Bitcoin Forum

https://image.ibb.co/h1ahFa/lol.png

Nodes on free fall as we speak. Not even a week after they fuck up, they release a patch that fucks up once again. Totally safe to put your wealth in the hands of incompetent morons.


This is why software is valued higher than any hashrate in the world. Anyone can press a button and run mining gear, few people in the world can develop and maintain something like bitcoin, which is extremely fragile and requires world-class coders, cryptographers, and engineers in the field.

Anyone still defending this trash is absolutely Insane. The losses would be on the billions if those idiots were in charge. The network effect crushed.

Can't wait to dump BUgcoin to double my BTC for free if kamizaze Jihan goes through with his cunning plan.

LOL its unbeliable. Another fucking bug in a hotfix patch!!! next level incompetence right there. We are talking BITCOIN here guys, this is not some fucking android app!!!

Im 100% sure now the market will choose solid software. We can replace the miners with a new PoW if needed. They can't replace the Core devs. We will also get segwit and LN quickly and then we can have fast and cheap transactions and everyone still crazy enough to use BU will move back to BTC.

Cmon Jihan do your thing, i want more BTC!!! :D

That's why we need to defend BU hard fork. Who doesn't want free coins, eh? Let them have their own shitcoin so we can't dump them for free btc's. Sounds pretty awesome to me.

If we don't have anything to fear, then why do we care about BU at all?

Voger Rer, or whatever the fuck he is called, has no coding experience. He doesn't understand a shit about it. He was a lucky early adopter, that's all.

That is what i posted before, that picture i have made here, so its another attack? This bug unlimited sucks

https://preview.ibb.co/cWDiov/lol2.png

this is happening right now?

BREAKING: BU developers release closed source patch (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/60rwye/bu_is_now_running_closed_source_patches/) because they are too incompetent to guarantee functional software. Users seem to be waking up and rejecting this scam:

https://s11.postimg.org/5ywn6y24z/bunodes.png

Anyone still defending this is under a paycheck. If the chinese cartels still go through with the HF going against 88% of the network you know they are being paid to do so since no one would be that stupid to go kamikaze for free. This seals the deal. There will be no HF (and if there is a HF, BUcoin will get dumped for free BTCs)

I think BU was good before it had some critical bug that took down lots of their nodes and now another attack occured. Did the core devs mess up like this in the past years?
Luckily the fork hasn't occured yet, they should really fixed their codes first before we get unlimited attacks in the future.
Bitcoin algorithm is extremely complicated i think BU developers are not fit for these field.

This is the sad reality. He will be remembered as the man who tried to break Bitcoin if Bitcoin Unlimited fades into the background just like how Gavin Andresen's XT. Now where is Gavin? His contributions are overlooked but his Bitcoin XT hard fork proposal is always remembered as traitorous to Bitcoin and the community.

Will the Bitcoin Jesus be renamed as the Bitcoin Judas? History will tell.


Closed source in crypto is very shady. Avoid.

BU is buggy right now.  Growing pains.  They need more mature process.

Guess what -- I still prefer it to Core.  Who cares how robust Core is when they want to change Bitcoin into something that's not even p2p electronic cash anymore.

It's like a religious cult at this stage. They will accept any old crap offered up now, on the premise of "it's just a bug". Imagine trusting the 20 billion dollar btc industry to this crap; crashes are the least of my worries.

im sure its just a temporary patch and the fix will be open sourced soon

Code has to be open sourced, sure.   

...

When do we get the guns out? *

I have read all kinds of stuff pro-BU, pro-SW, anti-BU, anti-SW, Core blah this, Core blah that, etc.  I also read (somewhere here in the forum) that it will be the team with most money that will win...

But maybe a little full-blown violence is the way to solve this.  A final solution (I know, bad, bad, bad).




* Just solve this guys.......  Get the major players into a room, and solve this.  The Bitcoin Community could destroy a good thing elsewise...

Already destroyed.  Core fucked it all up. 

Yes it is thats why bitcoin (core) is still considered as most secure algorithm while developers of BU are not even capable of fixing a bug found weeks ago.  ;D

still wondering why antpool is supporting BU after all this, have perhaps some man from their mining farm working on BU, who is working on BU currently, i would like to know who are the dev behind that thing

call this a conspiracy but it could make sense, that someone that is working on the opponent project want to push it at all cost by showing pool support

Oh, Cmon man. Just admit that you were backing the wrong horse and be done with it. It is one thing standing up for principle and another losing everything because of it. The only reason why someone would openly support this crap, would be because they are paid shills or if they have no money invested in this and are just trolling.

I admit, Bitcoin Core is not the perfect solution, but it is way better than BU at this stage. ^hmmmmmm^

The number of BU nodes has never been significant and obviously it's the hash rate that counts to whether it actually happens.

The number of BU blocks in the past week is still 37.6% to SegWit's 26.6% (http://xtnodes.com/).

I think that the nodes do represent the users (not completely accurately but to some extent), and it shows how BU is monopolised by Bitmain and other major Chinese companies rather than the vast majority of users (and nodes).  I say let the HF happen so that the BU coin can die from user usage and Jihan Wu comes crawling back to Core.

And the number of BU nodes is back to the about the same level showing yet again the type of person running this crap (that and all the VPSs owned by the same people inflating the numbers artificially.)

This is the funny part, antpool don't even need to be running this BU crap to be signalling for it. i doubt they'd trust 100s of PH of mining operations to that crap.

Well they don't want Segwit/LN, and they probably don't want BU either it's just a means to block the former.


I'll admit it, I was running one core node and one unlimited node (but no actual bitcoins on it, not that daft!!), keeping my options open. Not a fan of segwit/ln it seems to be so far away from what got me into bitcoin, and on balance BU seemed a simpler and better solution (though not ideal) to the current problems.

Sadly as you say, they just can't be trusted at the moment, my BU node has gone down (btw on a windows machine, thought this was a linux problem), and it's staying down.

Idiots like jonald_fyookball are too brainwashed at this point to be saved. He is accepting that developers release a closed source patch to save up for their coding incompetence. If Core devs attempted to do this nobody would trust them ever again.

Temporarily or not this is irrelevant, the point is, they have released closed source software, a capital sin in the crypto world. Good luck running that patch. The binaries are not even signed, and they somehow still fuck up and get their code leaked.

Anyone defending BU over Core without getting paid is objectively an idiot.



This is the work of none other than Roger Vermin and his sea of VPS nodes. Even the people on /r/btc are downvoting BU devs now lol.

Guys i m new. I posted that picture yesterday. So the nodes really suffered another attack or happened some kind of problem? Also i noticed today that the hashrate reduced almost 3% on unlimited.

Why ppl want to adopt this bugcoin?? I dont get...

Well, they are either too brainwashed to see the problem or they have some ulterior motive for doing this. I can see why some miners are supporting

this, because they might think that they would lose out on tx fees.... The main problem is the "politics" behind this... You have to make the decision if

you "trust" either of the sides of this battle. {Who will be the most capable to secure your coins}  Judge their code....

Luckily this will never be the end... there will always be "counter" proposals on the table.  ::)  

Another week another BU BUG.

It is growing pains or maybe it is time to accept that their coding team is simply unfit for dealing with multibillion worth software upgrade?
And the nail to the coffin - BU code is no longer open sourced: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-unlimited-second-bug-sees-closed-source-code-release (https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-unlimited-second-bug-sees-closed-source-code-release)

calm down guys... the source code was published this morning.
 

and what about next time?  Maybe it will take a week to get the source. And after that? A month, and then maybe never, and you are running proprietary close software because....

boiled like a frog who didn't pay attention to the temperature.

Jonny... it's time for you to get out of the BU boiling pot.

https://twitter.com/CharlieShrem/status/844553701746446339

It will be called "The Return of the BUg coin!"

i dont hold allegiance but its got the most traction to break core's tyranny right now.
I also like the idea of removing the blocksize from the protocol rules.

If you're truly devoted to your notion that "core's tyranny" must be broken, then you have only one option to you available right now:  sell everything and leave Bitcoin forever.

Because core IS Bitcoin.  Every dev, user, exchange, miner collectively decide what Bitcoin is, and today, very few are deciding that BU is Bitcoin.

thank god you're here to do my thinking for me. 

someone's gotta do it jonald :)

How are these people supposed to create a legitimate running hard fork!? If we fork I'm selling all of my BTU for BTC.

I can understand your point that block size should be increased as there are more transactions right now and the core has to competent enough to increase according to the situation,but removing the block size entirely is not the solution and BU cannot be trusted to run a billion dollars worth of asset .

Well in my point of view, i am really an amateur on mining and dev stuff, but I can see almost everyone is supporting the Original BITCOIN..

I just don't get how people support BU if it is showing that they are amateurs playing with people money around, its like send your kid to disneyland with 20 billion dollars and say: hey my son you can do what you want with this money, i dont care, .......

I am trying to understand more and more about this BU thing and supporters becouse I have a lot of friends that have made investments in Bitcoin and they are like me, they don't understand what is going on.. And I don't want them selling their coins like a lot of people is doing right now becouse they are scared...

It is impressive that this has happened once again, let them hard fork and end this soap opera now, lets see who survives and who comes begging for forgiveness.

That is good news. Let us hope for the future the network the BU developers do a good job. Whoever wins, wins and hopefully the community will come together again. The losing side should suck it
up and accept defeat'peacefully.

If i compare Core's code with BU then we shoud have Segwit asap. I dont trust BU dev they're not skillled enough.

I excpect more problems in the foreseeable future, kinda retarded from BU camp.

and yet miners are choosing their software over Core anyway.  What does that tell you?

It tells us that miners puts their profits above the good of Bitcoin, which was not originally what Satoshi planned for this. He had hoped that the majority of miners would do the right thing, because they would realize that doing good, will protect the technology and the value of a bitcoin.

Unfortunately the centralization in mining cartels are bigger than what most of us anticipated, so the "bad" miners are more than the "good" miners at this moment. ^grrrrrrrr^

Bitcoin is open source so anybody can play with its code and can create their own software, same goes for developers behind this Bugcoin (BTU). Actually there are many other alternative bitcoin clients developed by different developers but they need to be accepted by both node operators and bitcoin miners to reach consensus.

Recently this BTU (unlimited) have been in buzz because many miners have started to support them but it looks like their client is still not ready for adoption proved by all this repeating bugs.

Not the perfect solution?  ANYTHING is better than Blockstream controlled Core.  Why else do you think 40% (and growing) of miners
are supporting BU , DESPITE all the bugs?

That said, I would back this: 
https://bitcoinec.info/

I don't like segwit, but I would compromise.

How many of that 40% are 2 or 3 big mining pools? You have to put yourself in their shoes for a moment. Someone is spamming the network with useless tx's and this is causing congestion. So what happens next? People start paying higher fees to get their tx's confirmed. The miners get these higher fees and smile all the way to the bank.

The longer they can draw this whole process out, the longer they get these higher fees.

SegWit and LN would eliminate these scenarios and this is why they are not supporting it. The BU solution is only a temporary fix and before we know it, we might end up with the same situations where fees are artificially pushed higher with "fake" congestion.

Would you not want to delay the process and keep the backdoor open for these situations to repeat in the future?

The only miners are pool operators. They employ hash rate providers, who are generally only interested in short term profits. Hash rate providers have proven over and over again that they care nothing for the health of the network (neither do miners, for the most part).

So, 40% of twenty guys are signaling BU. Those miners apparently want more control than they already have.

They either don't realize they are cutting off their nose to spite their face, or they are playing the long game and trying to drive their competition out of the market. I'm not sure which.

Facepalm, who can take BU as something serious after such a fail?

The same people who were taking it seriously before are still taking it seriously now, which speaks volumes of their thought processes.

At this point it seems like we need to weed out the dead wood.

It's not enough that they are defeated, they need OUT.

Classic, XT, BU, and if they simply are allowed to attack again with the same mining threat scheme they will do it again. It's free to do so and they don't get their blocks fucking orphaned as they should.

That they are as BrainWashed, Deluded and Ignorant as you ?

.. it's a real problem.

Until they get there act together I will be running an alternative node.

Sorry Holliday, I don't think you can blame this on hash rate providers choosing larger pools.  Maybe that's a small factor.  But, everyone is very passionate about Bitcoin and is voting with their feet.
Y'all can think miners are stupid, brainwashed, or whatever.  I see the situation as the market rejecting the software Core is offering.

This just temporary fall of bitcoin. This kind of thing already happened and the first time I experience this kind of fall I got panic. Sold half of what I owned and after a few days it began to spike again upwards. If you see a fall buy as many as you can because it will surely recover in no time and its value will be even greater than its previous high.

No Johnny.

You don't get to sit on your moral high ground saying - 'oh.. I'm just going along with the market in rejecting CORE! Haha!'

You're pushing a CLEARLY sub-standard version of Bitcoin, that has MAJOR ramifications for security and decentralisation.

You're ignoring all the Alarm bells as nodes crash left right and center, and pretend this isn't UNACCEPTABLE.

You're shrugging off the $5 billion market cap loss since this crap started, when BEFORE the market shrugged of an ETF rejection as if it were nothing.

We are literally on the cusp of billions of txns/second with multiple sidechain goodness, and you've said 'Fuck That.. I want 3 miners to control the network and that's all!' ( Because that's how many miners will be left once BU kicks in )

and all those miners are signalling using core's software. that tells us a bunch too.

Youre not a very good listener.   I said I would support bitcoinEC.  Not good enough for you? Not my problem.

and then

sparta is happy with a more centralised mining network and cores more centralised TIER network

hypocrisy at its best.

core only want core nodes to be the upstream TIER of full validation nodes. leaving other implementations in a cess pool of down stream filtered, prunned, no witness, stripped block, half relay network.
where by people need to move funds to new keypairs that are incompatible and not validate to the cesspool of second tier nodes but blindly accepted due to a loophole.

dynamics can move the blocksize and bu, xt, classic bitcoinec and many other implementations can all work side by side as PEERS (core too if they just change a few lines of code)
all on the same level playing field (the actual definition of decentralised) of full validation. no need to strip data out or move users to new keypairs to achieve anything. things just move on

bu for instance has not been well peer reviewed because the cough independent cough devs are too far up gmaxwells ass that they wont independently review BU's tweaks to CORES original 0.12 code. they would rather attack it and say "no one spotted a bug that used to be in core but was patched in 0.13)

its funny when an cough independent cough dev prefers to shout its not been independently peer reviewed, rather than review it himself and help.. just makes himself look bad by admitting he is not independent

will everyone put ego's aside, forget which kings ass you wish to kiss and everyone actually start thinking about the network fundamentals.

You post like 200 times a day and it's always the same. Who could listen to ALL that.


You've. Lost. It. Franky. (Can't even debate with you anymore. Pointless.)

Just admit it Jonald, for the 3rd time, it's dead.


It will die a 4th death also. Giving it a different name is getting a bit tired, y'know?



You know what never seems to die, no matter how hard people try?

Say it Jonald. Say the name of that which will not die. Say the name. Can you say it. Speak the name

That's not what I said. In my other post, which is what I have to assume you are referring to, I gave an example of something that happened in the past (multiple times) to provide evidence that hash rate providers do not consider the health of the Bitcoin network in their decision making. The very fact that they are hash rate providers mean they have given up their vote and rely on a pool operator (actual miner) to vote for them. They've taken a model which requires no trust and found a way to include it. They have to trust that the pool operator isn't just signaling one way but will vote another when the time comes.

You see the world colored by your preconceived notions, that's obvious to me.

Ok.   But when Ghash had 51%, the situation quickly corrected itself , which is evidence to the contrary of what you're saying.


I would say that "Actual miners" are the ones providing the hashing, not the pool.  Semantics aside, they haven't given up their vote at all as they can choose whatever pool they want.  If you're suggesting that they not moving to a new pool out of convenience, you are making an assumption, but to whatever degree it is true, you could say the same thing about the large number of node operators still on core.
 

BU node version 1.0.1.1 on linux 64bit error: ERROR: ReadBlockFromDisk: OpenBlockFile failed for CBlockDiskPos(nFile=-1, nPos=0)

https://github.com/BitcoinUnlimited/BitcoinUnlimited/issues/386

Hashrate going down? I see there is only 33% today.    ::)

The fact that they even let it get there is ridiculous. I wouldn't call the correction "quick" either. First we needed steady outrage from the users to get them to pull their heads out of their asses. And this had all happened before with DeepBit!


Again, they introduced trust to a system that requires none. I don't know how you can spin that as being a positive, but whatever... preconceived notions...

and you don't have any?

I'm not here trying to spin that adding trust to a system which requires none is a positive or that those doing it are making smart decisions.

I'm not the one ignoring past actions and saying, "This time it's different."

I do think choosing a pool that supports a miner's scaling solution preference IS a little different than otherwise, and I'm not intentionally trying to spin anything,
just expressing my opinions.

But whatever, this conversation has run its course.  You have yourself a nice day, sir.

I more or less thought the bug in the code was going to be and lead to the end of BTU as we know it and I thought we'd be saying a lot of these big chinese mining companies (others too) start to back out. But I guess they're going to be sticking with BTU intil the end, they're probably going to stay with Ver and BTU through thick and thin, this being the thick.

If Ver is able to get more miners on board with BTU and kink out the bugs that BTU has in its code and make sure nothing like this comes to light again through peer reviewing of the code (fixing) and so on, I think they may be able to hard-fork without issue. As they seem to have already garnered a pretty good / close amount to 51 percent which is needed.

I just really hope Bitcoin as a whole can survive through this, please VER?

by continuing to signal it keeps the pressure on. it doesn't cost them anything extra to signal, apart from the actual price spiralling downwards of course, so the stalemate will probably continue.

they have alot of money. maybe they can spend that on coming up with code that works.

Peer reviewing is only going to be between people who are evidently incompetent because BU is still keeping the code closed source.  It doesn't matter whether they intend to open it in the future, if they're not willing to open it to peer review from people who can notice giant bugs before they matter then they don't deserve to be trusted with something as big and potentially delicate as Bitcoin.

I despair that there are true Bitcoiners (not shills trying to fuck up the system from inside) who truly believe this is a good idea. It boggles the mind.

It's not that BU has such a great team or bug free code... its a catalyst to get consensus for bigger blocks, with MULTIPLE implementations supporting it.

If you don't want bigger blocks and want Core's roadmap of 'maybe you'll get a tiny bit of on chain scaling with segwit while we transform Bitcoin into a settlement network' then I can see why you don't like what is happening.

It tells a whole lot that it doesnt take the better team of developers to be chosen by the miners. Politics is in play here and quite possible greed too. But we get it, whoever wins, wins. The losing side must accept peacefully for the sake of the community.

WHAT you code is more important than who is coding it.

Yes exactly that. Let us make a poll. What is better the Core software or the Bitcoin Unlimited software?

And naturally the better team will usually come up with better code compared to the inferior and incompetent team. To be clear and fair, I am not saying the BU developers are. I mean that generally.

You can have better coders who happen to be coding the wrong thing.  "What" they are coding depends on the visionary of the project.
Core is mostly coding what Blockstream wants (lets just all admit that)...and their agenda is as little on chain scaling as possible.

BU team's vision is on chain scaling.

So they are coding totally different things, and that is a separate aspect from the skills of the developers.

What are the real thing to decide the BU or SW? The nodes version or hash power? I see SW is dominant on nodes, but BU is dominant in hashpower.

The economic majority decides.

Yes, economy decides the result. I saw people said BU needs 75% signaling, and SegWit needs 95% signaling, so this "signaling" is hash power, is it right or wrong?

Yes, pool operators include information in the blocks they create in order to signal their support of a specific proposal.

For me personally, off the chain scaling always more sense to for Bitcoin. There is much more possibilites if we do it that way. But I am not saying it is perfect. It will have its own problems.


I get that and respect it. But it will never mean that the reason why the miners are following them is because they are better or their code is better. Politics and the need for control is one of the main reasons or maybe the main reason.

The hash power decides if BU happens, but if it does happen then the economic majority decides whether the new coin is successful.

SegWit is different though as it's not creating a new coin.  A lot of people are running outdated Core nodes which don't support BU or SegWit, but when the hash power supports SegWit it'll happen and the economic majority will not have the decision in the same sense.

I think BU was good before it had some critical bug that took down lots of their nodes and now another attack occured. Did the core devs mess up like this in the past years?
Luckily the fork hasn't occured yet, they should really fixed their codes first before we get unlimited attacks in the future.
Bitcoin algorithm is extremely complicated i think BU developers are not fit for these field.

Remember that it's a tiered system; on-chain is the foundation, the 1st layer. That means we can't get off-chain 2nd layers to scale without scaling the on-chain 1st layer too. Lightning transactions need at least 1 on-chain transaction before they can be made, Lightning depends on the on-chain 1st layer.


No, jonald's confusing the issue

Big blocks do not scale by definition. They increase capacity, but they don't change the scale at which more capacity is added. To scale transaction capacity meaningfully, we can only achive that by fitting more transactions into the same blocksize, "blocksize scaling" is self contradictory.

The term "vision" is abused in these parts. What they have is a "simplistic and ignorant obsession" at best, and a "malicious intent" at worst.

Do you agree Greg Maxwell's intent is to mold Bitcoin into a 2 layered network?

Bitcoin is a 2-layered network already, or do you not use exchanges or mixers? Maxwell is working on a 2nd layer that is permission-less.

So we agree that he is working on a 2nd layer.  You should also agree that he's decidely against allowing the first layer to scale freely.
He's openly stated he wants full blocks and a fee market.  Are we on the same page with that?

To answer your questions:  I use exchanges but those are not part of the Bitcoin network itself. 

LN may be permissionless theoretically, but in practical terms, it may not be...because it may not be economically
feasible to open your open channel, and you'll have to rely on someone else's.   

 

LN is not prmissionless.
its a 2 party signature

EG
imagine it like a co-sign bank account.. you cant buy a hooker without your wife signing the cheque..

you cannot just send funds(permissionless). you need to find a second party to agree.

thanks Frankie, but lets not lose the forest for the trees.  If both parties want to transact, muyuu is saying
they can do so...but i'm saying it may be infeasible economically. thoughts?

Hard protocol constraints impede the 1st layer from scaling freely without compromising basic conditions on node maintenance cost.


Layer-2 will not be part of the Layer-1 Bitcoin network itself. Nobody will be forced to use them, except by the very constraints of the protocol that are inevitable.

You're not in favour of on-chain scaling jonald, whereas the Bitcoin devs are. They've actually developed on-chain scaling ideas, some with early implementations.

What have you done? You're promoting on-chain capacity increases, which don't scale at all. Your position is untenable on this issue.

If I remember correctly it all comes down to the amount of hashing power that decides to go with one fork or the other, and at some point the network is supposed to collectively move to whatever fork is decided in order for the rest of the network to continue propagating.

Nodes only do so much, but a mix of nodes and hashing power is required in order for any fork concept to be successful.

If you consider that bitcoin is a "fiat-to-fiat" sending device, yes it is a double layer.   That is:

1) you have permissioned, banking-style access to bitcoin through exchange 1 (where you send fiat from your bank account to the exchange, to withdraw true bitcoins on chain).

2) you can send bitcoins permissionless to whomever you want

3) on the receiving side, the person needs permissionned, banking style conversion of his received bitcoin on an exchange, and back to his bank account

With LN, this becomes the following:

1) idem

2) this time, you have to ask the exchange to send bitcoins to you through your permissionned channel on your "LN bank" where you are connected to.

3) you have to ask your LN bank if you can send a permissionned payment to your destination (your LN bank can accept or refuse, ask fees, conditions, explanations, ....), that is to say, to your destination's permissioned LN bank

4) on the receiving side, the person will need to ask his permissioned LN bank to send the coins to his preferred permissioned exchange, convert to fiat, and get that fiat on his bank account.

So, what has disappeared in the LN story, is the permissionless sending of coins from sender to receiver.  You have to go through your fixed, permissioned LN bank, and so does your counter party (your "LN hub" to which you are attached until your LN link is sufficiently used that you can settle on chain).

Sure.  But node maintenance cost increases are inevitable.  

I understand you are in favor of mitigating/delaying those increases, but what is wrong with letting the free market decide?

In other words, if second layer solutions can shoulder some of the load on the main chain, great...but why not let people choose
those solutions on their own then the solutions are available?   Why do we need to centrally plan this and keep constraints,
ESPECIALLY when LN isn't even ready?  

Node's are running fine on Raspberry PI's and an SD Card for ~$75, that's a perfect example of how technology has moved on since bitcoin started.

Why wasn't the 1MB block size a concern in the beginning when the biggest hard disk you could by was ~10GB, these days we have 10TB drives.

I just don't see how 'node maintenance cost' is an issue at all ?

I see their side of the argument as far as what would happen to storage requirements and connectivity requirements when we have 300 TPS, and
Moore's law won't always be there to save us.

(But they still haven't convinced me that it sufficient reason to restrict scaling at the present time)

If you ran a node, which I'm going to assume you don't because of that nonsensical argument, you'll know that the number one constraint is upload bandwidth.

Nodes are hungry on upload bandwidth and this is quite expensive past a certain point. And it barely increases over time because most home consumers need mainly download bandwidth.

The only way to scale past where we currently are in terms of raw blocksize, is to start cutting corners related to P2P connectivity which endanger the network more the higher you take them.

This cannot be done "freely" under any circumstance unless you intend to destroy Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant transaction protocol.

You're not recommending anything different jonald


Emergent Chaos just de facto centralises blocksize changes with the mining cartel - not decentralised

Neither Bitcoin EC or Bitcoin Unlimited decentralise development, they keep it centralised (which the Classic devs admitted was the whole point just recently) - not decentralised


Well, all I can say is, thanks for helping to stall Segwit, it's given the Lightning developers much more time to get it ready for when Segwit activates  :D

I run 2 nodes. One since I started with Bitcoin, and the second was fired up recently as a BU node as a hedge just in case but has since gone back to core after their bugs and closed source patch.

Bandwidth hadn't even entered my head, probably because I have no caps both here and at my office, will have to take a look what they are actually using and if they are maxing out my connections (I am also sure I read that the problem isn't the downloading of the blockchain but the processing of it once it arrives).

Even so upload speeds here have increased over time in the same way as hard disks have got bigger, so I don't see a problem.

It's also silly to me that the 7,000 nodes all need the full blockchain, and surely there has to be a better way that maintains security ?

Congrats, so you do run nodes and you managed to ignore the main issue.

Access to high-speed uploads is relatively limited around the world. My node wrecks my home connection and I have the fastest provider in East London.

The issue of compensating nodes needs to be addressed before placing an even much higher burden on them than they already have. And it goes up exponentially with block size, it's a P2P gossip protocol not "downloading websites" like Gavin used to say - which is moronic.

muyuu:

I still didn't see you answer my question:

SegWit as proposed already will increase the size of the block and the burden on nodes very substantially.

You can't escape the limitations of the protocol, or you destroy it for its main purpose.

Fair enough.  I guess this is where we can shake hands and agree to disagree.  Sure Segwit offers *some* on chain scaling, but too little too late for my taste.

It's not debatable that the extra burden will be very considerable, and the increase in tx/s will be as well with the coming improvements that SegWit makes possible.

You think putting burden on nodes is a goal? rather than increasing tx/s capacity. Because you talk of increasing block size as a feature.

Get a grip.

"Oh sure, it's an incredibly-tiny, one-time, and slow-motion increase in the effective block size limit -- one whose extremely modest capacity benefits will only be realized slowly over time if and when people convert to SegWit-style transactions. And it comes with a mountain of technical debt and a huge arbitrary, economics-changing discount for certain types of data that will also make future increases in capacity harder to implement... But putting those little details aside for the moment, didn't you people say you wanted larger blocks? You're obviously just impossible to please." -Roger Murdock

Is it possible to worry about the future bitcoin in this case? Why is it recently very often the prices for the crypto currency are raised then fall. I'm worried about my coins, but as soon as new information arrives, I do not know how to react to it. Probably because of the incomprehensible, I will suffer more and more.

Up to this date, there's been zero on chain scaling.  Segwit's not even here yet and has less support from miners than BU.  Meanwhile,
companies like Fiverr have had drop Bitcoin because the fees and confirmation times are too high/unreliable.

  

That's because a bunch of idiots/shills are dead set on blocking it. Then blame the devs that it doesn't happen.

Total strawman.

Miners are smart enough to be in the Bitcoin mining business, but are going to listen to "idiots/shills" instead of making up their own mind and picking a sensible solution?  Yeah that sounds legit.

Why not just do a simple blocksize increase to 2mb like Jeff Garzik suggested over a year ago? 

Because Greg doesn't want to.  Doesn't fit into his roadmap.  Doesn't fit into his Blockstream business plan.  And the rest of Core has been going along with it.

Sorry, but that's the truth.

What? Happily running multiple nodes and coins in rural England.

Actually, it IS "downloading websites".  There are essentially 14 producers of block chain: the main pools.  With them, you have more than 80-90% of the hash rate.  If these pools are no idiots, they are linked amongst themselves by a high-speed back bone network in, preferably, if they don't trust one another, almost full mesh configuration.  These 14 pools' data centres are the principal servers of block chain.  They make the block chain and hence are the ones having it as primary source.  
 
Any direct connection of your full node to one of their data centres (their powerful "node" that can probably handle hundreds of thousands of connections) gets the block chain directly.  If you want to get the block chain through a P2P connection from another non-important node, you are just using that other node as a proxy server of the block chain, and not from the main servers (the 14 data centres).

I say 14, but in fact, 5 is enough: 5 miners have more than half of the hash rate, and they, for sure, are on a high speed backbone.  It is in their interest to set up very strong nodes, so that the rest of the full nodes can connect directly to them, and not through a clumsy and slow P2P network.

So essentially, the mining pool concentration makes automatically from the bitcoin network:

1) 1 central back bone on which the principal miner pools are connected amongst themselves (from 5 to 14 say)

2) mostly direct server-client links to these 5 - 14 data centres by all "seriouis" client nodes, in order to get the most reliable block chain directly from the source as quickly as possible

3) at the periphery, small amateur nodes connecting in P2P mode to the serious client nodes, if they don't manage to go to one of the main servers.

Bitcoin's mining architecture does not favour a P2P network, it favors a central backbone + spokes network.  Note that it is not a "single server" network: all important miner pools (5 - 14) are independent servers of the same block chain.  You can connect your 'serious node" in P2P mode to several miner data centres in order to be sure that none of them is cheating on you and giving you a "retarded" block chain.

As the block chain is sort of "cryptographically signed" with proof of work, the fact that the source is centralized doesn't matter too much in its quality ; nobody can fake a block chain without spending huge amounts of wasted hash rate.  The only thing that can happen is that you get a "late" block chain, but to avoid that, it is best to get it DIRECTLY from those that produce it: the main mining pool data centres, instead of letting it "drip through" the P2P network at snail pace.

You just described a nice plan for your future BTU network, not anything I'd have the slightest interest about.

It looks like a completely irreconciliable vision of what Bitcoin should be, so let's make the split clean (and good luck with those devs).

No, this is unavoidable for ANY form of PoW system in the long run.  It IS already the case BTW: 14 miner pools have essentially all the hash rate.

The reason is not "block size" or whatever.  The reason is the lottery of PoW, and the economies of scale.

Solo mining is not done much any more, because with solo mining, you win ONE BLOCK every two years or so.  That's too much of a lottery.

If you don't want more than 10% income fluctuation (RMS value) in 1 week of your income, it means that you must be part of a team that "wins 100 times" during a week.  As there are 1000 blocks in 1 week, you must hence be part of a pool that has 10% of the total hash rate.  --> there can be only 10 such pools !

Even if you accept larger fluctuations of income, there will at most be a few tens of mining pools.

Now, these mining pools need good network connections, to their miners, and to other mining pools, because every second lost is a second of hash rate lost.  As mining pools don't trust one another, they want to get good links to SEVERAL of their competitors, to avoid the possibility of "selfish mining" which needs variable network delays to get your private block in front of the public block.  

So, AUTOMATICALLY, this ecosystem will evolve towards "a few tens of pools with very good data connections and big data centres".

As an owner of mining gear, you have all interest to be in a big pool ; but you don't want pools the become monopolies, because then they will start eating off your fees.  So as an owner of mining gear, you are going to be such that you want to have "a few big pools".  In order for your mining gear to be efficiently used, you want to be able to have a good data connection to your host pool --> they need good data centres with good connections to all of their miners.

Once that is the case, automatically the above topology follows.  Has not much to do with block size.  Is intrinsic to the PoW system with specialized hardware (ASICS).  It was built into bitcoin from the start.

Either you've done something to limit your node, or you have quite fast internet speeds (upload specifically), or no one is using your node for other reasons.

How about giving us some numbers?

I experienced the same thing muyuu is talking about. My node would happily saturate my upload bandwidth to the point where basic web browsing severely impacted. I had to gimp my node (max connections) until finally switching ISP.

Now my node, in stock configuration with around 60 connections on average, uploads well over 1 terabyte per month, yet my quite expensive internet plan can now handle that. My internet bandwidth is in the top percentile, obviously, and unavailable in all but the most developed locations.

Advancements in either p2pool software or something similar would go a long way in starting to alleviate the problems associated with mining centralization. Unfortunately, there hasn't been enough incentive to advance these things. I think instead of removing mining from the reference client, it should have adopted and improved upon the p2pool software.

If hash rate providers had more incentive to be full nodes and retain their "vote", thus becoming actual miners, we might get a clearer picture of how much support these various proposals can muster.

That ship may have sailed long ago, but I think there is clearly an argument to be made that we should reconsider.

It's not from lack of incentive. Many of us have spent a lot of man hours with discussion, theories and code in mining that the non-mining world probably is not remotely aware of and quick to dismiss as "greedy miners." The idea behind p2pool was sound, but the reality was that the design is fundamentally flawed in a way that cannot be fixed, making it worse to mine on than a regular pool. P2pool is ultimately simply a merged mined blockchain on top of the bitcoin blockchain - mining on the merged chain means you're simply solo mining on a chain with slightly lower difficulty, yet still far too high a diff. After extensive discussion and investigation it is clear that these flaws cannot be fixed to make it even as attractive as regular pooled mining, let alone better. The design of the current bitcoin proof of work itself means that will always be the case. Without a massive change to the blockchain and proof of work design, pooled mining will always be possible, and the "p2pool" design will never be as good. A distributed peer to peer proof of work design that intrinsically does not lend itself to pooled mining without even changing from sha256d allowing existing hardware to continue mining is indeed a solution but unfortunately p2pool is not it and cannot be made to be it.

Automatically, if nothing else is done on top of this system, and if blocks are allowed to grow freely: this system will consolidate on one node-miner and will make zero sense. It won't be a censorship-resistance transaction system and it will be COMPLETELY POINTLESS.

That is why Bitcoin, right now, is a work in progress. Allowed to concentrate to 1, it's a convoluted, slow data-structure that makes no sense whatsoever. It's like downloading files from a standalone Bit-Torrent server running on your own computer.

Got to agree with ck on this one. p2pool, as much as I like it, struggled more and more as the barrier to entry (both difficulty and ASIC price gouging) in mining clearly delineated it's shortcomings.

I see Holliday's general point too, I think a different design for a p2pool system could be far more successful, and it would be far better if proof of work redesign took that into account. I wonder if that's feasible, but we'll see. Certainly, when only difficulty and economies of scale were the barriers to entry in mining (i.e. the GPU/FPGA days), p2pool had a far higher percentage of the mining market (somewhere close to 10% at one point IIRC)

Sure, that's why I added "or something similar". If not that specific implementation, something else with similar goals. Also, I was talking about the past (specifically when mining was removed from the reference client). If it would have been added then, perhaps enough eyes would have been on it to either improve or, if impossible as you say, replace it entirely with something superior. I think the decision to ignore mining in the reference client, was the wrong one.

I think pooled mining has had much greater incentive behind it, because pool operators stand to earn money from improving it and giving their hash rate providers the best experience.

This, I wholeheartedly agree with. Two years ago core devs were saying mining had almost nothing to do with the core implementation which was a very shortsighted view. The lack of emphasis on the delicate interplay between mining and the reference implementation of the bitcoin network protocol and the block chain was a major setback. Of course one could ask why I didn't get involved then since I was busy hacking on mining code and the answer is a simple one: I don't have any faith in my c++ coding skills so it would have been presumptuous of me to try and hack on bitcoin core.

You know what?

That's the level of the argument we should be having about the big-blocks vs multi-layer debate. The problem is that bigblockers took it to the audience and now it's exclusively politics and we have a complete shitshow of a debate with people who have no idea what they are talking about.

If it was the level set by people like dinofelis who actually have very respectable points, then this would be MUCH better. The problem is that the bigblocker side has degenerated to the point their position is untenable. I think this didn't start completely by a problem of their own, but from a separate problem which is that of software development governance. But the reality is that every client they come with is worse than the previous one and we cannot abstract the underlying technical debate from the fact that their current dev base is completely incompetent as 95%+ of devs with experience in this field (which is a HARD field) "roughly" agree with the Core Roadmap or are willing to make concessions to work with them (me included, although I stay very anonymous in dev because this could cost me my job in finance).

So I feel we don't have a way out that doesn't end up in some sort of radicalisation and infighting. They will resort to aggression, losing the argument on that alone even though they do have fair points like those exposed by dinofelis (I just disagree in his conclusions and in some key assumptions, but I actually agree with a lot of his take).

I'm seriously worried about this. If Bitcoin depends on sorting the problem of "perfect agreement in software development" then we are IN THE SHIT because that is never going to happen.

Good post.  I am all for honest and open dialouge.

The whole reason I am for EC is because its very hard to get agreement and its all been around this single blocksize variable.

I am sure there are issues from 'the big blockers' (you probably see me as one of them, that's fine).

But I also see issues from the small blockers.  For example, refusal to even admit blocks were getting fuller, or censorship of
even discussing the issues...and as you said 'aggression' -- plenty of that on both sides.

I'm really trying to make a personal effort to be as cordial as I can and see where some common ground can be established.
We're all bitcoiners.

I want to ask if the increase in block size through Segwit not enough for the present number of transactions. Is it not already a big improvement? What do you think the average block size be today if we were using Bitcoin Unlimited?

I am not a segwit expert.  I have heard it starts at 1.7mb but I have also heard that assumes all wallets in the world are using it which probably isn't the case.

I think if we truly had 1.7 today it would be ok for the moment (assuming people that left bitcoin to start using altcoins came back) but the idea is always stay WELL ahead of the curve.

Remember that demand is affected by supply in the sense that if people experience (or even anticipate) a congested network, they will be preemptively dissuaded from using Bitcoin. 

So 1.7 or 2 might be ok for a few months but hopefully we grow far beyond that.

No, really, once you have a cartel of pools, which is unavoidable with a PoW type income lottery, the network topology doesn't really matter, in *reality* you have a server/client system, where the pools are the collective server of block chain because they are the principal source of the data.  The other nodes in the network are nothing else but proxy servers of this data and ultimately, the clients.

The real P2P nature of the network only made sense if a block could be mined *anywhere* on the network ; if essentially all nodes were also miners.   Then the whole network is at the same time client and server, and the P2P style network is justified.
But if you have a specialized set of nodes that *make* the data, and a *large quantity* of nodes that only *use* the data, then you get an automatic adaptation of the network topology to the reality of the data flow: server/client.

Note that *amongst* the mining pools, the P2P topology still makes sense ; this is why they most probably connect in an almost full mesh, because they don't trust one another (subcartels of selfish miners might form).  But FROM the mining pools to the non-mining nodes, the relationship is not P2P, but is client/server, and hence the optimal network topology adapts to that given.

This has nothing to do with block size, but is an inherent property of PoW and economies of scale.  It is true that bigger blocks would push a bit faster to optimise the network topology to the reality of the client server nature of bitcoin but this is inverting cause and effect.  The network topology is not the cause of centralization, but its effect.  The real centralisation is the fact that only a few entities produce the data, the block chain.  The network only adapts to that reality but is not its cause.  PoW with specialized hardware and the economies of scale automatically lead to a few central mining centres.   That is not the block size or the network that push to that, it is the economies of scale in PoW and the smoothing out of the "lottery" (instead of winning once a whole block per year (or not), you prefer to have regular income with a pool).

This whole debate is misguided.  Block size has not much to do with it.  The real centralization is the fact that only 5 entities have majority hash power (and hash power is voting power in a PoW system), and that 14 entities have almost all hash power.  This is already the case.  The ILLUSION that the nodes are manifold, while they are only CLIENTS DOWNLOADING DATA from these 14 data centres through their proxies in the P2P network gives you the illusion that bitcoin is not centralized.  So this whole debate is simply about keeping up an illusion of decentralization by avoiding the network to adapt to the reality of the data flow.

you still dont understand. if you think nodes only job is a data store. then please go read some code

First foot forward is confirmed to be a mess that needed to be fixed - you still waiting and hoping this can storm half the weather Bitcoin have had to go through and still standing. They were quick to point at the small pebble in Bitcoin eyes, meanwhile they have logs of wood in their very own eyes. It helps to be able to see a red flag and recognize it for what it is.

Yes, that's essentially it.  Non-mining nodes download the block chain, and verify it FOR THE OWNER OF THE NODE.  They also relate those data to other nodes wanting to download the block chain from them, and not directly from a miner node.  If the cartel of miners makes one single block chain, then those nodes have the choice between accepting that block chain, or stopping all together.

And they send upstream those transactions that wallets, connected to your node, want to send, if they prefer to send it through your node, and not directly to a miner's node.

A user wallet doesn't need your node.  It can connect directly to a miner node.  But it MAY use your node for, well, for what ?  Convenience maybe.  A big user will of course have its own node.  For instance, an exchange may install (will install) its own node.  But it can only download one single block chain, because there's only one single block chain "out there".  If it wants to serve its customers with deposits and withdrawals, it better installs a node that accepts the one and unique chain out there, and better transmits its transactions to the miners making that unique chain.  A big exchange better doesn't rely on the feable P2P links of unknown in the network, and preferentially connects DIRECTLY to some big miners.  To be sure to get their (unique) chain.  And to be sure that their transactions are not stopped by the P2P network for one or other reason.

The P2P network configuration, and the propagation of transactions and blocks made sense when miners were "everywhere on the network".  Then, the network as a whole, served as a kind of "filter", and stopped single miners from "colluding".  But that is over, now that there are 5 majority miners.  The P2P network is obsolete in the current configuration which is server/client.

you have no clue.

i get the feeling your agenda is to make people think its ok to not care about running a full node. as if you want to brain wash people into thinking they have no way of controlling changes to bitcoin.

if you think nodes do nothing. then go be a centralist running a lite node. and let the ones that have been around longer and actually read and understood the code and consensus run a full node because we know what a full node actually does.

you spend too long trying to stroke sheep to sleep saying its ok for them to not be full nodes because core want to be dictators.
you have become too obvious with your endless rhetoric trying to suggest nodes are meaningless. so go play with a litenode if it means so much to you

Partly agreed: only blocksize won't stop this. However lifting the cap right now will accelerate the problem.

There is more work to be done to make this system useful in anyway whatsoever in the endgame.

Seems you think it's helpless, but I disagree. What I don't see is why do you care, because your theory implies that nothing will save Bitcoin from becoming a pointless Rube-Goldberg Paypal that ultimately won't be able to compete at anything.

My only agenda is to understand all the aspects of this kind of system.

Yes, I'm convinced, and I explained you why, "running a node" is a useless exercise, except for yourself.  Not because I have an agenda, but because this is a logical consequence of a Proof of Work system.

Apart from "you have no clue" and "waffle waffle" your arguments are pretty weak.


My "rhetoric" are observations, and logical arguments.  What is the real rhetoric:

"Proof of work systems are determined by those providing proof of work, and now they are, for obvious reasons, and also factually, a group of 5 - 14 entities"

Or:

"waffle waffle" and "you have no clue"

?

Which of both kinds of discourse is closest to "logical argument" and which one is closest to "rhetoric" ?

this. as with most bugcoiners they dont realise that blocksize increase is mere kicking the can down the road..

I don't even see how this accelerates the "problem", the problem is already there.   In bitcoin, 5 entities have majority vote.  14 entities have "overwhelming 90% majority vote", and the dynamics explaining that are pretty clear: it is PoW investment, and the fact that the lottery of who wins a block introduces high volatility, which can be hedged by using a pool.  This is *inherent in PoW with ASICS*.

The only thing that can be accelerated by bigger blocks, is that the network topology will adapt somewhat quicker to the reality of the data flow, but the network topology AS SUCH doesn't matter.  So I would think it rather positive that the network adapts more to the reality, to render the network more efficient.  The network has in any case nothing to do with "decentralization" any more, since a long time.

That said, I don't believe ANYTHING will change in bitcoin.  I'm pretty convinced that we are just witnessing the "wars" that are part of the decentralized consensus mechanism that installs immutability (by antagonists not agreeing over change).


My idea is that bitcoin is what it is, and will evolve to what it was designed to be: a reserve currency for unregulated big business.  (or nothing).

That "unregulated big business" can just as well be a "banking layer" on top of it, like LN, but it shouldn't be integrated in the protocol.  The banking layers should be independent layers, in competition with one another, and not one single style frozen in the protocol.  But I have not to say what "should be", as "nothing will be".  Immutability.


Yes.  My implication is comprehension of these systems.  I'm into this for the comprehension of decentralized systems, and the emergent properties and centralization forces.  It are very interesting times.  When I post my views on things, this allows me to put my ideas out for comment, and see where I didn't consider certain aspects.

I used to be enthusiastic about bitcoin, I'm now convinced that it contains several fundamental design errors, and I want to see how these design errors determine the "thing" that it will become.  I think it has something of a Frankenstein creation now, and I wonder what will become of it.  I only see three outcomes:

1) total centralization, huge adoption, and the Troyan horse TPTB will use against people ; but I give it little chance.  This is the Core way.  Worldwide bitcoin monopoly by a few dark forces no-one knows, worse than the current financial system.

2) Oligarchy of miners, bitcoin adoption niche as reserve currency for unregulated financial affairs that cannot be done with the fiat system ; backbone of "underground economy".  Bitcoin for the rich, sleazy business men.

3) Nothing.  Bitcoin losing its crown to alt coins, crashing into nothing.

First of all, we need to kick the can down the road sometimes.

For example, if you're running a business and have a cashflow issue, then you need to tap your line of credit.  You handle
the immediate problem and keep operating while you're working to solve the long term issues.  You don't let your
business die while you try to come up with the perfect solution because by the time you find it, you won't have
a business.

Secondly, LN still needs large blocks to support a large number of transactions because things still need to settle back to the blockchain.  Do you understand how LN works?

Closed source patch ??  WTF.. who dare to install this code and invest in this ??

SegWit is serious stuff, by serious and devoted poeple, thanks to all..

BU seems far away from just being viable..  short term and ever ;)

Impressive !

BUG coin will die. The official name now is : Bug Unlimited...

Just stop. You support closed code. Lol no on is coming with you. Enjoy your little crumbs. Poor people make me laugh.

Don't put words in my mouth, you brainless pratt.

I support on chain scaling.  There can be a variety of implementations supporting
bigger blocks.  The fact that BU temporarily had a hotfix patch without source for a few hours is
no reason to stop supporting them. 

Enjoy defending Blockstream controlled core that doesn't give a shit about you.

Then Segwit activation might not be that bad after all. Remember that it is not wholly a scaling solution but it also fixes a number of things that makes the network better.

I do agree that increasing the block sizes for the long term roadmap of Bitcoin is a must but it should be tested thoroughly and must be airtight secure. BU is simply not good enough.

Calm down jonald, we know your dream is dead and all, but there's no need to lash out at people telling you facts you wished were not true



You do not support on-chain scaling, you support on-chain capacity increases.

And because you think and behave as if blocksize increases are the only method of improving transaction capacity that exist, your views on the matter are null and void. You're blinkered, you are compulsive-obsessive about the blocksize, and nothing else.
 


And I suppose BU's attitude of "attack the BTC chain till it's face is in the dirt" demonstrates how much they value free and open competition, or how much they care?

I do not think franky1 and jonald_fyookball supports Bitcoin Unlimited only because of onchain capacity increases, they support it because they think it is a good idea to let the miners decide how large or how small the block sizes are. They want to take away the decision making from the Core developers because they believe the developers are corrupt.

Well, that's a whole load of wrong "thinking" they're doing (and I don't believe it. That's what jonald & trolls say, but they can only be thinking something completely different)


The devs cannot decide the blocksize without taking the users with them, it's that simple. External devs have tried to convince users to accept 2MB blocksize increases twice (XT & Classic), and no-one followed them. That demonstrates that the users are ultimately in charge, whatever the devs propose.

Maybe but from their perspective it is not. History will be the judge of who is right and wrong. If Bitcoin Unlimited "wins" then we who support Segwit are wrong.



For the Bitcoin Unlimited supporters that is not enough. They want the miners to independently decide how big or small the blocks are without having the developers involved. That for them is the correct long term solution.