Bitcoin Forum

Although I am not against the 1MB block size limit being raised it seems to me that the entire point of "decentralisation" seems to have escaped the Bitcoin project (the core devs at least mostly seem to be completely against having other blockchains).

I certainly understand that the Bitcoin Foundation is going to have that opinion (for financial reasons) and I can understand a lot of people heavily invested in Bitcoin (such as the Winklevoss twins) also having that opinion.

But any "rational" person would surely think that having other blockchains (with different code and proofs) cannot be a *bad* thing as it alleviates the "one point of failure" that we will otherwise always have.

I don't see how "one blockchain" is ever going to service the needs of everyone (without requiring a ridiculous amount of space and without having near instant confirmations) so IMO it is simply inevitable that we are going to need many.

How would you impliment this change? I see no reason for business to be against the idea. If they had the proper warning they could adjust. Why would it need to devalue the current coins we all hold?

I don't see why it needs to "devalue" Bitcoin at all actually - some of the use cases for Blockchains are simply "bloat" that would be far better off separated.

Sidechains can alleviate your space issue.  With today's technology, there's not really an issue with space in the blockchain either...

But why not have just one blockchain?  It makes it that much stronger and valuable as a consensus.  Sure individual organizations can have their own blockchain (token system), serving their specific needs - but this is also possible with sidechains.

Again - a "sidechain" would be dependent upon Bitcoin - so if a major flaw happens with Bitcoin then all sidechains are killed.

Not a very wise "insurance policy" IMO.

A big part of the problem is being able to transfer funds "trustlessly" between blockchains - and this is why I created AT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822100.0

the only rational answer to why the constant push for only one blockchain is: greed

(possibly those people are too lazy or stupid to invest in other projects or trade other coins)


another point: all the HYPE feeds on this - it's simple marketing, lies, propaganda

yes, it stifles real innovation
and yes, it's even dangerous to the crypto-endavour as you correctly point out
and yes, it's inconsistent with the idea of decentralisation

and you are probably about to get flamed for noticing it  ::)

Note: I follow your posts and have a lot of respect for your work with CIYAM/AT but IMHO I DO NOT see the need. I do, on the other hand, see room for subjects like the ones in these three links:
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/548/469
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-dawn-of-trustworthy-computing.html
http://www.coindesk.com/sidechains-white-paper-ecosystem-reboot/


Bitcoin itself had in the past been vulnerable to very similar things that you said happened and now see happen with altcoins these days, but fortunately THAT WINDOW IS NOW CLOSED.

Part of the definition of the bitcoin protocol includes the checking of the proof of work put into various block chains, and then choosing the one with the most work. Bitcoin has more proof-of-work in its blockchain than any other competing cryptocurrency, and so by definition it must be the one chosen, and all others ignored.

Altcoins are all very similar to Bitcoin: there is a block chain to store transactions, a consensus mechanism to build the block chain, and a cryptographic protocol to register transactions. Some prominent examples are PPCoin, Primecoin, Litecoin, and Freicoin.

Some altcoins incorporate interesting new ideas, but there is an essential feature of Bitcoin which they all lack. It is not a matter of its technology, but rather of history and community. Quite simply, a medium of exchange that is more widely accepted on the market is more useful than one which is not. This is known as the network effect. An initial imbalance between two nearly equal media of exchange will benefit whichever is more widely accepted until a single one overwhelms the rest. There is no limit to this effect: ultimately one would always expect a single currency to overcome all its competitors.

Because it was started earlier and has had a greater opportunity to grow and attract users, Bitcoin has a market larger by a wide margin than all the markets of all the altcoins put together, and this makes it vastly more useful as a currency. To defeat Bitcoin, an altcoin would require not just superior technology, but such vastly superior technology as to be an advance over Bitcoin comparable to the advance Bitcoin represents over fiat currency. Furthermore, a truly great innovation would much better serve people by being incorporated into future versions of Bitcoin rather than by requiring them to switch to something else. Indeed, the people who have proposed new ideas that are actually good, such as Zerocoin and mini-blockchain, did not develop their own currencies around them, but have simply described their usefulness as features.

The Bitcoin community is not just overwhelmingly larger but of overwhelmingly better quality as well. Bitcoin is surrounded by real entrepreneurs working hard to create new and useful services for Bitcoin. Altcoins are surrounded by loud-mouthed pretenders with irrational hopes of duplicating Nakamoto's success. This does not mean that there is anything intrinsically wrong with altcoins: the problem is simply that once Bitcoin exists, then there is no additional value, from a monetary standpoint, of creating knock-offs. Can anyone really expect to create something of value by rereleasing Bitcoin under a new name and with a few tiny changes to its source code? What makes Bitcoin great cannot easily be duplicated. Thus, while the Bitcoin community matures and grows as more and more entrepreneurs are attracted to its potential, the altcoin communities can only whine for attention.

For a new currency to take bitcoins place it would have to represent a significant improvement over bitcoin, or bitcoin would have to first FAIL before this could happen. So the question is not will bitcoin become obsolete, but will (your proposed new coin) overtake bitcoin? I don’t see any reason to believe that Altcoins represents a fundamental new innovation with meaningful improved functionality.

In physics, we learn about the concept of entropy. Entropy is often described as “chaos”, “randomness”, or “disorder”. To simplify quantum mechanics as much as possible, imagine a basket with a line drawn down the middle, and throw some balls into the basket. If all the balls are on one side of the line, that is an ordered state and has low entropy. If the balls are spread across both sides then it has higher entropy.

Now, let us take the concept of entropy and apply it to cryptocurrencies. We can imagine each cryptocurrency created has a possibility that some value can be placed within it. If all possible value is placed in bitcoin, and none in litecoin or altcoin, then this is a low entropy state. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that entropy in a system should always increase. So we should expect the total cryptocurrency value to be spread among all the possible altcoins.

Going back to our example of balls in a basket, one can easily get all the balls onto one side of the line simply by tilting the basket. This represents the concept of enthalpy, or energy within the system. Just as gravity pulls the balls onto one side of the basket, enthalpy can pull things into a higher entropic state. The most proof-of-work has been put into bitcoin, and so it takes higher energy to put any value into an altcoin.

From an entropy standpoint, there will always be alternate currencies, and the value assigned to them will always be greater than zero. But from an enthalpy standpoint, bitcoin is favored over altcoins, so the total value of each altcoin will remain very low compared to bitcoins.

read this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=921887.0

The point is not about making Bitcoin worth more or less (I am perfectly happy for it to be considered "the gold standard").

The point is that blockchain technology can do a lot of other useful things (such as tallying votes) and there is no good reason that every possible use of a blockchain should be added to the Bitcoin blockchain.

In regards to the "strength" of PoW I have actually developed a new proof concept which will be published (with a white paper) in the next few months (and it doesn't require massive computing).

Also I am not going to be launching it as a "coin" but instead as a "create your own blockchain for whatever purpose it suits" approach (aimed mostly at business).

Oh - and it will be open source (so I am not going to make money from the concept - only perhaps for consulting).

Is it possible to update the bitcoind node to support both chains without duplicating the existing block data?   So once the first > 1MB block the fork happens but the node is aware of the second chain "possibility" already. As new blocks come in they are put on the correct chain based on size, prev hash, etc..   Or would you need to run 2 separate nodes if you want to use both?  Both on port 8333 but each rejecting the other's blocks and txs.

Without modification to the code you'd need different ports but my point is not that we want two "identical" blockchain systems as any major problem would presumably hit both of them (i.e. it would be better to have different blockchains that work on different consensus mechanisms).

First time i hear someone talking sense in here for a very long time.

Respect goes to OP

My concerns with replacing POW and consensus mechanisms are with the following:

1) Trust concerning the security of money?
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ttps.html

2) The crucial Byzantine-replicated chain-of-signed-transactions?
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/securetitle.html

Hal Finneys “RPOW” that is used to solve the Byzantine General’s Problem, a problem in ordinary computing that demonstrates through “game theory” how a group of potential co-operators can come to the best consensus even with the possibility of having malicious operators among them.
http://cryptome.org/rpow.htm
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-dawn-of-trustworthy-computing.html

A proof-of-work that is a node in the Byzantine-resilient peer-to-peer system to lessen the threat of an untrustworthy party controlling the majority of nodes and thus corrupting a number of important security features.
http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
http://cryptome.org/rpow.htm
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs614/2004sp/papers/lsp82.pdf

Does your new paper contain the advance in technology and knowledge that is needed to produce a truely trusted solution that equals or surpasses the security of proof-of-work and Nakamoto Consensus?

That is a good question and I won't know I guess until we publish - but my point is not that I think my system will be *better* but that it will be an alternative (even if it turns out to be less secure).

So Bitcoin would retain its "gold value" by being the "most secure" if my proof ends up being viewed as less secure.

But even so it is better to have more than one type of blockchain just in case someone finds a horrible attack that "destroys" a blockchain (i.e. being "superior" to Bitcoin is not the point at all).

The main thing is that Bitcoin constantly promotes itself as "decentralised" yet wants to be the "one and only block chain" of the world.

If people can't see a slight problem with that then I sincerely wonder about their thinking.

I definitely agree with some of the issues you are addressing.......I'll check out the white paper when released.

I don't get how this makes sense. People propose sidechains so that the main blockchain is not enormous. But... where are you proposing to store the sidechains? Because moving information from one place to another doesn't make it disappear.

Maybe you can say that sidechains don't need to be on the same servers as the main blockchain. But even then, to secure these sidechains you would need a similar amount of servers storing and validating these chains, and it's just the same. Not in the same space, but taking up space anyway.

Even Andreas himself is saying sidechains are sometimes overrated.

It is still decentralized (agreed upon ledger by multiple nodes) and still trustless.  Using the blockchain for everything would make it more powerful with all the added computation.  Why not have a backbone blockchain for every project?  Are you afraid it will fail?  Certainly nodes will prevent that and the added computation will make it that much harder for attackers.

I get that you think one blockchain is "centralized" - but that's misleading.  It's set up in a decentralized environment from the beginning.

Trying to tie everything to that one blockchain *is* in fact centralising as it puts all them all at risk if there is a failure (such as its crypto being broken).

Having multiple blockchains that work in different ways is just a "sensible" approach or do you keep all of your assets in one single bank account?

Also Bitcoin is simply not suited to many, many things mostly because confirmations take too long.

For most stuff, it's safe to accept an unconfimed transaction and be happy with it. I don't understand why people argue about this non-issue.

One blockchain for currency is ideal.

If you want other blockchains, there are plenty. They are called alts.

I like Bitcoin for the BitPools voting because it is the most secure protocol in the world. That is kinda handy for voting.

I have more than one bank account, but all of them are in the same currency (MXN). I don't want to have to exchange currencies just to be able to buy a cup of coffee.

Really - if we end up adding transaction fee replacement (which is expected to occur) then a lot of people are going to be stealing an awful amount of stuff if vendors are silly enough to accept unconfirmed transactions.

Clearly you don't have much in the way of serious investments (where are your stocks and property?).

The whole "currency" thing is what tends to blind people (and cause most of the silliness).

Blockchains are going to have a hell of a lot more to offer us than currencies (and you should know this better than most).

I, like most people in the world, do not have such things as stocks. Why would this be relevant?

Because double-spending is the easiest thing in the world.

Because in the future stocks will be on blockchains also as will property titles, etc.

I would rather that we don't have the world's entire assets relying upon one single blockchain.

With fee replacement it actually would be extremely easy for nearly anyone to do (as tools would be created to do it for you).

How come?

Because it would allow you to create a tx with a very low fee (that would have little chance of confirming in days) and then replace it with another tx with a higher fee.

Easy money!


It is already possible to effectively do this at the moment (but it's not very easy to do which is why we don't really see this happening much now).

EDIT: removed "brainfart"

Ok, so you can have your Stockchain for things like this, but for people who use Bitcoin as a currency, it would be a headache to have to constantly exchange currencies just because you can't have all of it in the same chain.

What? Fee replacement only allows you to replace the fee, how can that bring a totally new transaction into play? Also, when I said you can accept unconfirmed transactions most of the time, I said “most” because you can predict that a transaction won't be confirmed and reject those.

For certain I am not advocating that one should be constantly having to shift funds around from blockchain to blockchain but just that having more than one kind of blockchain is a form of "insurance" against the failure of any particular one.

Yes - sorry - I forgot that fee replacement is supposed to check that the UTXOs don't change.

But even Gavin firmly advises no-one to accept zero confirmation payments with anything of more than trivial value.

How can the Bitcoin's blockchain fail, considering the amount of nodes and miners connected today? You would need a meteorite or something to make it fail.

But we're talking about things of trivial value, aren't we?

It only needs one serious "zero day" bug to be found to cause a fork (and we already have had one).

Also any stuff about "buying coffee" for Bitcoins at the moment is just plain "silly" (the entire network could only handle 7 TPS - I think you'll find a lot more coffees than 7 per second are sold throughout the world - so if we all started trying to buy our coffees with Bitcoin we'd only succeed in killing Bitcoin).

Having separate chains for things like "vouchers" can do a lot to alleviate trying to do everything on the one blockchain.

OK, so you know for a fact that bugs can be fixed easily without needing an alternate chain.


Well, yes. That's the point of people suggesting a larger block size, so that more people can buy coffee (and other trivial stuff) simultaneously. What's the point of this argument?

Seriously - we were extremely lucky that the fork didn't cause a lot more trouble.

Perhaps you are not the kind of person to bother with things like "insurance" but I can assure you that the financial world and big business in general are never going to "put all their eggs in one blockchain".

That didn't came out of luck, but out of people who want Bitcoin to succeed and so fixed it as soon as possible.

As soon as possible being the point - it wasn't fixed instantly - if Bitcoin was holding the entire world's economy and that happened then the repercussions would be *enormous*.

There is a reason why NASA have redundant systems - why do they bother if they could just create one perfect one?

There is a reason why "hedge funds" exist and there is a reason why "insurance" exists and why banks actually have their own servers rather than putting everything into the cloud.

It seems the reason for all these things is not clear to you at all (so there is little point continuing the discussion IMO).

Are 1690 nodes (https://blockchain.info/en/connected-nodes) not enough redundancy for you?

I see room for several alt chains to be wildly successful, and (obviously) we don't need the constant flood of new ones.

Of course. It's not magic.

Also, that's the reason Bitcoin is still beta software: so that errors can happen without fucking up with the world. That's why there's not Bitcoin 1.0 yet.

They are *all running the safe software* so if there is a bug in that software it doesn't matter if there are 1M+ nodes.

Why can you not get this?

There is never going to be "one single point of failure" for the entire world's Assets - put simply no government is ever going to allow it (and no large serious business is either).

Any decent software engineer knows "you can never fix all the bugs" so there never will be a Bitcoin 1.0 (in terms of something that is 100% reliable).

And NASA redundant servers run software different from one another?

They often have completely different programs to do the same thing just in case one implementation is found to be wrong.

It is also common for large businesses like banks and insurance companies to use more than one computer system (running a completely different OS) to look after their data.

Cool. So, you know there are different implementations for Bitcoin too (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/25294/3919), right?

This shit is getting ridiculous. Ok you want to another blockchain? head over to Alt and stay there. Why keep making threads in this section. Obviously you just want a complete separate altcoin then insert " trustless system to transfer between them" as some sort of holy grail.

Sad to see bitcoiners decided to go bear and still want to stay relevant by such "innovation"

Talk is cheap, do it, and publish your altcoins and let ppl make their choice. Otherwise, this thread is another spam.

No there are not (when it comes to the actual consensus) - you need to read a bit more of Gavin and gmaxwell's posts on this to educate yourself a bit more.

I have *no intention of making a coin at all* (so your challenge is rather pointless).

How can you have consensus if different software did things differently?

How is your sidechains proposal not an altcoin?

Exactly why I pointed out the problem with your post.

Because it is neither a "sidechain" nor an "altcoin".

Is that easy enough for you?

(it seems that you are expecting me to announce a new "coin")

OK, not a sidechain. An independent blockchain.

How is an independent blockchain not an altcoin?

Oh really? Then go to Altcoin discussion then. You keep bringing this shit up everytime. Its borderline spamming now.

As for government not allowing one place for all asset. Speak for yourself, why did you move to China? you dont like living in a free world?

You dont have to convince ppl. You do what you feel is right to you. The more you talk nonsense here, the worse you sound. I met ppl like you since I joined Gentoo project in 2000s, all kind of shitty debates no real work. You dont like it, fork it and make your own.

If it doesn't even have a "coin" then exactly how can it be an altcoin?

But you're comparing it to NASA. Do you think the different NASA servers also not reach consensus? (internally, that is)

You are more than welcome to ignore this topic and stop wasting your time posting here.

So, a purely informational blockchain? That's nice, but it doesn't seem to fit with everything we've been discussing so far.

would you stop spamming new threads? or you're just an attention whore now?

It would if people didn't keep trying to "put words into my mouth" and insist that I am trying to flog an altcoin.

He raises valid questions.

Btw, go home, baby. Your mom has called you.

We're talking about “not bloating Bitcoin's blockchain”. You propose to have alternate independent blockchains to alleviate it.

But Bitcoin is about money. Their tokens are meant to be currency. So, what exactly is your informational blockchain going to do if not handle money?

If it does handle money, then it needs its own tokens (because Bitcoin tokens only exist within Bitcoin). And such it becomes an altcoin.

It doesn't become an altcoin if it doesn't work like a "currency" (i.e. allow for easy transfer of funds for example).

You said yourself that you wouldn't be bothered with having to exchange things just to buy a cup of coffee.

Are funds not currency?

Yes. I would rather use Bitcoin.

Do you think that "houses are currency"?

Yet they are a "store of funds" and they can be "transferred" (perhaps I should have used the word *value* instead though).

I am certainly not going to try and convince you not to use Bitcoin if it is usable for that purpose.

OK. How is this related with my cup of coffee I'm trying to buy?

Aiya, a mom joke. Has not seen it for a while, Are JokesRUs having a sale ? lol the irony in your attempt to insult.

The whole cup of coffee thing was never my main point at all but in any case I am sure that you are familiar with "vouchers" (or "coupons") for shopping, restaurants, etc. (and yes maybe even your cup of coffee).

LOL at your nonsense, using bitcoin blockchain to carry deeds suddenly means "houses are currency"

Also, curreny is just a medium of exchanging value. Stop making yourself looks bad. You live in China, you should know there was time when ppl use rice as currency.

No. That was a genuine advice to stay away of the discussion if you can't contribute anything valuable. And now go, baby, go.

and you do?

Disagreeing equals " no contribution" now?

Nice, a step from calling it trolling i guess.

If ppl trade vouchers what dose it mean? Thats right its a currency.

You really think ppl here would take you serious for such lack of basic knowledge?

My guess is you just want to avoid calling it "coins" as much as possible and failed terribly.

*sigh* this is why we can't have nice things...

Let's just end this now (the trolling doesn't interest me at all).