Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin Exchanges Unveil Emergency Hard Fork Contingency Plan

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-exchanges-unveil-emergency-hard-fork-contingency-plan/

"As exchanges in the Bitcoin ecosystem, we face certain challenges that are unique to us. Specifically, we are collectively faced with addressing the very real possibility that a Bitcoin network split may occur in the future. We’d like to take the time to update the community on the procedure that we, as an industry, intend to follow in the event of a contentious hardfork activating on the Bitcoin network.

First, we want to make it clear that we are not here to pass judgement on such an event. If miners want to direct their hashing power to an alternative and incompatible protocol implementation, that is their right. We believe, however, that such hardforks should be engendered through a consensus of miners and users and, at this time, we have not achieved consensus.

As exchanges, we have a responsibility to maintain orderly markets that trade continuously 24/7/365. It is incumbent upon us to support a coherent, orderly, and industry-wide approach to preparing for and responding to a contentious hardfork. In the case of a Bitcoin hardfork, we cannot suspend operations and wait for a winner to emerge. Many of our platforms allow leveraged trading that requires markets to operate continuously. Due to operational requirements alone we are compelled to label an incompatible fork as a new asset.

Since it appears likely we may see a hardfork initiated by the Bitcoin Unlimited project, we have decided to designate the Bitcoin Unlimited fork as BTU (or XBU). The Bitcoin Core implementation will continue to trade as BTC (or XBT) and all exchanges will process deposits and withdrawals in BTC even if the BTU chain has more hashing power. Some exchanges intend to list BTU and all of us will try to take steps to preserve and enable access to customers’ BTU. However, none of the undersigned can list BTU unless we can run both chains independently without incident. Consequently, we insist that the Bitcoin Unlimited community (or any other consensus breaking implementation) build in strong two-wayreplay protection. Failure to do so will impede our ability to preserve BTU for customers and will either delay or outright preclude the listing of BTU.

In summary, if a contentious hardfork occurs, the Bitcoin Core implementation will continue to be listed as BTC (or XBT) and the new fork as BTU (or XBU), but not without adequate replay protection. We do this not out of judgement or philosophical reasons but rather for practical and operational considerations.

While a contentious forking event may be inevitable, and may ultimately provide a path forward for on-chain capacity increases, we have an obligation to our customers to provide a clear and consistent plan to minimize potential confusion surrounding such an event. We welcome any and all assistance that the development community may offer in reducing the risk inherent with such a pivotal moment in Bitcoin’s history."

We are:

Bitfinex, Bitstamp, BTCC, Bitso, Bitsquare, Bitonic, Bitbank, Coinfloor, Coincheck, itBit, QuadrigaCX, Bitt, Bittrex, Kraken, Ripio, ShapeShift, The Rock Trading and Zaif

Two thoughts on this one.

1. What happens if a BU fork will have the majority but did not implement the "strong two-wayreplay protection"?

2. A fork should make the exchanges some money, so it wouldn't surprise me to see them push for it.

So nothing changes; back to square 1; civil war continues.
Why ? Because BTU will only go for hardfork with enough hashing power to ensure victory and be considered the main chain. There's no point to go for it otherwise. So the internal struggle will continue while the community will get even more divided untill they will have their majority. Don't know why BTC core supporters think this is a win.
@senor.bla without replay protection any transaction sent on one chain can be replayed on the other chain, so it will be extremely risky to spend BTC.

One thing is certain. Bitcoin problems won't be tackled with these on going wars and community split. It's been 3 years already, nothing changed.

Coinbase are a conspicuous absence on the list. Who else is missing?

The Most Common Causes of Failed Open-Source Software Projects

https://handsontable.com/blog/articles/the-most-common-causes-of-failed-open-source-software-projects

Satoshi =

Everyone on this forum =

Mike Hearn, Gavin Andersen =

Half of the original dev team =


Bitcoin has had all of the below happen

I understand the possible danger of an replay attack, but the exchanges want to stick only with core if BU doesn't implement replay protection, which is fine, but what if BU has the bigger hashrate. They will not activate without. This is not covered as an option.

I think it's good that the exchanges are forthcoming about this. Ideally the blockchain wouldn't fork with angry people on either side, but I don't think that there's any other way for the exchanges to resolve this on their own.

Same question. Who has the responsibility to do that? Core or BU?

Poloniex Response:

https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2017.03.17-Hard-Fork/

Our Position on the Possible Hard Fork

As stated in the recently-published hard fork contingency plan, Poloniex agrees that any contentious hard fork must include replay attack protection. Without this, exchanges cannot continuously and properly operate.
Why can’t we pause markets until a "winner" emerges?

Unlike a planned fork where the block height is known, Bitcoin Unlimited can activate at an unknown date and time; therefore it is not possible to plan for such an event.
Are you going to support Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin Core?

We will support Bitcoin Core continuously as BTC. In line with our current internal policy, if you have Bitcoin on balance at the time of the fork, we will make Bitcoin Unlimited available for withdrawal provided it is safe to do so. At a minimum, any new fork must include built-in replay protection. Without replay protection, we would be unable to preserve customers' Bitcoin Unlimited without halting Bitcoin withdrawals, which is unfeasible.

At this time, we have not determined whether or not we will be listing Bitcoin Unlimited.
What if I have my Bitcoin on loan at the time of the fork?

If you have Bitcoin on loan at the time of the fork, you do not have it on balance and therefore you cannot receive corresponding Bitcoin Unlimited.
Why not?

When someone borrows coins, they typically borrow them to sell immediately on the spot market to counterparties who cannot possibly be aware that the coins they bought came from someone who borrowed them. Spot traders unambiguously own their purchases, and are the rightful recipients of the coins on the new chain and they can do with them what they like, whether that is selling them to others or taking them off of the platform entirely.

The terms of the loan dictate that you will receive the same number and type of coins you loaned within X days plus the agreed upon interest.

- The Poloniex team

Wow, this is huge.  This means payment systems will still be operating on core?  Imagine if payment systems are operating on a chain with the least hash rate... would seem to be a security issue.  I think the ability to control the name bitcoin is half the battle though.  Look at ETH and ETC, it was the exchange's agreement that set that in stone.  If ETH had ended up getting the name ETC I don't think it would be nearly as successful as it has been since the fork.

That kind of fork will cause exodus from btc,that what you can do with eth you cant do with btc.All that is not so funny,it looks like it is just speculative to lower btc price or somebody want to destroy and replace btc
Generally all that is very bad

Immutability.

These you have it folks, the economic majority is coming to a consensus that the BU implementation is an altcoin and will be listed under BTU. :D

coindesk article = DCG
participants in the article = DCG

http://dcg.co/portfolio/

kinda making it toooo obvious who is behind the "treat the majority community as a altcoin when core fork it away if core become the minority"

as for replay prevention. big laugh.
if core wanna ban nodes.. then even when core try to code out a way for core nodes to communicate to BU nodes.. people will make scripts to copy one mempool to the other and ensure there is a reply attack so that core cannot profit from their efforts of causing the split.

much easier core just joins the rest of the majority if there was a majority activation

It would be their single biggest money maker in history. They'll probably all retire and then some creep will set up a BTU only exchange to annoy us all.

They already made a lot of money out of the ETC/ETH split, but as you say, this would be gentleman for exchanges.  About the whole bitcoin market cap will get exchanged, imagine the fees !

That is interesting.
The bitcoin community is obviously very divided currently and will probably continue to be divided even after the hard fork.
Hopefully bitcoin will survive this fiasco, however even if it does there will probably be future ones that are bigger.

The notion of altcoin will not exist any more.  Bitcoin will have become a coin like any other.
First mover advantage gone if ever that happens.

Say that again, these oldies are making things difficult and doing politics everywhere. Let's stop the politicization and get the solutions for Bitcoin to be strengthened.

Yes, and importantly all the exchanges that are really operating as fractional reserves because they lost or stole their customer's bitcoins will be able to buy back at cheap prices.  We might get our Gox coins back  ;)  

A crypto currency is not an open source project, it is a protocol that serves as a smart contract.  Software implements this smart contract.   A crypto currency can be something like TCP/IP, except that it is not very open for revision because economic advantages are at stake: this is why it is not just a convention, but a contract.  

You could even say that a crypto currency is laid out in the original white paper, that is the contract.  Then, software can implement that.  But there can be several open source projects implementing the same white paper.  Once a system is up and running, economic adversity between users/antagonists makes that the only consensus on the protocol is status quo.
The software that wants to run in that system needs to respect that protocol, or it will get "punished".  What team makes the software is not so very important.

I don't understand why the unlimited people just don't fork off and leave. Prove their way is better, if it is people will follow them.

That assumes that there's no nefarious intention behind the whole thing or the desire to assert control over the existing chain and break a few wills at the same time.

If they really wanted to start afresh and stand apart then it would already have happened.

That would be some bullshit, grudges, politics and whatnot.

Yup. And it's only going to keep on growing. I'm sure much of it sprang from pure intentions originally but there's a lot of water under the bridge now and perhaps there are many people who now only want to ram their point home whatever it takes.

Btc-e is absent too. I want to know which part of the text they didn't agree on to be honest. The declaration looked reasonable enough to me.

But won't BU still make bitcoin's price go down a bunch, if it hardforks?

I'm a bit confused of this whole situation. I tried reading about this in many different places, such as coinbase, and everyone keeps saying bitcoin will hardfork. That would then decrease the value of bitcoin?? I'm a bit scared of what will happen with bitcoin to be honest.

Wrong. BTU will be, per definition, an altcoin. I'm not going to comment the latter part, but it will surely have a negative effect short term. I guess this is what they wanted when they were "concerned with the user experience". ::)

Yes; to be frank, it will be a "fucking blood bath". Whales supporting their own chain will be dumping the other chain to the ground in hopes that their chain is significantly stronger than the opposition.

This is probably the best way to handle things. Once BU activates, the market will be able to decide which chain will emerge as the "winner" as the price will give the miners an incentive to mine on the higher priced coin.

In regards to what "blockstream coin" and "bitcoin unlimited" are called on the exchanges, I really do not think this matters, even if exchanges call either of them something other than Bitcoin for a long time. Although it is very likely that one chain will very quickly die due to the incentives associated with mining and the time it takes for the difficulty to recalculate.

I agree that there should be something to prevent replay attacks on the protocol level, both for the exchanges' sake, and for the protection of the end user. Although as mentioned above, one chain will likely die, and if this happens, replay attacks will be more or less a non-issue.

Used properly, the block size itself can be leveraged to disassociate coins between chains.

I can send a transaction (or a chain of them) which would take ages to confirm on the existing chain, yet on a big block chain it should confirm in the next block. I then RBF on the existing chain to a different address under my control. Voila, easy disassociation.

There is also mining reward "taint", although you have to actually get some of it to use it. Once you've tainted your coins though, they can be used to taint others, and so on.

Yes, exchanges (and users) could send some of their BTC to one address on BU, have that transaction confirm, then double spend that transaction spending those blockstream coins to a second address with a high enough fee for it to confirm, and subsequently have each transaction be dependent on each of those non-compatible transactions . Unfortunately that could turn out to be very expensive and impractical, especially if many people are trying to do this at nearly the same time, especially considering that many exchange customers will not like delays in processing withdrawals.

If there was something in the BU protocol that makes a BU transaction not compatible with a blockstream coin transaction, then this would solve the problem.

Sure, but then you have to convince them that they should implement this, which they probably see as an admission that they are not the "original chain" or something.

As contentious as this has become, I wonder if either side would be willing to do that. I doubt it, but I have been surprised before!

Summary

TLDR = BU fork will only be added to exchnages with proper replay protection and it will be an altcoin called BTU / XBT

https://www.scribd.com/document/342194766/Hardfork-Statement-3-17-11-00am
https://fs.bitcoinmagazine.com/assets/exchange_handling_of_contentious_hard_fork_event.pdf

20 Exchanges in the document that say the original chain with remain bitcoin / btc regardless of outcome :

Bitfinex, Bitstamp, BTCC, Bitso, Bitsquare, Bitonic, Bitbank, Coinfloor, Coincheck, itBit, QuadrigaCX, Bitt, Bittrex, Kraken, Ripio, ShapeShift, The Rock Trading and Zaif

2 signers agree with document but place an exception that they reserve the right to rename BTU as BTC if the supermajpority switches :

ShapeShift  - If BTU sees 95% it wins the name BTC, otherwise the original chain remains BTC -
https://twitter.com/ErikVoorhees/status/842830189474136064

Kraken - At their discretion - https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zz6cu/important_the_exchange_announcement_is_indicating/df2fnyz/

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

2 more exchange joined this list :

21) Bitmex  

https://twitter.com/BitMEXdotcom/status/842796617120059393

https://blog.bitmex.com/a-statement-on-the-possible-bitcoin-unlimited-hard-fork/

22) poloniex
  
https://poloniex.com/press-releases/2017.03.17-Hard-Fork/

https://twitter.com/Poloniex/status/842789390518812673

I am nervous because if I hold bitcoin, I may not earn much money. But if bitcoin plummets, the altcoins will pump hard, I choose to invest altcoins instead.

Yes but Brian Armstrong already declared his support for Core and Segwit activation months ago and that presumably is the unofficial statement from Coinbase.

There we have it, the top exchanges declaring their support for Core. Those people must know what is really going on. Behind all the technical argument, there is really politics.

I am not expert on Bitcoin and its many confusing terms and technicalities but one thing I see is that we are trying to complicate things because we are bringing our biases and self-interests into the Bitcoin table. Another problem is that because Bitcoin is supposedly decentralized there is no single agency that can decide on certain issues with finality. Hence, nay problem or debate can go on for years with no solution but this scenario can be more desirable if the whole thing can be centralized or regulated, I guess.

When i started in Bitcoin, all I read and see online were praises and hurrahs for Bitcoin as if it is the the newfound thing that can give hope for mankind. Now, I thin am mistaken as it is just another form of currency to play with. I felt that I was just carried away emotionally and I lost the fact that we are still dealing with humans here.

Because the only thing bitcoin has going for it is its brand name.  It can still say it is "not an alt coin".  There are better alt coins out there than BU, technically speaking.   Hell, all big alt coins are technically better than bitcoin or BU.  Segwit is already existing in lite coin (but not activated either).  DASH is bitcoin with integrated tumblers.  ETH has smart contracts.  Monero is fungible and private.  ALL of these coins, by themselves, are technically far superior over bitcoin.  The only thing that bitcoin has, is its brand name, which keeps it at number 1 for the moment.

But the thing I highlighted is the (only) thing that makes it precious: NOBODY can change it.   As we see, indeed, nobody can change it.  So it is working.  Immutability: it works the way it was designed from the start, and cannot be changed: the rules are graved in stone, for the better or the worse.

Yes, the *software* implementing those rules can change.  But the rules themselves, no, if they determine something economical.  That was the guarantee of a crypto currency: the rules are graved in stone for ever, like the transactions.

This is a sad month for all bitcoin users. We are now faced with the possibility of a split community the other one is with the core developers while the other group is with Bitcoin Unlimited. It is sad to see that bitcoin will split into BTC and BTU however it seems that this time we can no longer meet a consensus and thus bitcoin will split like Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

I don't think it will split.  BU only serves to not activate Segwit.  Miners don't want BU either.

poloniex is actually saying that if you have bitcoin in your wallet, you can withdrawn those as they are bbitcoin unlimited, this does not sound like an altcoin to me but more like having the same coins twice

this is dangerous it can certainly kill the value on both chain, since people will get coins for free

I know you have this miners are happy with the 1MB limit mantra, but does past actions on behalf of the miners support this?

Miners used to limit blocks to 250kB, then 500kB, then 750kB, and then 1MB. That is, in the past they have implemented a soft limit in policy.h or using -blockmaxsize command line option. If they wanted to squeeze fees higher, they could reduce the block size now. They can't increase it as they have hit the protocol consensus limit.

For those that say BU not tested? It might have some bugs that need sorting out, but they do seem to have their own test chain:

I don't think it is going to hurt the price, but the market cap is going to be splited between 2 coins.

Let's say you now have one coin worth 1100$, so after the split you will have a coin worth 700$ and a coin worth 400$, or something like that.

all of this
"forking(splitting) the chain is a control attempt"
but then
"they need to fork(split) off"

lol makes me laugh at the hypocrisy and the bait and switch just to play a failed victim card.

the thing is the community wont split away..
they laughed at blockstreams CTO when he begged the open community to split away.

the community want consensus no matter what side it is.
however the group in the blockstream/DCG corps pockets (http://dcg.co/portfolio/) know they cant incorporate bitcoin if bitcoin is left open to diverse nodes, so they want all the diverse nodes to fork(split) off.
thats why there has been soo many rekt campaigns against anything not in the blockstream/DCG corps pockets.

the only group willing to cause a split is the blockstream/DCG group. but they have to wait for majority to do it if they want any chance of incorporating bitcoin. to then have domination and control of who can take fee's to repay the VC's.

---

bitcoin should remain open and diverse PEER network, not changed to be incorporated and TIERED network. there are even some [true independent] core devs that are repulsed by corporations and not everyone in core actually like the corporate dominance plans.

its getting too obvious that the corporations are getting desperate when they are begging the independant community to split away. and the corporations are doing all they can to avoid community consensus with all these non community consensus 'soft' bips that have actual banning(splitting off) end results.

---

there is nothing stopping the corporations from making an LN right now, but they know that people will only see it as a voluntary side service if the community help bitcoin grow.. the corporations want bitcoin stagnant to make their LN essential to grab many fes's to repay the MILLIONS of debt(blckstreams $70m/DCG multimillion debt).

if you are actually advocating to follow the corporations then you are not thinking about bitcoin. your thinking about corporations control. so you might aswell just go play around with fiat or hyperledger and leave bitcoin to be an open currency.

atleast admit you care more about the corporate control to grab fee's for VC repayment. and then go play with hyperldger to go grab your fee's, leave bitcoin to be the open diverse currency that it suppose to be

The politicians and elites will do everything to split bitcoin network to several units and from the infect reduce it values and undermined people trust and integrity of it network. Just like every human system, bitcoin has its challenge such as high fee, slow for confirmation and vulnerability. If this issue and resolve by the inside then politicians will be put to shame.

If they have the majority of the PoW, they will fork off. Their coins will be listed as XBU.

You don't understand how hard forks work. All these exchanges have defined BTU as an upcoming altcoin (if it happens).

Everyone sane just wants them to fork off to their altcoin so that we can move forward in a more timely manner. Whilst you obviously have theories about Blockstream or whatever, it is very unfortunate that you're completely ignorant about Jihan Wu and his power trip to take control of the Bitcoin network.

Wrong, Jihan & his cartel want not only BU to activate but to take control of the network. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/601t7u/jihan_wus_messages_after_the_announcement_seem_to/
Watch out for wrong or exaggerated translations.

They don't need the majority of hashrate to fork off.

Interesting thought.  I suppose since Satoshi may still be out there holding a huge amount of coins if they're unhappy with one particular fork they could probably pummel it into oblivion by dumping those coins in large amounts day after day.

This is not a fork, it is a revolution

Yes, this is what I have mentioned in the other thread.  If Satoshi is adamantly against BU (and there are reasons to think he is) he could dump it into the ground.  It would be a very dangerous move though.  He would be acknowledging he is still alive and has active control of his keys.  He might help core by dumping on BU, but it could also make people not want to use either chain knowing he is back.  Obviously very unlikely but interesting to think about.  Of course, as has been mentioned, it will be a dumpwar fest regardless, since there are plenty of massive early adopter holders on both sides of the debate.

everyone?? lol learn consensus. 74% of pools disagree or not decided.
also ZERO % of nodes have an active segwit wallet. all they have is a user agent sybil flagging desire for such.
in short segwit isnt even ready for release. without weeks/months of delays and drama after activation.

infact that 74% can be more because some pools faking desire for segwit, much like your propaganda of the opposite being true. but 26/74 are numbers that cant be ignored. its not 50/50 its not 75/25 its not 95/5... its 26/74

fixed that for you

jihan has only 16% management but even then not even 16% are voting in one direction. so blaming the 74% against segwit on one man with less than 16% is a major laugh, kind of digging at the bottom of the barrel for any straw you can find, laugh


again the whole 16%=74% jihan propaganda. lol. keep digging
if they have the majority they dont need to fork off.. if they dont get the majority they wont fork off. consensus of one single chain. LEARN IT

Sources?

This has nothing to do with Segwit. You are living your delusions again.

If you believe that Jihan only has 16% under his control, then I have bad news for you. You are as ignorant as any other shitposter on this forum.

Majority hashrate != Bitcoin.

What makes you think that Satoshi is alive?

your right. he doesnt have 16%. he has less.. try to double check statistics, not reddit next time

never said hashrate. i said majority. learn consensus and you will understand its about nodes that are more important.. remember its only core that car about hashrate. they even went soft because of it. but they didnt expect to be on the losing side. they thought they could fly their code in un opposed. it made me laugh when they avoided full node then pool, to instead just go pool only.. basically shooting self in the foot.
but we know the reason is to take the glory if it worked going soft or blame the pools if it didnt work.. either way not having to accept that segwit just isnt wanted.


doesnt matter what satoshi does. spending coins is just temporary "price" drama.
if anyone only cares about price drama they need to take a step back and think about the bigger picture.
if anyone only cares about 'double my coins' greed drama they need to take a step back and think about the bigger picture.

Because they care about the health of the network, they don't want to fork because they know that's bad for bitcoin... Once BU has a large majority of the hashrate (75% IIRC) they will start producing large blocks (and thus fork) in the hopes that the other 25% will then have no other choice but to also start mining (or atleast accepting) big blocks... They know that if they fork now they'll lose all the hashrate they currently have and that they'll create 2 BTCs, which they know would be horrible for adoption. Just imagine new people learning that there are 2 bitcoins all of a sudden   :-[

splitting the network is not a good thing, but if it happens we are going into a revolution.
It may make the price lower but at the long run we are just going to have a benefit out of it.

How many dumbass believe BTU will just create a >1 MB block out of the Blue.

Think about it for  2 seconds, there will be no emergency , like the liars are posting.

BTU will gain a 55 to 75% control and hold it for 2 weeks, once they have proven they can hold over 51% control,
from that date, everyone will have 2 weeks before they release a block that will discard the segwit idiots,
So everyone will have 2 weeks prior notice before the > 1mb block will be released .

That is not an emergency that is a well planned evolution of BTC new Transaction capacity , which will lower transaction fees and save BTC
from an early death of being priced out of the market.

 8)

FYI:
Within 72 hours of the fork, all segwit miners will migrate to the unlimited design or face an economic collapse.
Then there will only be 1 BTC again and the Trojan virus of Blockchains known as segwit , will have been eradicated.  :D
Learn it , Love it , BTU is the Future of BTC.

FTFY

by the way there are MANY implementations ready for dynamic blocks this includes some people with copies of core with say 2mb/4mb/8mb limit set. meaning they accept anything below those limits.

its not just a BU vs debate its a dynamic vs 1mb base debate.
its doesnt have to be exactly BU's design that needs to be followed word for word. as long as there are the ability to go passed the 1mb limit. it will be acceptable to consensus.

also pools wont just jump straight to 2mb on activation day. pools will try a 1.000250 block and see the orphan risk. and then if happy that consensus accepts it. it will increase in small increments of acceptability

When these limits were increased, there wasn't yet a fee market.  It was still a totally technical parameter that could be changed without too much hassle.  In fact, as long as there is no pressure on the fee market, miners have tendency to INCREASE the block size in order to get more transactions, and hence more fees, fees that are very small.
After the last block reward halving, which coincided more or less with the emergence of a fee market (that is, sometimes full blocks and "fighting for a place") however, this block size became an economic parameter.

You are right that they could reduce block size now with a soft fork, diminishing the accepted block size, but *in order for a soft fork to succeed, it must have 51% of mining power*. 

A miner voluntarily reducing HIS blocks to 512 KB he would just reap in less fees, augmenting the pressure on the market and increase the fees HIS competitors will reap in at double dose (1 MB).
If he only builds on blocks of 512 KB, and there's no 51% miner hash rate doing the same, all his blocks will be orphaned.

So:
1) there's no individual advantage to produce 512KB blocks, and forego half of the fees that 1MB blocks bring to competitors
2) trying to orphan 1MB blocks if you don't have more than 51% of hash power doing the same will only lead you, as a miner, to produce orphaned blocks.

3) the "common good" for miners, to reduce blocks even more, is offset by the tragedy of the commons.  They first have to agree amongst themselves to apply this block reduction with more than 51% of hash rate, for this soft fork to succeed.

==> it won't happen.

A hard fork over economic parameters is a revolution.

In a proof of work system, majority is majority of hash rate.  That is what consensus is about.   In a proof of stake system, majority is majority of stake.  And in a proof of node system, majority is majority of nodes.  Easily Sybil attacked, hence not meaningful.

Nonsense. It is clear as sky that you are very uninformed and ignorant. Jihan has far more than 16%. What Antpool is mining is just a tiny part of that. ::)

They will never have a majority. They have a very tiny minority.

Dumping almost 1 million Bitcoin is "temporary price drama"? :D

No. You don't understand how consensus works. Even I agree with franky1 on this one.

I explained the mechanism in every detail.  Just saying "you are wrong" without any logically build argument, is no tt going to cut it.  I know many people are deluded on this, but the earth goes around the sun, and not the other way around, no matter what the Cardinals have been preaching.  Learn to think for yourself.

In a proof of work system, the consensus is made by those providing proof of work.  But ultimately they will take into account those that pay for the joke, that is, the users in the market.  And that's it.

Counter my argument that:
1)  if miners agree (PoW consensus), there is only one single source of block chain, namely the chain on which they work, and which can only  be obtained from one of their nodes
2) there ain't any other block chain around
3) all that non mining nodes can do, is download this block chain, directly from one of the miner's nodes, or from a copy of one of their peers, but if they want to have a block chain, they'll have to obtain it.
4) miners, in order to be efficient, have to have good direct connections amongst their own nodes, in order to be quickly aware of the new blocks so not to get orphaned
5) miners, having invested a lot in mining, can easily set up "data center type" nodes to which ALL other nodes that want a copy of the block chain, can connect, and non-mining node owners cannot have any other block chain than the one they can obtain from one of these "big" nodes.  As long as the distributed network of proxy nodes does the work for them, that's OK, but if they have to invest in such a big data center node, they will, because they want to serve their customers, the users, and get their transactions, and deliver the block chain to them, so that these users continue to pump money in the market where the miners sell their coins.
6) if a non-mining node doesn't agree with the block chain that is produced by miners, it simply stops because there is no other chain around.  A non-mining node cannot stop miners from making the chain THEY agreed upon.

As such, this proves clearly that in a proof of work system, the consensus is the one between those delivering proof of work and no-one else.

But, these proof of work deliverers will take into account all signals from the MARKET to optimize their earnings (that is, to optimize the amount of coins they can get from reward and fees, times what the market sets as a price for those coins).  In as much as nodes are an indication of the sentiment amongst market makers, they will take that into account in their consensus to optimise their earnings.

Exercise:
1) suppose ALL miners agree upon 4 MB blocks, even though all users want to have 1 MB blocks.  The miners only make one chain, with 4 MB blocks.  What are users and nodes, including exchanges, going to do ? 

2) suppose that ALL miners agree upon 1 MB blocks, even though all users want to have 4 MB blocks.  The miners only make one chain, with 1 MB blocks.  What are users and nodes, including exchanges, going to do ?

Tell me how nodes impose their will onto miners, if miners come to a consensus.

Emergency hard fork PoW change -> all miners are fired and all their gear is effectively useless.

Same as above if needed.

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Both situations are a hostile takeover.

No, of course not.  If you change the PoW algorithm, for instance, you implement Scrypt, you simply make an altcoin with a bidirectional hard fork.  

You make a NEW POPULATION OF MINERS.

Both coins will be on the market now, one with a SHA256 hash and one with a Scrypt hash.  The market will now decide how the market cap will be divided over both coins.

If it is true that the users prefer the new coin, then indeed, the former miners will be on a worthless chain.  But we now have simply a NEW miner population.

Note that the nodes didn't count for zilch in this transition.  It was a new miner population on a hard fork that was taking over, not nodes.   But the USERS decided in the market.

However, think of this.  The new miner population will be running at low difficulty, because there's not much hash power available for Scrypt.  The security of the new chain will be miles below the security of the old chain, and the new scrypt miners will make a fortune, with small gear, reaping in high rewards.

So it isn't guaranteed that the users will make the switch.  Hell, if they wanted to, they could have exchanged their bitcoin for litecoin right away, because this other coin already exists !!

So this "take over" is far from guaranteed to succeed, and in any case, it is then a battle between two miner populations, and NODES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.

There where it gets trickier, and might be an outcome for bitcoin, is if one launched a proof-of-stake version of bitcoin.  A hard fork that uses proof of stake instead of proof of work.  Like ethereum plans to do.  

At a certain point, you don't care any more about any miner, because there's no mining any more.  In fact, just any person could launch a proof-of-stake version of bitcoin.  If the code is available, people can install this.  But again, it is a hard fork and will be decided in the market.  

This might actually be a good idea: to make a proof-of-stake version of bitcoin.  But it will just be an alt coin.  Will people switch entirely to it in the market ?  Highly doubtfull too.  But at least, with proof of stake, there is no miner war any more: the consensus is this time determined by the stake holders, and not by a separate interest group.

In that case, nodes become slightly more important, because stake holders have also to keep their nodes running to mint blocks.  This might be an idea.  But it won't catch on, I'm sure.  Because it would be an alt coin, and would not carry the brand of bitcoin.

Forking off bitcoin is something that I'm surprised is not done more for altcoin makers.  I would never start a new genesis block if I wanted to make an alt coin, I would fork off bitcoin, eventually with a special forking bloc giving me some premine.

So, conclusion:
in any case, nobody "forced bitcoin" to do what ever because nodes decided so.  At best, an altcoin is forked off from bitcoin which has such a big success in the market that it completely overtakes bitcoin, but that is already possible right now: if people want 4 times more room and another algorithm: litecoin is already in the market (note that it has segwit ready to be activated too, but it is not catching on there either).

And if people really are fed up with miners, they can fork off a proof-of-stake coin, but, hey, if ethereum does the same, why not simply buy ethereum ?  Or peercoin, for that matter ?

So that's visibly not what people really really want and in any case, it is an alt coin that is made NEXT TO BITCOIN.

Confused by this news. I have all my bitcoin in offline paper wallets. Do i need to do anything.

No.  Nothing will happen in any case, and if it happens, that's the safest thing you can do: keep it there until the storm is over.  Maybe they won't be worth much any more, but you'll still have them  ;D

By the way, can one keep his BTC both on a paper wallet and in a PC-Based (say Electrum) wallet ?

You can, however the safety of your private key will then be as safe as the weakest link (most likely your pc), so make sure to keep your pc safe. Except for that it's a good way to backup your private keys :)

I understand, thank you very much.
Now, what happens when I spend some BTC ? Do I have to print again the paper wallet, or does is contain only (sort of) passwords ?

i think yes that is too much important to keep it now and not to sell. i think the everything will be ok very soon. the price is going to get a strong support here and hope that the price of bitcoin is not going to fell down any more.

These blood letting portends no good experience for the average user, whales stands to buy back at ridiculous low prices, while average joe might have had a chunk of his worth and purchasing power gone with the wind. What to do now ??? Guess the time is ripe for migration while these two elephants make a show of their sizes.

Sad? Why would it be sad? The big blockers are saying that a fork is "healthy" and at some point, to make everyone happy, it is unavoidable. Some people with Core themselves think almost the same. If you're not happy then go ahead and do a hard fork.

The only sad thing I can see happening here with all the Bitcoiners is the dropping price. Get over it.

I see that some of us are pessimistic, and words like "blood bath" are used...Isn't this exagerated ?

The reasons for which the system will stay solid and continue to grow are strong : BTC is by (very) far the biggest and strongest alternative currency with a rather "long" and consistent history - demonstrating the technical and financial validity of the concept - and millions of users, the majority of which (including developpers who are also stake-holders and BTC investors) have a common interest in keeping everything "in working condition".

Many difficulties have been successfully overcome in the past, with a general increase in value, and a reinforced confidence in the BTC. The current drop in exchange rate is moderate - no more than roughly 10 per cent if you put apart the speculative peak to USD 1200 due to the hope of an ETF approval. There are reasons to believe that investors have somewhat anticipated the "BTU issue", hence the hesitation of the market.

I am far from being a specialist, but by reading the comments of many experts of both sides, I have the impression that in general there is a consensus that, although there will be some technical issues to address, the money that we own in BTC will not "disappear". Many competent people will continue to work hard to technically overcome the fork issue if it happens, and if the BTC "system" (buying and selling) continues to work, the rest will be essentially a matter of trust and time...

The usual suspects.


Well yeah Hal is dead (r.i.p.).. if you think he was alone.


I dunno.. 5-10% of outstanding btc might not be "temporary price drama". 

Lets say hypothetically there is a split, and BU gets vast majority of hashrate, and BU price is around $1000.  Then Satoshi would control roughly $800 million to $1.6 billion worth of bitcoin.  Lets say he had very strong reasons to dislike BU, and also felt that in a free market, anybody should be able to sell their coins whenever they want.  I don't know what the total order book liquidity across all the exchanges would be for BU, but I doubt it could withstand the epic tsunami of one billion dollars worth of Satoshi's BU coins raining down upon them.

10min-2 hours minutes of pressing send and waiting for funds to confirm into an exchange
placing an order and selling the coins.

once sold, then what..

oh yea over a century of blocks still producing.

a few hours of price drama maybe even a few weeks.. compared to a century of block creation = temporary price drama

much like ethereum.. the price drama of their bilateral split is over. people dont think its exciting and just treat it as 2 alts. much like non-exciting trading between say bitcoin and litecoin.. no drama the litecoin/bitcoin drama ended in mid 2012... just a couple months after litecoin got popular then slowed down..

but now 5 years on..  bitcoin and litecoin are doing their own thing.
meaning a hard fork based purely on greed of people only caring about the price/'double' coin hopes.. are not thinking about the big picture or caring about bitcoin as a diverse single consensus network. they just care about some temporal price drama

My point was regarding the special case where a single individual who might not like one of the resulting chains controls a huge percentage, at least 5% of outstanding coins.  Is there anyone like that in eth?  Maybe the DAO hacker if they hadn't forked... I think that was several percent of all eth.  And, in fact, maybe someone else did control that much eth, and maybe that's why etc is at least an order of magnitude cheaper.

If for example Satoshi dumped a billion dollars on BU, he could take those profits and buy core BTC, and make it more profitable for miners to mine core. Obviously this is all unlikely, but if it did happen it would have lasting impact imo.  He wouldn't even have to sell them necessarily, he could just move them to exchanges and say if you want the price of BU btc higher than X you better be prepared to buy $1 billion dollars of my BU btc.

still temporal.

notice the event of the mega rise and dump of 2013-2014...

its just history.. no one talks about mtgox anymore.. just a temporal price drama. gone, forgotton.
if all you care about is the price. then expect 6 months after your greedy moment has passed. your then left with the thought of..

was that greedy moment worth it to have core in sole 100% control where bitcoin is a TIER network, with multiple implementations diversely on a minorty network.
or
having multiple implementations diversely and happily on the peer network, whereby core left in the minority as an alt in their own tier network.

try to think passed your greed of price drama and think about the network as a whole and the long term results

I know one person, who is a long time Bitcoiner, who has the capability to do something like that. He is also rumored to be the guy who hacked the DAO. He is kind of an eccentric but he is very smart. I am scared to mention his name in public and I do not know if I should. But I would happily give it to you through pm.

Well, what it really says is that all these exchanges plan on listing BU.

Disclaimer: at least two of the signatories have since announced that the text was changed after they assented to signing.


Yes, but it would also gratuitously make BU 'not Bitcoin'. So it likely will not be implemented by BU. Clients already have all tools necessary for avoiding replay at their disposal. No protocol change needed.


Well, no:


source: https://blog.gdax.com/https-medium-com-adamlwhite-bitcoinhardfork-3f6ac05ceec6#.9eyge9yg0 (https://blog.gdax.com/https-medium-com-adamlwhite-bitcoinhardfork-3f6ac05ceec6#.9eyge9yg0)


Over 40% of the last 24 hour's blocks are signaling large block compatibility. 12 hours ago, it was even over half. Seems resistance to BU in the mining community is nowhere near universal. (https://coin.dance/blocks (https://coin.dance/blocks))


I'd like to know what reasons there are to believe that "Satoshi is adamantly against BU".


He just as plausibly might help BU by dumping on core. Not that I think either eventuality is very plausible.


Possible, but I doubt it. Part of the fork dynamics is dependent upon BU delivering greater value. If BU forks at 75%, then the 1MB chain will be about a 40 minute average block time, delivering 25% of its pre-fork throughput. With a corresponding rise in fees due to the rise in blockspace supply. The BU chain will be about 13 minute average block time. If BU stayed near its pre-fork block size, its throughput would be on the order of 76% of its pre-fork throughput. If, however, BU went straight to 2MB, then it would deliver 150% of its pre-fork throughput. With corresponding drop in fees. Blowing through the backlog in relatively short time. Cheaper transactions, more transactions: greater value. Leading to increased incentive for fence-sitters to throw in to the BU side.

Future increases may be more probing, and therefore incremental. But I would expect the 2MB immediately. They'll fall after the backlog is cleared.


Well, yes. That's exactly what it is. It would certainly be dramatic, price would tank, effect would be temporary. Kind of definitional, that.


Yes, but you are arguing against religious fundamentalists.


Um... by retroactively claiming that what the miners have done is exactly what the nodes wanted all along?

the maths does not work that linearly.

EG if there are 4 pools of equal hash. it does not mean take one away and the time moves to 20 minutes. because the competition may have only been only seconds behind getting their own solution.
bitcoins are not mined based on the combined hashpower of the network. each pool makes their own effort. and the "75%" you mentioned is not 1 pools.

here this image will make it a bit clearer
https://i.imgur.com/tcAFVCH.png
as you can see 75% of blocks is just HALF the network hashrate in this example,(top half of image) but the block
timings still are reasonable whichever way you play it(bottom half when they have split)

Well, no, it does not make it clearer. However, it is peripheral to my point. Which is that it is unlikely that BU miners will creep up initially. They will likely go straight to 2MB. For as long as it takes to clear the transaction backlog. For such would deliver a demonstrably better user experience (faster cheaper transaction processing) relative to the other chain.

Yes, further increases may be likely to be more incremental in nature.

they would actually creep up in increments, thats the smart thing. (as the 500k berkely locks/levelbdb upgrade drama has taught the community)
they done so in the past.(policy.h v0.7 0.5mb, policy.h v0.8 0.75mb, now 0.999mb)

but here is where your missing a few idea's

moving at say 250byte a block increments, means they can reasonably safely get to 2mb in about a month.
so it wont be 2mb activation day .. and it wont be 2mb by 2020 by being slow about the increments.

250byte per block increments = 4 weeks-ish
500byte per block increments = 2 weeks-ish
1kb per block increments = a week-ish

they may even once say the first few blocks above 1mb havnt caused issues. increment it in 0.25mb increments. taking possibly a day or less to get to 2mb... but one thing is for sure they wont just jump to 2mb straight off. they will see if there are unknown bugs/orphan risks etc

so not that long when you think about it

Any 'average user' can do the same as those whales. You just need to sell on time and buy back in at a lower rate.

The fork is everything but healthy.

Don't do that.

Slow increments will not reveal all possible exploits. They will be revealed once someone attempts to use them, at which time damage has already started occuring.

lets say there was another Leveldb 2013 episode, but this time at 1.2mb
the pools dont know its 1.2 yet though

now would pools jump to 2mb where there might be hit by that bug AND say 5 other propagation issues aswell all in one swoop of mega F*ck-ups and then have to tear up and remake a 1mb block with half as many tx's to try again..
or wrongly guess that it must be an issue at 2mb so try 1.9mb and have that block too throwing a tantrum in the orphanage, then try 1.8 and so on all creating orphan tantrums trying to find a new 'sweetspot' that is acceptable(to potential knitpicker: yes i know bitcoin doesnt have an actual 'orphanage' place, im just entertaining wordplay of 'orphan drama' to entertain the imaginations of people with short attention span)
or logically

start in small increments. and when hitting 1.200250mb.. the block causes orphans. so they just take 1tx (250bytes) out of their list and try again. knowing to not pass 1.2mb while things get sorted.
then later when sorted they go again. safely knowing at most its only going to cause minimal disruption... rather then several orphans of going straight to 2mb and haviing to work its way down trying to find a sweet spot. without instantly knowing whats a good or bad size to run with(apart from 1mb again)

This thing might have been answered several times but still I cannot understand why do we need a hardfork when softfork is available,  aside from that, is  it really necessary that a hardfork is needed In order to upgrade bitcoin features?  Sorry for being so noob about this but I do believe that there is a strong reason why these exchanges are so against the hardfork.

Are you saying that the network participants should put *trust* into the miners in hopes that they don't centralize in order to reduce orphans, but rather produce smaller blocks? :D

We don't.

No. Well, some things can't be done with a soft fork but there aren't any planned hard forks that 'upgrade' existing or add new features.

though soft methods are available. where by the pools get to vote.
nodes matter. if there are not a good amount of nodes validating the data diversely than data could be corrupted by one party saying "follow me" and non validators blindly accept them. this is a risk

nodes are important. and we should not aimlessly let the node count be turned into a TIER network of one brand setting the rules and other brands playing pass the parcel of data its not checking.

some soft methods are acceptable because its not changing anything fundamental and still allows the PEER network to check the data and strike off blocks it doesnt approve of.

however in a TIER network some nodes are nothing more then unreliable data stores. so worthless as a security measure and thus no point being a node.

when something rule changing occurs its always best to have good node acceptability first for security purposes of avoiding corruption and to give pools confidence that what pools build will be accepted with full validation.

core however bypassed letting full nodes have a vote on what should be valid. by implying a TIER network where core implementations validate the block that core set new rules to. and then core will strip that block and twist the data to blindly pass other nodes.. not as valid or invalid.. just out of scope of other nodes tests would pass or fail, so blindly kept not due to being fully validated but by not triggering certain old alerts.

this is dangerous.
also by making it easier to do soft patches. is a network security risk because thats where trojan horse attacks can happen even more easily..
by simply not triggering the rules due to finding the hole in the defence to continue unnoticed

core think its good because it allows them an easier life.. but it makes it an easier life for attackers too

There is no clear statement as to BU miners will adopt 2MB blocksize. But we can expect some major changes and changing of sides when the time comes. There is a high possibility that some BU miners will go to the side of the core developers and will support segwit in the last moment. Or perhaps some supporter of the core developers will transfer to bitcoin unlimited. It is not impossible but let us wait in the final moment to see what will happen.

They already did that when they joined a PoW consensus rule system.  (the putting their trust, I mean, not their hopes: hopes are whatever you want them to be).

what are you even on about "centralize"
the pools earn more by competing.
1. jumping to 2mb instantly makes propagation delays and loses the competitive advantage. so pools will move in small increments to keep their competitive advantage
2. no point jumping to 2mb because there may be several bugs and if going to 2mb then down hoping to find a sweet spot can cost them multiple blocks of wasted time.. can cause many orphans.. due to bugs and propagation.
3. going up from 1mb in small amounts reduces orphan risks and keeps a good grasp of acceptable propagation times.

oh and if you think that going from 1mb to 2mb in small increments of 250bytes would take years.. and thats your real argument im betting.
your wrong. it can take a month of safe testing the water with least orphan risks and least cost to pools and their competitive edge.
increments of 1kb can get to 2mb in a week and increments of 0.25mb can get to 2mb in under an hour

so relax. its best to be safe.. rather then have been waiting years just to get a chance and then try to rush things in 1 block or 1 hour.
1 extra month of good practice safe increments isnt gonna kill bitcoin. but jumping straight to 2mb could cause another 2013 event.
pools are smart enough to know this

I am starting to feel sad for Bitcoin and loosing my optimist side about it. I guess Bitcoin is on the road to know its dark days. I am not surprised to see some trying to takr control over the newtork but wtf.

Since you said that nodes matter, I do think Bitcoin Core had been fair here by bypassing node voting since as far as I can see majority of nodes support/uses Bitcoin Core features.  If they use it (letting node vote than miners) the possibility of Segwit being implemented is bigger than letting the miners to vote for the implementation.  (That is if I understand it right)


I get  this as Bitcoin Core believe that hardfork is not needed for the added update / upgrade for the Bitcoin features regarding scaling issue of Bitcoin.  I also read that even with implementation of Segwit the onchain spam won't be solved is that true?

Yes, currently miners have every incentive to keep integrity to the bitcoin network - if bitcoin is attacked or changed, bitcoin price would plummet, bitcoin would not only lose uniqueness to other altcoins, but would also quickly turn those miners' business into bankruptcy.

Blocksize at 1mb keeps things secure and helps limit the onchain spam.

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)

in the end, money talks.   ;)

and the bullshit will walk

maybe...you know better :)