Bitcoin Forum

Hi all,

I'm not a bitcoin whale not even a person who has bought like few coins and is praying for the price to skyrocket. On the contrary, I've exhausted all my coins and savings to keep myself full time focused on bitcoin as my research field instead of what I've been doing for years as an ordinary software engineer and a programmer. Not that ordinary in the latter field tho.  :P

So, from my point of view bitcoin adoption is not an urgent personal requirement at all. Actually I'm totally satisfied with what bitcoin has done up to now: great codebase, excellent discussions, a decade of 24*7 mission-critical task accomplished with almost no interrupts, absolutely no failure,  ... bitcoin is amazing from a technical perspective.

But before being a software guy, I'm a human being and an activist. I want peace and justice and equal opportunities and prosperity for mankind and health and safety and preservation of species for the planet. Actually bitcoin became my main technical concern because of its superiority in ethical aspects. It was the first field of commercial activity ever that I found to be coherent with my half/spare time occupation as an activist, it was why I quitted my job and stick with bitcoin, a life-time decision. :)

So, aliashraf the idealist, wants adoption to happen while aliashraf the dev does not care that much about it, why should he? Technical curiosity? come on, out there zillions of technical problems to masturbate with, in cryptocurrency and other IT fields, let alone physics and cosmology.

A bitcoin whale/hodler/investor faces a dilemma: on one hand, he needs bitcoin to be mass-adopted because it is what can eventually make bitcoin to skyrocket but on the other hand, there is a lot of contradictions that discourage him, most importantly, they don't like change and putting their assets in the risk of hypes and tensions. It is how it works, the real world, people are ready to invest a tiny fraction of their savings on a promising technology, but when it happens and they get rich, it will be time for conservatism, so natural.

People in bitcoin ecosystem are hybrids of devs, investors, activists, ordinary users, ... As long as we are asking about agendas and objectives it is totally about the ingredients: How much of each factor is presented in the anatomy of each person who is somehow active in bitcoin?

But no matter who you are and what's your priorities, bitcoin mass adoption is a goal you need to respect eventually because it is not just about expansion but about survival, systems either grow or collapse, without mass-adoption bitcoin will fade out.

Among many things that one can suggest for this to happen, technical challenges are the most important ones. Bitcoin is technology after all, isn't it? So, how is it possible to have bitcoin adopted by billions of people when it is faced with centralization and scaling challenges? Sure it is not possible and let's don't get the "world reserve currency" claims as serious rhetoric, they are not, ask a BS economics graduate.

My proposition in this topic is as follows:
Bitcoin mass-adoption is subject to technical developments that should and can happen simultaneously in three critical fields: Decentralization, Scaling and Privacy.


I strongly denounce Buterine's claim about the existence of a so-called trilemma which implies that it is impossible or (as he has retreated to it recently) very hard to achieve to such a state.

I am aware of the popularity of Buterine's trilemma among some bitcoiners, core devs and LN believers who are naysayers to ambitious improvement ideas because of the balance of the above-mentioned ingredients in their blood.  :D
All I have to mention to these folks is that Buterine himself is retreating from his claim not only officially but also by advocating in favor of Serenity and Eth 2.0!

During my research, for a long time, I have mainly focused on decentralization targetting both ASICs and pools as evils, postponing scaling and privacy problems. To be clear, I don't believe in security as an independent problem, it is rather a spin-off from centralization scenarios. I formulated some ideas and proposals for both ASICs and pools, specifically, I made a thorough analysis of pooling pressure flaw in bitcoin and proposed an alternative approach to bitcoin like PoW systems which are based on a winner-takes-all idea, instead I proposed a collaborative proof of Work method.

Thereafter I began to realize that both centralization and scaling issues in bitcoin are by no means subjects of a trade-off unlike the poisonous ideas behind the trilemma of Vitalik Buterine and more interestingly they are not essentially and radically two different problems and both could be understood as consequences of the same (now, let's say) flaw: winner-takes-all.

My latest work is focused on a comprehensive solution to this problem and I think it is in a good state, almost ready to publish and I'll share it with bitcoin community asap, for the time being, I'm just wondering:

1) How important do you think such a project is?

2) Who is ready to jump in by dedicating actual resources to support/participate in a project tackling centralization, scaling, and privacy at the same time without any trade-offs, i.e without sacrificing one in favor of the other two?

Please note:
I'm talking about bitcoin, my agenda involves no forks and no alt-coins don't waste your valuable time debating about how bad is a  fork and how disappointing would be an alt.

Easy of use is also one that should be tackled. We have to be honest so ask yourself is Bitcoin easy to use and set up compared to other payment methods? I am not talking about other alts but about other alternative ways to pay online with fiat. It might be easy for us - the younger generation, but can your parents figure it out. Does your aunt know how to do it? Would she rather pay for her groceries with Bitcoin or her native fiat currency. There won't be any real mass adoption unless all generations understand and learn how to use the technology and it is not that easy. And you have no one to turn to if you make a mistake. 

I do agree. Ease of use is critical too, though it is a problem for second layer development I suppose, not the core. I mean leaving it to the market, couldn't we? I think if there was a true demand for a better user experience somebody would provide it eventually as long as it was feasible and supported by the core protocol.

I think to decide about your proposal of putting this topic, user experience or ease of use, in the critical list along with improved decentralization, scaling and privacy, we need to mention protocol level hurdles (if any) that prevent developers/market from providing such utilities.

Can you elaborate on "collaborative proof of Work method"? How is it going to tackle ASIC monopoly in mining? As long as the mining algorithm stays the same, casual PCs will not be able to compete. Even if we all connect to some kind of pool, our accomplished work would be so tiny compared to all the ASICs, so reward would be too small to share among everyone who participated.
Changing the mining algorithm of Bitcoin to be GPU-friendly and ASIC-resistant is not realistic I think.

We need to accept that Bitcoin mining is rather centralised  and its not necessarily a bad thing. Network is very secured exactly because of enormous hashing power of all the ASICs.

OP, you have been talking about your "great idea" that will "save" Bitcoin, but never have you showed us a Github repo, or a Proof of Concept. Or a whitepaper?

If something is truly decentralized, everyone must be able to access it equitably. If everyone can access it, then rich people can access it. If rich people can access it, then they can also access most of it.

If you truly have a solution for this (which might exist but I certainly can't think of one), I'd love to hear more about it.

I think that ease to use depends mostly in wallets.
There are some wallets like coinomi which can be very convenient and easy to use.
You can just scan the QR code to send funds. What could be easier than that?

The biggest problem imo lies in seed security, which most users are not used it yet.

i rather think bitcoin core and their supporters are already doing that---or as close as possible to that, anyway.

you're speaking in (purposefully?) vague terms. i don't think you'll get much support without at least describing the sort of technical changes you're proposing.

ASICs are not part of the project, it is not too late for bitcoin to tackle ASICs though, but I'm not including an ASIC-resistant algorithm as part of the solution.

Collaborative Proof of Work (PoCW) which I published its idea a while ago was a preliminary example of how it is possible to have POW that is not based on winner-takes-all. I have merged the core idea with a scaling solution (based on hierarchical sharding) and it is working (conceptually speaking) fine. It is not about ASICs, has nothing to do with ASICs, it is about pools and mining variance.


I've discussed much of the parts of this project separately with some exceptions. And I don't think I've been talking too much about it, just once (maybe twice) I've shortly denounced the integrity of claims about bitcoin being trapped in Buterin trilemma, mentioning the existence of a project.

Usually, I don't talk about ideas, rather I think about them and when they show strength I work on them and once the work is matured enough I publish it. By matured, I mean having a state that people can read and contribute. Unfortunately, in this forum and bitcoin community, we are losing stem for contributing to projects, because they think it is about forks and alts.
On the other hand, recently, I have not enough time and resources to argue with shills, I want contributors and people committed to the cause.

Distribution of wealth is not bitcoin's main concern, decentralization of authority on money is. Socialist, Anarchists, ... should take care of the whole picture but decentralization of monetary system is a critical step for any form of justice, I suppose.


Ok, keep praying for that to happen, but I'm in a rush and I will take my shot, let's say good luck for both parties :D

BTW, It is not vague, it is just about the big picture: tackling centralization and scaling problems at the same time. We are used to thinking about each problem separately or worse, as a challenge for solving the other one. What if they both are phenomenons of the same flaw in bitcoin? Above thread I have introduced this flaw for the first time: winner-takes-all.

OP made this thread Getting rid of pools: Proof of Collaborative Work (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4438334.0).

@aliashraf you might want to mention relevant thread/posts that you've made


I don't see how technology could solve this problem, each solutions have different weakness which can exploited.

Besides, not all people see equitably/fairness as best way to solve problem.


I think Pmalek's point is current wallet is still complicated for older people, even though younger people finds it very easy to use.
I can't think any real solution besides having someone to teach them how to use it few times before getting used and feel the convenience.

can you provide a link to your paper on "collaborative proof of work"?


we think that way because changes imply trade-offs.

let's take your "hierarchical sharding" idea as an example. can you elaborate on that? because the consensus is that sharding is highly centralizing since it drastically reduces network redundancy.

OK, then how many years away are you before you publish this "great idea" that will solve Bitcoin's problems? I believe you once posted that it's near, and that we should expect it?

Mass adoption which is a good thing for Bitcoin should not happen to early thats why its not always a good thing when companies start accepting Bitcoin and that hits the news which can cause instability in the market. The ideal solution to the adoption which is needed in my opinion for Bitcoin to become what it was created for needs to happen after all major forks. Forks cause doubt and could hurt those that have adopted Bitcoin and having the mass adopt Bitcoin after most major forks will be the better long term solution. Forks can be complicated and cause instability which causes doubt from a average person that is using Bitcoin. We don't want Bitcoin to be only for the technically advanced members of society we want it to be easy to use for everyone and that is the biggest challenge of Bitcoin when it comes to talking abut adoption.

You'll have to pardon my skepticism, but this just sounds like more of the same vapourware from you.  You always have plenty of grand ideas, but nothing ever actually happens.  I suspect because your ideas are a little bit too grand for you to handle.  Start smaller.  No one else comes storming in claiming they can magically change a significant pillar of Bitcoin's reward mechanism without consequence and without a fork, so why do you think anyone is going to believe you when you say you can do it?

That proposal is abandoned by me because, in the process of implementation, I realized that there are opportunities for taking care of the scaling problem as well and surprisingly this is how we can implement the core idea of PoCW. It is exemplary as the first alternative to Nakamoto's winner-takes-all PoW design, as far as I'm aware.

In PoCW miners compete for transaction fees in the first phase and the block that has won the race is chosen by subsequent shares that are generated by miners committing to it more and more.

In the original design, there was a finalization phase in which rewards should have been distributed, later I found a way to eliminate this phase by leaving this duty to the next block. I didn't edit the original article for historical reasons neither published a new version. The whole idea is now merged into a new work.

you can check this link for details:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4438334.0


No, they don't! It is true for super matured technologies or basic nature rules but not for bitcoin. Winner-takes-all was a wrong choice from the first day, Satoshi didn't care because he was not ready for developing a system that is supposed to live forever, imo, he was just releasing a proof of concept and you don't wrap a concept in a sophisticated multi-layer architecture like what we have to do for a collaborator-takes-share model.

There is no reason behind such a claim, changes imply trade-offs, just analogies, and presumptions about how GREAT bitcoin is.
To be clear: bitcoin is great but it is in its infancy, the fact that this system is so exciting shouldn't be an excuse for manipulating minds about trilemmas and trade-offs. You can't tell a child to do a trade-off and choose between growth in his knowledge and his brain or body.

They "say" that sharding has security implications because of the distribution of hash power but what if there is a workaround for this threat or other issues? Hierarchically sharding the bitcoin machine state is one such workaround. Now they may suggest centralization threat, yet there may be a workaround for this, actually, there is:

Suppose we have segmented the UTXO (IOW, bitcoin machine state) in just two layers a top layer (full state) and two odd and even segments. High-end full nodes may choose to maintain the state in the top layer and machines with less power should stay on either odd or even segments but does it lead to centralization of mining (we will be back to the centralization of full nodes later)? No, absolutely not. We could simply ask miners in any layer to do the same amount of work to prove their blocks, couldn't we?

Now, let's take a closer look at our simple 2 layers hierarchical sharding model and become even more surprised by figuring out that mining is not centralized and on the contrary, we have a more decentralized system! How? Just focus:

In our naive model, the difficulty is distributed between 3 segments and in each round, we are introducing 3 blocks with less merit to the network, these blocks cumulatively have the target difficulty, tho. Yes? But lower difficulty means better distribution of luck and it is what we desperately looking for to keep the network decentralized: low variance, less pooling pressure, less need for pools.

Interestingly, we found ourselves in PoCW territory again. Defining a block generation round as being broken to small parts and accumulating the work done is the key to Collaborative Proof of Work. Only in the new model, the transaction space is partitioned and work is done more efficiently and in a smart way.

I'm aware that it is not a formal description or a proposal but it is more than enough for the purpose of this topic to convince the reader about one simple argument: Decentralization and scaling problems are neither paradoxical nor even substantially different problems and have one basic solution: Distribute the work!

As of fears about full-nodes (not mining) becoming centralized, one should be absolutely pragmatic:

1- We have UTXO commitment and pruning potentials for bitcoin, currently not unleashed, that can reduce cots of maintaining a full-node drastically but we have absolutely no idea to fix centralization of mining and getting rid of pools other than PoCW and this new version we are discussing here. So, the whole full-node issue is not on our priority list, actually, it is not a problem at all.

2- Costs does not grow linearly with UTXO size, anyway.

3- Bitcoin is and remains permissionless and it is up to the user to choose the level she wants her node to take part.

@Domad, @WIND_FURY,

Just relax, I'm not hired by anybody to do anything about bitcoin, I'm just trying to share my ideas in a top-down approach. It is because I did it bottom-up for PoCW and I got nothing, people came and asked for high-level discussions, now I have progressed even more in my work and I'm trying to present it this way, just relax and wait for more to come, you are not losing anything, it is my time, my budget and my nerves, ok?  :D

You are right about stability as a pre-condition for adoption but not regarding the need for a delay, nor for ease of use, I explain:

One of the most important factors behind my hesitation since the day I become convinced that there is a way to help with pooling pressure and then scaling in bitcoin was the governance problem: How should it be decided to change anything in bitcoin?
Some people (mostly scammers?) commit hard forks, others go after a brand new so-called altcoin while decent old hand devs are trying hacks and hooks to extend bitcoin, i.e soft forks.

In accordance with your arguments, I don't support forks (either soft or hard) or altcoins. I'm investigating a more decent approach: "absorption". It is about a one-way pegged side-chain that competes fairly with the legacy chain (while surprisingly is helping it to function better) and proving its superiority over time, gently "absorbs" users without hurting the legacy chain. It deserves a separate article, I see, but there are more articles to be written regarding this project, let's have this topic: "How and when we should make a move?" postponed for a while.

This topic we should rather focus on the core ideas about decentralization, scaling and privacy, IMO. As of "ease of use" I've discussed it above thread:
If there was enough adoption it would have been solved now, boosting more adoption.

I see, so when you're asking for people to offer resources to support your project, you're talking about them mining a sidechain.  Not sure why you couldn't have just opened with that.

NO!
I need you and everybody to be committed to the cause (bitcoin as an alternative monetary system) and take part in the project. Mining on the side chain is not an altruistic gesture, it is a business decision, we will come to this, not very soon tho. Other than you and other committed people, idealists, activists, and bitcoin enthusiasts I have audiences among other groups as well:

-Bitcoin whales/investors/hodlers who want bitcoin to be truly adopted by masses and prices to skyrocket.

-Hardcore programmers/hackers in this ecosystem who want an exciting really big project to contribute.

-Decent, old hand core devs who want bitcoin, their legacy, to shine even more without suffering from stupid forks and disappointing altcoin projects.

All of these groups SHOULD contribute and WILL do so. For convincing them, I don't follow the familiar but threadbare methods. Instead, I'm thinking of a step by step roadmap.

First step: I denounce hypes and myths regarding magical trade-offs, dilemmas, trilemmas and so on, proposed by junior programmers and people with poor knowledge in software engineering. For this, I'll incrementally give the outline of the project as far as it is necessary. This topic is started to help with this step.

Second step: I'll organize a ring, a sub-community of people who understand that a system with hundreds of times more throughput and thousands of times more resistance to centralization and ways better built-in privacy than bitcoin is achievable and is not theoretically impossible, unlike what is advertised and bought mostly by the community.

I'll start communicating with contributors to this topic, who show enough interest and alignment with the framework  and put as much time as needed for encouraging them to act, NOW!.

Third step: I'll publish my works in bitcointalk and in separate threads gradually. They include:

• An essay on the governance crisis in bitcoin it includes a formal description of Absorption my proposed solution for this crisis.
• A re-newed analysis of mining variance and pooling pressure in bitcoin and a thorough analysis of possible approaches to this problem.
• My scaling solution for bitcoin. it includes:
  
  • An innovative hierarchical state sharding model.
  • An Improved/organized yet open/permissionless relay network design.
  • An ultimate UTXO commitment model to support smart full-nodes able to migrate between shards in a fast and seamless fashion.
• A built-in coin mixer feature to enhance privacy in bitcoin substantially.

Fourth step: A mailing list will be started for finalizing a technical road map and choosing core technical staff.

Fifth step: Sharing code for core algorithms on Github, I'll actively participate in the implementation phase, taking care of the big picture and architectural issues.

Sixth and final step: System will be launched as a side chain.

In the final phase, we need campaigning to encourage solo mining in bitcoin that is now incentivized by rewards distributed in the sidechain. It is a very important point to keep in mind: This system will help bitcoin by offering a stable block reward in the sidechain to bitcoin solo miners helping them to be more resilient against the very high variance in the legacy chain. I can imagine a situation that rewards in the sidechain are covering the costs and small miners take it as the main source of income while patiently waiting for a hit in the legacy bitcoin chain. It would be just like buying a lottery ticket by a fraction of their income.

OK. Then how many years away are you before publishing a whitepaper, or having a Github repo available for contributors, or a Proof of Concept?

I'm not away from anything, WE are away. I'm doing my part and will continue doing it, what's yours?

I'm not a fan of whitepapers, it has been a while, in bitcoin and cryptocurrency whitepapers are neither white nor a paper, rather a colorful advertisement for running ICOs and making dirty money by scamming people and hurting bitcoin ecosystem.

I'll formalize core protocols in step #3 and Github repo is scheduled for step #5 as I've clarified above

To be crystal clear:

1) I'm not under any form of a contract, it is not a scheduled project with budget and time tables.

2) I won't do anything about it without a minimum of community support/contribution, why should I? After all, WE are in step #1 i.e. discussing outlines and finding more contributors.

Now my question: If we could have a better bitcoin in terms of scaling, decentralization and privacy without touching or hurting legacy bitcoin, without spreading FUD, without consuming legacy bitcoin resources while we are helping and strengthening legacy bitcoin, what would be your responsibility?
I mean other than naysaying and accusing peers of being incompetent or the project being vaporware?

Whitepapers when done correctly can be the general information needed for a new concept or project but I would agree that when looking at the Bitcoin whitepaper its not very useful for beginners and thats what a whitepaper should be designed for. It should be a basic introduction to the concept and able to be read by everyone and not just technical Bitcoin users. This is why I have mentioned that ease of use is very important to adoption.

Creating a better Bitcoin has already been done to death and none of them have the success that Bitcoin has. Its not because they are not better than Bitcoin but because Bitcoin is known as the first cryptocurrency to gain momentum. Anyone else trying to replicate and add to Bitcoin will forever be known as altcoins and will not be as successful.

I don't think so.
Firstly, I can't classify most of the altcoins as being better than bitcoin, they are not! People are used to making wrong design choices. Let's take a look at the top of the list:
Ethereum with its universal machine is just a disaster, an exemplary case of a very bad design choice, state bloat will destroy it eventually let alone Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik who feel free to manipulate it because, they say, it is a project!
Ripple is not even a legitimate permissionless cryptocurrency and bitcoin cash is just a simple and naive fork of bitcoin.

I'm not aware of any alt deserving the label "better bitcoin" and it is absolutely understandable: you can't leave a great innovation behind in just a few years. It's time tho.

Secondly, I'm not proposing an altcoin, this project is about a sidechain as I've introduced it above thread. I'm thinking of a better version of bitcoin that co-exists with it as a sidechain, absorbing it gradually (one-way) while helping it by encouraging solo mining.

you are confusing "claims" (or advertisement) with "actions". it is very easy to claim to be better and in the eyes of most people it may look better (check top 10 altcoins!) but to actually be better you'll need some innovation and to go in an entirely different direction than bitcoin. in short when you see there is a ton of similarities between bitcoin and another altcoin, there is a good chance they are worse than bitcoin!
why? because they take the idea that works perfectly well with bitcoin and try to adapt it to their own purpose and it doesn't work that way.

it was perfect design choice, you are only mistaken about the purpose. ethereum was never meant to be "universal machine" it was just their advertising technique. the reality was ethereum was a premined coin with a big ICO to make the creators of it millionaires overnight. the design was chosen in that way to give it that short term advantage and hype to get the biggest pumps.
the developers have to be really stupid to not know seconds apart blocks will lead to a bloat of nearly 3 TB blockchain!

;D
I liked the sense of humor  ;)

BTW, I think the scamming part was not a design-purpose from the first day. "They" should have talked to Vitalik's dad and convinced him for the scam, initially it was a trivial "generalization" idea to replace the bitcoin's automata with a Turing-complete machine, a very bad design choice for a consensus-based decentralized system, IMO.

We? No. This is you until you convince the community to follow you. How do we know you're not trolling with Collaborative-POW, blockchain-sharding, and with the other "great" ideas?


Satoshi made a whitepaper, and many other scientists do, to present their ideas.


OK. Would "within 20 years" be a fair estimate?


You have a Proof of Concept, whitepaper? How can we know if we can support it?


Am I wrong to be cycnical with the kind of social-engineering attacks, and trolling within the community?

I'm here to learn, and grow.

See? It is your problem. You think I have an obligation to convince "the community" about my ideas being great, it is not true!

As of now, the purpose of this topic is proving the feasibility of a scalable, decentralized secure sidechain for bitcoin, better than bitcoin and denouncing claims about the existence of dilemmas and trilemmas and trade-offs.

It is not about me being or not being smart or possessing great ideas, it is about the feasibility for bitcoin to get mass-adopted. I've presented an outline for such a bitcoin and I'm ready to jump into the details if I find enough reasons for this.

Re-thinking winner-takes-all and designing an alternative PoW model is not a trivial job, it is one of the most sophisticated technologies to approach and more complicated would be presenting it to a community poisoned with false claims and political propaganda.

It is also worth mentioning that I've been presenting crucial parts of my work in this forum in the last couple of years and in some occasions you have been contributing and you just can't pretend not being aware of what I'm talking about.

In one special occasion, you started a topic asking for more information about sharding and I presented you with a very important part of my work; How it is not and should bot be considered a security/scaling trade-off, remember? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5112524.msg49929370#msg49929370

If you want the community to accept, and run your software, then yes you do. Are you telling us that we should trust and follow you blindly?

With the current state of minds and the atmosphere taken into account, it is both too soon and resource-intensive, convincing the community, it is time to convince individuals that there is a chance to do something good about bitcoin, show me just one case that anybody has succeeded in
convincing the community about anything, in past few years.

Then write a whitepaper. Satoshi started Bitcoin from nothing but a whitepaper, because the idea was so convincing and good.


How?


That's actually good. No one is following anyone blindly.

As far as I know, Satoshi created software first to check if everything works as expected. Bitcoin whitepater was written by him/her only after the implementation and just before approaching community.

By the way, that process is vise versa to what most of other crypto projects are doing. That may be even a single case. At least, I don't know other examples in crypto when a whitepaper was created only after a software is ready for production.

other projects aren't really writing any "whitepaper" though. they have changed the meaning of it too. it is currently used as a way of advertising the useless token they are trying to sell by giving vague information and only false promises. and sometimes even create and solve imaginary problems in one place!
that's 99% of the cases.

Pardon my mistake, sorry. But that gives a better example, because Satoshi had a Proof of Concept, AND a whitepaper to show.

To be honest, I don't care about what Satoshi did but AFAIK it was not the case.

I'm aware of this thinking by code thing, not a fan tho, I've tried it, works for small projects and smart hacks, lots of fun but not really applicable in most of the occasions, especially not for pushing an already invented technology to its edges, what we are talking about and desperately need for bitcoin.

If you are looking for things that can affect Bitcoin's mass adoption then we have a complete opposite view about it. Mass adoption won't really start without the support of our own governments, two out of the three fields you have mentioned won't really be given by the government namely decentralization and privacy is something is what they are concerned the most mainly because of the crimes and illicit activities revolving around the industry. The mass adoption won't really take place if you just focus on the internal factors you are mentioning about technical development since it's already there and really the only thing missing is to be supported by the government. External factors (governments/lawmakers) are really want you need to start looking for since this literally will be the green light for all the developments happening within in the industry.

The only obstacle to mass adaption is government sabotaging of native scaling. But sooner or later it'll become overcome and we'll say good bye to our dear government.

By governments you mean the US authorities, don't you? No? But it is the truth!

Speaking of monetary systems there is just one government in the world, the US government, they do whatever they want with the world economy using their USD dominance as leverage, since World War II, and it is both stupid and impossible to tolerate. Unlike what most people believe bitcoin is not an alternative to fiat currencies, it is an alternative to USD in the first place.

We have nations oppressed by USD right now and the rest of the nations are not completely satisfied by its dominance. The world monetary system needs to be changed and there is no alternative other than bitcoin, it should improve.

I agree with the USD dominance and leverage aspect. I believe both fiat and cryptocurrency can co-exist for periods of time, but not indefinitely as reserve currencies have only been seen to last somewhat short period in history.

Back on to topic, so your intent is a hierarchical side chain (not sure how this can be a one-way pegged without setting BTC as some backed standard?). Mass adoption would need to happen at least in US at a personal level somehow. If person X trades for something, person Y needs to accept the trade and believe what they received has some value and may choose to exchange it for their future needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.). Novel ideas are great but mass adoption is the key (why the need it and cant live without it).

@Wynn1427,

Decentralization is the first key to mass adoption and scaling is the second one. Both are necessary but decentralization comes first because it makes it possible to resist. Actually some believe that there is an axiom of resistance  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5066769.msg47759875#msg47759875) that bitcoin is built on it by Satoshi.

The priority of decentralization was what correctly justified the Core view in scaling debate, you can't naively increase the load on a system by compromising its essential design principle, its purpose and decentralization is such an important and elementary feature for bitcoin. An unscalable but decentralized bitcoin could exist, somehow, but it is not true for the opposite case.

The basic purpose of this project is higher degrees of decentralization rather than scaling the latter comes as a bonus and a surprise once we figure out that the same flaw that is threatening decentralization of bitcoin by pools, is degrading its performance substantially: A bad design choice for Pow, winner-takes-all model.

So, fixing pooling pressure flaw is not just about a better bitcoin as a utility, it is about resistance, the ability of bitcoin to survive despite what govs all around the world and the US government especially do or wish to do. This resistance is at stake right now, and mass adoption is conditioned by the results of this game. Let's win it!

All in all, you're speaking about a "currency" and not a cryptographic element (experiment) anymore. The day since we started comparing BTC to other individual Fiat currencies and started adopting because of its value in USD rather than its actual value i.e.; 1 BTC equals 1 BTC always. Since then, the adoption of BTC is being drifted more towards these qualities while the technical part has been left to a smaller set of Devs who were already involved since the beginning. While considering everything what I said:

Decentralization is never going to take place fully in the world of BTC because we (not me and you maybe, but most likely everyone) need something "highly secure to control our funds", I mean we want something to rely upon so badly that we can even compromise it to an Institution that can provide us with the same. We want Governments to get involved to stop criminal activities (yeah, we are relying over them :D) and help us keep the activities clean and as smooth as possible because these authorities have got our back and they're the first to f*ck us as and when we try to save ourselves from disclosing our relations in BTC and paying taxes to them.

While about Scaling, I'm also not in the favor of any forks because forks create diversities in a community which was meant to be unique as well as united forever but that couldn't happen based on the fact that opinions change from person to person. And alts? Kick'em off all of them. They're just doing me one favor - cheaper fees and that's it. Nothing else can they do. Now back to the topic, scaling will also not be easier considering that if you come up with a new idea, the time it'll take to get implemented will already have a lot more traffic involved till then. It's like we try to make the roads bigger and broader from time to time, but during that period, quantity of vehicles won't remain the same and increases to almost double or sometimes even more. I guess scaling is not going to be any easier a topic here to get done till a system to deal with this quantity issue is invented and presented to the community and make them agreed to the same (that will be a different story as LN took a lot of time before everyone understood and adopted it, still it's very complicated).

Until Centralization remains, Privacy is ought to be compromised to various organizations where we will be storing our funds and need to meet their KYC AML obligations before we're able to get a hold on our funds back at many places.

You are almost advocating for an undocumented vision of bitcoin which is absolutely paradoxical. Bitcoin is not separable from its mission and its cause.
Without a purpose, there is no bitcoin as a promising technology worth dedicating our lives. A centralized, unscalable, KYC/AML friendly bitcoin is not entitled to carry the label. Such a discourse is contemplating a radically different system than bitcoin, maybe Ripple?

This is the point: Without overcoming technical challenges there will be no infrastructure for sociopolitical campaigns, hence it is the canonical part.

Cool... on this topic I found very relevant this blog post, in case you want to give it a look:

https://blogchainzoo.com/the-mass-adoption-of-the-blockchain-technology/

Cheers, and let me know!

Rob

Those 3 things are being addressed, I think. Decentralization is due to many different miners and full nodes, many different devs contributing code. Scaling is being worked on by centralized entities such as off-chain solutions either with third party custodians, exchanges, web wallets, points thingies, token thingies. Privacy, at least on the bitcoin level, is being done by such things as CoinJoin, JoinMarket, Wasabi and all the other privacy tech by other altcoins that supposedly focus on them like Monero and ZCash.

As you implied, these things are being worked on separately (and maybe together) by different groups of people. They'll eventually come together, but understandably some things are prioritized depending on the group or devs working on them. If you're smart, you can take advantage of all three right now.

Thanks for the link. It is focused on user experience and ease of use, it has been discussed above-thread shortly. It is critical and important but not exactly what I'm interested in because I think it is a result of rather than a cause for mass-adoption.

Mining is highly centralized because of pools, centralized services are not part of the game and shouldn't be considered a scaling solution and privacy gains from centralized services is not true privacy.

You are right though,  we can take advantage of and learn lessons from available centralized solutions. It is possible to re-define this project as an attempt to decentralize existent solutions to current shortcomings in bitcoin mining, scaling and privacy.

For Instance, you can imagine a built-in, on-chain coin join service for privacy. Actually, I've been contributing to such an idea a while ago and integrated it into my work lately.

Don't worry about the miners. The incentives will keep them honest. Plus ask yourself "Who actually secures Bitcoin?"


That's actually good. It will keep the network working together in lock-step than having many different implementations.

You mean we are all good? It is not true! Bitcoin is not perfect and we have lots of work to do.

Pools are centralization monsters, they should be thrown out of the ecosystem.

Scaling is a nightmare, we need tens of times better performance and lower fees.

The feds are watching wallets, we need built-in privacy support.

It is a bad political agenda, covering up the weaknesses of bitcoin, it eventually hurts bitcoin.

I believe you didn't actually ask yourself who really secures Bitcoin. Is it the truly miners? 8)


But is it a monopoly? What "progress" and "creativity" were limited? No one can stop developers from their own implementations, or their own cryptocurrencies with "special features".

Sure it is or maybe you have invented a new theory about the security of the network. Miners are gods of PoW, full nodes are like angels with very limited power: to nod or not to nod, it is not enough for the security of bitcoin by any measure.

The bad thing about social media is its potential for spreading nonsense instead of science and this story, counting on full nodes instead of miners for securing bitcoin, is such nonsense. Otherwise show me a paper, a well-formed document at least, asserting such thing about bitcoin and PoW. Consider censorship resistance, for instance, suppose a Chinese "court" issues a verdict for blocking a list of bitcoin addresses and the gov asks pools to block the list, how could your full nodes help with this situation? They can't!
Let's instead of redefining bitcoin naively, for justifying the current situation with mining and pools, dedicate our time and resources to solve the problem professionally.

Nonsense? You know it yourself, that miners have cartelized, and could collude. What stops them from doing that? Who rejects the changes imposed by miners, and how?

@aliashraf

I tend to agree PoW does have some limits when it comes to scaling and decentralization. Believe this is the reason why we do have other systems in place such as PoS, DPoS and RPoS (have not seen much of RPoS in development at this point in time which intrigued me while reading various white papers on various projects). Biggest is is that the natural tendency is that most things actually centralize naturally. Just look at history of civilization, countries, cities, even users of technology can become so enamoured with one entity its the primary goto service. In terms of PoW and winner take all system, the pool/centralization solved the difficulty issue and turned it into a workable solution as opposed to a single person looking for the solution.

Have you had time to read the Ton white paper? From what I can tell it's solution is as hierarchical DPoS with various delegated groups to help the overall scaling effect (decentralized? not sure any DPoS can properly hold that definition). Have read through to try and understand the basic concepts and idea (don't claim to understand all of it, but only one way to learn is reading what others have written).

Along with the adoption there will be developments and project that will make anyone even your parents can swipe and pay for grocery products. Adoption will take place no matter what and just like computers where it starts with CLI til GUI was created for anyone to use, anyone can just swipe. You don't even have to be idealist nor a dev to see governments today starting government backed coin.

Pools do not collide because they have no incentive for collusion, it is their business they don't want to ruin it. Simple! But it is not called security, not at all, your funds in Binance is not secure neither your funds deposited in City Bank, shits may happen and you may lose your savings.

About the "rejection" issue: The hypothetical colliding pools don't need to break the consensus they can do a lot of things against users without wallets/full-nodes being aware of anything: double-spending attacks and censorship for instance.

Censorship is very important issue because pools are so vulnerable to this problem and have little incentive to resist again it because in short term it can be done without damaging bitcoin too much: users don't care about "a few addresses" being banned as long as they don't belong to the same minority or group of persons that suffer from such discriminations.

The pools are not vulnerable to censorship themselves but the those that use Bitcoin are vulnerable of centralization by pools having a large majority of the percentage of mining power and this is only going to get worse with new people coming to Bitcoin and getting started with Bitcoin I would say over half would want to join a already established pool because it brings greater rewards and more often rewards. The only issue with that is the most popular pools will continue to gain miners and cause a monopoly which theoretically they could use that bad intentions.

This is naive. Adoption will not just take place and come as easy as that. At the moment Bitcoin is viewed as fake currency whenever you talk to someone about it and the perception of Bitcoin among the majority of the population is not a good one. To change that its going to take a lot of special individuals to spearhead campaigns to increase the reputation of Bitcoin.

Let me stop you there. I'm not only talking about costs, and incentives. I'm talking about miners/mining pools exerting "political pressure" on the network.


1. Read my reply for aliasharif.

2. But how can we secure ourselves from a cartel of miners?


I support a "software monopoly" because I believe that everything "should work in lock-step", not my words, research who. I only agree.

Plus not all developers are as competent as the Core developers.

The problem with the current bitcoin implementation of PoW is how it encourages (actually,  imposes) the formation of such cartels AKA pools. I've thoroughly analyzed and proved this flaw (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4687032.msg42296802#msg42296802) to be incurable as long as we are dealing with a winner-takes-all approach to PoW.

I wouldn't call it a "flaw", but an inconvenience. But change the "winner-takes-all" approach, and you change the cost-incentive structure/game-theory, which is generally what keeps everything together.

It is a known flaw: https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-system/wiki/Pooling-Pressure-Risk

Winner-takes-all has nothing to do with game theory and is not helpful in the cost-incentive tradeoffs involved in bitcoin. The very fact that we have pools right now shows that this model does not work and is replaced by a contributor-takes-share alternative using pools, unfortunately, pools are centralized entities.

No it doesn't. But the miners only have a small space to move even with 100% hashing power, because?


Yes, because the answer is clear, and obvious. Who/what makes "the miners", the miners? 8)


That doesn't assure the network to work in lock-step.

Trolls doing everything they can to take the center of interest/attention of the audience to the centralization of mining. The same trolls say you don't have to run full nodes.

Newbies, know who actually secures the network, and who makes the "miners" the miners. 8)

Trolls trolling, putting words in my mouth, and refuse to accept reality, and refuse to learn how Bitcoin has evolved. The UASF was seen in practice that the miners/mining pools only have a little space to push us around if the economic majority express themselves in the network.

Newbies, how do we express ourselves?

OP, do your proposal like him/her, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5060909.0

"Unknown" means mining pools or single users which haven't identified themselves. So it might be 100, but definitely not 2.