Bitcoin Forum

The transaction format, the block format, script operations are all designed to be upgradeable. The bitcoin protocol is not locked in stone, as some claim.

BIP 16 (P2SH) demonstrated a "soft fork" network upgrade: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0016.mediawiki

BIP 34 demonstrated a majority-lock-in block format change, exercising a decentralized upgrade process: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0034.mediawiki

Bitcoin developers may let the ecosystem design interesting new features (hello, Ethereum!) and then incorporate them into bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a living, growing, changing thing.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2anxr1/reminder_bitcoin_protocol_designed_to_be/

http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/2ao1be/jgarzik_says_they_can_just_hack_ethereum_into/

Surprise, surprise  ;D

yeah, and thats the reason why most of these systems will die or live in a niche (mastercooin, ehereum...)

Yes, most people seem to forget that when criticizing bitcoin for a lack of features.

I hope they will improve privacy soon.

On the other hand, bitcoin should not be bloated with unnecessary features which could cause added security risks and reduce efficiency. From my point of view it would be a good idea to let some of the advanced features (like algorithmic contracts) simply "ride free" as an independent secondary layer (run by third parties) rather than making them integral part of Core. In that way a lot of risk can be mitigated, because problems on some advanced layer do not interfere with core functionality. Also Core developers can focus on the essential features. So I see use in systems like Mastercoin.

Need to implement it and make it live rather than just talk.

bitcoin is pseudonymous already. but then you dont realise that you are the one ruining your own privacy..

you have publicly announced your own bitcoin address:     1BW7LRNWvgPvLBHPWcEiDWqP5xbggxNWyy

so now people know any transactions that ever touched that address belonged to IIOII....

no matter how great the code is, humans will always be the ultimate reason it succeeds or fails. and you have made your privacy fail  

What a dumb argument. First you don't know if that even is my address, just because it's listed in my profile. Second by that logic no one could ever publish a bitcoin address to receive payments.

Of course technology could be improved in a way that doesn't allow full tracking of all transactions on a published address.

Perfect trolling. I already had you on ignore, now I know it was not a good idea to delete that list...

Agreed! It seems a lot of people feel very confident in talking the talk, but nobody is willing to walk the walk.

whats new that you can do with bitcoin now that these upgrades have been made? any new features or what?

Huh?  Bitcoin is changing more rapidly than probably any industry I can think of.  Just in the past 6 months we've seen massive changes.  You know all those large-scale thefts / hacks we kept hearing about?  We don't hear about those too much anymore, right?  That's because the entire architecture of systems has changed, making it much, much more difficult to pull a massive theft off.

This will lead itself to people becoming more comfortable trusting bitcoin, which will lead to additional solutions and innovations, and round and round we go until soccer moms are paying their babysitter with bitcoin via their iPhone.  There's still loads of work to be done, but don't kid yourself, Bitcoin is humming along at a nice pace.

okay, thats the point. Bitcoin will never add something, that makes it even more anonymous. bitcoin wants and will go mainstream.

other coins have to do the hard stuff...

(knock* knock*...Zerocoin?)

does this change one single thing for the end user?

Let the core devel team do their job -- maintaining the core protocol and the network.  That's more than enough responsibility on their shoulders as is.

Bitcoin now has a massive developer community behind it, so let them do the job of developing new services, solutions, security, and so on,  And from what I see, people are doing it at a rapid pace.  Many of the ideas coming out won't stick, but a few will.  Again, massive thefts on a large scale are now a thing of the past, and shouldn't happen again, assuming the necessary operations upgrade their systems appropriately.  Just that is a massive leap forward for bitcoin.

so it's a bit safer? Is that it? Nxt is guna have instant (1 second) transactions in 2 months. It's guna be the first truly p2p crypto exchange using multigateway and asset exchange very soon - end stages of beta on live net. Mmorpg's built on top of the blockchain using nxt as in game currency and items won being tradable on a p2p market place. Digital goods store in alpha/beta. That's just the tip of the iceberg too. All of this with out any third parties.

I don't mean to offend bitcoin being safer is not moving at a rapid pace. It's a dead stop in comparison to other platforms.

But sometimes you are needed to make an address public, for example to get paid in adv campaings and what not.

So given Dark Wallet also doesn't solve the privacy problem, does CryptoNote based coins (basically Monero) have a legit role within the crypto world?

Im sure a lot of people would enjoy the extra privacy for whatever reasons.

Well, I guess time will tell.

Once companies like Expedia, Newegg, and Overstock begin accepting NxT, let me know, and I'll take a further look into it.  Until, I'll stick to being a Bitcoin fanatic. :)

and what if its not using the bitcoin code base and is totally incompatible? what then?

ok great now we have established that, please refer to this post and note the very partial list of features.

for the record, nxt is totally new codebase.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694410.msg7847575#msg7847575

still "go bitcoin"?

edit: eeehhh BUUUUURRRN!!!!!.

actually it was nothing to do with vericoin. vericoin was the target of the hack, but it was the exchange that was hacked. vericoin itself was never hacked. that "nothing-at-stake" thing it total nonsense aswell. even vitalik buterin called over to the nxt forum to discus it and he stated that nxt actually does things far better than he thought and agreed they had solved(or nxt never suffered from) nothing-at-stake. i can link that to you if you want? as for distribution, that will solve itself over the long term.

read here: https://nxtforum.org/general/how-does-nxt-fix-the-nothing-at-stake-problem/

can you explain how they become centralised over time? due to "rich getting richer"? i could say the same about mining. how many times has "51%" attack been an issue in the last 6 months? an entire 50% of mining power has been controlled by one party multiple times.

i actually agree with you that the distribution was very bad and still is, and its one of the reasons i heavily support nem.

ok lets for the sake of making some kind of progress, assume you are correct.

enter nem - New Economy movement.

PoS + PoI (proof of importance)

3000 original stake holders 1200 being veteran accounts - sock puppets removed via taint analysis. each stake holder getting an equal amount being 1 million nem.

proof of importance is an algorithm that decides your forging power based on how important you are to the network by giving a weight to every transaction - or lack of transactions - you do. ie. hoarders are punished for hoarding, you get higher weight the more you distribute the coin and higher weight for the more transactions you do to other nodes who are also of benefit to the network. sending transactions back and forth from your own accounts actually lowers your importance. this eliminates the "rich getting richer" issue and promotes the growth of a healthy network and incentivises distribution. i stand by the "nothing at stake" being pure bollox but even if it wasnt PoI would eliminate that issue if it was an issue.

due to having 3000 stake holders getting equal amounts - the initial distribution is a gigantic benefit. due to PoI the network is poised for rapid growth and then add the 3000 people. thats a network effect with incentive to grow the network effect. with little fear of anyone dumping. PoI ensures that rich dont get richer and the little guy can get just as high a chance of forging as a large holder.

nem is also written from scratch so bitcoin cant clone any of it. it will support all the features of nxt - plus more not yet announced.

its a given that nxt does have advantages over bitcoin but it also has flaws of its own. nem has these benefits over bitcoin plus benefits over nxt and doesnt have the flaws of nxt or bitcoin. sounds to good to be true right? well its not. nem stakes were trading for 1500 dollars prior to the alpha release - there are many reasons for that, the ones iv listed being only a handful.

want to find out more? 8)

3000 person distribution evenly spread is bad for a coin thats not even launched?

http://static.fjcdn.com/comments/Not%20sure%20if%20trolling%20_4661e3bca62855f90ca5d37d52e065bf.jpg

firstly. theres no need to bold everything and make your writing larger.

secondly. no, anyone cannot buy a miner and start mining. its too expensive and is already available for those who can afford expensive mining gear. its a better investment/cheaper just to buy bitcoins than it is to mine to thats a false statement.

and nem isnt 100% proof of stake. its pos and poi. makes a massive difference. it means anyone who has nem be it from wages or whatever can effectively earn higher interest than you would get from a bank just for having nem.

look im not debating with you any longer. its obviously not getting anywhere. just do yourself a favor and learn about these platforms before you start debating against them as it WILL come back to bite you in the ass when you have to admit your wrong and you have lost out on the best investment opportunities since bitcoin was invented. not that you would you would admit your wrong ether.

good day.

Amazing, I'm about to +1 darkota.....

Good post. I spent a very boring hour arguing this point to a Mastercoin rep a couple of months ago.
Any currency built by a third party, but utilising the BTC blockchain, is building their business on quicksand.
If the added features are any good, they will get folded into Bitcoin itself, leaving the original developers (and investors) standing out in the cold.

Even if Bitcoin doesnt do this, there is always a good chance that future changes in Bitcoin (blockchain pruning, for example) will break other systems that rely on the blockchain. Do you think Bitcoin will take the wishes of outside, competing currencies into account when they implement changes?

So darkota, would you agree that Cryptonote based coins do have a legitimate space in the crypto economy because they (as in the Bitcoin devs) can't copy whatever exclusive features they come up with right? (like ring signatures for instance)

Correct. The only coins that can stand beside/compete with Bitcoin as I said above, are coins that don't use the Bitcoin codebase, so Bitcoin won't be able to simply apply whatever features that coin has, into Bitcoin itself.

So yes, Cryptonote coins have a chance at potentially competing/standing alongside Bitcoin, since they do not use the Bitcoin codebase aka are not Bitcoin based coins.

Bitcoin is a living, growing, changing thing.
It is exciting to hear that Bitcoin will be able to grow and evolve.
A refreshing change from Mike Hearn's warnings about neglect and stagnation.

Unfortunately nobody is going to hack Ethereum into Bitcoin.

Even though they sure as hell should.

Why?

Because then they wont get rich with something new.

In the end, the selfishness of human nature is going to take its toll.  Even in a decentralized paradigm.

Colored Coin is already doing much of what Ethereum offers for Bitcoin.

Legit. This is why I big up Monero as much as I want. Sometimes they tell me im a shill, but im honest, I think Monero has a huge space in the crypto world when people realize how much a revolution actual internet cash would be. Bitcoin is great, but it isn't digital cash.

Ethereum seems to be lacking some of the key aspects of bitcoin like for instance innate decentralization. Plus, Ether will always have to decrease in price in order to keep the system competitive.

They use a lot of buzzwords like anti-ASIC. In fact, the entire project reminds me of the Weird Al song Mission Statement. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4)

Best way to tell that it's hard to make changes to core bitcoin: A core developer feels the need to create a post proclaiming it's easy to change core bitcoin

Except that achieving enough consensus to successfully hard fork bitcoin is effectively impossible. I mean seriously, they can't even agree on how to increase the TPS limit (increasing block size, etc.).

Bitcoin is now TBTI--Too Big To Innovate.

Let's put it this way -- if Vitalik really didn't believe in Bitcoin, he wouldn't be taking it for the presale.
I think both will co-exist

but if you make an innovation attractive to miners wouldn't the fork be possible?

You are correct. Ethereum hasn't even launched yet and they are already designing for this eventuality.

You don't need consensus.
There would be a fork, and two version of Bitcoin would coexist: the old one, and the new one with ethereum's features. The difference with the actual ethereum is that everybody owning BTC would now be able to use the ethereum feature set.
I'm very interested in the tech behind ethereum, but the ether currency has no future.

+1