Reading resources about bitcoin is important to participate completely in the forum discussions, mostly centered on bitcoin. You need to read as much as any bitcoin related contents shared above and ask questions to easily learn and get quality answers from members. The forum have different boards allocated to the different factors associated with bitcoin. And you must learn gradually, focus on the board that interests you. Grow from reading different terms, new jargon and words that you don't understand. We are here to learn, teach and exchange knowledge, that means your contributions matters too. I found a good resource about bitcoin FAQ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6jlop4/rbitcoin_faq_newcomers_please_read/ remember and stay clear from people who demand money from you and offer to mine bitcoin for you. Bitcoin mining is not for beginners and no app can mine bitcoin. Don't fall for this! A board is available for mining, if you have questions regarding how it works.

Indeed, they forget to know that their suffering won't end by instigating suffer on someone else. You've made a great point by encouraging civil disobedience on the scam lords. But, we forget that these people are forced to suffer other people, and not everyone have the courage to exit.  Consider the risk of traveling illegally to a different country. A move to the police or leave the house they hide in, can't come to mind. What happens to them if they get thrown out, who is going to accept them. So, their predators, use many con skills on them, torture, starve them, and risk their life in the eyes of the law. UN human rights provided good, but, rare to achieve solution to this, because these scam hubs can be sponsored by connected people. Thereby, knowing how to escape the law enforcement agencies. Moreover, these people are not citizens of the country, the both parties must end up in trouble. In many occasions these slaves are not forced to the house, greed also lands them into such a horrible condition. 

I always thought of making this thread, not sure how useful it'll be for individual readers, but the resources and tools are great. The thread contains few explanation and links to articles or docs that fully describe how the tools work; debugging, constructing wallets, verifying ECDSA signature, etc.

Below are some useful tools

Bitauth IDE designs advanced scripts for bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, in it are different features for line by line debugging used to visualize the status of the program execution. Templates are used to represent projects on Bitauth, which include a variable system for generating automatically, private keys, public keys and correct signature in locking and unlocking scripts. This writeup explains deeply about the project, its usage and other useful terms in bitcoin scripts.

Bitcoin IDE Provides step by step ways or processes for learning, teaching and testing a bitcoin script. Its features include; Synthax highlighting, auto complete, translation to and from assembly, Stack visualizer and step by step debugger. The github repository for bitcoinIDE can be found here https://github.com/siminchen/bitcoinIDE

Btc Deb contains different utilities or tools for debugging bitcoin scripts and building bitcoin compatible scripts. The tools can be compiled into javascript using https://emscripten.org/ every information about the BTC DEB is on the first link that begins this section you can further read here https://github.com/kallewoof/btcdeb/blob/master/doc/btcdeb.md

ECDSA Generator This tool solves for generating keys, public and private and signs them using bitcoin curve secp256k1, its friendly user interface is easy to navigate. I tried generating keys myself and it played out to be fast and responsive.

Below are some useful resources

Bitcoin Script: A reading list written by Jason Dreyzehner the developer of the above Bitauth IDE tool, focuses primarily on bitcoin scripts, list of tools, links to different useful terms like P2SH required in building bitcoin scripts, bitcoin development language etc. It's a good read for anyone that needs supports building bitcoin scripts.

Bitcoin Contracts Is an article powered by a script Bitcoin Contract Compiler that goes in details about the technical aspect and practical sample of how bitcoin contracts works. It's mainly encouraged to be used for learning purposes.

Online Bitcoin Simulator or Debugger A stack thread where most of the tools used in debugging and simulating bitcoin scripts were shared by individual developers and users. I got most of the tools shared in this thread on the same thread, I would have simply shared the thread link instead of arranging them this way, but most of the links to tools don't work anymore, so this thread consists of the ones I found useful and still working. You are welcome to contribute.

Use Testnets to work on these tools, don't use your private keys to test on any of the tools. I feel like I've done something this morning.

One of the mistakes of Elon Musk on twitter is that he decided to pay creators, it's good to the creators, but wrong for viewers or readers. The creators on twitter provide low quality information to earn the X ad revenue. Twitter is flooded with spam tweets from influencers seeking quick money. I'd say many people left twitter when he sold the verification for $20, but that won't be compared to the number of people that left twitter the moment he started paying verified users depending on the number of accumulated impressions. He is doing good by promoting free speech on twitter, but a lot of changes on twitter, like uploading long videos on twitter, also read somewhere that people can download videos on twitter, and the need to login before reading tweets on web, etc. He is a billionaire, so he tries anything he feels possible, not minding how twitter operated before he purchased the platform. I've not heard about his intention to sell twitter, not yet. That would have been a major headline news on blogs. 

Such softwares used for tracing addresses only instigate stress on a victim that got scammed or lost their coin. A scam victim, who wants to track the address where he/she sent a transaction, needs to bring evidences; chats, photos and money to the agency that claim to trace blockchain transactions. Most victims end up losing more money added to the lost money. Its existence also gave birth to fraudulent agencies claiming to retrieve lost coins or tracking a scammer; with the slogan, a person that fell for scam can easily fall again. The results always appear differently based on the software used to track an address. If the software can't retrieve the lost coin, why depend on unrealistic results, in the name of tracing a person who may not be behind the crime or scam?

This is correct, I've seen multiple complaints of missing data on the old dataset "bigquery-public-data.bitcoin_blockchain.blocks", a case like missing transaction output not correct or shown, but the new dataset `bigquery-public-data.crypto_bitcoin.transactions`seem to have all the blockchain data and updated every 10 minutes or so, not sure, most times people who complain for missing data didn't send out the right query. Google developers also provided a form https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/new?component=187149&template=0 where people who have missing results or any underlying difficulty can send their complaints in details and their dispute may get settled. I'm not trusting them, only that they're trying to solve a problem on their own end, also putting a bitcoin dataset on their bigquery is a good move, despite the certainty people or users will time to time face issues unlike those who download bitcoin core and query directly by themselves. I understand your points, things can get fishy, since it's managed by some developers, aside it, we have explorers to crosscheck our results if unsatisfied.

Carried out a search on some SQL programs that can query the blockchain, Saw Abe, but it required that I download bitcoin core, which wasn't what I needed. Knew of some RPC commands that people who run full nodes can use to retrieve data on the blockchain. So I checked out bigquery, read it on a PDF, a google product that has some bitcoin datasets, with two tables blocks and transaction, including interval structures stored in columns; TXin & txout of a transaction, stored in the inputs and outputs columns of the transactions respectively.

It all looked complex to understand at first glance, but read further to discover that it's mainly to help analysis for various kinds of analytic problems, and not for exploring individual transactions.

I queried for the transactions with zero fees, which I also read on the introductory aspect of the program, which explains that miners add their transactions to a block without paying fees. The query retrieved the number of transactions with zero fees



Did another test run on another query I found on the article written about the bitcoin dataset, the query is to retrieve balances on different addresses.


This retrieves different addresses with the amount of bitcoin contained in them, but the numbers didn't look realistic at first, like this 5502219754649, then I copied one address: bc1qjasf9z3h7w3jspkhtgatgpyvvzgpa2wwd2lr0eh5tx44reyn2k7sfc27a4 searched on blockchain explorer and found that the digits doesn't have a decimal point that separates the number, though correct. It looked this way on block explorer 55022.19754649 Tried out different queries, which I may not post because I didn't understand the results, didn't stop loading or too long to share.

The bitcoin dataset is 'bigquery-public-data.crypto_bitcoin' other cryptocurrency datasets also exists too, you can read this thread

Google is still building the model at the moment I notice some limitations, you can also use Legacy or Google SQL to execute query on bigquery.

Bitcointalk Username: Accardo
Bitcointalk Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2882909
Preferred Network For payment: Bitcoin
Preferred Currency For Payment:Bitcoin
BTC Address: bc1qrgp3ljsv9cm9cskwhp06xpzjphk6562404rt0n

Thin clients run on a server and its performance depends completely on a network connection. With ports for different peripherals like SD Cards to enhance performance and it works with Raspberry Pi. Full nodes on desktop oriented systems also requires round the clock network connection to run effectively. Thin client being server oriented reduces load on the system, which saves power. And it's less cost effective to set up a full node with thin client. I've seen some advantages of using thin clients and disadvantages like server failure. Yet I've not seen much usage of such devices to run a full node or contents about it, does it pose plenty vulnerabilities? found just one thread on reddit that talks about running full node on a thin client device. What possible issues could arise with using such devices to run a full node? I'd want to try it myself.

Yeah, I've read through this, but didn't know how to share a clickable link that'll lead to the exact place where I saw the term, however, regarding the double spending, a mining pool (not saying their operators are into such practice) control about 28-31% of the total mining hashrate according to mempool stats, and I just figured that it doesn't really have to be 51% of the hashrate to perform a double spend, that 30% can also execute such an attack. Hence, if that's possible I think I'm clear about the double spending capability of for-profit attack. As you can see the term wasn't explained in details, that's why I asked here to know more about it, the techniques and what can be done about it. Your answer is good, moving people away from a suspected mining pool controlled by tricky operators can help reduce such threat by diminishing the hashrate of the pool, yet it's written that if it's been done carefully they'll go unnoticed. So, I'm wondering if no method exist that can bench or stop for-profit attackers even though a mining pool does that secretly. Or its centralized nature keeps the for-profit attack operators immune from sanction or restriction?

I know it's common amongst some mining pool operators, which is centralized and they can decide what transaction gets to the block and some other sort of manipulations. But, I can't in details understand how this attack works, for or against the consensus rules. How can they take advantage of the consensus rules or how vulnerable is the consensus to such attack? is there any technique or means whereby the bitcoin community tries to stop such attack, lastly can they perform double spending too?

I'm new to this term, pls help. Cheers!

Great explanation, I went through it again, and it happened to be that the version number is like a tool used to know the amount of miners who are using the new consensus rule and to determine the status of the ungraded network and what decision to take whether to continue with both old and new rule, depending on the majority.


Regarding backward compatibility, in softfork, if the threshold is met, is the non upgraded node still eligible to be forward compatible or does the block it generates get staled? On the other flip, in my quote I wasn't writing completing about softfork, from what you said, it's not a fork at all. I was referring to hardfork while elaborating on version number. Since hard fork is non forward compatible, that is the non upgraded nodes don't follow the new rules, it poses threat to the network, does it mean bitcoin core's means of tackling those who want to perform a hard fork isn't effective?

Username: Accardo

I think you've mistaken block version number to be Miner Activated Soft Fork where a specific percentage, lets say 80%, of miners or hashrate have to signal that they're ready to use the new consensus rule, for all nodes to abide by the new rules. Block version number can be used to dictate a fork or helps to remind a user they need to upgrade their software. If the non upgraded node sees new blocks with a different block version, which they don't understand it can signal the user to upgrade, but if the non upgraded node keeps mining using the old rules and gets to block headers that has six blocks with more computing powers than the blockchain bitcoin core considers valid, it can detect this issue, using RPC command and this means bitcoin core can flag the blocks from non upgraded nodes as not valid and it won't be get added to the honest chain. Hence, Miner Activated Soft Fork depends solely on miners for nodes to execute the new rules while, in, block version and transaction numbers nodes work with the version number they're compatible with and ignore either the old or new version depending on the version they're wearing.

this can help us understand the block and transaction version numbers better

Well, a difficulty increase by 300% for those who mined 2016 blocks before two weeks and 75% decrease for miners who spent more than two weeks may not be reasonable but has a huge difference, that can pose as an advantage. However, I'd say that the network has been well thought out against any reasonable attack, like you mentioned the majority nodes controls the network. Because a single controversial change on the consensus rules could have been a loop hole in the network and attackers would have taken advantage of it, imagine having the non-upgraded node becoming the majority against upgraded nodes that would have caused a problem to the network, but such things have been tackled with block and transaction versions. Hence, It's rare for any means of attack, that has not been thought of or being taken care of by the core developers.

In addition to what o_e_l_e_o said, by manipulating the timestamp the difficulty adjustment algorithm will be forced to reduce the difficulty because it assumes the attacker spends longer time to mine a block. Delaying the timestamp to take longer time is more effective.



With enough computing powers, if a chain with all difficult blocks solved is built and it's long enough or more than the honest chain, the nodes will reorganize and join the other chain. Which still opens room for 51% attack, this can take a huge number of miners to work on an alternate chain, and a long time too, as the bitcoin chain is quite too old to catch up with easily, if they mine from the genesis block.

On the contrary, miners don't think about this because their block rewards depends on the honest chain, and it'll take about 100 blocks ahead of the miner's block before they'll be eligible to withdraw the bitcoin, so they'll keep working on the honest chain to earn more bitcoin.

@ranochigo Talking about PGP, during the usage of IP or if domain names were later used by merchants wouldn't PKI be the digital certificate needed to verify the authenticity of a message or transaction. Would they be need for asymmetric cryptography when securing a digital signature from getting impersonated or cracked. Please I'll appreciate a clarification on this.


It was once proposed and discussed by some forum members including Satoshi on this thread, that URL can be used to reduce the threat using mere IP could bring, but like Ranochigo already said about DNS Poisoning, that would have been a problem if Url was chosen, such things as DDOS attack or phishing will be a norm.  That was a mistake, where I used "chose", he only discussed the idea; its advantage and disadvantages. However, do you consider a mistake or what you don't understand clearly as AI generated content? No AI is as intelligent to write like I did, if my text looks like one then my writing improved suddenly.

That would have been a set back and will expose bitcoin transaction to different kinds of third parties like you mentioned, VPN, can lead to a man in the middle attack. Satoshi chose using URL in place of IP, but the digital signature will depend on certificate authorities to make confirmation that a bitcoin transaction was sent to the real owner of the site. Hence, that would still be ambiguous to non technical users who are into bitcoin. The whole concept would have derailed the primary aim of full decentralization. I don't think they will be need for a PGP digital signature security if sending bitcoin to IP was not removed.

Username: Accardo
BTC segwit address: bc1qrgp3ljsv9cm9cskwhp06xpzjphk6562404rt0n

Using digital signature depends on the type of transaction you want to place, which is grouped under the different types of SIGHASH_FLAG; this is a single byte that determines what data is required before a transaction is seen as valid. There are about 3 valid SIGHASH_FLAGs available for bitcoin transaction. Like suggested above most wallets use the P2PKH scripts embedded with a SIGHASH_ALL Flags, which insists that all inputs and outputs must remain unchanged before the transaction will be considered as valid.

On the other flip, what you'll do that'll require you to use a digital signature can fall upon if you want to build a software that requires the security of data, or if you want to perform a transaction that requires crowdfunding you can use a SIGHASH_ALL/ANYONECANPAY FLAG appropriate to it, whereby the transaction won't be valid until the targeted amount of money is reached. Moving ahead, you'll be the one to construct them into your software to suit your need and you'll need to know the mathematics behind ECDSA.



Two things to understand about digital signature, due to security issues, digital signature works in both ways to keep the private keys secure like shown below, PGP is an alternative to PKI. They both work differently, PKI requires a third party Certificate authority to validate the public keys and verify their private keys, while the Pretty Good Privacy algorithm uses asymmetric cryptography; requires both private and public key encryption and authentication. Hence digital signature is not only used for bitcoin transaction, different bodies use it for different reasons.