Bitcoin Forum

I was recently reading this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/43pq1z/i_didnt_realize_how_bad_it_is_blockstream_has_9/?ref=search_posts

And it seems scary that Bitcoin Core development is driven by a single company. With news that this company got $55 mil founding more, I worry they will be doing more to please and make profits for themselfs and investors, rather than what's good for Bitcoin's community.

When did Bitcoin go from being free and community driven development with volunteers fighting against current financial systems and companies, into de-facto companies driven project with primary goal of fast financial gains?

So Tor's development is driven by the US government? Just trying to understand your logic behind this.

TOR development is funded by the US government, but not necessarily driven by it. Unlike corporations, governments (at least in theory) are not created/structured to generate profit.

Corporations, of course, are responsible to their shareholders, typically to generate financial gains.
Imagine such a for-profit corporation, a hot dog bun manufacturer, being placed in charge of your lunch menu.
Question: All other things being equal, do you think you'll eat hot dogs or hamburgers more often?

I would believe believe most developments would be run by only one company. Or maybe two or three at most.

This is nonsense. This has nothing to do with control. Only 1 developer from Blockstream has commit access and that is what matters. Stop reading biased sub-reddits such as "r/btc" as your source of news (i.e. take the news with a grain of salt).

Apparently.

dont diss bitcoin core. or they will call you a corporate shill.. oh wait................................

ok, lets try something else.. 2nd time lucky

dont be part of the community asking for a simple 3 line of coe updateto expand bitcoin, because.. blockstream is there for the benefit of the community.. oh wait.................

ok i got it, third time lucky

dont rebuttal the code using logic, because blockstream is all about the code logic.. oh wait.. dang it, even in this case blockstreams defense is illogic rebuttals that make no sense. and are just said to confuse noobs into surrendering to the roadmap..
EG
blockstream: increasing to 2mb hardfork will require data centers  .. community: but, segwit full archival is between 2-4mb blocks
blockstream: users cant handle the data.. community: skype videocalls are 30mb UPLOAD every 10minutes from a home PC
blockstream: but the other implementations have corporate agenda.. community: so do you, you even wrote your agenda to move people off bitcoin in a roadmap (liquid, sidechains LN)


in short it was always a 3 corporate shell game.

3 shells and the name of the game is "you have 2 chances to throw away the corporate ball under the shells, the 3rd shell stays"
(secret all 3 shells R3, toomin, and blockstream have corporate balls) though for months they have pretended they are here only for the community

To be fair, I don't think a private company has the same legal obligations. There are no shareholders.

"Blockstream has raised $55m in Series A funding to continue its work expanding the bitcoin code base for commercial use." --CoinDesk

"A Series A round is the name typically given to a company's first significant round of venture capital financing. The name refers to the class of preferred stock sold to investors in exchange for their investment. It is usually the first series of stock after the common stock and common stock options issued to company founders, employees, friends and family and angel investors."--Wikip

"We were one of the first companies that painted a vision for interoperable blockchains, that there wasn’t going to be one blockchain, but many of them, all building off the bitcoin codebase to deliver the technology."

No false modesty here. Just a dynamic, innovative company.


http://coinjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/23589894666_de229b75a7_k-696x464.jpg

Problem?

So what if its going in the right direction and any changes have consensus what the problem?

blockstream shills reveal the bait and switch to move common bitcoin users off of bitcoin and into their pretend money.


its becoming obvious that they dont want bitcoin to be a useful currency for everyone/anyone.
sounds so much departed away from satoshi's reason for creating bitcoin and is moving closer to the corporate crap that the genesis quote was trying to highlight as being wrong with this planet

This isn't new. You see, in a free economy people can get hired by companies of even found them. Does that mean that they'll abuse their power over developing a project with perfectly open development procedures like bitcoin? Maybe. But if they're caught on the act it's very likely that their privileges will be stripped.

To me it seems like this argument is pushed by Gavin's supporters to make it seem like there's a conspiracy edging them out. But even if the theory is true, what evidence do you have to show that blockstream is not good for bitcoin, can you compare it to bitcoin XT or Classic o say that it is better or worst? No. It's not even out yet and as long as there is no urgent need for larger blocks (which there isn't) some people better stop pushing that narrative.

i dont support gavin.

but what if blockstreams agenda, all along was to make gavin and hearne the scapegoats to take peoples attention away from the blockstream corporatization.

we all know that gavin and hearn wouldnt succeed. even if us normal folk just wanted more capacity without the corporate bait and switches.. we knew gavin and hearne was not the solution.
but now we know blockstream isnt either.

so now you know it too.. what are you going to do to:

how will you strip their privileges?

How much power do they have? If they choose to raise the block size to 4MB, could they make it just by snapping their fingers?

Also, being a member of Core development is certainly nice and honorific, but it doesn't bring much food on the table. Developers need to have a regular job.

So what should I read? /r/Bitcoin only which is biased for Core? 

If the majority of the community agrees that certain commits should not be followed, they won't. Kinda how Gavin and Mike dug their own holes.

r/btc is very much anti core, so much so that it's just as much of a fucking joke as r/bitcoin. I don't really think you'll find anywhere that's untarnished. You may as well pick and choose and come to your own conclusions.  

Garzik is reportedly now using the same shovel (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/440vvo/this_is_why_blockstream_gets_so_much_hate_around/czmthfa) as Gavin and Mike, as he attacks segwit for no good reason.

I wonder what make him lose enough self-respect to put up with being bossed around by a bigoted, copyright-trolling shitlord like Olivier Janssens?

You'd think Classic's (heavy-handed, top-down) steadfast commitment to 75% instead of the far more reasonable (and miner endorsed) 95% would clue Jeff in to the fact it's not a serious effort.  But no....

Oh well.  We needed a new Lolcow to replace Hearn anyway!   ;D

The idea that blockstream controls core and has a secret agenda to manipulate core is complete and absolute bullshit.

How, exactly, does blockstream "drive" the development of Bitcoin Core? Only 1 out of the 7 people who have commit access work for blockstream. gmaxwell used to but he voluntarily gave up his commit access for personal reasons. 1 out of 7 certainly does not mean that they have control, in fact, that is very little control. The other 6 developers are not affiliated with blockstream and they would revoke the access rights of sipa if he decided to commit things for blockstream that is detrimental to Bitcoin.

Furthermore, blockstream was founded by several developers who worked on Bitcoin Core before blockstream existed and those people have contributed greatly to Bitcoin Core. This isn't some company that was founded by a bunch of people who then hired Core devs to do their work, this is Core devs who wanted to do something and founded a company for it.

your analogy is much like saying.. "its not like burglars wanting to break in and steal the family jewels, blockstream was a family business, it is their house"

but its more like "someone in the family is now stealing the family jewels. he has now told his friends if they hand him some cash, he will leave the door unlocked so anyone can sneak in"
while also pointing the finger at the 2 cousins he pushed away and said dont trust them they know bad people, they are the ones after the family jewels, not my friends

I'm not giving you an analogy...

But your analogy is false. Anything that blockstream would try to do with Bitcoin Core would have to go through sipa because he is the only one with commit access that works for blockstream. He can't "give them the keys" because there are no keys and there is nothing to give. Sipa could write code and commit it or people at blockstream could write code and submit a PR. Either way, the other 6 people with commit access would notice or the other hundreds of people actively watching Bitcoin Core's progress (me included) would notice. They would definitely notice if code was committed without a PR because that goes against the code review process. They would definitely notice if a PR was merged without discussion or with discussion and a lot of NACKs. That would of course result in the offending code being reverted and sipa having his commit access revoked. If that doesn't happen, a lot of people will be forking Bitcoin away from Bitcoin Core.

So going along with your analogy, sure the person in the family can give his friends the keys, but he cannot disable the alarm system. The alarm system will go off when the burglars try to break in and then the burglars are caught by the police and sent to jail.

All forks are dangerous and all forks must be deployed with near total consensus. Both hard and soft forks.*

_{*Use in moderation.}

Nah, seems perfectly reasonable that the "reference" software of the decentralized future of money would share the roadmap of a company with direct and growing ties to the past of money. 

Besides, we all know that a beautiful 76 million dollar saddle won't chafe too much. It doesn't have to, consider it a down payment on lots of riding through the verdant countryside together [altruistic work on open source software for the benefit of everyone].

A wonderful day in Bitcoin history, my friends.

Coders code eat like shining kings of the Earth while their peasant servants salt your fields. U jelly?

The nature of greed is to spawn multiple heads. Bitcoin and it's value attract that sort of beast, which is sadly inevitable; Bitcoin Incorporated is inevitable.

What are our options, if you truly look into this a little deeper? The evil <greed/power hungry> are coming from all sides. Our Options were Blockstream or Gavin or Mike Hearn and all of them had a hidden agenda. You will never remove the human element out of any technology or innovation.

Give me one team without a hidden agenda and I will follow them. If not, I will follow the people with the good code. 

Pedantically, it's 1 out of 5 now.   But yes, it just shows the dishonesty and the hippocracy of the attacks.  They claimed I was the problem. I _left_ and now it's still "blockstream controls bitcoin core". It's just going to be bullshit lies and threats until the end of time.

Part of the answer is that there are lot of people who do not want any work done improving Bitcoin.

There are people who do not want sidechains to exist; because it undermines their plans with altcoins and, especially, "spinoffs"... or want there to be drama in bitcoin so they can peddle their "hardfork upgrade to ethereum's design" as the grand solution.

There are people who do not want strong personal and commercial privacy to exist: They run services predicated on undermining the privacy of users or they own an interest in competing systems that bill privacy as their advantages.

There are people who don't care if Bitcoin is decentralized at all, but have raised millions on promises to store random third party data for practically no cost into the Bitcoin ledger.

And so on...

I don't believe there are many of each of these type; but there are some without scruples who don't mind faking it. And they're super busy spinning up lies like one of the only companies funding bitcoin tech development _at all_ somehow "controls" Bitcoin core because they employ one person that has commit access, or pay a half dozen people who have contributed out of several dozen while other companies pay no one to contribute.  And that is why we see that forums that are easily sockpuppeted like reddit are overrun with fabricated "increase blocksize at any cost" yelling, places like here less so.. and in person gatherings or [cryptographic measurements](http://bitcoinocracy.com/arguments/if-non-core-hard-fork-wins-major-holders-will-sell-btc-driving-price-into-the-ground) see far less.  

All this fabricated noise, right out of a GCHQ playbook (not that really think any state actors are involved)-- and it just may win: Because at the end of the day, the few with the courage to stop it gain nothing but the preservation of a dream of decentralized currency that changes the world; and too many others sit too quietly, hoping that others will take the heat. Dreams only go so far.

And some decades from now when your grandkids ask where were you when they took the shining hope of decentralized money away, more than a few people here will be able to tell them how they were fooled and fought to make it happen, or how simply stood idly by.

Wait, PwC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PricewaterhouseCoopers) is behind Tor?

I thought Blockstream are into sidechains, which I believe will become an important part of Bitcoins future, and enable it to become a world reserve currency. Why should their sidechain activities mean they are taking control of core?

Governments esp. the US one have shown to have a great interest in compromising the ability of anyone to stay anonymous for the sake of law enforcement. Tor is a thorn in their eyes, while at the same time they need it.

Thanks for making my point though. Some core developers are funded by blockstream, but that does not mean the core development or the bitcoin development in general is driven by the company.

I think the right direction is to let the protocol more or less fixed and spread it widely so it understood by more people. Just like IP protocol taught in many universities today

If you constantly change the protocol, then all the effort that countless people have put into making educational material and tutorials/books/videos will all become irrelevant very quickly, this is a way to not become a standard

People are talking about blockchain today, but then they heard that bitcoin is not blockchain anymore, it has changed to segwit chain, and maybe in future it will change its chain structure several times a day due to soft fork is totally safe ;D

IMO, no matter what happens to Bitcoin, if some people end up wanting decentralized money in the future they will have it. The technology can't be un-invented. If the 'main fork' of BItcoin eventually becomes highly centralized, some decentralized fork will spring up as long as there are cypherpunks who value it. Or some new cryptocurrency will be fill the 'hardcore decentralization' niche.

You _left_ for a month, and magically your email to the mailing list became core's official roadmap. So yes, there are some more than tangential connections here. Your visible agitation towards having to deflect this isn't encouraging.


More stories you've concocted to explain away criticism in your mind. They want some clean on-chain scaling so they must be altcoiners, anti privacy agents, or the same people that had us pinned at the 1MB limit for years with data storage and spam... Look, everyone wants LN and sidechains to exist and be functional, they just want them to compete on an even, not heavily slanted playing field.


Everyone just has it out for Blockstream simply because they contribute to development [does that make sense to anyone?]... could be GCHQ (just kidding). Calling people who honestly disagree with you a sockpuppet campaign is a surefire strategy for success, not a sign of ego enabled self-delusion or anything.


Exactly. Well put.

Recently. Too ignorant miners wanting short-term profits are the primary cause.

He left as in gave up commit access. It became obvious that he was not the 'problem' and that the 'Blockstream is evil' propaganda still persists, there was no reason to give in to trolls and shills.
Indeed.

Propaganda and lies are 'honest' disagreements? No. Either they're shills or there is something wrong with them. This has gone far beyond 'honest disagreements' (if you want those don't read almost anything in the last 6+ months).

The question is why are some of the members here buying into this story? It is pretty clear the that other side is going to use just about anything to get a successful 'fork' regardless of consensus.

Core development used to be literally controlled by one individual (at least entity ), first Satoshi and later Gavin. I think it may be more meaningful to ask another question: Is the interest of the Bitcoin economic majority well aligned with the interest of the company doing most of the protocol maintenance? Even if there is no company, you can't rule out the possibility of most core devs suddenly go evil and conspire to destroy Bitcoin - They might have a better chance that way.

I feel really bad for you dedicated bastards who actually put your time and talents into developing a potentially revolutionary technology, only to get shit on constantly by the ridiculous mood that's been overtaking the Bitcoin community lately. I'm largely a lurker on these forums, but it's gotten to the point where the noise is so abundant that the only way I feel that I can get useful information without dealing with overwhelming amounts of junk is to directly follow your posting history, Mr. Maxwell. So thank you; thank you to yourself and all of the actual development team that has done so much and put up with so much crap for the sake of an idea. I don't have the skills to offer much to Bitcoin, but I'll keep running a Core node for as long as it is viable to do so (which, best case scenario, might well be forever).

If anything is far more reasonable than 75%, then the Satoshi 51% fork, dear Monero troll!

Normally if is made a concern must be made even a proposal. To criticize or to make doubts is normal but is not normal to be stopped here. Let tell that you have right. What it would be the solution of this situation? Creating a corporate with 1 000 000 or even more owners (miners and users of bitcoin)? There are way much less them who must take care for bitcoin and are divided because of bullshits. How can be managed such kind of structure according to you? According to me must think before telling something. As I told even in some other my posts written before, it is easy to destroy but is hard to build. Everyone is able to destroy but only very few are able to build. Are you able to build? For such kind of people have need the world today and forever. Maybe even for destroyers but way much less. And only when after this act will be build.

That there is a sockpuppet campaign is an objective fact, and not up for debate. (see the hundreds of vigorous and dishonest attacks that inevitably are posted by single use throwaway accounts.)

There was never a period when it was just Gavin working on Bitcoin; this is a common narrative people spin but it is incorrect.

I can't speak for everyone. But I own a lot of Bitcoin. Blockstream's compensation is setup to make sure everyone receives time locked bitcoins so that everyone at blockstream has an interest there too-- I am aware of no other company in the Bitcoin space that this can be said for... Not to mention that no question ever seems to be asked about incentives or funding sources for the people opposing.

Judging by the lack of coins showing up on the bitcoinocracy polls (http://bitcoinocracy.com/arguments/if-non-core-hard-fork-wins-major-holders-will-sell-btc-driving-price-into-the-ground), the vigorously attacking groups may not be big investors in Bitcoin.

Indeed. Well more over, if someone were out to be evil they could just as well _not tell anyone_. I could _legally_ if not ethically be off working for EvilCorp and not tell a soul.  Based on what I've seen in this, people do a pretty poor job at asking probing questions. It's not the risks that you know about that are the most likely to cause harm, it's the ones you don't know about.

It also does not matter as long as the technology could be replicated by independant individuals and hence serve other purposes as those from governments and corporations.

The Core devs are clearly doing hypocrisy. In one hand they are stopping block size increase citing lack of consensus, and in other hand they are force feeding RBF & SegWit without consensus.

Indeed. In fact, 51% is explicitly defined as consensus. (oh but argument to authority blah blah. yes, and anyone who actually groks why its 51% are baffled by people who argue it shouldn't be)

Anything over and above that is just being kind. Any grace period of X from Y blocks is a courtesy. These measures are already *far more reasonable* than the actual consensus mechanism.

Remember when organofcorti argued over some percentage point slippage, and everyone jumped on the fact it might activate with *oh the horror* only 68%. This is *still* more than consensus. It is still deferring power to the status quo. This can't be overstated. The myth that a supermajority is needed needs to be dispelled.

The consensus mechanism was defined like it is to *exactly* deal with the situation where there is contention. Let hashrate decide.

If some people want to try and undermine this by trying to trick miners into following different chains, let them do so now. Let them reveal their hand. Then we can see who is truly being 'irresponsible', and who is truly 'trying to destroy bitcoin'.

The argument about fake nodes only works if those nodes are miners, they would have to partake in mining blocks until the 750/1000 trigger is hit. Then as soon is that happens, and a 1MB block is mined, they would reject it and immediately implicate themselves. In a trust centric system thats probably a bad business plan.

How do you define 'lot' ? 10+, 100+, 1k+, 10k+, 100k+ ...what ?

Removing the rules against actions that the network protocol expressly forbids against the will of an economically significant portion of users, and risking a persistent ledger split in the process is not a comparable thing. It's something that Bitcoin Core strongly believe it does not have the moral or technical authority to do, and attempting to do so would be a failure to uphold the principles of the system. It's not something to do lightly, and people who think that it's okay to change the system's rules out from under users who own coins in it are not people that I'd want to be taking advice from-- that kind of thinking is counter to the entire Bitcoin value proposition.

The other things you're talking about are fully compatible updates which users can voluntarily choose to participate in or can choose to ignore. Users opt into applying them to their own transactions, and they shouldn't really be anyone elses business.  Neither of them are forces applied to third parties.

In the case of Opt-In RBF-- that is purely local node policy, not even a consensus rule. If even one miner wants to use it it could not be prevented even if all the other users and developers and all miners agreed that it was desirable to prevent. Worse, there are already miners out there doing full replacement without the signaling. Without the positive uses being able to opt in and voluntarily choose to use replacement, we will likely see more of that spread sooner. So you have something that causes no harm, potentially delays harm, and is fully optional being used to attack Bitcoin Core? I think that is really lame. Especially since replacement of non-final transactions was a feature in the _very first_ version of Bitcoin that was only turned off much later because as it was originally implemented it was a flooding vulnerability. In people's zest to politically manipulate others into disliking Bitcoin Core it seems that some have really lost the plot.

We all wait with abated breath while you go and cite that "explicit" definition for us.

It's nonsense in any case: When you're talking about the hard rules of the system-- the limits that make it valuable and tractable-- no amount of hashpower is enough to override it. Not 99.9%.  If a miner violates the hard rules of the system they are simply not miners anymore as far as all the nodes are concerned. This is an integral part of the checks and balances that create and preserve the incentives of the system: Miners can't just steal a bit on the side, their power is very strongly shifted to either participate honestly or DOS attack the whole thing (in which case the users would presumably change the proof of work), but not attack the system while continuing to have it usable.

But really, if any of you have an honest desire to continue a conversation-- go convince the OP to retract the wonky and non-factual claim. Otherwise this is all just a hall of mirrors.

Explain how they are "force feeding" RBF and SegWit. Those who do not like these features do not have to use them, and, more importantly, do not even need to upgrade in order for other people use them. Old versions of Bitcoin will continue to work, and new versions get new features. Users of the new version can even downgrade if there are problems with the new version. That's what makes soft forks less dangerous than hard forks.

dont forget to add "paymentcodes" to bloat transactions (defeating any positive segwit would have achieved reducing bloat) to hide transaction values.. which is more about breaking node validation ability.

i do love how the blockstream sockpuppets try to say only one person is getting paid from the $55mill.. but atleast i now see why so many people are sucking up to Sipa and blindly following his plan. (hoping for a payday if they kiss enough ass)

the thing i do find funny is that segwit archival mode (fullnode) data transmission is the same as a 2mb limit proposal. i find it funny that blockstream thinks that libsecp256k1 wont be included in other implementations to fix processing time.
then i find it funny that the blockstream crew want to force people off of bitcoin blockchain and get users onto valueless altcoins and security risk offchains. rather than doing what the real community want, which is to expand bitcoin (not blockchains).

i have nothing against sidechains, but the methods blockstream are doing it, are obvious to push people off of bitcoin. rather than making it a free choice to jump back and forth. this is done by no longer fixing the tx fee to a sub 2cent value that moves down in decimals if the fiat price increases, to keep transactions cheap. thus attempting to make bitcoin less useful for normal people.

the blind suggestion that segwit helps more people become fullnodes, is fundamentally flawed. most users will not enable archival mode and so when the 5000 peers connect together, not all of them will stick with being archival mode. as they are told "everything is fine compatible mode still works", users lose no function.. but there would be a lack of peers set as archival node to be able to get the full data to validate. (one of many bait and switch plans)
along with pushing part of the community onto sidechains, more users wont be using bitcoin fullnodes but instead running elements fullnode.

blockstream looks good on glossy paper. but in the reality of real life usage scenario's, all of those dreams evaporate and what is left is a incorporated bitcoin that normal people cant use because it has been outpriced with tx fee's and bloated with "paymentcodes" and other stuff.

if only blockstream thought logically that tx fee's are not even required as a income stream for atleast 2 decades, they would not be pushing for tx fee rise... oh wait they would, as they need the rise to push people away from bitcoin.

blockstream really do need to look at the genesis block message and remember what bitcoin was all about. as i feel that blockstream payday's have blinded people away from an open currency and swayed people over to the bad code and corporate strategy to create profit at the expense of controlling normal peoples finances.

by saying i want 2mb does not mean im in the r3 boat. i hate them for the same reasons as the blockstream corp. all i want is clean code that remains where bitcoin is the open currency for anyone to be part of.

a 2mb implementation with libsecp256k1 does not cause doomsday scenarios of needing datacenters to run fullnodes... its just that simple
if blockstream shills reply about the malle-fix. that too can be done in a dozen different ways too. without all of the hidden corporate agenda that would push normal people (the million+ population) away from hoarding bitcoins.

everyone knows that in april if they want to remain as full-node status, they are going to need to upgrade, so its not as soft as the glossy leaflet pretends. if you dont upgrade you wont be fully validating node. and if they do upgrade, some will choose not to run full archival mode, so blockstream will be cutting the full node population down. while not (longterm) increasing capacity because of the other features that add more bytes to a tx (after segwits promise of less bytes).

i see soo many bait and switch plans that end up pushing normal people down a one way street that moves away from hoarding bitcoins... and that is the thing that i do not find funny

Will Blockstream Core agree to shift to 2mb if bitcoinocracy poll indicates more coins are supporting 2mb ?

Well this is quite a rare and good stance towards the development team. I've said this before and I'll say it again. People without a technical background can't even begin to imagine the complexity of the development of certain features. If they did understand the complexity, there would be much less toxicity (aside from sadists and trolls).

That's possible, however the poll is unlikely to indicate such.

RBF is not forced, it is opt-in now (IIRC). There is consensus on Segwit; the only people who are against it are those who fail to understand it; besides it is a soft fork (won't be activated without 95% consensus).

they will have no choice at that point, because it would mean that their proposal is not well seen, and their soft work will be useless

if indeed miners and majority of the merchants are supporting more the simple increase to 2mb, then this is the way to go

I don't think there's an actual control over bitcoin development by such companies. if some developers are in their payroll, that doesn't mean it's not possible to keep the blockchain of bitcoin segragated from corporate interests.

Wrong.
No it does not. This is not a fact, this is (paid) propaganda.

https://i.imgur.com/IhyvMef.png
::)

Those definitions are subjective, but definitely not under 100/1000.

I think the rest of my post made it clear that it's a rhetorical question.

He's compromising on the blocksize. 8)  The general public might be completely in the dark about who runs core now, but people that eat, live, and breathe bitcoin aren't as easily fooled. As a moderator on this forum, you are indirectly (at best) sponsored by Blockstream.

He's not. '20 MB urgent' -> '2MB absurd' -> '2MB fork'. This is not compromising, this is manipulating. A thing can't be "urgent" if you can accept a 10x smaller version of it. Also you have no idea why he left Core because you were never more deeply involved ("eat, live and breath" the propaganda I'd say).

Correct. My post was actually directed at the person that you've quoted, but I felt like quoting you as well was better.

Wrong. You're putting up tweets from long ago. In addition, you can't possibly be an objective contributor to this conversation.

It is not wrong. Those are all the things that he has said. You can't change that, regardless of when he said it.
Said the person that suddenly started supporting Classic like a true 'forker'. It is pretty obvious to a few of us.
If anything, as seen on bitcoinocracy.com there is barely any support (from the holders) for a fork.

its obvious that the blockstream shills dont want normal people making normal transactions on bitcoin blockchain


remember. Those are all the things that he has said. You can't change that, regardless of when he said it.

blockstream shills dont want bitcoin to be an open currency for anyone to be part of. anyone who is against the blockstream plan is essentially being told to STFU and get lost.

i think the blockstream lovers have lost complete sense of what bitcoin was all about. they really need to look at the genesis block message and see what the quote was pointing at.

corporate control of finance creates crisis, greed and controls that negatively affect normal people

Great posts, franky1.

A $1 purchase is not a normal transaction that a normal person makes with an international payment system. I've been complaining about this increasingly loudly since 2012, long before Blockstream was founded.



Remember. Those are the things that I have said. You can't change that, regardless of when I said it.

Remember that anyone is free to launch their own bitcoin and compete. Control is what we allow, IMO.

Bitcoin is a business. Nobody can deny that.

If it's controlled by one company ... hmm... it may be good, since this way it can surely grow. But it can be very bad, especially if they will tell the common user "I don't care about you".
But a company - any company - wants to earn money. If they go "the dark side", the people can - and will - just migrate to another coins. Really, there are plenty of coins just waiting around the corner for Bitcoin (as a business) to fail.


So if it's going to be a "closed business", Bitcoin will go down.
If it's indeed controlled by one company, that will not allow this to happen.

a $1 purchase is a normal transaction. i can think of a million things people can buy.. the mindset you and others have is that america dominates.
do you realise that some countries only get paid $1 every 3 hours as a wage. that you can by a large plate of food for under $1. where $1 if used wisely can buy a couple bags of groceries..
once you move your mindset out of Emerica. and think of the world as a whole. you will see that your own preference is actually pricing 4billion people out of possibly using bitcoin for "normal transactions"
EG 1.3billion of china, minimum wage ~80cents
so if you think while being in ameria $7.50-$9 is a "normal transaction" then $1 is "normal transaction" to 1.3billion chinese
EG 1.2billion of china, minimum wage ~30cents
so if you think while being in ameria $7.50-$9 is a "normal transaction" then $1 is "normal transaction" to 1.2billion indians

so get your mindset out of the 300million americans and think of the 4billion-7billion world that do think $1 is "normal transaction" amount

but if blockstream expand its capacity. and stop with the fee greed. (it is possible to do without datacenters)
EG 2mb+ libsecp256k is fast processing times and more capacity.(that home users can afford to run without special servers
EG 2mb+ libsecp256k1 +segwit is even more capacity, and again manageable on home computers.
but
1mbsegwit + huge fee's to sway people over to sidechains.. is not expanding bitcoin, but making blockstreams pre-mined coins go from valueless to valuable, while strangling bitcoin.

bitcoin WAS suitable. for microtransactions.. thats what the 8 decimals are for!. the problem is the greed of fiat lovers pricing bitcoin into unsuitability

The noise generators and disinfo agents shall not gain succor so long as Honey Badger ignores their odious presence.

Of course it did nothing but encourage them when you absolved yourself of commit access ('if the system is solid, attack the people').

That was predictable and I hope your reason for leaving was to spend more time coding or fishing or whatever, not to appease the liars and terrorists.

The walls of La Serenissima, high and strong, are defended by stouthearted men of mind who stand ready to quickly dispatch any incautious adversary.

https://i.imgur.com/pzGs3rN.png

Take heart Sir GMAX of Core; the only people feeling fire will be those foolish enough to attack Bitcoin's commanding heights!

perfect metaphor
blockstream are building castles, with high walls (barriers of entry). using guns(shills) to kill off anyone that wants to be in the bitcoin community.

"bitcoins commanding heights". your nailing it.. your mindset really is in a corporate controlled bitcoin. and not a open currency.

Ja! Führer's doomsday weapon, the "Embarrassing Freshman Virus," is a success!
Succor... odious. He talks like a total douche now...
http://s15.postimg.org/4itsxph4r/s_w21_3b24776u.jpg

Nobody said anything about America. Why would I? I don't even live in America, nor have I ever been to America. I said Bitcoin is an international payment system. When was the last time you made a $1 transaction using SWIFT?

My own preference is that nobody would be poor and everyone could have the basic necessities of life for free, but that's simply not possible in the real world. Bitcoin is expensive. It's by far the most powerful distributed computing system ever conceived. And anyone who wants to use it has to pay for it. That's the plain reality of the matter, whether I like it or not.

It wasn't. Ever. Everyone who has ever tried has complained about how impractical it is for that purpose. The problem is the greed of freeloaders expecting to use a ridiculously expensive payment system for free.

It is 22000 to be specific. 14000 can be traced back 3 different addresses.

5000 : https://blockchain.info/address/18mkjbVaHAcMauL6iiy7zm9VjMYCjy4UU1

4600 : https://blockchain.info/address/1LtrEDMGKV81vf8eGYYz4c7u6A8936YgDM

4400 : https://blockchain.info/address/1K5PrGXqH8iSpKX4YsPp5gStLLsYTmnVBh

its not free!!
miners get multiple thousands of dollars worth of value every ~10 minutes.
transaction fee's do not need to be a revenue stream for atleast 2 decades

First this idiot says:


Then he follows it up with:


So then - why is not free if according to your own logic there is no need to charge for it for at least 2 decades?

I'm guessing you are going to say the only reason is that we don't have Gavin in charge and 2MB blocks?

:D

In other words, Bitcoin should be a bank-to-bank payment system?


Bitcoin is not a "distributed computing system." If it is, it's certainly the most *idiotic* computing system, distributed or not. A non-programmable distributed computer that only solves one problem is only useful if the problem itself is useful, no one will pay for the privilege of solving 2+2 for the gazillionth time.


re. "ridiculously expensive": Now you're getting it.

yeah but i could argue that the altcoin scene is "centralized to bitcoin", in the sense that no matter how many copy paste one can launch, the attention will always be on bitcoin

and in regard to the fee and microtransaction problem, it is easily fixable by lowering the fee when the minimum fee will be too high

Any non-satoshi white paper design, e.g. segwit, side chain, LN, they are all alt-coins, because they know that alt-coin will never succeed alone, they try to become parasite on the main blockchain, or even morph the main chain by slowly changing its architecture

It is the same thinking behind Mastercoin, but Mastercoin did not succeed because they use expensive bitcoin transactions to do useless things like smart contract (the concept of smart contract is questionable, since without law enforcement backing, the smart contract will be defaulted easily without any consequence). However, if you can use a parasitic chain to enable thousands of transactions and merge them into one bitcoin transaction, then it becomes economically feasible, and you can make a lot of money from this parasitic chain while let the bitcoin network provide the top level security

In fact there is no way to stop this kind of parasitic chain from appearing, so the mission of core devs should be defending the blockchain from being polluted, not becoming the parasite and leech the value from blockchain

Your post might seem correct to the average user, sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. You're putting a change in the Merke tree(s), sidechains and LN in the same bag. You're comparing the incomparable and calling them all altcoins (if I understood your post correctly)? You're trying to say that the 'satoshi white paper design' is the only and perfect design that should be included in/to Bitcoin? Appeal to authority? This must be a bad joke. Let's start:
1) Segwit has nothing to do with sidechains or LN as a concept (even though it carries necessary changes for LN).
2) Any altcoin could be a sidechain to Bitcoin with two-way peg and this has a wast amount of use cases; sidechain != LN
3) LN, being a second layer solution that enables two participants a theoretically infinite amount of transaction, is now a bad thing?
4) This has nothing to do with Mastercoin.

---

---

Corrections.

because for the next 20 years the block reward covers costs..your blind mindset is that miners income is based on fee's..
seriously you lack logic.
and by the way im not a gavin fanboy.
the desire for 2mb is a community need way before gavin even mentioned it. even gavin disagreed with 2mb last year because he wanted 8-200mb(whatever it was).. he only settled on 2mb this year because the community wanted it first and he is now riding the community needs coke-tail..

it wasnt gavin that envisioned 2mb and the community followed gavin. it was the other way round.
so stop trying to make the whole community that wants 2mb into some crappy dirty corrupt crypptsy theifing toomin or some r3 bank loving gavincoin..

the community want 2mb.. not the corporate shit

They don't - http://bitcoinocracy.com/arguments/in-the-event-of-a-fork-i-will-sell-rbf-blockstream-core-coins-and-buy-classic-bitcoins.

You can carry on about "the community" but apparently they don't have any funds invested in BTC (so you think people that own zero BTC should make the decisions?).

Unless you are a supporter of "communism" (and this is very funny for me to be saying to you as I live in China) then you can't possibly support the idea of "the community" being some financially irrelevant minority making the decisions about Bitcoin.

you can circle jerk your link to all your friends on /r/bitcoin/ to garner votes in your favour all you want..

i really think that you must have financial investment in blockstream
are they paying you using some of the $55mill pot of cash, or giving you a few premined sidechains. or some of the non-chain liquids?

As I don't even use Reddit it is rather odd that you would state that (perhaps you are just overwhelmed with having to deal with facts that you're not very used to having to).

Let's face it @franky1 - your sponsors are not going to be paying you for much longer (as you have failed them - you make them look foolish which is not really what they want for their money).

I doubt this. Majority holders are probably not yet aware of this poll. If we make an effort and make them aware and win the poll, then Blockstream might back out again and say "bitcoin is not democracy", "mere winning wont do, you need 90%+" etc. So, there needs to be clear message from Blockstream that they'll move to 2mb if they lose this poll 51:49 and give us three months to send the message across.

Where is 51% defined as consensus?  The whitepaper?  Cite please!

And you know full well much less than 51% will given time inevitably appear, due to variance, as 51%.

The consensus mechanism is designed to discourage/prevent a situation where there is contention, via the extreme penalties (ie losing all your BTC) for defecting from the socioeconomic majority.

You don't get to be privy to, much less control, the Core Defense Network and small block militia's strategy, timing, and tactics.

You only get to find out what they are in the heat of battle, as the wildfire turns your attacking fleet into ash, shipwrecks, and corpses.

Now, isn't it well past time for you to concede that XT was defeated?

We're waiting.... (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1115016.msg13774006#msg13774006)

You can't expect everyone in the ecosystem to vote on a poll, that is absurd. You try to get as many people as you can and then draw to conclusions. You have the link now, go try and find these 'majority holders' that are against it. As it currently stands there is more than 80% support for Core.

This would be a split, not consensus for 2 MB blocks.

i debunkd many of your examples.. and you cant debunk my examples. so instead you try to hurt my reputation. the laughable thing is that "franky1" is just a username..

so lets try this out.. lets hear some honest answers without you meandering into reputation crap.

1. with blockstream dominating what goes into the code. how is bitcoin (staying on the main chain, not talking about altcoins or other crap) still open for anyone to handle.. (and dont talk about anyone can make their own GUI. im talking about the underlying code)

2. how is bitcoin the same vision of financial freedom based on satoshi's genesis block quote (hating where corporations fucked up world finance), when one corporation has dominating control and is ignoring the community, to instead blindly do its own plan.

3. how is bitcoin going to be useful for 50% (non-westerners) of the world that blockstream are blind to, instead of the handful of businesses that blockstream will envision using bitcoin, thus forcing general population away from bitcoin and onto other stuff.

i do find it funny that while (i think) you are in china. you are ok with transaction fee's being the equivelent of 5% of an hour minimum wage. .. but imagine if you were in australia, 5% is the equivelent to 80cents..

would you be happy paying ATLEAST 5% of hourly wage just to make a transaction, come on.. imagine you had to pay ATLEAST 5% of an australian minimum wage.. then you might see beyond your own circumstance and see that you are blindly kissing ass to people that want to price out china, india and about 50% of the world from using bitcoin.
i honestly thought a man of the world that has been to china and india would atleast see beyond the western world pricing and the corporate overlords to atleast see the real world

P.S i am not sponsored by anyone. i hate gavincoin as much as i hate blockstream corporate shit. i just want bitcoin to grow without the shady tactics.
your blind loyalty to blockstream and hate of anything not blockstream shows you are sponsored

Not sure if what you are saying is true / confirmed or not. But I prefer to have diversification in most aspects of life. The more separate and less monopoly, the better for everyone.

I think bitcoinocracy poll  is a quite good way to measure the economy majority interest, it can be quite handy for future change request evaluation, if the question is more human understandable

Many people vote blindly or based on rumor, so there should be first some small test for investor's knowledge level and then they will be directed to different poll that suits people with different understanding of bitcoin

As usual @franky1 you use your "wall of text" approach to try and attack me (as you do with everyone else).

Perhaps you hadn't noticed that we've all noticed this and are not going to respond to your silly posts.

You are an idiot and everyone knows it.

So keep on making an idiot of yourself (it doesn't bother me).

He ain't wrong tho. And your text effects won't change that :)

I have created polls on bitcoinocracy before you heard about it. I also know who created bitcoinocracy and what other sites he run. So, u dont need to boast "You have the link now". This type of arrogant and I know everything attitude of Blockstream has forced the community to stand in front of split today and your patron Adam Back is crying on twitter not to leave the minority behind. So, behave properly.

Coming to the point, there needs to be a clear message from Blockstream core that they'd accept the defeat and move to 2mb before we "find these 'majority holders' that are against it". It requires an effort to send the message across as majority holders do not surf bitcointalk or /r/bitcoin anymore. So, we need the confirmation that the effort will be worthwhile to change the arrogance of Blockstream.

Ha, ha! A good one! Yeah in 21th century nobody wears tailed coats. I'm quoting it for the future use.

"coke-tails".. means exhaust fumes.. it comes from the old analogy of people kissing ass driving/riding behind someone else not watching the road and just following the car infront.. i dont know where you dreamed up anything to do with coats(jackets)

If the XT with 8MB increase can be called an alt-coin, then this segwit/sidechain are all 100% genuine alt-coins. And such a large change without any formal design specification (Just read BIP 14X, those are all terrible documentations without any useful information, just redefine everything. In fact I doubt if anyone have read them, if you happened read them, just tell me where is the witness block structure architecture?  ;D)

Someone mentioned: Respect to Satoshi writings is essential, not because he is a god or something but because that's what we were all offered and put our money and effort for believing in it. We did not put our money and mining rigs to construct infrastructure for running segwit/sidechain

LN is another story, I heard that miners don't like it, since it reduce their fee income   ::)

Again, false analogy. Would you call Clams an altcoin or would you call it Bitcoin? Because Clams did not start off like most of the alt-coins (forked off of Bitcoin but with a "clean sheet"). They've forked off with the existing balances at one point in time. The only difference between Clams and Bitcoin (from this viewpoint) is that it is not called Bitcoin Clams. :D
Again, do you even know how an altcoin gets created? Segwit has nothing to do with an altcoin; a sidechain could be technically called an altcoin pegged to Bitcoin; LN has nothing to do with an altcoin either (does it have its own blockchain? No.). There is no need to continue this discussion as you obviously don't properly understand the basic concepts of a cryptocurrency.

Go ahead, download the first version of Bitcoin and run that. You didn't put a considerable amount of money in anything as it is clearly demonstrated that there isn't much of it behind the people that are doing this.

---

---

Update: Corections.

community :D

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/cd/cd92cb9a3fa15e2bf45288fa94be0aa929023e171df28c11c1973e361434a06d.jpg

http://rynothebearded.com/oo-show/uploads/2013/12/image00.png

OK, so I'm a newbie who has just been reading a lot and trying to understand things. So here is my opinion.

We may need 2Mb blocks, but it's not urgent, and it may be that in the future we need 4Mb or more. Most blocks are half empty, so maybe what we really need are variable length blocks and more efficiency. There is too much "rubbish" in blocks that is not essential to money transfer - people are recording weddings for heaven sake, SigWit doesn't mean that we can't use 2Mb blocks, it just means that if we do, then the storage will be mofre efficient. Please explain to me why we can't implement SegWit in the short term. See what effect that has on transaction processing, and then decide a block size policy for the future.

many have proposed a 2mbsegwit (3.5-4mb real full archival data). that way its 2 birds with one stone.(giving into the segwit while also getting community desire for more buffer space to allow growth)

but blockstream dont want buffer space. they dont want room spare for open transactions, they want dominance, they want miners to have premium services and prices to allow transctions.

its not in their roadmap to have a buffer and room for growth.

without a buffer miners can charge more for transactions. with a buffer people dont need to pay fee's.
the whole fee income strategy blockstream want to impose is not actually needed for 20 years because the blockreward is enough compensation for miners. so this fee debate and twisting bitcoin in favour of higher fee's is a business decision and not a logical code/equipment cost decision

Why do you spout such ignorant nonsense again and again and again?

You are probably being paid to do so but everyone now is aware of that (so don't expect you are going to continue to get paid for this nonsense for much longer).

i dont get paid.. but you do! but nice of you to redirect the attention off your ass kissing of the $55million blockstreamers, shame though, it didnt work

Now provide proof of this or be considered to be the complete idiot liar that you are.

*plonk*

This is an interesting piece of info.

I think you two should get a room. :)

your blind loyalty to blockstream, that distracts you from logic.

So - you have no proof at all and just reply with rubbish.

Thanks @franky1 - you have been REKT by me (and I think by others already).

:D

This is false. Here's a chart: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size (.5 is "half full")
The urgency is pretty obvious: we knew that the number of transactions was growing, infighting about blocksize started over a year ago, and the blocks are hitting the limit, and... And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well. I just don't understand it.


Block size is already variable, meaning that blocks with max_block_size of 1MB aren't all 1MB -- that's just the maximum size. In other words, we're not growing the blockchain by 1MB every ten minutes, regardless of the number of transactions.


SegWit won't make the storage more efficient -- it will simply separate it into two warehouses. The amount of stuff to store will be the same.
Like the 2MB blocks, SegWit isn't a permanent solution, it merely kicks the can down the road. In other words, when we hit 1.7 to 2MB blocks, we'll still need a hard fork.

ill just leave this here because the blockstream fanboys delete any attempt to propose anything that is not their blind one way street roadmap

^^ sunnankar: please delete your post. It adds nothing but faggotry to this thread.
http://s28.postimg.org/6lt4fmcnx/faggot.gif

I see - so Gavin fans are also anti-gay.

Any other minorities you'd like to attack while you're at it?

No, not really. You, for instance, are [presumably] straight.*
This doesn't mean that you're not a humungous faggot -- you are.
So now you know.

---

*you've mentioned a "wife" when you were blackmailing this forum (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1086875.0;all), though it may be heterosexist of me to assume female. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

see how CIYAM presumes anyone not blockstream loyal as being a gavin fanboy..

by the way a faggot is actually a scottish meatball.. but nice to see that you want to accuse non blockstreamers of being prejudice against people of differing sexual orientations..

come on mr brains. we know you and your 5 cohorts(6 total), lauda, carlton, icebreaker, to name just a few are all in the same small box

http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/facebook-faggots.jpg

You just make yourself look more and more ridiculous with every post.

Let's see how long your masters will pay you for your unsuccessful trolling attempts (their pockets are not really so deep).

i have no master. but your assumption that someone can't survive and make a living without one, shows that you do have a master and that you get paid and your mind cannot cope with the thought you you being independant.
please think outside of the box you are living in

I am financially independent (which I am pretty sure you are not) so I am going to outlast you whatever happens.

Keep trying with the stupid stuff mate - everyone is seeing you're lack of intelligence.

And in case I'm wrong then why don't we organise a meetup in say Hong Kong (assuming you have funds that shouldn't be a problem for your should it)?

:(

im going europe in the spring america in summer and thailand in autumn. i might decide to make the couple hour flight from thailand to honk kong in autumn. if there is anything more interesting then just meeting you.

hopefully there is a hongkong bitcoin meetup in the autumn which you would attend.(2 birds one stone)

Not like the thoughtful and dignified post you just made.  ::)

Well I do applaud you for being brave enough to at least state that.

When you are closer to that time let me know.

and i will laugh if it turns out that its a blockstream sponsored event and you have been paid to attend, either as panelist or organiser

@franky1 - no-one has paid me one cent (from any organisation) to do with Bitcoin at all - so that isn't going to be the case.

You mean this one, made right before that faggot's gigantic Obama meme?
No, nothing like it.

The 5% consensus joke is one of the dumbest you've ever made.

https://medium.com/@Aquentys/on-the-theology-of-hardforks-312ab2f0ca9b#.vcoxbjuqd

XT is not defeated. XT 0.11.0E is compatible with the 2 MB hard fork. Together with Classic and BU there are about 250 nodes already, vs. 150 Blockstream/PWC 0.12.0 soft fork nodes.

On one hand, you're saying that Bitcoin is fine even with the rewards being 64 times lower (that is what it is roughly 20 years from now.).. and yet you also think that 75% of the hashrate can force people into accepting rule changes.

https://medium.com/@Aquentys/on-the-theology-of-hardforks-312ab2f0ca9b#.d121nwxds

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the Blockstream™ paid/controlled Core devs to conceal the severity of their conflicting interests.

Their lies and rhetoric - their smoke and mirrors - have all lost their luster and appeal. Satoshi Nakamoto must be saddened by disgust.
 

never said 75% of hashrate.. that was someone else..
i actually made a graphic saying 75% of peer consensus would be over 90% of hashrate (in a different conversation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1348950.msg13756917#msg13756917))

and as for the rewards.. yep 20 years will still be valid to mine with only block rewards as the main income.

my point being that transaction fee's should not be abused right now or in the next couple years. its only going to be PART of miners main source of income in MANY years. at the moment it should remain as a non-essential 'bonus'

remember if the fiat price increases, that takes care of the bitcoin reward decrease. if miners dont like getting $10,000 for 10 minutes work, then they need to either stop selling coin to help raise the price (supply decrease), to get the price they want. or find another hobby and let the rest have a chance.
i know you know the numbers
over the next 4 years 12.5btc, ($10k total $800/coin)
2020 6.25 ($10k total $1600/coin)
2024 3.125 ($10k total $3200/coin)
2028 1.5625 ($10k total $6400/coin)
(gap to take a breath and think about the numbers)thats 12 years for bitcoins fiat price to grow to $6,400 a coin($10k reward), more than enough time.
 especially if you blockstreamers are trying to make bitcoin into a reserve currency (need i remind you that bitcoin was 100x less in value just 4 years ago, soo is indeed possible to grow just 15 times in 12 years)
2032 0.78125 ($10k total $12,800/coin)
2036 0.390625 ($10k total $25,600/coin)

I thought it was 51%?

agreed XT is defeated. so is classic..

but that does not mean people... wait.. ill translate.. the community :D dont want 2mb.they still want it.
they just dont want one company with private backers running the show

depends which posts of different people Gmaxwell is reading. numbers seem to range from 51%-95%

Why are you shying away from giving a clear answer to this ?

This is only a democracy if Core is winning.  ;)

bitcoinocracy has been hammered and spammed by the blockstream friends and not really advertised to the whole community.. so its not really a fair example of democracy.

even hilary clinton can persuade a group of her friends to get on a tourbus and be by her side and cheer her on, pretending to be the towns folk loving every word she says infront of a carefully zoomed camera

Oh please tell me you didn't just use that word against someone else, you jackbooted, FN-loving, MP-shilling, GoldmanSachs-lackying hypocrite!!!  :D

Remember the Nakamoto Consensus  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1318519.msg13768027#msg13768027)


No figures needed - voting with their feet is just simple majority - 51%  You could say it is implicit.

Any other efforts you have to skew this are just spin.

It's in the white paper. I expect you have read it.

You can say it's "implicit" -- but there are also many other lies you can tell.  The paper describes a mechanism where nodes verify and enforce the system's rules for themselves, using POW for ordering. It doesn't describe a system where nodes stop enforcing their rules if the are overpowered, nor is that how Bitcoin was written.


"The fundamental engineering truths diverge from that misty goal:
Bitcoin is a settlement system, by design." -- Jeff Garzik (https://web.archive.org/web/20150508113802/http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/33405247)

Ahem.

And the claim that Jeff and Gavin are more senior is bunk. Unless you mean to say that someone whos first changes were merged a few days earlier, regardless of how much involvement they've had since is "more senior".

http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2014/February/140220/2D11695192-today-parent-yell-140220-11a.today-inline-med.jpg
No, I don't wanna hear who started it, apologize to your brother THIS INSTANT! You know yourself you're wrong!

OK boys, you two have fun getting your story straight.

And I expect it to be explicitly logically and linguistically consistent, not the hand-waving implicit wink-wink-nudge-nudge version.

PS  Nobody else believes your preposterous "51% = consensus" falsehood.

Not even Garzik.   :D

"The world's citizens en masse
will not speak to each other with bitcoin (IP packets), but rather
with multiple layers (HTTP/TCP/IP) that enable safe and secure value
transfer or added features such as instant transactions.

This opinion is not a conspiracy to "put the bankers back in charge"
-- it is a simple acknowledgement of bitcoin's design."

Eck. Bummer.  :-[

If all the development is done by one company it could lead to monopoly or pursuing of their own interests and centralization.

In the sense of seniority where one person has been at a thing for longer than another person; Gavin was given the go-ahead straight from Satoshi, Jeff registered this very forum. Weren't you sort of a latecomer? I think that's what they meant, anyway. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

"That misty goal" refers to "universal payments" ("both a laudable goal and a shopworn bitcoin marketing slogan.")

The sooner the public understands "universal payments" may fit into Layer 2, but certainly not Layer 1, the better.

Nah, the forum was kicked off Bitcoin.org in 2011 due to concerns about the lax moderation-- even I was part of that discussion.

In terms of commits: Matt and Luke predated Jeff on the project (by months in Luke's case). Pieter came nine days after him, Wladimir 51 days after that. I was 8 months behind on the commits, though most of what I do has never been coding-- I my logs show that I was the most active person in the development discussion channel the same month as Wladimir's first commit.

Characterizing someone who came later or who was earlier by mere days and less involved as "senior" is a bit of an insult.

OK - you accept that it is implicit - but why then go off on the "many other lies" tangent? I'm not interested in the "many other lies" that can or cannot be implied from a loosely worded whitepaper.

We were discussing the issue of consensus and what it means -  Core have nurtured a false understanding that somehow it is written that consensus within Bitcoin means 95% or better. But this is not the case.  Without any explicit definition of what consensus means then we can fall back to the default - in this case the whitepaper - where it is very obvious that the idea of consensus within Bitcoin is that of a simple majority.

The fact that any hardfork is designed with a threshold of 75% should be considered a bonus.

I too have no time for seniority dick measuring. Its a vague appeal to authority that gets us nowhere, and moves the discussion away from the primary issues..

Everyone who contributes to making bitcoin a viable peer to peer cash system into the future should have their voice heard.

He used the right word, I used the wrong one.

Majority means 'the greater number', to me its pretty explicit, but I'll accept that it is implicit if it makes you happy.

It's explicit to me that your only rebuttal to claims that (in summary) "51% is a majority, this is consensus, it is implicit/explicit" is pedanticism over the linguistics.

Unless you want to argue about what the word majority means then we can agree that the definition amounts to 'the greater number'. So if it was 3 vs 1 that would be a majority. If it was 1000 vs 999 that would also be a majority. The 51% figure has been commonly used recently to express hashrate majority, but it is probably more accurate to state >50%.

Take a look at the closing sentence in section 12 of the white paper.

"Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism."

The phrase "this consensus mechanism" refers to the immediately prior descriptions of the mechanisms that detail how the majority of CPU power will prevail by working on the chain they think is valid. If >50% accept and work on blocks that follow particular rules then inevitably leads to that blockchain becoming longer over time. The longest chain is the valid chain (as per the line in the abstract which states: "The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power.")

So the white paper explicitly states that consensus is achieved through a majority of CPU power. It is implicit that majority is >50%.

This is all logically and linguistically consistent (subject to Skitt's law!).

This OTOH is your opinion:

Fair enough. I was just trying to expain how the author might have been justified in choosing those words. (I wasn't the author.)



Re: Blockstream's strategic alliances; I don't know if this is a popular idea around here, but I see Bitcoin as a public good. Are you in a position to reveal the precise nature of these new relationships? Are you inclined to? Are there contracts? 

AXA SV have updated their site with this:


Sounds to me like they have bought Bitcoin. I wasn't aware that Blockstream had an alternative implementation that they were flogging, so I assume they mean Bitcoin Core. Were Blockstream in the position to do that? I guess core feel they were, if AXA  can feel justified in writing that on their website.

Sounds a bit to me like they're being sold their own private on-ramp in the form of a sidechain maybe?

so we have had 3 corporate filled implementations which were rightfully beaten to the ground,
even if atleast 2 proposed code chances that the community wanted, they still dont deserve to survive due to the hidden corporate agenda


but where are these anti-corp bigmouths, now that blockstream has revealed their corporate hand aswell??..

is it, 'the first rule of blockstream club, is you dont talk about blockstream'?

i really hope the blockstream defenders are going to get paid, otherwise their lack of morals and blind devotion will be their downfall

Your incessant use of this canard only weakens your arguments. bitcoinocracy is no more credible than consider.it.

If Bitcoin Core was controlled by one company, it would be indeed bad. However, it isn't the case, so your question is answered.

So just to be clear - do you maintain that block size increases are necessarily "Removing the rules against actions that the network protocol expressly forbids", and are therefore necessarily evil?


- Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html)


For better or worse (I would say for worse), in this era of industrial mining, non-mining nodes have essentially zero power. Any viable mining operation has sufficient  resources to run a node of its own, and connect explicitly to other mining entities that share its philosophy. The only power outside of miners is the threat that users abandon the chain en masse.

The beauty of bitcoin is that anyone can create a new hard fork version any time given a little bit IT expertise, so it is just a matter of whether enough people will use that new version. And I think over 51% of hash power is enough to present the major consensus, because that is how bitcoin was designed: With over 51% of hash power, you essentially control the bitcoin network consensus. People will move to the new chain and dump their coins on the old chain to kill it in a few days

Of course any company can lead the develop of bitcoin, only one condition: They must step down if the majority of community request it. That's the only requirement any company can lead the code development, otherwise it is a hostile corporation take over and can be solved by a hard fork

A few people here here keep arguing about some landslide "community opinion"-- and yet, strangely, that opinion is only visible in venues which are highly vulnerable to manipulation (http://imgur.com/5kUV5d3) and not in person or, currently, on cryptographically verifiable counters.

The bitcoinocracy poll, as crappy and limited as it is-- both demonstrates that there is significant economically backed opposition to those views, and suggests that so much of that "landslide" is just bullshit manipulation.


You can keep repeating it, but it isn't true. I doubt you really believe it yourself. Otherwise, why aren't you calling your argument lost (https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/442t0g/oh_fck_blockstream_just_raised_enough_money_to/)?

is gmaxwel still trying to flog the dead horse of classic, as a dead horse. rather then talking about the cancer inside blockstream

yes gmaxwell XT is dead, classic is dead, but lets talk about the blockstream cancer that is eating up bitcoin and mutating it. and isnt willing to listen to the community either

As I said, this thread is just a hall of mirrors.

If you actually want a serious discussion you could start by showing some integrity and calling out the misinformation in this thread and stop repeating it yourself. Try acknowledging that even without determining if some people are following Blockstream's interests instead of Bitcoin's (where these interests differ) Blockstream has no special control of Bitcoin Core-- except by being the _only_ company in Bitcoin directly contributing to maintaining the infrastructure.

and here is my rebuttal

This is AXA's distillation of the message from Blockstream over several weeks of presentations and complex due diligence. Is their understanding inaccurate?

^This is a private company. They don't owe anyone any explanations. Now get back to work, peasant!

Bitcoinocracy is immune to Sybil attack, because you must prove ownership of BTC to participate.

Consider.it is so open to Sybil attack it might as well be a honeypot.

The former is signal, the latter is noise.

You're just butthurt the deep pockets support continued consensus more than contentious hard forking.

If Bitcoinocracy was in favor of Gavinista governance coups and contentious hard forks, you'd never shut up about what the "community" wants/demands/deserves.

Correct. I don't think that they can be compared though. Consider.it let's basically anyone vote regardless of who they are or if they own any Bitcoin. Bitcoinocracy could be considered a decentralized voting platform because one can verify each signature themselves (IIRC), thus the system can't be cheated nor manipulated.

A network split remains a network split regardless of how many times you repeat the "51% is consensus" lie.

Not going to happen with a 51% : 49% split.

IMO Bitcoinocracy, consider.it, and every other voting platform out there to get people's opinion are terrible polls and are vulnerable to many different sources of bias.

They are all volunteer samples, so really it will only get people who care very strongly one way or the other to actually respond. You aren't going to get the opinion of the average bitcoin user but rather of people strongly in favor or strongly against. It isn't representative of what the population really thinks and thus it isn't consensus

Those platforms are vulnerable to sybil attacks, though Bitcoinocracy less so. People can make multiple fake accounts and thus submit fake votes making one option more popular than it really is. Bitcoinocracy combats that by requiring that people sign messages with addresses so it really is based on how many coins. But that gives unequal weighting to the votes, although I suppose that is a better representation of the economic majority.

The questions asked in those polls are not without bias. The way that the questions are phrased typically imply one meaning or the other, kind of making people want to vote one way or the other. The questions should instead be neutral and bias free to get the most unbiased responses. Also, the questions should provide information for people to read about what those changes are actually for and how they will work so that people actually know what they are voting for. The information should of course be unbiased, but that information is not available in the polls.

In any scientific study, just having one of the above biases would invalidate the entire study. Therefore, since any online voting platform has those biases in them, the entire voting thing and checking those sites for the supposed consensus is invalid and thus should not be considered or referenced when discussing consensus among the population.

No. All the above is noise. That's my point. The only signal is the emergent consensus of the network. The only vote that matters is the ultimate decision on who accepts what within a block. That majority will determine the longest chain. The longest chain, in turn, defines Bitcoin. Anything other than that is an unreliable 'measure' of power within the system.

And I was so hoping we could discuss the following:


So just to be clear - do you maintain that block size increases are necessarily "Removing the rules against actions that the network protocol expressly forbids", and are therefore necessarily evil?


- Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html)


For better or worse (I would say for worse), in this era of industrial mining, non-mining nodes have essentially zero power. Any viable mining operation has sufficient  resources to run a node of its own, and connect explicitly to other mining entities that share its philosophy. The only power outside of miners is the threat that users abandon the chain en masse.

That seems a bit harsh. :-\

Perhaps it might be bad, because they might work in their favor only. But it is more stable that way, so it cannot be altered by odd-thinking people.

It's a matter of journalistic integrity. He has the right to not answer, I have the responsibility to ask the tough questions. Do you think I enjoy this?

I think its safe to say non-mining nodes *never* had any power. In the white paper the word 'node' was synonymous with the word 'miner'. It's only over time that this 'node/miner' separation has arisen.

Bitcoin is defined by hashrate, and the arguments (from all sides, me included heh) that something else *should* matter seem a bit petulant!

The industrialisation of mining has happened exactly as predicted. The mechanisms to keep the big guys check are still there. One of which I think is exactly what you describe the threat that they cannot do anything that would cause user's to abandon it.

Miner's and users are the yin and yang of the network. Developers and non-mining nodes grease the wheels but ultimately have no power.

The code's out of the bag so to speak. If the chinese miners decide they want 2MB, even if they don't use Classic, or BU, they could always just roll their own.

Hate to agree, but ... That.

but ... that ... is just untrue; it reflects a deep and fundamental misunderstanding of what Bitcoin is. The design of the bitcoin system deeply constrains miners-- and doing so is precisely how it creates economic incentives to keep them honest in the other ways it needs them to be.  Miners cannot mine except in conformance with the rules imposed by the users of the system: it's physically impossible for them to break them.

Both deep AND fundamental misunderstanding? :o Whoa, that's some bad misunderstanding right there..
Care to set me straight & quickly list the ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners"?
Or are you talking about the Bitcoin ideal (how things should be), and not the actual mechanics of Bitcoin?
An example of non-mining nodes "deeply constrain[ing] miners," if possible, would also be nice.

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/44rx5k/psa_clearing_up_some_misconceptions_about_full/

Not a word in that link re. "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners""
Sill waiting, still confused.

I was hoping someone would tell me. :-[

Well for one thing , economic Full nodes are what determine what is valid and what is not. The Majority of hashing power and longest chain don't mean much except a very expensive liability unless the nodes accept the coin.

Bitcoin consensus is determined by the longest valid PoW chain determined by economic nodes. This means that not all nodes are equal.... I.E... spinning up 1k full nodes on amazon ec2 has less of a vote than an individual running bitcoin core with 50 btc , which is less valuable than a node on an exchange. Nodes controlled by Payment processors are more valuable than individual nodes but still only represent a fraction of the payment processing (Coinbase/Bitpay constitute ~6% of txs combined by their own statements)

This distinction is very important to understand, and understanding this is critical to understanding the security implications of the Bitcoin network.

1) BTCC recently deployed 100 nodes with altruistic intentions because they didn't understand Bitcoins security model. Since All 100 nodes were controlled by them they are weakening the security of  bitcoin as their nodes can be used as a Sybil attack.

2) All votes are not equal and very large bagholders can quickly bring miners to their knees and force them to switch chains by dumping one of the 2 coins created during a fork on an exchange.

Of course greg! Of course "it's physically impossible for them to break" the rules. Thats why you change the rules, and then allow the nodes ( in the white paper sense) to vote with their hashpower on what will constitute the fabled state of zen consensus. Isn't that they way its supposed to be? Dont nodes choose the rules?

Not really constrained, deeply or otherwise.

They simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the rules of the protocol (and ban the peer(s) that sent them). If the block isn't valid it does not exist any more than a litecoin or a namecoin block exists to the Bitcoin network.

I believe Greg was making a distinction between a mining node and a non mining full node. Mining nodes do vote on what is valid or not, but don't have as much of a vote as a large investor or an exchange.


sgbett has been explained multiple times why he is wrong and how non-mining full nodes still have all the power but is making a nuanced argument that Full nodes who don't mine simply don't vote because developers defer votes to miners for soft forks and hard forks as a signal to accept a proposal or not. This is purely coincidental due to the limitations in approximating an accurate vote among economic full nodes and  because of this we are left with and interesting attack vector some have already committed to exploit during a hard fork.  

Yes, "A" nodes ignore etc. blocks they consider invalid (such as "B"), "B" nodes ignore blocks they consider invalid (such as "A"). As long as there is at least one of each (there is, non-SPV miners are also full nodes), everything's happening.

Explain "ways in which non-mining full nodes "deeply constrain miners" plz.

@BitUsher: feel free to field this, I'm genuinely interested.

*Also explain this bit in the Bitcoin wiki:

Finally, if nodes are essential to Bitcoin security & are quite cheap to implement, what's preventing a malefactor from breaking Bitcoin by throwing up a bunch of misbehaving nodes (which "simply ignore blocks which do not conform to the [new] rules of the protocol (and ban the [old rule] peer(s) that sent them)."?

1. Investors dont 'vote'
2. exchanges dont 'vote'

Nodes competing to find blocks and then building upon them 'vote'.

[1] & [2] make choices on predetermined outcomes.

This was already answered. Full nodes can veto the miners at any given moment. All of the miners investments can instantly become expensive useless liabilities if the economic consensus of full nodes rejects the miners longest chain.

I will give you two possible scenario's of how this can occur-

1) In the unlikely event Classic convinces 75% of miners to HF, their are multiple extremely large investors* who have made commitments to dump their classic coins and keep their original coins.(remember a HF essentially doubles the money supply unless there is complete consensus). This high stakes form of attack would quickly devalue the chain with the most hashpower driving miners to the other chain or completely ruining both chains. Others may discount this due to the flawed assumption that this would only temporarily devalue the currency but in reality this attack can be ongoing and be conducted in a manner to create steady and persistent downward pressure on the majority hashpower chain.

2) Their are multiple technical solutions that can be implemented if a miner mis behaves where their double rounds of SHA256 hashing means less or nothing at all by the nodes.  Full nodes simply can change the consensus algo.


* These threats aren't being made by Core or blockstream but other large investors some of which are quite "unstable"


This was also just answered with a specific example. I will give you the benefit of the doubt one last time that you aren't deliberately trying to "blunder" the conversation. 100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet. If those 100 nodes deliberately break consensus by the owner, or are hacked to break consensus than all the damage they will be doing is misleading the community to how decentralized the ecosystem is(Unless a SPV wallet trusts them). Their vote will be ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered.

And nodes figure into this how?
Well sure, they can create an altcoin, like any other altcoin. How does this effect miners & users with new nodes?
Mutual destruction, the paragon of maturity ::)

Re. your edit:
What does that even mean? What determines what's less and what's more of a vote?
But you don't understand. THOSE NODES WILL BE THE MAJORITY. It's the "real" nodes that will be blacklisted & "ignored by the other full nodes and not be considered."

Way to take my comments out of context. Pay attention to the nuanced distinctions I am making. There are different forms of votes being expressed. Non - mining Economic actors/nodes can quickly cripple the miners if they so decided to.

FWIW, full nodes have rejected the most-pow chain on several occasions in the past. E.g. in 2010 there was an incident where software errors caused miners to mine a block that minted a billion bitcoins out of thin air. That fork grew to about 75 blocks. There was another incident in 2013 which made it to about 35 blocks.  More recently, at the enforcement of strict-der, nodes started enforcing the new soft-fork rule with 95% hashpower support, and miners not in conformance with the rule (then a hardfork) managed to produce a chain of blocks 5 longer.

By block count, litecoin's chain has more 'work' than Bitcoin, and yet bitcoin nodes don't follow it.

I think that many people, versed in pre-cypherpunk organizational modalities constantly seek to attribute control to some authority in any system. When they look at Bitcoin they see mining and say "ah, here is the parties that are in charge" (or, alternatively and less  often, some software developers).  They're wrong about that: no one is simply "in charge", and that is a big part of the point and value. It also makes some people uncomfortable, because what they want is the old way of doing things with singular authorities which can be influenced in traditional ways... rather than the personal autonomy of cryptographic proof that backs Bitcoin.

.@gmaxwell: could you actually answer my questions instead of waxing philosophical re. "pre-cypherpunk organizational modalities"?
ty

I don't advocate for this action or repeat these facts to fear monger, but they are important considerations one must consider when
deciding upon what level of consensus one must agree to before activating a fork. It is no surprise that many of the Chinese miners are advocating 90% -95% threshold and a much larger window.


The code determines what fits consensus or not. Human beings with Nodes full of BTC that now represent 2 different coins can transfer that BTC from their non-mining node to an exchange or another human which places downward pressure upon one of the coins price.



It all depends upon perspective. From their Eyes the big block coin that uses democratic form of governance where a majority can impose changes upon a minority would be the alt where their coin that uses anarchistic forms of consensus would be the true bitcoin. In their eyes the change in political consensus is much larger of a change than the change in the mining algo.

I'm not talking about ideology, I'm asking about the mechanics, the actual methodology.

I don't see how "100 nodes spun up on amazon ec2 is less of a vote than one bitcoin core node with BTC in the wallet."
Please explain.

P.S. I'm trying hard to overlook your bitchy insinuations re. trolling & shilling. Try to avoid such infantile faggotry in the future.

Very well said and something I completely agree with.

Every individual Full Node wallet is a distinct node that can independently verify every transaction going back to the genesis block. They aren't dependent upon those 100 full nodes spun up on amazon ec2.* If one of those amazon ec2 nodes attempts to relay a block that doesn't conform to their full nodes consensus rule it will simply be ignored. The reason why a single full node with bitcoin is worth something is because there is an economic actor behind that full node who has agency and decides those coins have value. The only reason anything has value whether gold, fiat or bitcoin deals with that economic agent who places value upon their asset and can make choices or vote with that value.

Thus 100 full nodes spun up by one person with no btc associated with any of them has the exact same vote* and 1 node with no btc and even less of a vote than 1 node with btc. In fact those 100 nodes impose a very slight security risk as they are being hosted within a central company and misleading our ecosystem into believing that the node count is more decentralized than it actually is. If any of those full nodes changed consensus and other non -full node SPV clients trusted them that would also be another attack vector.  


* There is a low probability attack if those full nodes provided an alternative history during the bootstrap process(first time the blockchain is downloaded, that a new full node can coincidentally and unluckily peer from only those 100 nodes which could maliciously provide an alternative history as well. This means that there is a different and distinct form of a vote that is the exception that breaks the rule. 100 nodes have more of a vote than 1 node with regards to influencing new nodes bootstrapping to the main chain. Therefore not only is there a complex interwoven power dynamic between multiple groups within bitcoin there are distinct forms of "voting" at play here.

I do not know if it is good or bad that it is controlled by one company. But I think that being controlled by more than one company does not guarantee it will go good either.

BAH! But the network doesn't know if there's a wallet behind a node or not. There is no way for the network to know if there's 1000BTC or 0BTC behind a node. NONE. If one of your "real" nodes attempts to relay a block to one of my "fake" nodes, it gets ignored & B&. "My" node will pass on the blocks from "my" miners just fine, because they comply with "my," "fake" node's ruleset.
There is no value judgement here. Your nodes don't propagate "my" blocks, "my" nodes don't propagate yours.
You keep saying that, but it keeps making no sense. Via what mechanism? How?
Don't care, irrelevant. Stay on topic. We're still trying to determine how the network decides which nodes have money/"humans" behind them and which do not.
Please explain the mechanism.
ty

I think a lot of you are unstable. But threats are always a clever means of promoting your ideas.

Quite compelling when everything else fails.

Some of us actually care about the security of the network and spend time and effort to protect it from malicious actors. Part of this process is understanding the attack vectors , and educating others the risks so we can collectively make the right decisions so threats aren't realized. MP and other fringe lunatic 1MB forever disciples can indeed carry out this attack and are no friends to me or most/all developers in Core. In fact he has threatened to murder some prominent developers.

If you consider my politics to classify me as unstable , than so be it. I call them principles, you consider them unstable ... but perhaps you would be better off considering them "insane convictions" or "convictions you disagree with" instead because these principles are quite stable and consistent . I'll respect your thoughts and try to offer you some consolidation that we truly do want to increase capacity and are working hard to do so safely.


You are fixated on the code acting as a form of AI that solely does the voting. The network consists of nodes with human agents behind them that "vote" with the BTC in their wallet. Actual human being interacting with the code is part of the network!

In other words, they can dump their BTC. That's fine, and for that, non-mining nodes are neither necessary nor instrumental.
I'm not interested in some feelsy newagey humanist take of Bitcoin network. At this point, all I'm interested in how the Bitcoin protocol can differentiate between "real" (money-backed) and "unreal" (unbacked by anything other than crunch power) non-mining nodes.
The answer is "IT FUCKING CAN NOT."

Allow me this argumentum ad verecundiam:
"... They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism." --S.N.

P.S. I also don't care if you "care about the security of the network and spend time and effort to protect it from malicious actors."
I care about kittens, which is equally relevant to this topic, which is to say not at all.

Estimates have Classic at 16% of full nodes. This is madness. What will happen to Blockstream's alliances/sidechains under Classic? Any change in business strategy? Are we all doomed?

So, unstable people are threatening to dump their coins and/or spam the mempool to get their way... therefore, we should do exactly what they want...

How about... no.

This question has already been answered. The protocol cannot assign value to these tokens. Just like with Gold, Commodities, Fiat... value is assigned by human agents or AI in the future. This means that 1 person can fork off of the network, have almost no hashing power and his/her coins can be extremely valuable as long as they and another believe it is real money and has value.

This is very basic economics that applies to any assets, that seems to escape you.


At the time when Satoshi wrote that, CPU power was synonymous with Full nodes.  This distinction has changed over the years. Now there are differences in the vote and influences of a full node and mining full node.


I agree , and all/most of core agrees with you here, that is why we are pushing for changes to increase capacity with Segwit.


I count 8.89% of all nodes now... where are you getting your data?

https://coin.dance/nodes/image/share.png

That last statement.

What are you insinuating? Don't be shy.

It's not that bad. If they make some stupid update, people could just choose to use an older version and the new dumb update would be useless. (Unless lots of people still use it though)

Economics have absolutely nothing to do with nodes, since non-mining nodes *DO NOT REPRESENT BTC OR HASHPOWER*. They are IRRELEVANT.
Stop turning what was intended as nothing more than "trustless" wallet, of use to no one but the guy running it (to protect *his* BTC), into some mystified majical security measure. It's not. It's a friken wallet. No majix, no meestyry.


Unless you can describe *how* these nodes "vote and influence" (and how they're differentiated from "fake" nodes by the network), I'm gonna assume magical thinking on your part.
Which is cool, but not here. Not now.

Satoshi was well aware of the direction the network would take as it scaled. Your view is oft repeated by experts (who do/should know better), so I can see how you might have picked it up along the way.


The technical experts you derive your arguments from have always thought that the network needed paternal stewardship.

The mindset reminds me of an excerpt from Mustapha's Chorus Sacerdotum.


If it was true, it would probably mean guaranteed failure at some point in the future. Thankfully it isn't, and our consensus mechanism is built in, as described up thread.

Not Classic, but Others than Core. That's my bad.

I'm not trying to subvert here. I swear.

I already described one way in which the nodes themselves (without humans) vote that you seem to ignore. The more important vote includes the human actor, or future AI/oracle controlling the coins. If you don't want to consider the agent as being essential to the nodes vote than so be it.... we are merely talking past each other.  


Excellent, I hope that cores percentage continues to drop... hopefully in the future we can have safer non contentious implementations steal marketshare from core like libbitcoin.

Edit: But won't there be the threat of a contentious HF if one of them overtakes Core in nodes? Or are some implementations more benign than others?

And I, in turn, have explained to you that is irrelevant since this mechanism is both available to/is trivially countered by "fake" nodes.
In other words, ineffective as a defense against a malefactor.
This is getting into heavy mystikal shit.
I'm asking you how this seemingly goldbergian contraption called non-mining node help to keep burglars out of our safe, and you reply "economics and the human factor."
My hands just drop, really.

I support the use of SPV nodes with fraud proofs, pruned nodes , lite nodes, and mining on scale. We don't need everyone mining just sufficient decentralization where governments or industry members or malicious actors cannot subvert the will of individual users. Otherwise we will just have a very inefficient paypal and what is the point in that?

You understand that bitcoin is an incredibly inefficient distributed database by design, right? Are you comfortable having only a few banks, processors, and governemnts running full nodes in our future? what level of decentralization would satisfy you?



Yikes, I haven't heard this argument before. So when should Classic devs walk away from maintaining their repository?

This is now a different question. Perhaps you believe that all the questions you are asking are the same, and you are merely rephrasing them? This is not the case. I can't keep holding your hand explaining things to you.

A good place to start to understand the role Full Nodes have is here -

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032281.do

The book is available for free as well.

lessee... let's go back to where you jumped in...


Nope, one and the same, still unanswered :(

Nope, most implementations don't break consensus rules thus there is no risk of a HF occurring even if they have greater node count (miner or not). There can be multiple implementations with slightly different features and unique wallets with no contention or risk of a fork. It does require more coordination but that is why Core is working hard on libbitcoinconsensus to insure that other implementations can prosper.

The good news is that Open Bazaar and Airbitz use libbitcoin implementations and thus are making that codebase more popular.


Yes, that why I suggested we must be talking past each other. You are better off trying to understand the code directly like I have done and read that book.

A majority of hashrate makes decisions by deciding to extend the chain of blocks, a bad decision impacts their profitability directly, as does a good decision. They have an interest in keeping the system sufficiently decentralized or they destroy part of the value of their product, bitcoin. This slippery slope argument is tiresome, we're talking about a 1MB increase to the Max block size.


Again, you are ascribing control to developers, which they simply don't possess. Miners decide to use a particular team's software, until they don't. It's a component of antifragility, an escape valve from capture.

I keep suggesting the exact opposite and you keep insisting on ignoring my statements:


My question was in response to your statement. So are you insinuating miners have 100% control and developers/ economic full nodes /users, merchants, processors/banks/exchanges have no control or vote?

Users do have control: they can hold or sell -- that's their voting mechanism. Merchants have control: they can accept a particular coin or not accept it, value it higher or lower.
The notion of "economic full node" is ...empty verbiage.
P.S. How about another chunk of useless jargon: "economic light node"? How would those vote?

I apologize. I've had these debates with you before, so it's difficult to completely wipe that slate clean simply because it's a different thread.

Miners have direct control. Nodes /users, merchants, processors/banks/exchanges can and do influence miners by buying or selling their product, the coins. They may even form an altcoin if miners go against them in a way that is intolerable.

/r/btc Bitcoin Classic math: Computing a proportion as x/y instead of x/(x+y). But hey, they're totally ready to handle making critical survival decisions for a global decentralized cryptography consensus system.

This is simply untrue.  Lets imagine that 75% of miners start paying themselves 50 BTC again instead of 25 BTC per block.  Nothing, it's the same as if they simply turned off (which they may do when the subsidy halves). Nodes simply ignore their blocks. So much for "direct control".  Miners do have power over some things-- they can choose the order of unconfirmed and recently confirmed transactions; but they can't break the rules of the system enforced by the nodes... if they do, they're not miners anymore as far as the nodes are concerned.

Yes, they are miners -- for the updated nodes/wallets/users.
The legacy nodes/wallets/users won't have any miners, and thus become subject to savage rapings by any kid with a couple of vidya cards.
Bonus points: no tx confirmations forever because outrageous difficulty/hashpower ratio, no diff. adjustment forever, because see aforementioned.
That's how hard forks work, always assumed it was understood.

Of course nodes could ignore their blocks, and holders can dump their coins. If a particular change is disagreeable enough to a sufficient portion of the market... an opportunity exists to change the proof of work and lower the difficulty to continue on an altchain that could possibly become more popular than the original. In any case, a blockchain needs solved blocks, and solved blocks require PoW.

It baffles me how you could remain so interested in Bitcoin if you see its central free market based consensus mechanism as natively flawed and irrelevant. Again, created sick, and commanded to be well.

Miners are incentivized by the market to make decisions, they don't make these decisions in a vacuum, free of consequence.

I haven't heard of any plans in the near future to make consensus rule changes for sidechains. Sidechains are completely open and you can play with the code and run sidechain node if you want. They are mainly used for testing new features right now. I understand what you are insinuating with your concerns... and let me address that:

I don't assume bad faith within Core developers, partly because I know of some and know of a majority of their mindset with following their logs and discussions. I really do respect your skeptical mind however. For the sake of argument lets assume that these fears are real, that blockstream is trying to subvert our ecosystem and is controlling core to sell their products on sidechains.

This is why I am not worried-

1) The core developers are very transparent and this is an open source project. If at any point in time notice anything nefarious we will instantly fork away with or without the miners. It really doesn't matter if Core developers are malicious or not because there are thousands of extra eyes reviewing their code. This being said we should indeed have other development teams (like we do) managing other repositories.

2) We aren't going to accept the LN or sidechain products that aren't open source or don't have a level playing field for all economic agents added to the network. Additionally, the LN allows for us to solve a really large dilemma with incentivizing full nodes by paying them.

3) Banks are going to produce private blockchains regardless... it is much better that future sidechain products are sold to the banks which make sure they are dependent upon the main bitcoin block chain.

4) Whether or not Core gets the economics and incentives right is up for debate... In reality this is a complex experiment with many known unknowns and unknown unknowns; anyone claiming to know the future or the right balance of incentives for nodes and miners is likely wrong. Cores conservative approach is prudent under this scenario and we are lucky to have a diverse set of bright minds working with us to solve these problems.


Yet miners make critical mistakes all the time that jeopardize the network (BTCC spinning up 100 nodes/ SPV mining ) , Developers make mistakes all the time (One of Satoshi's many mistakes - https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki) . Thank Goodness no one controls bitcoin and we have to work together and rely on each other to solve these problems. 

There is no need to dump any coins. The nodes _will_ ignore their blocks, as that is the very design of the Bitcoin system-- embodied in every implementation ever shipped; one which _completely_ deprives the ability of miners (even a super-majority) to carry out a broad spectrum of coercively acts against the users of the system. These protections are an essential part of the economic balance which keeps miners honest. Saying "if you shit it up, people will take huge losses (since-- who will buy if everyone knows its screwed) selling out and use something else" is a pretty fringe protection... as a concrete example it's one which has been fairly ineffectual in constraining the monetary policy of popular currencies.

I never suggested they did-- quite the opposite. Rather, I point out that the consequence of failing to comply with the hard rules set by the users of the system is that their hashpower is completely discarded while the users notice _nothing_ (except, perhaps, some slower confirmations for a few weeks or until they get a clue).

I just want all this ugliness behind us so's I can go back to my pigeons thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1342275.msg13688742#msg13688742).

I suppose there are people who think they are more clever than a simple system built upon the basic principle of aligned incentives.

Code can be maintained. But we should avoid interference in the network. Dont conflate the two.