the market then selects via consensus.  In the event there's ever a gap in the market where users aren't happy with the code, competition in the market will result in another developer providing alternative code for users to run.  You don't have to trust any single group of devs, you just have to place all your belief in a free and open market. 

You also have to fight for that market to remain free and open against all those who would call for centralised protectionism to "shield" the market from a participant they don't personally trust.

It happens every time.  Someone reacts to a group or individual doing something they believe is wrong, so they call upon some sort of authority or central power to fix it.  Not understanding that, in doing so, they are a far bigger threat to the system than the person or persons they don't trust.  The second you introduce a central authority in Bitcoin, it stops working.

Everyone seems to doubt the motives of everyone else.  People fear "takeovers" and "power grabs" on both sides.  It's easy to get bogged down in all that negativity and it's easier still to start casting aspersions on those you see as a hazard to the well-being of the ecosystem.  But the whole thing gets a lot less scary when you remember that the code can't lie.  Neutral and transparent wins every time and that's what Bitcoin is.  If the effects of the code are neutral, obvious and stable, it doesn't matter who coded it, so picking sides is just silly.  The code will speak for itself and the market will choose the code.  Whatever you think about the developers, their intent or their proposals, trust the market to choose the best code available at the time.

In short:

No one cares who you do and don't trust in a trustless system;  No one cares who you think should be in control of a system that no one controls;  No one cares who you think has permission to edit the code in a permissionless system.

If we do not trust the core then who will we trust? I do trust the core since they are keeping bitcoin alive since a long time ago and if if it werent for them bitcoin would be encountering many problems today such as double spending and many more. They are keeping the blockchain alive and continuously making some upgrades to make bitcoin and its transaction much better.

Indeed, in a "trustless decentralized" system, people are looking for agreements by trusted entities to solve their problems :)

I 100% agree with you.  The software monopoly is not good.

I used to believe in them, I used to expect them to be able to solve all the problems without any change, but they disappointed me, now it takes too much time, and We charge too high a fee.

Me too, I've trusted it before, but it always disappoints me, now I'm headed for a new solution, which is assessed to solve every problem. I hope it can be successful.

I trust no one, but I don´t think it's a matter of trust either, it´s a matter of proposals and to know which is the correct one to go ahead. In this aspect Core has an advantage, they are the developers and they are supposed to be the ones who know what they are doing.

Do you think the core can solve the current difficulties? I think no, me and you, and many others, we used to trust them, but what they give us is disappointment. They just want to protect their interests, and they force us to pay a premium for all transactions, but even transactions are not confirmed. so sad!

We do not have the right to choose, we can not change anything, but we are their customers, we have the right to give our personal opinion and ask for their modification. Bitcoin was created from the head, but it grows thanks to all of us. Therefore, we need to give a general idea in order to fight. Bitcoin needs to change

Maybe between the believe it or not against core because I didn't know about them if instead they really have the experience or not, but I get from info if they run her work well in running the network finally I would probably trust the core

Hell no. Core is the one blocking scaling and trying to turn bitcoin into a settlement layer. Also their uasf game is the most dumbest and childish thing I've ever seen. Totally compromised by AXA. Educate yourself.

To be honest, bitcoin core has a lot of experience, they are capable enough to lead the bitcoin to continue to grow, however, they seem too selfish, or somehow, they do not solve the trouble. Of bitcoin, so they are forced to change.

There seem to be some misconceptions being bandied about the forums regarding Core's stance on UASF.  To clarify, Core isn't supporting UASF at this time.  They're still arguing amongst themselves about the pros and cons of merging BIP 148.  Some of them believe it's too aggressive and could potentially result in a contentious split, while others may be in favour.  It's mainly a group of users and a Litecoin dev involved right now, so Core are mostly just watching from the sidelines to see how it shapes up.  I don't think they're going to do anything rash.

Don't be fooled by the overconfidence of the most vocal UASF proponents who might give the false impression that everyone, including Core, agrees with them.  That remains to be seen.  They make a lot of noise, but aren't backing it up with much in the way of action.  There are only ~800 nodes expressing support for it, out of a total of ~7200 currently reachable nodes worldwide.  That's about 11% of the network.  There's a huge distance to go in a short space of time if they want to activate in August.

This is cryptoland, where the golden rule is "never say never", so I could be wrong, but I don't rate their chances that highly at the moment.  Unless things change rapidly over the next few weeks, UASF = non-event.

On a logical base core cannot really be pro UASF, since they said (?) SW is a compromise and they defined a long activation time and a high threshold to kick in absolutely safe.

They said with this: a compromise is only live with sufficient time and maximum support

Why now rush this in with a rant like style and risk split for a compromise? They feel fine doing nothing...before fuck sth up.

Of course time travel is possible, have you seriously ever dreamed of something and after a few days it comes true?
I wonder how did you come up with ASICboost all of a sudden in this post?
SW will kill ASICboost period, no need to beg them not to.

I think where the money is concerned you can not trust anyone.
How do you expect trust from those you do not like? But hope you can. So need to be alert.

I trust reliable working code, whoever designs it does not matter to me as long as it resolves an issue.
Then it is up to a community of miners nodes etc to do something with that code and come to a consensus.
Decentralized yet organized.

He is some ranting against BScore:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1997310.0


I only trust the dense bitcoin network core seen there.  ;D

Do you trust any person who are being paid to develop a technology that might disrupt Billion dollar businesses like MoneyGram and Western

union or possibly the whole banking sector? The moment when you get paid to do something, you have to follow instructions from someone.

Do you think for one moment the Bitcoin Unlimited team are doing this for the fun? They are getting paid too.. and this makes them corruptible

and unbiased. I trust nobody... not even Satoshi Nakamoto. {because I do not know who he/she or they are}

Oh wait. Youve forgotton evil Linus from Linux, yeah. You just cannot trust anybody. This is why bitcoin needs to scale on chain. The most trustless way we have now since 2009!

They've kept people's savings in bitcoin safe for 7+ years or 8, I lost the count. That is all that matters. The software must be solid, and I must be able to run a bitcoin full node, everything else doesn't matter. I couldn't care less about buying coffee with bitcoin if that means i can't run a full node, they seem to agree with this so they are good to go.

The hardforkers will fail because the other devs will make them lose money, it's a matter of time.

I hope we don't have 2 fucking bitcoins by the end of the year because my bitcoin saving will suffer.

The main problem with core is that they are not a cohesive group, the positive thing is that most people involved want bitcoin to do well. They have my trust because I dont see them compromising for their own personal interest. 

Sure. My car was also fine first 7 years. But then it needed a HF.

Shit. The HF is 3 years shifted and kicked down the road because of very human lazy aproach or interest conflicts inside BScore. This car is OLD and misses new modern scaling inside. They want to lift the wreck on waky plane and close planes doors now.

You only need to a run a full node to mitigate the risk involved in accepting a high value of payments from untrusted third parties. You do not need to run a node to spend or save bitcoin. Do you have a specific use case that requires you to run a full node?

You said everything else doesn't matter. I respectfully disagree. I think the value of bitcoin matters, and I think it derives that value from being useful. I think that increasing the cost of transactions reduces that utility. On chain is still a scarce resource regardless of blocksize, because of the marginal cost of mining a transaction.

not particularly, but they are competent. the opposing team is both incompetent and vocally malevolent.

core has voiced concerns that chime with me far more than anything the mining cartels have come up with.

That's some strong shit you're smoking there bud.

Hehe, yeah. But with his effotrs he came to right conclusion. The way is the goal. Proof of Smoke PoS

Why do you assume it was spamming and now the spamming has stopped.

With high fees it is perfectly reasonable to assume that users are making less transactions based on the huge amount of complaints and Core don't care.

because it has always coincided with maximum agitation about block sizes. it happened around unlimited time and then eased off when unlimited looked like a piece of shit. it has now also magically eased off with the sewit2x thing.

if people stopped transacting as they are now then fees would never have been so high.

"We need a plan that will not drag the community into the blocksize issue from now on. For the growth of Bitcoin, blocksize is a minor issue that cost the community so much damage."

now that's something i can get behind no matter who says it. i don't know if it's possible but it's something that should be aimed for.

Some more insight into interest conflicts and closed door meeting or face to face promises.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1998082.0

... And more shit here

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1999889.0


Others can tell me what is next. A SW REKT threat or is there dispute?

I have never doubts bitcoin core, however, we should know that the ability of a currency is always limited, Core can not meet current market demand, that is why it needs Some changes Everyone's consensus will be to create a nice bitcoin, but if it's deprecated and branched, the bitcoin may collapse....

I'm not a big Bitcoin guy, nowhere near a maximalist or similar, sometimes I don't even hold Bitcoin, only use it when needed like trading but this situation it's just sad honestly, especially how fragmented it all become. I know many still assume Bitcoin will not die and it will recover, that's fair enough. But I don't think it can come back from this amount of animosity that installed among the most important players. We have a big civil war in our hands and it's really a shame that they can all cooperate together.

Some months ago I was sure a resolution would come but lately I'm even wondering what is "Bitcoin" and in case of a split (or many) which side will claim its name and brand, that's all that matters to the public. They all have a right to be called Bitcoin right? Imagine the public reaction to that, do you honestly think it can recover from that? Ethereum and Ripple have no governance problems at the moment and they will suffer in terms of price in the short term but at least they will learn to avoid from this in the future. Tezos is actually trying to solve self governance. Others like Antshares/NEO follow the Hyperledger DPOS system where forks/splits are not possible.

Even if I'm not a big Bitcoin guy like I mentioned, I wouldn't want an scenario like this to happen, it's a bad image for the whole industry/market.

That might be glossing over recent turbulent history just a little, heh.  Ethereum has no governance problems in the sense that it has already split into two and those who couldn't reconcile their differences no longer have to.  If it hadn't separated into ETH/ETC as it did, there would almost certainly still be a problem.  Perhaps there is an argument to be made that Bitcoin would have fared better to do likewise before now, or may fare better to do so in the near future, but there's no way of knowing for sure.  Without both scenarios actually playing out, we can't tell if it's less damaging for the debate to rage on in stalemate or to force a divisive split and let the chips fall where they may.  Hopefully we reach a compromise soon and avoid finding out what effect a split would have.

we should review this 'trust' and differentiate to distinct terms like

I full trust in core - keeping the network up and running. They have done a great job here over many years in monitoring and fixing bugs. They know how to MAINTAIN.

I full trust in core's technical expertise and coding capabilities - they know their job.

I partially trust that they can sort out and filter all the ideas coming up and to them all day.

I less trust that they oversee all the economic impacts on these decisions they still are in charge.

I.o. to relief core's burden a bit - we need multiple clients here - market / economical decisions no single entity is able to define in FRONT and predictions here are normally wrong and we all are personal victims of prediction errors.

I'm happy if we have business here like blockstream and other comps concentrating on their 'duties' posted in their naming (and transparent agendas). Blockstream should be only responsible for streaming correctly the blocks - not more   ;D