In my experience bitcoin cash is a fork of bitcoin even BCH is faster and cheaper to use due to larger blocks but still it'a seen that most of the people are using BTC than BCH so why is bitcoin doing better than bitcoin cash?
BCH is currently cheaper to use due to it handling only a fraction of Bitcoin's transactions (and being only a fraction worth per coin in fiat terms). If either of those were to change significantly, you'd quickly see a difference in terms of transaction fees. Larger blocks does not equal better. If it were that easy we wouldn't have had a blocksize debate in the first place. Other scaling solutions exists that stand to increase transaction throughput far more effectively than a mere blocksize increase. |
|
|
|
Deleting old unnecessary transaction requires deleting old "unnecessary" blocks It permits blocks to be deleted, it doesn't require it. Same difference. You can't delete a transaction without deleting its block and vice versa. a shorter blockchain is significantly easier to attack than a full blockchain. Length only matters when resolving branches. The main chain is secured, not by it's length but, by the total hash rate of the network. A blockchain is secured by both its length and the total hash rate of the network. Otherwise you wouldn't have a difference in security between 1 confirmation and 100 confirmations. you can't delete singular transactions from a block without invalidating the whole block You can when the block is already on the blockchain. The only reason to retain old transaction data is to be able to reproduce the Merkle root but there's no reason to reproduce the Merkle root. I might be wrong, but if I recall correctly you need to reproduce the Merkle root when validating a block. Problem being, when a block is invalid, each subsequent block in the blockchain is invalid as well. [...]
However, like you pointed out, a lot of old unspent transactions will never be spent. In order to keep the blockchain size small and portable, it's necessary to limit it's length and that means blocks have to be deleted after a certain period of time- i.e they have to expire. Of course that puts the oldest unspent transactions at risk but, knowing this, every user will have to make it a top priority to recycle their coins before they expire and wallet apps will do this automatically as long as they're running and connected to the network. That encourages users to stay connected which helps keep the network strong.
At this point you only know some idiots are going to lose their coins despite all warnings and advice. That's deflationary so, in order to maintain a target supply of coins, the block reward should increase to compensate. This creates a more useful and sustainable coin, don't you think?
I respectfully disagree -- I personally definitely would neither like to see (1) bitcoins with expiration dates and (2) a change of the coin supply. In my opinion both would be a violation of what everyone signed up for when buying into Bitcoin. To add to that, expiration dates would hinder people and exchanges to store their coins safely (ie. in cold storage) and add unnecessary network load by forcing people to send their coins to new addresses on a regular basis. Especially the latter would get worse over time as the userbase holding "old" coins increases and more users have to "recycle" their coins. Sooner or later you'd reach a point where the recycling transactions alone would already fill up block after block, as all of these transaction would have to take place on-chain. So no, I don't think so. I guess it would make for an interesting alt though -- at least for an observer, without any actual skin in the game. |
|
|
|
1) Nodes only know in hindsight that there were competing branches. Miners are aware of all competing branches because they sometimes have to stop mining on one and start mining on another when it becomes the longest branch. Nodes (usually) don't keep copies of multiple, ie. competing blockchain states. If that were the case every single node would also propagate multiple competing blockchain states. This means that in case of an impending chain split (or orphaned branch) each different node stores a different blockchain state. It is only after one chain has become longer than the other that the nodes that used to follow the now orphaned branch are acknowledging the differing version of history and reorganize their blockchain state accordingly. And that's ignoring cases where competing branches may be intentionally withheld (ie. selfish mining). 2) Your whole security scheme would now hinge on a single block (ie. the one containing the most recent transaction of a particular set of coins). Deleting old unnecessary transactions doesn't change the security scheme. It's the blockchain that secures transactions, not the other way around. Deleting old unnecessary transaction requires deleting old "unnecessary" blocks leading to a shorter blockchain that is significantly easier to attack than a full blockchain. Additionally, and more importantly, you have the problem of old coins that haven't been moved since the early days. Since you can't delete singular transactions from a block without invalidating the whole block, even following the proposal of keeping only the latest movement of a coin you still have to keep every block until the youngest block with the oldest unspent transaction -- which happens to be the Genesis block, I'm afraid. |
|
|
|
Lightning Network uses HTLCs as fundamental building blocks, so maybe this accounts for some of the HTLCs you are seeing that do not correlate to atomic cross-chain swaps? The first known mainnet LN transaction took place some time in late December 2017 [1] so that should be the first time that a LN related HTLC hit the blockchain. However there are currently more than 6000 LN channels open [2] so maybe LN opening / closing transaction don't satisfy your search criteria and thus don't show up in the first place. [1] https://news.bitcoin.com/first-real-bitcoin-lightning-network-payment-completed-via-bitrefill/[2] https://lnmainnet.gaben.win/ |
|
|
|
|
Pretending to be a newbie asking questions about hardware wallets only to then link to your own online shop selling a previously unheard of product smells pretty scammy. I'm not saying that it's a scam, I'm just saying that at least in my opinion that's not exactly a way to gain the trust of people.
|
|
|
|
That's the thing though, except for encrypted paper wallets all other cold storage solutions also break with physical access. Compared to dedicated mobile devices or airgapped PCs a hardware wallet arguably still offers a higher level of both physical and software security.
What about an air-gapped hardware wallet? Would you trust that? Airgapping serves as a security measure to prevent unwanted online / network access by an adversary. That bit is covered by hardware wallets just as well as by airgapped mobile devices / PCs. As mentioned by others, all security flaws that had to be fixed so far required physical access, something against which airgapping doesn't help. Point being, if your main fear is people gaining physical access to your cold storage device / hardware wallet, you're probably better off with a hardware wallet, since unlike regular hardware they are at least reasonably secured against physical attack vectors. |
|
|
|
But the Nano S sold about 1 mil units. I'm assuming anyone buying does hodl quite a bit and would therefore be quite clued up... so why trust in this?
Trezor have also suffered firmware hacks... KeepKey hasn't really had any major issues yet, but have a tiny market share.
Trezor has an excellent track record of fixing security flaws in a timely manner. I presume this is true for Ledger as well. KeepKey still has to prove itself in this regard. Problem being -- just because no major flaws have been found with KeepKey wallets yet, doesn't mean there are none. Especially given the fact that they likely have far fewer watchful eyes on them than the Ledger or Trezor wallets, due to the significantly larger userbase of the latter -- including many inquisitive minds hacking and probing about just for the fun of it. In other words, smaller market share means fewer people looking for security issues leading to fewer security issues being found. That being said, KeepKey could very well be more secure than Ledger or Trezor wallets. But we won't know until more people have given it a go. Ledger is based on a Secure Element which at every boot checks if the device is compromised. That's why they don't use seals, there should be a leaflet in every package mentioning that. Some people prefer this solution over Trezor's open-source code and hardware. It is worth noting that Trezors also ensure firmware integrity on the hardware level: https://doc.satoshilabs.com/trezor-faq/threats.html#reflashing-the-trezor-with-evil-firmwareEvery discovered security flaw in both Ledger and TREZOR needed a physical access to the device.
[...]
Cold storage might be a better solution for you. It's less convenient but you can also use, for example, Samourai on your Android device which offers high privacy and security. Cold storage for savings, Android wallet for shopping and F2F transactions.
That's the thing though, except for encrypted paper wallets all other cold storage solutions also break with physical access. Compared to dedicated mobile devices or airgapped PCs a hardware wallet arguably still offers a higher level of both physical and software security. |
|
|
|
When a new transaction is being verified, is it sufficient to only check the transactions referenced by the inputs or is it necessary to check the entire chain of transaction going all the way back to the genesis block?
[...]
The utx is only referencing the previous tx. The tx referenced by that tx is just old data that nobody really needs, especially if it's contained in a block on the main chain, i.e. there are no competing branches.
Looking at the way Bitcoin transactions work this approach comes with the following problems: 1) Nodes only know in hindsight that there were competing branches. 2) Your whole security scheme would now hinge on a single block (ie. the one containing the most recent transaction of a particular set of coins). If you can't trace a coin back to its coinbase transaction you can't verify whether it has been mined or falsely conjured out of thin air. In other words, applying this concept on Bitcoin would result in a loss of both security and reliability. You may be interested in MimbleWimble's Cut-throughs [1], however. MimbleWimble has supposedly found a way to securely get rid of intermediate, historic transactions that are no longer needed. This is enabled however by a transaction concept that is vastly different from Bitcoin -- and any other alt, for that matter (at least as far as I'm aware of, if there are other alts applying this method I'd love to hear about them). [1] https://github.com/mimblewimble/grin/blob/master/doc/intro.md |
|
|
|
Every post from @anunymint apparently was deleted. The thread is now very difficult to understand because a significant portion of the discussion is missing. Some of this thread was archived here and here. I understand that they banned his account for circumventing a previous ban -- honestly I wondered why the banhammer didn't strike sooner -- but I also find it problematic that all his posts got deleted. Sure, there were a lot of dubious claims in his writings and at times things got a bit out of hand but it's not like he was spamming the boards like some of the n00b and bounty hunter accounts out there. Aw well. I just hope this case won't get instrumentalized as an example of "censorship on Bitcointalk". |
|
|
|
3c) Experts in the field, e.g., computer vision, after looking at the dataset, will know how difficult the problem is.
Experts = Miners.
They will look at the current elected problem (equivalent to hash problem), and decide on whether to participate in the mining (training of the neural network). They do not rate a dataset per se.
So... human experts in the field will manually monitor their GPU clusters at all times to determine the difficulty of a problem? ಠ_ಠ Yes, so I guess the solution is to somehow automatically select the next block of POW problem, and let miners just work on it.
That's merely a vague way to describe one of the many problems of this approach, not the solution.
How to stop rogue clients from DDoSing the network by flooding it with wrong timestamps and turning 2 minute block intervals into 2 days or weeks or years?
By attaching a cost/fee to each broadcasted result? So miners are paying to mine blocks? Why would anyone pay to mine a block? How would currency be issued in a system where miners pay for mining blocks but don't receive any block rewards? Or does the fee simply get substracted from the block reward? In which case, how is it a fee if miners simply receive reduced block rewards to begin with? We will just follow how bitcoin does for handling DDOS. if bitcoin sucks at it, we will have to think of a way of facing DDOS attacks. Bitcoin handles the problem of timestamping by using a PoW scheme with an objectively determinable difficulty allowing for striving towards predetermined block intervals. It's why Bitcoin and other alts use cryptographic hashes as part of their PoW scheme and not a problem that can't be quantified without human intervention. I'd recommend taking a closer look at how and why PoW works and what problems it solves. |
|
|
|
|
I'm no patriot, but I think Austria has gotten it quite right. Taxed like gold when used as an investment vehicle, taxed like a currency when used as a currency. And unlike Germany we still have LocalBitcoins, which is nice. Not sure how long Austria will keep these rather liberal laws up though, as the government tends to fuck up when the wrong interests are conflicted with. Also I'm not quite sure why there aren't any Austrian crypto-exchanges yet, seeing how there are at least 2 brokers with a very large distribution network within Austria.
|
|
|
|
[1] Why was Satoshi the first person to design a viable crypto?
I mean there must have been legions of computer scientists, IT people, hackers, mathematicians and really really smart people thinking about this
but what was it that allowed Satoshi to make the breakthrough,
both in terms of insight and surrounding tech/maths/ etc
This article might be of interest to you: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/3140000/3136559/p20-narayanan.pdf?ip=213.47.139.106&id=3136559&acc=OPEN&key=4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E6D218144511F3437&__acm__=1531246903_43cea13ebff559f61941f2610ceb21ccIn essence, all of the pieces that nowadays lie at the foundation of cryptocurrencies were already conceptualized by other researchers -- linked timestamping, Merkle trees, proof of work... it's just that Satoshi happened to be the first one to put these pieces together and applied them in a wholly new way that led to Bitcoin. In other words, Satoshi too, merely stood on the shoulders of giants. Whether it was his brilliance, pure luck or lateral thinking that led to the conception of cryptocurrencies -- who knows. But they definitely timed it quite well, with the 2008 banking crisis still fresh in everyone's mind and the internet becoming ever more prevalent while still lacking a native currency. |
|
|
|
If you want to take the holistic approach and maybe enter academia some way further down the road: Subscribe to the Bitcoin Dev mailing list and follow the discussion on current and future developments: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-devRead BIPs. Read whitepapers from cover to cover to get a fundamental understanding of protocol specifics and some of the more interesting alts out there. Maybe find yourself a project that you are interested in and that you can contribute to. If you want to take the more direct approach at landing a job in the private economy: Look for companies that are hiring engineers related to blockchain tech and cryptocurrency projects and see what skillset they expect and what profile they are after. See what skills are mentioned more often than not and focus on those. Contributing to open source cryptocurrency projects may improve both your relevant skills and your resumé. |
|
|
|
My further research revealed that a block chain developer should be well versed in front end development (like HTML, CSS etc, so I will start with them for a time being)
Where did you read that? Front end development is likely one of the least useful programming skills when it comes to working with blockchains / cryptocurrencies. HTML / CSS even moreso. You may end up with a pretty GUI but a blockchain / cryptocurrency needs more than just that. Server-side JavaScript / NodeJS development might be a useful skill. There's a lot of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency related npm modules that allow you to communicate with your own full node via its RPC interface and receive / send transactions. If I'm not mistaken ByteBall's official wallet is written in JavaScript and uses a wrapper for its desktop version. Most blockchain / cryptocurrency projects are written in rather low-level languages such as C++ though, which is a skill that is hard to learn, but without which you likely won't get far. Still, it largely depends on what you mean by becoming a "Blockchain Developer". Do you want to work on a new cryptocurrency / blockchain project? Contribute to existing cryptocurrency / blockchain projects? Write smart contracts? Create wallet clients for existing cryptocurrencies? Integrate existing cryptocurrencies in new or existing applications? |
|
|
|
If you're talking about international remittance it's still a good deal unfortunately. PayPal, banks, Western Union, etc all take a bigger cut in that case. This is not entirely true: I can send money by bank to any euro country without paying a fee. And even if I include the "commercial" banking fee, I can withdraw euros from for instance Kraken.com to my bank for a just 0.09 euro fee. I wouldn't count SEPA transactions as international remittance though, unless you're withdrawing to US / Canadian bank accounts in which case I'd be positively surprised and impressed  My personal experience with transactions outside of the Eurozone (but within Europe) have been rather sobering to say the least, with transaction fees ranging from EUR 10,- to more than EUR 30,- with little to no beforehand transparency on what fees I might expect. Might just be me having a shitty bank tho. |
|
|
|
|
Good advice! Be aware though that virtual machine emulators such as VirtualBox are not catch-all solutions and that occasionally sandbox escape vulnerabilities are discovered. In other words, using VirtualBox does not absolve you from applying other security best practices as well eg. using paper wallets / cold storage / hardware wallets to secure your coins.
That being said, I personally also wouldn't touch alt coin wallets without a virtual machine. Even if you trust the devs, github repositories do get compromised (looking at you, Bitcoin Gold), so be safe out there.
(edit: Also make sure to get the installer directly from virtualbox.org, lest you download a fake version and all is for nil)
|
|
|
|
The mempool doesn't look too full though (around 1500 unconfirmed transactions as of the time of writing). Maybe your transaction contained a lot of inputs from various change addresses and/or incoming transactions? Either way it's nice to see that transaction fees of USD 2.50,- have become worthy of complaining again  Correct but not when 0.01 BTC What's not correct when talking about 0.01 BTC? You mean USD 2.50,- are worth complaining about when sending 0.01 BTC? Depends on your use case, I guess. If you're just trying to send some money to one of your buddies across the street, sure. If you're talking about international remittance it's still a good deal unfortunately. PayPal, banks, Western Union, etc all take a bigger cut in that case. |
|
|
|
The latter should be fairly obvious and I wouldn't be using the Trezor anymore at that point. If someone simply opened the box, you should be fairly safe assuming you don't use the Trezor's default seed phrase and create one yourself by selecting words from the BIP-0039 word list: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txtMake sure to select words from the BIP-0039 word list randomly, not by selecting lucky numbers or words you more easily remember. Using dice may help as well during the selection process. Use a strong passphrase on top just to be sure (ie. when setting up your wallet you not only enter the seed phrase, but optionally can also add passphrases for multiple accounts in addition to your PIN). Make sure to back up your seed phrase. You can't just randomly select words from the BIP39 wordlist and expect to get a valid seed mnemonic. Part of the last word value is a "checksum" that is derived from the rest of mnemonic. If you're randomly picking words, it is highly likely that you're going to end up with an invalid checksum... from memory the odds of picking a word that includes a valid checksum are something like 8/2048 (there are usually around 8 words that will have the correct checksum out of the possible 2048). OPs best option, if they're concerned, is to simply wipe the device and set it up from scratch again as suggested above (it'll generate a new random seed). Aw geez. Thank you for correcting me! I had a feeling that my memory was off but couldn't quite put my finger on it. |
|
|
|
|
I doubt there would be enough liquidity for most ICO tokens. As CodyAlfaridzi already pointed out, shorting an ICO token would also require someone else providing the long position for you.
Even when it's rather obvious that an ICO will go down the drain eventually, remember the old saying: "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".
|
|
|
|
they have a kill switch embedded inside the miners, the miner calls home every time and if you block this, the miner will not start, i know, i've tested it.
If I recall correctly a patch for this backdoor / vulnerability was released as soon as it was made public. That was more than a year ago and as far as I'm aware of that was pretty much it, with no further reports of underhanded code changes or suspicious network traffic after that. Looking at the Antbleed website subverting this backdoor / vulnerability has been as simple as adding a loopback entry to the /etc/hosts file [1], making blocking it a fairly easy affair. [1] https://www.antbleed.com/GPUs are general purpose computation devices, it can programmed by anyone, it can be installed by anyone.
...and there are only two big manufacturers of which only one creates GPUs that are really worthwhile for mining. ASICS are not, only bitmain can design, build and program There were other ASIC manufacturers before Bitmain and there will be other ASIC manufacturers after Bitmain. Current market dominance does not necessarily mean that they will retain it, especially as the market grows and becomes interesting for hardware manufacturers outside of crypto, many of which are far larger than Bitmain. Bitmain's dominance is a problem, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the problem lies with ASIC mining itself. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
