Bitcoin Forum

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I'm not entirely sure of what happened but It looks like Bitcoin Unlimited is seriously catching up with SegWit while SW is pretty much stable and not changing. I want to know now, If BU get 95%, is it when It will get activated and If yes, we will have to download another client or they will take control over the current Bitcoin Core Repository because It looks pretty much confusing... and should we switch our coins somewhere else after that?

Immutability at work.  Perfect consensus over status quo.
Not the slightest bit of consensus over alternatives.  That was what the immutability dynamics of bitcoin was all about, and it works marvellously.  Not the slightest bit of chance of a rule-changing consensus.  Ever.  That is what "immutability of the rules" means.

Two options: when near 50-50: a hard fork and two coins.  Or, nothing.

hard fork and two coins is worse than having one single chain that take over, i don't know where you see this as a good thing, the value would split and bitcoin would lose credibility

i'm all for the block limit fix and i don't care at this point how you achieve it, if miners(the majority) decide for bu, nothing can be done, BU will be the new bitcoin and yes you need to download the new client, since it's and hard fork

This is probably due to AntPool starting to signal for BU, if they go trough with it we'll see a significant rise in BU hashrate. It may even cause others to jump on and get the train rolling. I agree with Amph, we need something quick, it doesn't really matter which of the two.

I'm not commenting on "good" or "bad".  I'm telling you about the dynamics of a distributed consensus system, which has as hypothesis that all scarcity parameters are frozen in eternally (that, for instance, 21 million coins cannot be changed by full consensus).  Now, block chain room became a scarcity parameter, just as valuable as the 21 million coins limit.  So, if distributed consensus mechanisms work as expected, that is, if they impose immutability, then this parameter will not be changed any more ever.  If too much tension arises between two camps, a hard fork will happen.  It is not a matter of "good" or "bad".

As I said, as long as the main value proposition of bitcoin is "first mover advantage", people will be so afraid of a hard fork and two coins, that it will not happen.  Status quo.  From the moment that bitcoin's first mover advantage over altcoins will be eroded, the hard fork will be acceptable.

But what will NOT happen, is a single bitcoin chain, with a bigger block chain, segwit or whatever.  Unless bitcoin becomes sufficiently centralized that the consensus mechanism breaks down, and a cartel can make decisions.

Dont let the cartel from Roger Ver and Bu altcoin take over! Fight. Of course chinese miner wants bigger blocks so they can mine more blocks then people outside the china internet wall.

This is exactly the "immutability" at work, and why I am convinced that nothing will happen.

To answer the OP,

(1) My understanding is that BU has the coded ability to hardfork at 51%,
but it is likely they will wait till more, around 75% consensus according to what I have
read previously (75% = current verbal agreement.). As a comparison, SegWit has
it's consensus set for 95%.

(2) If BU hardforks whether at 51% all the way up to 100%, and you wish to follow their
chain, whether it becomes the main chain or is one of two, you will need to download
their BU client in order to transact on that chain.

(3) If BU hardforks, whatever the result, Core Github and BU Github will remain separate
most likely. If in the event Core devs would like to work on BU later, they will need to
participate on the BU Github, presumably.

(4) If the hardfork occurs, your coins will be safe as long as you do not transact until it has
been shown to be safe. You will have the same amount of coins on both chains, both
associated with your single privatekey. It is best for noobs to wait and hold their coins until
the community and devs determine it is safe to move and how to move if there are any
special precautions.

Indeed, and the only way to distinguish transactions between the two chains, is to mix with coins mined on one fork only.  Otherwise, your signature is valid on both chains and your transaction will happen in both coins.

chinese miners are afraid of the UASF. If unlimited gets 51% they become another alt and finaly we get rid of Ver, Andressen, Hearn and other Judas.
When split happens it's important not to miss the moment and sell all BU, before it's price is dumped to the lever of the other alts

If unlimited gets 51%, then it's rather core being an altcoin with its 49% minority, isn't it?

I appreciate the answer, now what exactly BU is offering that SegWit is not? I also don't understand how Gavin & Roger ver mostly are supporting such a thing as they are early adopters and probably have a net worth of millions of dollars, It's impossible to predict what's gonna happen and seeing them taking such a risk is definitely something phishy.

Strictly speaking, no.  The original protocol is the original coin.  But with ethereum too, they "stole the name".  The original ethereum is now ETC, and the new altcoin with the modified protocol kept the name, ETH.

Note that the original splitting in mining power doesn't mean much, as two coins will emerge, and it is the MARKET CAP that will determine the mining ratio, and not the other way around.  Even a "minority miner" coin, that gets a higher market cap, will be very lucrative to mine, so will attract more miners.  And a "majority miner coin" that plummets in the market, will not be interesting to mine with high difficulty and low market value.  So miners will leave it, until miner ratio will equal market cap ratio.

Well, almost everything in your post is just speculations, imo. That's because you wouldn't be able to define what is "the original protocol" in Bitcoin, and no one in this world will ever be able to judge which one is original Ethereum. Also, no one is able to predict what's gonna happen in case of split. ETC exists because exchanges listed it, so if no exchanges will list any of the forked Bitcoin branch, then how are you going to perform a valuation? There're so many factors that the post-split reality is unpredictable.

Exchanges list it if they think that there will be transaction volume, which is their source of income.  ETC/ETH has been very lucrative to exchanges.  Why wouldn't they list it ?   The first exchange that lists the split, will take the lion's share of the initial volume.  Can you imagine the gains ?  Other exchanges will be eager to do so too, or leave the volume to their competitor.

Moreover, there is all chance to have a huge initial volume, because everybody owning "old bitcoin" will have "free money" on the chain that he doesn't like, and will try to cash it out for the coin he likes.  What exchange wouldn't want that volume ?

And concerning "the original protocol", that's easy: for bitcoin, it is the current one.  All the previous ones are dead, and their chains stopped.  For ethereum, it is the one that was continued by ETC.  Simple.

"not listing" to "protect the unity of bitcoin" is suffering from the tragedy of the commons.  You are foregoing a huge reward in the form of transaction fees while those not adhering to it, reap in the part you could have taken.

People here are definitely not learning anything... Unlimited is like the Communist Party of nowadays, this is some kind of dreams. SegWit threshold is too low, and should be increased to 95% like Unlimited. This way we would be sure none will ever get activated ::)...

Or rebuild any of the other clients changing probably just one line of code so they accept 8 MB blocks.

It is pretty evident that if you want to use an alt coin, that you need a wallet talking the protocol of that alt coin...
You can't transact litecoins with a monero wallet either...

Isn't it like both coins can be merged mined, so miners simply would not  care and mine both?

Well, of course, but they have to pick a chain to spend their hashrate on.  Merge mining doesn't mean that you mine *at the same time* on both chains.  It only means that you can switch easily BETWEEN chains.   But you have to chose for each block.

Same port, and non BU blocks are valid on BU so no - you don't need a new client, just remove the 1 MB restriction from existing clients and they will work.

That is another client.

You could just as well change the hash of the genesis block.  That's how you make a bitcoin clone.  You have another coin.

Well what I'll probably do if there is a fork is move all my BTC to a cold address on the BU chain, and once it confirms, fire up core where that same value hasn't moved and immediately sell them.

I bet a lot of people will.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

And if after I sell I buy again - its possible that the value I buy will show up on both chains. That would be cool.

There is one area that makes me wonder though in a hard-fork scenario what happens to the unconfirmed transactions.
Unless you delete the unconfirmed transactions and put the balance back into the forked wallets balance they would be stuck but that pretty seems complex if your not running your own client and using a service instead unless they keep rebroadcasting it.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=35214.20

Not unless you buy a pre-fork UTXO I wouldn't have thought.

Yes, I even have heard some ideas of Chinese monopoly for bitcoin mining. I hope it will never happen, cause it's just not fair.
And if to talk about this results that there are in the head of the topic - the difference is just 0.3% and we can't count it as something serious.

If the inputs are valid on both chains then the transaction may end up being relayed to both chains, is what I'm thinking.

I suspect they will have measures to prevent that though, it looks like Jihan Wu offered a bounty for someone to write a guide for exchanges on how to avoid that happening in case of a UASF prompting the need for the fork to happen early.

I agree with that. We have to make sure that problem is resolved quickly and ease the network congestion.

Yes.  Because a signature of a transaction of valid pre-fork UTXO is valid in both chains.  It can even be picked up from one chain (not network) and incorporated in the other one by a miner wanting your fee on his branch.


There are two ways.  The first way is to make the signatures incompatible.  That would be a serious protocol change.  It would be the best solution, but it would be a deep modification of bitcoin's protocol, much more than simply the block size.  The simplest trick I can suggest is to flip somewhere a little-endian in a big-endian convention.  That would make the signatures, hashes, and everything different, avoid backwards compatibility and be a full, clean hard fork.  You make a signature according to one, or the other branch, and the signature is invalid (and cannot even be computed without your secret key) on the other chain.  Because, be careful.  If you only WANT to transact on one chain, it is important that not only your transaction is incompatible with the other chain protocol, but mostly, that it is cryptographically NOT POSSIBLE to have others make a transaction in your name on the other chain with the information you provide on the first.  So just superficially changing some aspects that don't change the cryptographic signature, won't do.  One can still DEDUCE your (unwanted) transaction on the other chain, and produce it - to get the fee.  So you need to modify the cryptographic signature for both.

But I think that BU will not dare to do that.  So we stay with a very messy, dangerous and backward compatible hard fork.  
Bitcoin not being able to make smart contracts, the ONLY way to separate transactions is to include some dust of a coinbase transaction with a coin mined AFTER the fork.  This UTXO not existing on the other chain, you also have a non-valid transaction on the other chain.
But it is difficult to get to these new coins.  Only exchanges can probably do so, but how are you going to get your pre-fork coins to the exchange ?  If exchanges are friendly, they let you have a "joint wallet", and they do the mixing and split for you.

Its not yet time to panic since the Segwit and Block unlimited is having a tie and there is no consensus yet. But i still bet on the 8mb increased on blocksize and hoping that there will be a miracle during the last hour. But if another choice will be approved then it is still okay for me since what we need today are solutions to the long confirmation and higher fees on transactions.

My idea is that nothing will change.  Or that bitcoin will hard fork in two coins, but I don't think that will happen before it loses its first mover advantage.

I think any kind of change of the current protocol would mess up the payment systems. Doesn't matter what.
We all committed to 2 major bitcoin laws:
1. The protocol was said to be 1MB per block. Period!
2. There are only 21 Million Bitcoins. Period!

While the first one may be discussable and unimportant for the majority (I talk about users not miners!) the second one is severe.
We will never reach 100% consensus with any kind change. NEVER! That means, we will have a forked chain for sure.
And if there was a fork, we would automatically have 2 chains, with a maximum of 21 million EACH!
That means, we more or less DOUBLE the amount. Yes I know, its not a double actually, but the majority of investors don't understand that and will just think bitcoin was hacked. Consumers just don't understand that! "Which one is the right one now?"'s will be everywhere ...

We have similar problems with ETH already. The fork harmed ETH a lot. And this was although people invested in ETH are probably a lot more technical understanding already than the ones invested in Bitcoin.
If we fork bitcoin the trolling will be gigantic!

Keeping that in mind I have only one "solution" for Bitcoin as "unique Bitcoin":
We have to create a second chain (BITCOIN 2.0), where Bitcoin can MOVED to by burning it from the original chain. Only this way the number of bitcoins stays the same. Consumers will move their coins, if there is an easy way and everyone accepts the new protocol. Laggers can easily be forced by stopping support of 1.0 payments...
We can enhance the protocol in any consensus way (of course here is a lot of work hidden) and anyone can decide to move. Decision is only made by stakeholders not by miners.

There are only a few more or less acceptable problems (at least more acceptable than to double the coins):
- new and old coins are not fungible (new ones can not be converted to old ones any more)
- the bitcoin generation on the old chain will still go on. Thats why there should not be any coin generation on the new one, because that would increase the amount. For the new chain is probably only a POS/POI consensus acceptable. (I will not go into a discussion about POW against POS here. Let's just say, that with PoW we will run into a mess again)
- as a result the old chain will sooner or later just run for generating bitcoins that can be transferred. Transactions will not generate fees for miners any more so the chain will run out, if there can be generated any bitcoins any more.
- The payment providers have to implement 2.0 in advance in order for any change.

I fully agree with you, except that 1. is now also important: it determines the fee market.


However, you proposition is not going to be accepted, because the second coin (obtained by burning bitcoins) will not be seen as bitcoin, but as an altcoin, and the first chain (true bitcoin) will keep on living.  Nobody is going to burn a real bitcoin to obtain an altcoin.

I know that its hard, but I think it can work like this:
- You make a proposal for 2.0
- You ask major payment processors and exchanges, if they support it. They have to implement in advance and sign a contract, that they will stop support for 1.0 after some time
- You invite the major stakeholders (vinclevoss, roger ver, major exchanges) to a consensus party where everyone has to click on the button so that most of the coins are moved...

I mean its a change of a protocol. Its hard but not impossible...

I cannot see how a important change like this can be done without 95% consensus... I see people are saying that consensus can be reached at a

50%+ consensus for BU? { Please explain, because I am missing that point } ... I just love the fact that it is not easy to change important code in

the protocol, otherwise miners would have dominated these decisions... we still have a say.  ;D

We don't have a say. If 51% miners decide to change to a software with a different protocol the original chain will be changed. The 95% was just implemented in the segwit software. And BU has implemented 75% as far as I know...

No, this is not true.  You only have no say with Segwit.  If 51% of the miners implement segwit, all of them have to follow or get orphaned, and there will be only one chain.  Whether your node supports segwit or not, only one single chain will be produced.  No choice.  Only miner majority.  Core is nice to not activate before 95%, but they don't have to.  51% is enough.

However, with BU, you have a choice.  BU being a HARD fork, (but backward compatible), it can make a NEW CHAIN forking off the normal bitcoin chain if it has 51% mining hash rate or more (if it has less, it will, being backward compatible, always be orphaned as it makes invalid blocks for the majority, but the standard chain is accepted by BU miners, which is the longest one).

So if BU goes beyond 51%, it makes a new chain WITH A NEW COIN, call it butcoin.  Former bitcoin holders now hold their former stash of bitcoin, and a new, equal stash of butcoin.  Bitcoin has forked.  If exchanges include this butcoin, people can exchange butcoin for bitcoin and vice versa.  The market cap of bitcoin will split over bitcoin and butcoin.  If butcoin's market cap remains over 51% of the total, miners will stay in the majority with butcoin.  We now have two coins: the original bitcoin, and an altcoin, butcoin.

However, if ever people sell off their butcoin for more bitcoin, and the market cap of butcoin drops, miners will move back to bitcoin (lower difficulty, higher market price).  If now, butcoin becomes minority, a major clusterfuck happens.

Indeed, more miners on bitcoin means that sooner or later, the total PoW in the bitcoin chain will overtake the total PoW in the butcoin branch.  From that moment on, butcoin miners will now accept the bitcoin chain as the valid chain, and mine on it (just to get orphaned each time by the majority: bitcoin's protocol being more severe, it is as if the former bitcoin protocol is a soft fork of butcoin so the majority wins).  It is only if they implement a full hard fork that makes the bitcoin chain incompatible with the butcoin chain that the butcoin chain will not undergo this major orphaning.

But with a BU split, the market cap will decide, and as long as the market cap of butcoin is larger than bitcoin's, it will stay alive next to bitcoin.  And if BU becomes fully incompatible with bitcoin, it will be an entirely different coin.

If segwit will be used the other blocks would be orphaned with the software, thats true. But I bet at that time there will already be a software out, that fixes that and makes another altcoin with them like ETC did. So there is actually not really a difference. There will be 2 chains in either the way...
If people get crazy we maybe even have 3 chains. Classic, BU, and Segwit...

The main point is, it will always be a "double" amount of bitcoins with the fork. I suggest to think about different possibilities(https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1819160.msg18124177#msg18124177)

No, because a segwit block is still a good normal block.   Because segwit is a soft fork.  Every segwit block is accepted by an old node.  Otherwise it is not a soft fork.  So as a non-segwit node, you cannot decide whether a given block is a non-segwit block.  Because segwit blocks are also OK.

You could, indeed, implement ANOTHER soft fork, a non-compatible with segwit, true.  Is that what you mean ?

Yes I ment that, but I actually think I misunderstood something. Thank you.
But still I guess we will not reach consensus as we stick to the 25% since months already. And with BU we will have the fork...

If Bitcoin forks into 2 chains.. it's over.. :(

If CORE (95% of ALL the fixes/changes/updates) leaves Bitcoin development.. it's over.. All respect to BU, but they are simply not at the level required yet..

No idea how this will all turn out.. BUT Bitcoin is NOT un-destroyable. Nothing is. Dangerous times..

but the original bitcoin did have 32MB limit, by your logic we should be there now not a 1MB, satoshi was all for the right change, i said that 1MB was done momentally to avoid ddos attack, it was not a solution, and why we should now remain at 1MB?

Sorry, but the original protocol had no blocksize limit at all, there was just 32 MB memory limit for message in the software, thus blocks. BU and Classic follows this logic, and thus argument for anything over 1 MB = altcoin is pretty weak.

You don't seem to understand that it is not a matter of choice, morality, principles, legality, legitimity or whatever.  We don't have any choice, because there is a DYNAMICAL SYSTEM that decides upon choice: the immutability mechanism.   And that system will decide to remain as it is.  So the only way to do something different, is to make an altcoin.  By forking or whatever.  Not because that would be "right" or "wrong", or "moral", or "just" or .... but because it is dynamically IMPOSSIBLE to do something else.  By the very mechanism that bitcoin was designed to develop: immutability.

The only way to break immutability is by centralisation.  

When I talk about the "original protocol", I don't talk about a historical protocol for which no block chain is actually running today. I'm talking about the "original one" as the CURRENT one.  Any "old" protocol is dead, because no live chain is running it.

Why would that be the case ?  If it forks, we have two coins.  There are already more than 700 other coins out there.  What happens, of course, is that bitcoin then loses its "first mover advantage" and becomes "just another crypto currency".

QED..

To be honest, I'm fairly convinced to just go with whatever the majority of miners are supporting at the time, because this block size debate has been going on for too long and either solution is going to result in Bitcoin being scalable whether we like the exact mechanics or not.

whoever takes over that I think if it helps the problem and a better future for bitcoin is not a problem for me :)

Bitcoin is about disruption and momentum and its free and censorship resistant.

Blockstream money is disrupted by BU, the free unlimited version of bitcoin.

The momentum is at BU side.

Miners might collude and switch with that momentum.

It might also be that miners support BU to the height to make sure that segwit doesn't get activated, but don't want BU either.  Miners make most profits with small blocks and no segwit: they sell block chain room.  That may, in the long run, become the most valuable commodity, not bitcoin's coins.

If there is a hard fork the exchanges and online services have already spoken and said there will be both Bitcoin (BTC or XBT) and Bitcoin Unlimited (BTU or XBU) like they handled the Ethereum split.

If BU gains control of Bitcoin, they could keep blocks small to reap more transaction fees. This may all be a ploy to take development away from Core and stop Segwit and slow down sidechain development. No one really knows the agendas behind Core or BU. One thing is for sure, it aint to benefit Bitcoin.

Of course, it is extremely lucrative for exchanges, as everybody has "free coins" on the chain he doesn't like, and will go and exchange them: a lot of volume (essentially the whole bitcoin stash, twice !), and a lot of exchange fees.

(1) SegWit is basically a reconfiguration of the block structure so that a new transaction
type (SegWit TX) can be implemented that creates more space with the 1MB cap. It changes
the "blocksize" into a "blockweight" by allowing 1MB of transaction data in the block and 3MB
of witness data outside of the block. The original purpose was to fix the malleability flaw but
was then seen as also adding "more space to a block". So it is an optimization, a fix, and an
"tx increase". This is not a long term scaling solution but helps facilitate second layers in a
more efficient and safer manner as well as maintains current level of decentralization and
unregulatability by governments.

BU is basically a final scaling solution. This proposal creates a new paradigm that bitcoin has
not experienced ever. It essentially give the miners the power to create any size block, as long
as their BU node network approves of that size cap. In theory, BU is based upon pure economic
market principals that believe that the market is rational and will balance the Bitcoin system to
an appropriate equilibrium. It uses a new Consensus mechanism call "Emergent Consensus".
It is intended to solve scaling so that it follows along the same lines as difficultly adjustments
and halving, as that they are automatic parts of the Bitcoin system.

(2) Gavin and Roger Ver only support the BU version because they believe Satoshi intended
On-Chain scaling, even at the cost of centralization and regulation of the network. Some think
those possibilities were intended by Satoshi, others think they may not happen, and others have
no opinion either way since they are purely interested in mass adoption and low fees only. Gavin
and Roger (and others) truly believe that they are right because they are following the "original
Satoshi plan" of an online currency. They believe that the "original Satoshi plan" has been
sidetracked and/or delayed.

(3) I don't know if Gavin has a lot of coins now, since he doesn't talk about such and he did give
alot away with his old faucet. But Roger Ver claims to be bitcoin wealthy and has shown so by
creating infrastructures and support system that support his Bitcoin beliefs. It is likely that both
believe that their coins would in theory be more valuable in time, as more people get their hands
on and start using bitcoin as a mass payment platform.



If your tx is in the mempool and unconfirmed at the time of a hardfork, my understanding is that
you will have "double coins". Whats important is whether your tx was including within a block, PRIOR
to the hardfork. That is all. So, if your tx gets 1 confirm, then the hardfork, the receiver now gets the
"double coins". You do not need to delete your pending tx unless you are worried about getting into a
block prior to the hardfork. Point is, if we have warning of the hardfork, you can wait till after the split,
but if it is unexpected, then what will be will be.


The above are my understandings.

No. The way mining works, they try to solve the hash puzzle and as soon as they solve the hash puzzle they publish the block and hope it isn't orphaned.

Every TX they include is additional money, it is not in their best interest to exclude transactions that pay a fee - that's money they are giving away to one of their competitors.

When blocks are not full it is because they solved the block before validating enough transactions to fill it.

There is a bounty in the mempool already thats worth to mine. The block size is a non linear optimization problem but there will be a finit optimal block size for every adoption rate.

Unlimited somehow caught up in pool support, but blocks mined with it are still way lower than SegWit. %'s seem to be really close, sometimes SegWit on top, sometimes Unlimited. This data mostly means nothing, at least up until now, but it's still interesting to follow...

It caught up because Ant Pool one of the largest mining pools, has begun transitioning to Bitcoin Unlimited.

In fact, there is a trend developing:

https://i.redd.it/i9f8wm49gbky.jpg

It seems to me that BU will take over Segwit. I dont know if it's good or bad.

But the inability of the devs to figure out a solution faster is leading to this. Plus, we are tired of huge fees.

So whatever can fix the fee problem, I will stand besides it.

If we dont fix the fee problem, we wont have any bitcoin to debate about, so better choose now, and risk bitcoin, than to lose bitcoin altogether over some other coin.

What happens if there is 50/50 between BU and core and there is a hard fork? Do we now own bitcoin 1.0 and bitcoin 2.0 or do you have to switch your coins to one and hope you made the right choice? I've never been through a hard fork with bitcoins (or any alts tbh).

It's a good thing.

Core and Blockstream don't think there is a fee problem. They want to kick regular people off the network by maintaining 1mb blocks, a limitation originally intended as an anti-spam measure.

Bitcoin unlimited isn't against 2nd layer solutions (look up flextrans) but not to the determent of normal people using the Bitcoin Block Chain.

Your question was previously answered earlier in the thread
(as well as millions of other times in millions of other threads).

BU will not activate until it has 75% hashing power. Once activated, the hard fork won't go into affect for some time, allowing miners who have not yet transitioned over to make the change... or be left behind.

Perfect thanks. I was just looking through and still couldn't find the answer. So I'll have bitcoin and a bitcoin clone then I'll just hang onto both and see which does better basically. As long as I don't have to do anything then it's pretty fool proof!

The code is designed so that it is possible at 51%.
75% is what the community is currently agreeing to defer to.

So "activating" at 75% is contingent that they do not agree to reduce it later,
for example if only 65% could be reached.

Yes, in theory. If you hold, you are safe.
If you re not experienced in such, you should wait and see before transacting or trading.

If they didn't think there was a fee problem they wouldn't be working on segwit/LN implementation.

I went looking for a roadmap for BU today and what I found was a seven months old, very weak regarding the current issues, and and vague about the proposals it did have. This is not a serious alternative to core/segwit/LN.  Hating on core without evidence they are doing anything wrong is not going to fix anything.

If I had a miner I'd be doing exactly what the folks on Reddit are doing - signalling support for BU so they go ahead with their plans, then pull the rug out from under them once they commit. It's time to end this foolishness.

While I suppose it is your right to use deception to get what you want, though I'm not sure how that lines up with other passages from the good book you quote in your sig,

Didn't it have some words to say about The Deceiver?

simple solutions dont require big re-writes
real workable solutions dont need excuses of why X, Y, X are needed . then downplaying it when its revealed that X and Y are not needed and Z is actually an A(complete opposite)

simple solutions don't need to promise things and then pretend the promises still promise even when it wont be achieved even if they got super majority
simple solutions dont need to suck eggs and write scripts with buzzword of the month competitions to show which spammers are involved in the competition (like a secret handshake)(bucoin btucoin, ad-hom, conservative)

Its pretty logical:

Blockstream offers very limited space for miners, but unlimited for 2nd layer = Blockstream Unlimited 2ndLayer Coins


Good for Miners ?  - No, only good for 2nd layer projects. Penalty for miners. Not economically balanced!



Bitcoin Unlimited offers both - just no limits = real disruption bitcoin   <-  I want rather that

Miners might be more happy with that open competition vs 2nd layer scaling. Better eco balanced.

I think you got it all wrong with your assessment of Core intention, Lighting will bring the transaction fee down considerably, also the SegWit will move the blocksize to more than 2mb, which I'm sure is significant for now and this will make on chain scaling possible.

I want to ask you do you trust the code written by Bitcoin Unlimited team. When are people going to understand that bigger doesn't mean better

But only if all UTXO's are moved from native keys to segwit keys, I have understood this right? If all UTXO's where moved from native keys to segwit keys, one input to one output, how long would it take move all UTXO's over, assuming there are no other transactions to process?

Hello class ..can we say "pending train wreck"

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/train-crash-two-trains-collided-head-39549575.jpg

Lets face it guys it is ALL my fault....if BTC tanks to 'beanie baby status". My one shot at making a killing.

The ASIC/CRYPTO gods shall likely 'smite' me and I will take you all with me...

(hey its a gift ..if there is money to be made..I can inverse that puppy in no time at all) :(

No - it's not your fault.  We've been told right before the start: It just cannot scale - and we tired anyway:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09963.html

46million outputs
http://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/unspent-transaction-output-set

on average equates to about 18million transactions

if every user voluntarily moved their funds (including the oldtimers and satoshi)
if every block was filled with ONLY the 'opt-in' to segwit (average native tx to a segwit tx)

AT BEST. 2 months of constantly filled blocks just to pay themselves just to 'opt-in' to segwit

Someone got it.

However, between "cannot scale" because of technological limitations, and "cannot scale" because frozen into the protocol for ever, there's still some room :)

Bitcoin is frozen in far before the technological (and moving) limits are reached.

I calculate that to be between a 70 day operation for average transactions at 3 tps, to 76 days for 1 input to output at 7 tps. Or maybe I need another cup of coffee to wake up if I have calculated it wrong.

not an exact science. i used the average of 2100tx per block*144 block with the 18mill tx average
18m/144/2100=59days

---

but think about it. 18million transactions (46mill outputs) all trying to rush to 'opt-in'
... mempool crash

but think about it. will malicious users 'opt-in' or see a good oppertunity to stick with native-to-native and cause further disruption while the sheep think they can achieve 100% voluntarily.

Either back of the fag packet calculations gives a good idea of a 2 month migration cost being added to the chain, assuming everybody voluntarily moves over. So we do not get that promised transaction rate increase for a very long time in practice.

imagine if: activition 1996 said
"we cannot scale passed 2d shoot-em-ups' on a nintendo and Call of duty:MW because 56k internet and 4gb hard drives. we should never make call of dutyMW, never work on growing gaming passed nintendoNES and instead build plastic figurines that dont require electronics so the kids have something to play with that has no limitations."

Well you dont want to give too much power to miners otherwise they will act like a pseudo government.

Of course I dont know how good the 2nd layer will be and how decentralized.

It seems to me that neither Segwit nor BU is good.

That is why they have only 25% approval.

yep

but thats 2 months at best assumming ALL tx's were segwit migrators. remember usual tx flow of people paying people and spam fill blocks too. so imagine it like many months of mempool crashing and fee war price increases with still no guarantee's

other proposals of just blocksize increases (real blocksize increases) either dynamic or spoonfed fixed amount, dont rely on moving funds to cause it. so those options dont cause months of mempool bloating.

1. in segwits case . BLOCKSTREAM GAVE only pools the vote. so dont blame pools for it

2. in any vote.(for any change to rules, consensus, network protocol) without nodes being ready, pools wont do anything due to orphan risk and network safety and other things.
so whether nodes get an official vote or not, smart pools would hold off voting for anything unless they see a good node count to cope with the network change

You have a misunderstanding about the notion "scale".   You confuse it with "is currently not within reach of technology".
In any case, bitcoin cannot scale, because it limited itself, independent of the scaling problem of single block chain technology.

The scaling problem a block chain faces, is that for "n" participants, over time T, it needs to store/process/.... ~n^2 T data.
If we presume that transactions per entity rise with the number of potential partners they have on the network and that ALL nodes need to process ALL transactions of ALL participants over ALL of history.   This runs into technical limits at a certain point.  

But bitcoin put itself a much, much more severe and hard limit: 3 transactions per second.  Making transactions themselves an expensive resource.

you were not understanding my sarcasm to bring up the point

the punchline being someone from nintendo being the activision insider saying to activision not to expand passed nintendo limits. because X,Y,Z reasons.

also the technical limits of 1996 are not the technical limits of 2016
so stating activision should not progressively grow into 3D gaming and then as years go on increase to HD 3d gaming.. and instead only ever stick to nintendo rules of 2d...

is stupid.

---

ofcourse logic dictates dont make call of duty:MD in 1997..
but bringing the logic to bitcoin.. "gigabytes by midnight cant happen"

but..
PROGRESSIVE, dynamic, NATURAL GROWTH. where NODES define the parameters of what they can cope with. (even BU know this and know/use consensus) will allow growth and scaling.

all you need to do is ignore the fake doomsdays of "gigabytes by midnight" and replace that scripted mindset with "natural growth over time (months, years, decades)

then you see the difference.

in short we WILL NOT suddenly get 1billion people over night. so ignore the "overnight capability" doomsday.. as the fake reason to halt real scaling

imagine if everyone ignored the "gigabytes per midnight"
we could have been at 2mb REAL blocksize in 2015(nodes can cope with)
we could have been aiming for 4mb REAL blocksize in 2017(nodes can cope with)
and then by 2019ish 8mb (nodes can cope with*)

*telecommunications company have a 5 year plan they are in the middle of. (landline: fibre optic, mobile: 5G) so by 2019 things will be different then now
*hardware capability, moves on too.. (raspberry pi min specs of RPi1 vs RPi3 have scaled 20-60 fold for bitcoin capability)
*people on average upgrade hardware between 1year-4 years average

---

we should not halt natural scaling onchain just to FORCE users offchain. there can be a symbiotic relationship where LN is voluntary side service. and not an essential only utility to spend.

the fee war is not due to natural scaling not coping but due to DEV decision to halt and delay scaling to push LN to become 'essential'

Look, I think that BU is not a bad solution (I don't know exactly how the consensus mechanism works, I've read there are big fuck ups there, but this can be solved).  Monero is a crypto that has such a dynamic block size adaptation.  So this kind of technology not only exists, it is active and it works.

But my point is that BU, or any other solution (like Segwit), WILL NOT BE ADOPTED by consensus.  Not because it is bad, but because of the immutability dynamics.  I'm not saying that this is "good".  I think that it *will be like that*, because some people involved will always find their profit from NOT changing the block size, and because different groups will see their advantage in different ways of solving this problem.  And for exactly the same reason that me wanting to reverse my transaction to you, and you wanting to reverse your transaction to me, none of us can, and the block chain is immutable because of that, there will never be a consensus on changing the finite block size.  The imaginable bitcoin that would have BU included would probably work better, but it will not happen, because that is not the real bitcoin, and the transition to BU will be against the advantages of enough people to avoid it.

we cannot 'give'. they take because they can due to their role and investment. you would do the same in their place.

No, the fee war is a symptom of immutability dynamics.  When an economic parameter is established (number of bitcoins, block reward, block time of 10 minutes, block size....), any way of trying to modify it will give rise to non-consensus, meaning, disputes over ways to do so.  It will look as if the antagonists in the dispute are "holding back progress", but the disputes themselves ARE the trustless distributed consensus mechanism at work, that makes it IMPOSSIBLE to change the parameter.

I disagree with IMPOSSIBLE. I think the situation makes it difficult, and so potentially highly unlikely that protocol change can be implemented. That is not the same as impossible.

Well, in the same way that it is not impossible that one decides to postpone the next halving, or to have blocks every 2 minutes.
BTW, that would be a much smarter solution: decreasing the block times.  10 minutes is awfully long.  Many newer coins have times of 1 or 2 minutes.  (note that this increases the amount of bitcoin in the end too if the block rewards remain...)

It becomes *more and more* difficult as fees rise and this parameter plays a bigger and bigger role in miner revenue.  It was 10 times easier to solve that issue one year ago than now.  Because the financial implications become more and more important every day.

Yes, any one of these parameters could be changed with consensus. Block times are less important than ensuring that transactions eventually get confirmed. The zero confirmation economic risk has shifted from the disadvantaged malicious double spend propagation attempt, to one of not getting confirmed at all due to full block capacity and forgetful mempools, or selective transaction node relay.


Most miners are not short sighted evil entities. They would rather process more transactions with lower fees as this increases the utility value of what they are mining.

Transaction capacity and confirmation time effects are part of the liquidity value of bitcoin.

the problem is bitcoin core and BU and other folks with block chain solutions are digging their heels in less about the actual block size fix..but it is about POWER who controls
bitcoin..most if not all the developers of ANY camp are bitcoin whales....they have cashed out much/or could if things get ugly...so it is all about ego and power now or
they would imho have comprised like they said on the seg witness first then the hard fork later...they caved and punted (bitcoin core)

so money/ego/power that always works out well right?

its only hard to get consensus if people do not learn consensus (such as those not understanding BU or segwit)

those WITH NODES should spend more time learning consensus. rather than reading sci-fi scripted doomsday rhetoric

politics of doomsday "gigabytes by midnight" "call anything not blockstream a alt" are the time wasting crew causing delay in REAL LEARNING

yes its hard to wake the sheep up and get them motivated to learn how bitcoin actually works to then make the informed decisions.
but we are not talking about millions of users. but just 6000ish people who run nodes(a few people run many nodes) need to learn how bitcoin
really works to make them decisions.(pools are amongst them 6000)

its not impossible. but just harder due to politics. not 'immutable dynamics'

Franky1; the legendary troll spewing out his daily FUD again.

My point is exactly that they can't, as long as we have a distributed, trustless system.  It can only happen, if there is sufficient centralization.  

Would you accept that suddenly, the block reward jumps to 500 coins because this suits miners ?  Do you really think this is possible by consensus ?


Of course they are "evil entities" like all of us.  All entities in a trustless system are to be considered as evil entities.  Otherwise, if they are to be trusted, the system is not trustless.

The point is, however, that there are *different ways* to increase the number of transactions, and that there will not be an agreement on which way, because that will influence the gains and the losses of some.  One will not come to an agreement, even if an agreement is beneficial.   There is no way to come to a consensus, as there will always be a sizeable fraction that doesn't want it that way but the other way.

You see it with segwit vs BU.  

The politics IS part of the immutable dynamics.

People don't really care.  Most of the market cap comes from exchange IOU.  Not from transactions on the block chain.  And big players will always find an agreement with miners to get their essential transactions through.

You don't really see the power that miners get when normal transactions become impossible, do you.  Exchanges will of course "buy" (with fiat ?) room with big mining pools.  Big financial players will buy room on the chain.  To make it impossible for mere mortals to transact without them.  Most of bitcoin will become bitcoin IOU.  This is also what states like: no more anarchic bitcoining, but bitcoining through institutional players.  And miners are king, because they sell their precious space to the highest bidder in contracts ; not with fees. 

Would you like to make a reasoned argument against this FUD so that I can expand my knowledge, reassess my own misunderstandings, and then I can factor it in to my decision making process.

Looks like this could very well be the end game for bitcoin.

The end game for bitcoin as a "currency on the internet", but its beginning as an institutionalized reserve currency.

Underlying capacity not big enough for an institutionalised global reserve currency. They'll soon work that out and buy gold and security vans instead.

If 2-3 transactions are too low for "currency on the internet", I don't know if this is not sufficient for settlements between institutional players. 

A quick internet search and calculations regarding the Swift network:

1995: Average around 0.5 tps.
2015: Average around 3 tps.

Plus to be able to be used for institutional settlement, there would need to be a registry of address ownership.

They would be better off creating their own blockchain instead.

Bitcoin unlimited can never anywhere because the most important thing is the code, and the team is obviously light years away from the Core team, so you are wasting your time thinking anyone but the idiots that only think about cheap fees are going to be running this abomination called BU.

Anyone can create their own node software as long as it complies with the consensus network protocol. That statement is similar to calling linux developers idiots because most people run Windows.

Kind of like the derivatives ticking time bomb that will need to be propped up with tax payers cash.


Can Dash handle 'visa tomorrow'? Look at the transaction usage and blockchain size and tell me how well you think that system has been stress tested.

DASH has some super nodes, that means scale good, security bad.  ETH might need to do the same (PoS) to achieve scalability with smart contracts on top... Bad security!

But even with the dash masternodes being able to quickly agree on an 'instant payment', don't these still need to be written to the blockchain? And can they quickly agree on millions of transactions being thrown at it?

So the masternodes, once agreed, must broadcast this as a high priority transaction some how to all other nodes (which would override any conflicting tx in its mempool), so that if someone mines a block it will be included. If the dash blockchain capacity fails to meet demand there could be issues. How does it fool proof it to prevent a double spend, e.g. node which has not yet received the masternode winner already writes a double spend into a block it mines. Why could such a system not be included into all bitcoin nodes (without requiring someone to lock up 1000BTC and expect mircropayment)?

Suppose I think Core and BU won't compromise (thickheads).  I want to spread my investment out across both.  Too early?

Just make sure that you obtain BTC before any potential bilateral split (should it occur), and then you have an identical stake in both. That BTC has to be on your own private key to be safe (not on exchange or web wallet).

DASH is a copy of bitcoin, with build-in mixers, and some other fancy stuff like mem-pool confirmation.  However, DASH will not run into bitcoin's consensus problems, given that it is centralized, with the devs owning a very large portion of the voting system that determines everything that happens in DASH.

That said, as of now, until the DASH devs decide otherwise, DASH has 4 times more block room than bitcoin, as it runs 4 times faster.

Instant X is nothing else but a certification that the transaction is on the mempool. 

I think Evan's multiple masternodes have already voted for a 2MB limit increase, but they have voted to reduce the block time and implemented it first to mimic LTC. So it will have eight times the capacity. Or perhaps the 2MB vote was just a publicity stunt at the time.

So still a small chance that a mining node thinks differently (e.g. has a double spend in its mempool)? In that case it would be no more secure than the zero confirmation economy, apart from you have to pay for the privilege to use it.

I think that if there's an issue, you can write an e-mail to Evan, who will put the right transaction on the block chain  ;D

I have two investments; 1) non-retirement mostly in a private wallet although I do have 1 physical coin, 2) retirement (Roth IRA) in GBTC.

So, my private investment is ready for what comes.  What happens to the physical coin depends on the details when we get there.  My retirement investment in GBTC will depend on how Grayscale handles it (if I don't jump to COIN (if it becomes a reality)).

This is my take on it:

There is a phoney/cold war going on.
The phoney war is the spreading of propaganda causing the cold war which is two separated group of factions opposed to each other.

Miners can vote for their preference by signalling it in a flag in the block. Of those who are signalling these blocks, bigger block solutions have a slight edge over segwit at the moment. (BU being the vast majority of the bigger block vote solutions). There are still many pools not signalling there intentions.

But no matter what the miners vote, nothing can be implemented unless the user nodes accept it.

The vast majority of user nodes are core nodes. Bigger block nodes are mostly BU. Consider though, that a lot of users maybe uninformed and will run the latest thing from core downloaded from the bitcoin.org, and not even know BU or other node software exists. (This is probably not an unreasonable assumption, but some could easily attack this as FUD, even though BU and other nodes are not listed on the bitcoin.org site)

So with the current node distribution, segwit would get activated if miners signal 95% support. BU does not have the node support to be activated even if they signalled 95% support.

There is talk of User Activated Soft Forks as mechanism to force miners hands. This could be the trigger for all out thermonuclear bitcoin war. In this case leave your bitcoins unmoved, head for the bunker, and wait for the radiation to settle. Remember a cold war includes as an arms race, and when war breaks out arms deployment, strategy and who changes sides will determine the winner.

The winner then blames the loser for starting the war.

I run a 0.13.2 Core full node with 8 outgoing and 52 incoming connections and am thinking about going to 0.14.0 soon.  I have run a BU version in the not too distant past but I really want both SegWit and BU.  I suppose I could alternate every so often but that seems cumbersome.  I could run two full nodes but I just want to run one.  Would someone build me a version which runs both SegWit and BU?  Please.

One outcome is that the cold war will de-esculate and you will get exactly that.

trying to be my very unbiased

no point running v0.14
... unless you want to do tests on testnet. as thats the only way to really play with segwit.

if you want a node just for normal usage on bitcoins mainnet, no point running v0.14

and lets say sgwit activated later. it does not fix anything at activation.
however WEEKS after activation core will release a version that includes the segwit wallet (yep segwit keys cannot be used in 0.13.X or 0.14).
v14 only includes native key usage on mainnet.

normally best to wait it out. for that post activation version to save you hassle of redownloading twice in x months

0.13.2 shows the 'support' if thats what your hoping. and 0.14 doesnt support any less or more the 'vote'
all im saying is if your just a normal user and not looking to do tests on testnet involving segwit. no point downloading an update now to just download again another later if your hope was to use segwit on the mainnet

I've run 0.13.2 or BU over the same blockchain/wallet directory without issue. I run BU to show my support for the need for larger blocksizes.

learn consensus.

oh did you know that segwit at activation bans certain nodes from being upstream and bans certain blocks that are not in a segwit format.

its worth learning these things.

soft doesnt mean safe. soft just means node bypassed

Not doing anything does not solve the block problem either. Over 16m BTC are held on native keys, so segwit doesn't even solve the solution in the near term.
We are talking years of effective 1MB blocks even if segwit gets approved.

That makes little sense Dwarf.

BU comes with no guarantees about larger blocks, it simply moves the shouting from the forums onto the network. Guess what? Wildly diverging opinions will be expressed, and that can only be resolved with forking into separate chains, which is what BU more or less does guarantee. You'll get bigger blocks. And several forked BU coins with which to use them. And an exchange rate to reflect that volatility.



Segwit literally does guarantee larger blocks, it's a defined 4MB hard limit. But because it upholds consensus instead of making it easy to break, there is no added risk of forking along blocksize lines.



It's true that the Bitcoin Core wallet doesn't support Segwit keys out of the box right now. That's because the Core devs want to use the initial few weeks after activation to continue testing, and to make sure that a large enough proportion of regular nodes are ready to accept the new, bigger blocks.



What makes you think that? ???

be honeest, if you dont know, just try not to act lik you know.

the reason they havnt added the ability. is the risk of an 'anyoncanspend' attack if segwit keys were used prior to activation.
the delay of weeks is to ensure enough segwit blocks are produced to avoid deactivating. and also to get the native nodes reset as downstream by banning the upstream nodes to ensure other attacks cant be played out


46million unspent outputs

Thanks. I think this has been explained several times in several threads already, but I suppose some people either do not read what they are not willing to read, or they do not understand how to explain why it is not the case.

You haven't thought through the implications, there's no need to scare yourself.

At 46 million outputs, that's probably around 300 B each (some will be using compressed keys, others uncompressed keys, others multisig). That's roughly 13 GB of transactions in total. At 1MB blocks, it takes 13,000 blocks to move them all across. That's only around 6-8 weeks.

Not everyone will move (Satoshi's coins may never move, for instance). And everyday commerce isn't going to hold that back; I'll be giving out Segwit addresses for people to pay me, for instance. The shift to Segwit keys can and will be folded into everyday use, there's not much incentive to continue to use the legacy keys, so people will stop providing them for others to use.


So, you're scaring yourself unnecessarily. I think the price action might be getting to your nerves, calm down.

Must be https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1820153.msg18140189#msg18140189

basic maths already done of 2 months(if everyone moved at same time).
but as CB said due to normal transactions wanting their space too . it will be more than 2 months.

oh. and need we forget malicious spam attackers WILL stick with native keys. after all why would they give up their weapon and disarm themselves

Then why are you so frightened of the truth about Segwit keys? ???

Like I said, 6-8 weeks is all it would take to move all 14 million outputs, and not all will move straight away anyway, so it will take less than that. No-one will want the old P2PKH & P2SH keys, as they'll be more expensive to spend from once you get your money. Regular business will switch to providing Segwit keys very quickly. So there's very little to worry yourself about

In a month or so, a majority of outputs will be moved to Segwit keys already. No need to worry about Sigops attacks, the exact same attack is possible now, as it's limited to 1MB now and after Segwit. Spamming with old keys won't really work, miners will happily accept higher fees for old keys, or reject old keys (they can make more money if they choose to confirm transactions that fill the whole 4MB limit). Nothing forces miners to accept spammy or attack transactions, as you can see by how much spam gets kicked out of miner's mempools right now.


You're all a bunch of worriers here, you just need the correct information to set your hearts at rest :) We'll be able to enjoy the ~2MB blocks that Segwit keys will initially yield after only a few weeks, those are the facts.

^ failing to stroke the sheep to sleep

if spammers fill the base block with native keys. there is no "extra" room

the witness is just a ratio of the base.
its not like the whole segwit tx can sit in the 1mb witness area safe as a separate room of a house.

its analogically more like more footspace on a plane, rather than needing to buy 2 seats to put ur feet up
(base=seats, witness=foot area, other weight left=baggage area (for future features that can append onto the witnes later but useless now)
the issue is:
1.stampede for seats fills the plane
2.the new tx's doesnt reduce mempool utility (full txdata and witness still take up mempool space)
3. if fat natives buying up 2 seats to put their feet up, then anorexic segwiters have to wait longer at the terminal

seems CB thinks he can just not worry about the seats (base block) and just have his entire body on the floor (witness area) or sit in the baggage area (empty weight)

not even sure why he brings up the 4mb number as thats just an un-utilised buffer that cant be filled with anything for a long while.. at best hope is ~2mb
the 4mb weight is not 4mb of capacity. its just extra baggage space for future features

I'm sure that 4MB buffer won't be fully utilised by midnight, unless somebody works out another exploit.

My understanding is a one line patch to core will make it compatible with block created by BU miners.

So those who do not trust the BU developers can still use a core client with bigger block nodes.

SegWit does look like is has a tremendous advantage to hardware wallets, so going to SW is something I support even with bigger blocks, hence why I very well may run a core client but with support for bigger blocks. I build my own from source (have for years) so that's not hard for me, perhaps we should start making some binaries built from core code but supporting bigger blocks available alongside the BU binaries.

Not really. The BU client protocol changes are more complex than just a CORE "blocksize" patch.
Also, CORE currently has things implemented that are not in or not allowed in BU.

In theory, after a BU hardfork with a surviving chain, certain implementations like CPFP and RBF
are not allowed to be used since they "harm" the reliability of zero confirmation txs (oxymoron IMO).

This is my understanding.

My unease of segwit as a soft fork is that it creates a two tier node network and introduces a lot of technical debt. Plus non mining nodes need to advertise the fact that they are willing to accept bigger blocks to give the confidence to miners that they can create them without them being orphaned.

the funny part is.

making bigger blocks doesnt need rocket science.
as you say its just a couple lines.

so when you hear "its just a clone of core with some tweaks" turned into "they cant code"
the real mindset should be

simple fixes dont need complete re-writes.

so although aliceWM you may run a core client with support of bigger blocks . your essentially making XT or classic.
if you make it dynamic. thats essentially BU

and instead of people seeing it as 'simple solutions dont need complete re-writes'. you will be hit with the same 'you cant code' rhetoric
and if you did rewrite ever line.. youll then be hit with 'not peer reviewed by king gmaxwell'

..
what you want to do is exactly what has been done.. take core tweak it and release it.
but all its been met with is doomsday rhetoric because king gmaxwell has not approved it

soft consensus (pool only)
or hard consensus (node or pool)

both actually need node approval. otherwise its orphan hell.(yep after activation segwit will stop native blocks bing built ontop of segwit blocks)

going soft just means only pools get to OFFICIALLY vote. but pools will UNOFFICIALLY wait for safe number of nodes even if nodes dont get OFFICIAL vote

segwit going soft is more about segwit alligned at the top of the network as the upstream filters(already set up (FIBRE).
segwit nodes will also white list other segwit nodes to receive segwit blocks blacklisting non segwit nodes(thus no old node being upstream)to then white or blacklist non segwit nodes downstream of who segwit wants to filter a block to. into a sesspool of nodes where some have been pruned. some have witness some dont. why by those nodes wont really communicate with each other due to lack of full data and other things.
(hense sesspool)

meaning the only true real validators are the upstream filters.
leaving the other nodes downstream as just unnecessary nodes, faking the true FULL VALIDATION node count. right up and to the point where the upstream nodes just blacklist all native nodes because their "old, pruned non full validators".. to then force native nodes to upgrade to segwit or be dropped out. (much like nodes refuse to talk to anything prior to v0.8 )

however because a bigger blocksize node uses normal block formation that doesnt need to be translated. doesnt need nodes to be in a certain order doesnt need to intentionally ban nodes nor does it need to PREVENT relaying new style unconfirmed tx's to old nodes to avoid new attack vectors.

the network of nodes allowing bigger blocks are all on an even playing field.

and all of this could have been achieved years ago in either GUI as an new options tab where users could adjust acceptable blocksize or a new RPC call in the debug console to change settings. thus users wouldnt need to beg devs after that for constant tweaks everytime the size increases because users could have done it themselves to stay on the network rather then becoming unsynced if a blocksize change occured

---

basically if segwit activated now
their would only be 3000~ true full validation nodes, other 3000 deemed as non full validation relay nodes
and also 75% of pools blocks would get orphaned and 75% of pools own nodes would be banned
..
if segwit waited for 95% pools(where by node count didnt change). 5% of blocks wold be orphaned and 5% of pools would be banned
and still only 3000~ real full validation nodes.. other 3000 deemed as non full validation relay nodes

Can someone explain me what will happen with blockchain size after 2MB blocks? Will it start becoming double as big as it is now, or just double as much transactions will happen at a time? Just wondering what will happen with full nodes in year 2020, because setting up full node today require average machine and a week of downloading, and chain doubles its size each year.

When the block size increases, each block will be able to fit more transactions which means the competition to get your transaction into the block will not be as fierce and you will have have shorter confirmation times with smaller fees.

That's what will happen.

Regarding blockchain size, you can use a torrent to speed that up considerably. At least one use to be able to use a torrent to speed that up considerably.

1mb blocks allow a max blockchain growth of ~52gb a year
over the last 8 years (mainly the very first 6 years) blocks were not full which is why right now 8 years of data is not ~420gb
EG before 2013 blocks were less than half filled

however because demand is at a constant 1mb full now. expect ATLEAST 52gb growth/year
-whereby it would be ~52gb a year if we just stay stuck at 1mb blocks.
-whereby it grows beyond 52gb/year depending on demand with more than 1mb blocks being allowed

It looks like Bitcoin Unlimited is now  28.5% while SegWit is only 26.2%, I'm starting to think that SegWit has no chance sadly. In the meantime, Coinbase, Bitfinex  decided to list BU as an Altcoin after the soft fork which I think is a good thing because If we ever have the exchanges and online services with SegWit, BU won't have much of a chance even though If miners are supporting it.

I think it's a horrible idea for exchanges to list BU as an altcoin, that only encourages the splitting of the network... It doesn't really matter if we go with SW or BU IMO, but the whole network needs to agree on one of the two, the network ending up in 2 forks is the worst that can happen to Bitcoin atm.  If it does Bitcoin will lose one of its biggest advantages, all the adoption that it has built up over the years.

It might not be a bad thing.

Those who want it as a reserve currency would have it as a reserve currency and those who want it as use currency would have it as a use currency.

The free market could then decide which use is better.

There is a drawback though, in that the two currencies would have different values yet payment addresses would look the same. That would cause a huge problem for usage, so I I would prefer it if one of the philosophies started with a new genesis block and a different scheme for base58 payment addresses.

However if blockstream went to SegWit and BU did not, SegWit addresses look different so it may not be that confusing except when using non SegWit addresses on the Blockstream chain.

segwit started as an altcoin(elments project) with its own genesis block
segwit also rewrote thousands of lines of code just to become bitcoin compatible
segwit requires moving people away from native tx addresses to get segwit benefits
segwit requires banning and moving nodes around and orphaning native blocks

where as
BU is just a tweak to bitcoin code and people dont need to move funds just to get BU benefits
BU treats blocks under 1mb just as valid


so segwit should start a new genesis block

What I don't understand between Segwit and Bitcoin Unlimited is, whoever wins the race, will they get the complete control over the whole bitcoin network as well as nodes, or is it limited to something specific, like mining?

BU stays on the same playing field as classic, xt and about a dozen other implementations. and requires core to only rewrite a few lines of code to be on the same playing field

segwit requires everyone to rewrite thousands of lines of code to match segwit. or just download it from the blockstream controlled repo.

the minority(core) avoiding any rewriting/downloading/upgrading to either. will (either BU or SW activates) not remain 'full nodes' and it then becomes useless to be a node as you might aswell just be running an spv(lite) wallet

No, we give them, if we are passive.

It's the nodes who should be in charge, not the miners. Segwit really needs to address that issue, and not give power in miners hands.

If you let the miners take over, then the miners will effectively become the Central Bank of Bitcoin, that's a fact.

Let's suppose SegWit is pretty good stuff but is falling behind in the public relations department.  Is there a way to incorporate SegWit without forcing everyone to move their coins to new SegWit-compatible addresses?  Or am I confused?

I'm lazy and don't want to have to do anything.  Besides which there will be the fees to be paid to get my investment/holdings moved to the new addresses.  If I don't move them then eventually they will become valueless, right?

If all of this is right then Satoshi's coins will either have to move (interesting) or become worthless (interesting).

If forced to chose at this very moment then I would be inclined to chose BU.  I would much rather see the two camps compromise.

How much does the https://bitnodes.21.co/dashboard/ User Agents chart matter to folks?

You need to check your terms & conditions of your investment trusts to see what would happen should a bilateral split occur. Similarly, the same applies for online wallets or exchange accounts I should think.

At the moment there has been no announcement that native UTXO sets will become invalid if segwit activates. Leave your coins unmoved in your desktop or paper wallet and you will have an equal stake in both coins should a bilateral split occur.

David Rabahy's had this demonstrated to him in the past, and still behaves as if he doesn't understand this blindingly obvious "subtlety".



David, do people actually take investment advice from you? On Bitcoin? They are incredibly unwise to take advice from a financial adviser one who states

"I'm lazy and don't want to have to do anything"

Shaolin Fry has committed a bip-segwit-flagday draft (https://gist.github.com/shaolinfry/743157b0b1ee14e1ddc95031f1057e4c) that may be useful.

Interesting development: (Definitely worth reading)

-------------------------

  Status: Draft
  Type: Informational
  Created: 2017-03-12

Motivation

Cause the mandatory activation of the existing segwit deployment before the end of midnight November 15th 2017.

--------------------------

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-unlimited-reaches-almost-40/
Bitcoin Unlimited Reaches Almost 40%  ???

Let them be new altcoin like XT Classic , who cares about them now ?
Mining will be centralized over time IMO.
Over time few people will own pools / hardware factories and we will and like FED but miners FED.
Once few people have monopoly at mining they can force even 1% inflation if they want.
They will just say we will stop mining with 99% of machines and what you can do to me :D ?

Shitcoins had solution for that with fast recalculating blocks if time-limit is not reached.

You can watch the current signaling here: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/pools?resolution=24h. You don't need to rely on any news articles for such. Keep in mind that ironically, almost no miner (besides Bitcoin.com) is actually running BU. They are just signalling it. ::)

Probably because they are waiting for 75% to diminish the impact of a contentious fork.

There are also substantial performance improvements in core 0.13 and 0.14 that haven't made their way into the BU code so miners would lose all those benefits by abandoning the core client.

It's also expensive to switch and then have to switch back if the fork doesn't happen but SegWit does.

There is no technical reason to run BU on a mining node now except for testing, and you do not need to move a majority of your nodes to test.

Right now it is just about the signal, so it is wise to only signal.

Once 75% consensus is reached for a difficulty period, if that ever happens, there is a span of two difficulty periods before the fork takes place and that is plenty of time for them to actually upgrade the client itself.

BU has had its own network propagation improvements for quite some time, which have been tested on the live network:

https://medium.com/@peter_r/towards-massive-on-chain-scaling-presenting-our-block-propagation-results-with-xthin-da54e55dc0e4#.57yryf5um

Have core solutions have been implemented that surpass this? (compact blocks? fibre?)

The other improvements miners will care about relate to block creation time. BU might have optimisations in development that we don't know about.

I should imagine other niceties, such as IBD improvements will be an 'on the back-burner' issue until the future network direction is resolved.

Is there any fool proof way to tell exactly what node a miner vote is running?
Some articles would indicate that more pools (e.g. ViaBTC) are mining on BU nodes, but then we all know a phoney war is part of the cold war.

...and they had to rely on the Core developers to point out the serious flaws in their design.


Yep.



The Bitcoin developers have made IBD and block propagation improvements, and released them in 0.14. Maybe BU do have unreleased ideas that they've not announced yet, guess who else with a larger team, who've proven to be consistently more competent team, also has the same


Where are the BU privacy solutions, like Confidential Transaction or Mimblewimble? Where are the new more efficient tx encoding formats? The reason BU does zero development along those lines is that they're entirely focused on creating the most disruption to the Bitcoin ecosystem as possible, not on improving it at all. It's literally trolling software, made for the sole purpose of trolling the Bitcoin network, and is unsurprisingly promoted using actual internet trolls using trolling tactics

an idea...

IBD concerns are less about time of IBD but actually of..
(subtle difference of psychology(nodes function-ability vs users utility))
time to get it synced to have a full UTXO set to see their uptodate imported key balance and actually start spending.

by simply (much like a liteclient) downloading a UTXO set first as a temporary measure. it then allows people to see their upto date "balance" to then start spending. making the IBD still important, but in practice something that becomes more of a background matter and atleast not have people "waiting".

then as the IBD works in the background. it just makes any changes to the UTXO as it gets updated.

then IBD becomes less practically tiresome to the user

... and still : Not voting for SW because of all that nice little core goodies -> BU is more voted, what does this tell you?

maybe bloating up a tx from say 450bytes to 1.4kb by adding commitments is less important than keeping transactions lean.
maybe mimble and other 'confidential' matters should be left for second layer solutions like LN or sidechains. and to keep bitcoin lean is more practical

well if core want to change tx encoding for minimal tx efficiences, but then bloat tx's with in-efficient bloating commitments for the sake of confidentiality. results in no beneficial efficiency trade-off.

thus by just keeping things lean actually becomes more efficient, than the bait and switch of gaining then subtracting efficiency.

That it's not a vote, lol

When a proposal wins a vote, it becomes dominant. BUcoin won't survive the markets, the vast majority of commercial and private players actually using Bitcoin are publicly rejecting it

If only  C  rated Banks reject I'm fine with such poor predictions....

 ;D

only the "markets" that are VC funded by DGC, http://dcg.co/portfolio/
which are in blockstreams pocket

hence why BTCC is the loudest pool supporting segwit..and flagged segwit support within minutes of the october start, rather than take the time to assess things first... oh look DCG->BTCC

And lots of their miners already moved out - the % of BTCC has dropped sharply

If that BIP proposal forcing segwit activation goes through, we can expect market attempts at resolution before the end of summer.

Another update, Bitcoin Unlimited is now 32% while SegWit is still 26% since the last updated I have made. I'm the only one thinking that BU will get activated sooner or later? without forgetting that they only need 75% while SegWit require 95% signalling in order to get activated.

BTU has no activation threshold AFAIK. 75% is what they prefer.

---

Let me just leave this here: Bitcoin Unlimited Remote Exploit Crash (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zdkv3/bitcoin_unlimited_remote_exploit_crash/)
Professional code at its finest:
For those unfamiliar with this part of the code, here's an explanation on the 'assert(0)':
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34236653/what-does-assert0-mean

It has nothing to do with "this part of the code" Lauda, or "interpreting" as your poorly chosen quote states. Any assert statement is a logical evaluation, and 0 is literally a false evaluation (1 evaluates as true), assert statements are logical evaluations by definition

Was this necessary? It makes no difference to those who don't understand it anyways. More information can be found following that up and the reddit commits.

You're becoming worse than franky. :-X

Don't talk about code you don't even understand: that's the point

If you want to help people, there's not much point in presenting and commenting on code in a way that doesn't teach anyone anything, your explanation can only serve to confuse someone who is trying to learn, and bolster your reputation for comprehending the code, which is obviously pretty limited (and I'm not even an accomplished coder)

Looks like someone has noticed a fix going in to the repository and has decided to exploit it.

I read somewhere that BU just need 75% of consensus.

On a positive note, that means people are seriously looking at the BU code now to toughen up any exploits. Amusing watching the BU node count go down though (yep, they took mine out too!)

Is yours DDosed?

Crap out exploit:

https://coin.dance/nodes

That is dropping like a rock... :D This is not even a suprise for me it was inevitable.

So it looks like segwit has gained a hard 3% since I have last been on the forum. Impressive, with this pace it may be activated by 2050.

Seriously, why cant just people reach a compromise? What if the chain splits in 2? Nobody would want that.

I dont believe the results are accurate.  With all the alt coin pumping going around and people trying to destroy BTC it seems.

What are you talking about? those percentages are pretty accurate because the hashing power is generated by the miners and altcoin pumping and dumping has nothing to do with that.

last time you were around (and said goodbye to bitcoin ;D) the percentage was about 25-26% so it is about the same and besides the small changes are because it is not "hashing power" it is number of blocks mined. and finding a block is not a fixed thing (depends on luck)


there are still brainless newbies who want it because they think their money is going to be doubled if we see a split!!!

The only thing that should be split is the skulls of the people pushing for it.  ::)

Actually  I want to see btc holders money halved when we see a split.  ;D I guess some people just want to watch the world burn.

In the end, your halved money will be my doubled money :d

You've all got to stop looking at the percentages as though they're some meaningful trend. The values are simply representative of the number of pools supporting one or the other. Once one pool decides to move from legacy to segwit or BU, the percentage will slowly rise by the hashrate of the pool till it levels out again. There is no "trend" in that; it's a stepwise change. The last rise in BU% was antpool choosing to signal BU as a protest against UASF and as a result the proportion of BU has gotten 3x higher, but no other pool is signalling it so the percentage has again levelled off. Yes, the overall signalling of BU is higher than segwit at the moment, but that doesn't mean there is any ongoing trend for either of them, until the next large pool decides to signal something.

its will be real interested in next coming days.

Pretty much this until the trend is signaled all we see are the flags.
Nothing else per se although the bitcoin exchange announcement did damper a few people since Bitcoin Unlimited is now treated as the alt-coin if it is listed
https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2017.03.17-Hard-Fork/

Unless they build in replay protection
However, none of the undersigned can list BTU unless we can run both [blockchains] independently without incident. Consequently, we insist that the Bitcoin Unlimited community (or any other consensus breaking implementation) build in strong two-way replay protection,"

all these chats about the contingency plan. are not highlighting the main words enough

contentious hard fork


knowing that dynamics wont go contentious and is and always has for the last 2 years just patiently wanted consensus. never pushing for splitting, never setting deadlines. thus showing no intent to rock the boat.

meaning if dynamics activates. they will have majority and it would be consensus not contentious. thus dynamic block prosals community will be the bitcoin. and the contentious minority that orchestrate a bilateral split to keep thir minority alive will be the altcoin. namely SWCoin

Who should be voting ?  surely only the votes of major miners counts, isnt that how a fork debate would work ?   I'm kinda lost why disagreement cant be resolved/tested without risking loss of confidence

The loss of confidence comes from investors and holders being spooked that the alternatives proposed, both of which are a downgrade to what bitcoin is today (which bitcoin is an amazing store of value), are appearing to pose a someday threat in undermining the integrity that is bitcoin.

Those who want change can create an alt-coin, or goto litecoin, goto (permissioned, central-authority by foundation) ethereum, or implement such change to another coin.

For anyone new or simply wanting to expand a bit more about bitcoin, I try to touch on a few of these points (and others) on post titled
"Hacks & puppets & forks - how to destroy bitcoin" https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1834310.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1834310.0)

Correct. The massive price decline is directly related to Antpool signalling BU & the fears of an imminent hard fork. Almost nobody who knows how to use Bitcoin (hint: Consolidate outputs on time) really cares about the fees. There were times where the spam attack was quite massive and delays occurred, but that was only a minor annoyance. The mempool is currently empty, considering that the attack has subsided for now.

Indeed. Bitcoin is fine either when:
1) Segwit is activated (soft fork; no split).
2) Segwit is not activated; no fork either.

Ironically, the same "free market" proponents from the BTU folk want to attack the Core chain after a split (if it came to that). ::)

But it doesn't look like Segwit is going to be activated.  Bitcoin unlimited is also taking a long time, I am not convinced that it will fork.
It is almost worse now that we are hanging under the cloud of a hard fork, without knowing if or when it will happen.

Segwit would be a better solution, I agree completely there, but I think we might end up with BU and BTC, the worst of both worlds!

For some reasons, It looks like SegWit is making some progress and BU is stable enough for the moment. I still don't understand how miners could continue to support it though, I mean a lot of exchanges and wallet already made statements about not supporting BU as the original BTC, instead it they will support it as an alt or not support at all.

At this point they are only signalling support for BU through their minted blocks. Large farms know exactly that it isn't profitable to mine an altcoin that might have a value probably below the 10% mark of the real Bitcoin. I think it's more some sort of a warning to trigger Core devs to agree to a mid-way solution. Or they must have such a hidden agenda, that they will take the risk and force through a hard fork anyway. I think the first mentioned is the case. Either way, it's a nasty situation as the uncertainty is the main factor that is causing all this panic among people.

Read my post again. I've stated that it will not negatively impact Bitcoin.

On the other hand, this would negatively impact Bitcoin.

Correct. While Segwit isn't perfect, it is far superior than the proposal(s) from the others.

I can think of plenty:
1) Stupidity.
2) Lust for power.
3) Lobbying.

to correct you both
a) lauda for the last year+ have you even bothered to read passed the 30 second elevator pitch and glossy images of what segwit actually does and HOW its suppose to achieve its promises (hint: it has nothing to do with activation day)

b) dynamics may take a long time because they set no agenda, deadlines, have no nuclear red button. they are simply offering an open option of consensus. it is blockstream(core) and the centralist defenders over dramatising it because of fear. eg if there is nothing to fear then why scream that splits are bad and then scream that they should split off.. hypocriticising yourselves in the process.

c) once you have done (a) you will realise that all the promises are half-baked gestures. you realise the complete rewrite is not good nor guaranteed and nor superior. all you are left with as an argument to defend is WHO wrote it not what was wrote. which then leads you later to realise that devs too are temporary. so no point defending devs.

d) if you stop caring about devs and think only about the bitcoin diverse decentralised peer network. and take just half an hour out of your lives to care just about bitcoin, not brands, not devs. but maintaining a diverse decentralised peer network. you start to see that blockstream(core) CODE is turning the network into a TIER network that DOES cause splits and oppositions and centralising the network and more importantly dilutes the full node count far more than any other implementations proposal does.

so take your time. dont hit the reply button straight away. actually take some time to run scenarios. read code, learn consensus learn diverse independent network ethos. really think about it without the "protect the employed dev" hat on. and truly understand bitcoin. without just replying with the empty rebuttles thus far.

and if your rebuttles are 'its been tested'.. well so has litecoin, screw it so has many other alts. far more then segwit has. imagine litecoin code being dropped into bitcoin by november and people not even yet seeing if a litecoin keypair will or wont break bitcoins mainnet or lose peoples funds until after activation

BU + classic is 45% of hashpower right now.  thank god all we need to do is convince miners not a bunch of forum fan boys. 

but wait you say, what about economic power...what about the users... miners wont mine a coin that no one wants right?

right.
https://vote.bitcoin.com/

Variance and irrelevant. Miners can create their own shit altcoin if they want to.

Here comes the hypocrisy. Back on the original Bitcoinocracy, where the votes were majorly in favor, it was being completely dismissed as valid. Now you're using the same *thing* as your own argument. ::) Ironically, Ver has more coins than the maximum found on any of those votes. Therefore, this is representative of nothing and makes you a mere baboon.

While I think many of us are aware of the negative impacts, I'd like to hear if you see the potential for any positive impact on Bitcoin Core if Bitcoin Unlimited forks. 

A baboon. lolllll...  :D i like that.

no, you're right.  the user votes don't really matter all THAT much here.  I'm just saying that a lot of people would economically support a bigger block coin if/when the network does split.

Have a great day!

Bitcoin Unlimited is going to be more centralized with roger ver as the new satoshi nakamoto who going to rekt everything with his greed and ego .
He supported and invested in Qtum which was an outright scam thus can not believe in btu also bitcoin as more accessibility with e-commerece and site and now convening them to use  btu would be another uphill task

What benefits are you expecting from this? Basically, in the event of a hostile/contentious fork (which this obviously is, since there is zero consensus on it) suceeding it shows that Bitcoin can be covertly "hijacked" and further centralized. If the tiny fish that are Jihan & Ver can do it, how would you expect Bitcoin to resist a state sponsored attacking (assuming that Bitmain is not influenced by China at all)? If it does succeed, I expect the following: 1) The majority of Bitcoin Core contributors continue to work on their own chain (POW change & Segwit). 2) The majority of Bitcoin Core contributors drop Bitcoin development all together.

Yes, an poorly educated (?) and ignorant one that is. I'd expect educated and well aware people not be resorting to these heinous tactics of yours, but rather use logic and valid reasoning.

There are no user votes, and most certainly not from the economy. These are Ver votes.

The funny thing Lauda, is we all know how loud you would be screaming that the users have rejected BU/big blocks, if the votes favored your position.

Of course the votes are meaningless -- you don't even need a whale.  Someone who really wanted to vote multiple times could just keep moving
their coins and the only way to mitigate that would be sophisticated taint analysis.   That's why UASF is a joke.

I would say that I am the one using logic and valid reasoning while you're the one resorting to heinous tactics, but I guess people can make
up their own minds.

You seem to be either shilling or extremely close minded and attached to your position.  Might have to put you on ignore soon.  You radiate negativity.

I did, in the past, and it was discredited by you and the likes of. That's why I mentioned it as being hypocritical.

This website and its voting has nothing to do with UASF.

Said the person deeply entrenched in one view, to the person open to several different scaling proposals and approaches? Completely logical statement indeed. ::)

I never screamed though that this was any kind of proof.  Glad you agree it doesn't mean anything all that important.
 

What are the several different scaling proposals and approaches that you're open to?

It seemed implied considering that Ver et. al. seem to use it as "proof". You should point this out to anyone who does attempt to use it then.

Read this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1817272.0). We were discussing an approach post Segwit (considering the quadratic hashing problem is quite a risk without) for quite a few pages. Claiming it is just "Segwit vs. BU" is radical. BU is 'emergent consensus' and this is nowhere scientifically proven to be safe (you can't argue against this). It is an change of similar complexity at least on a scale equal to Segwit. I'm not even going to comment of the possible consequences of chain reorganizations (I'll remain neutral).

Gavin's done extensive testing on 8mb blocks.  If EC allowed miners to use 8mb blocks, would be fine while research continued.

2mb + segwit would be better than nothing but Core is not even giving us that.  Pretty sure I read that Greg recently vetoed that idea.