For some, it is that Bitcoin will continue to function as a payment network for individual users rather than a settlement network where only large transactions can be processed cost-efficiently.
I would like to know why that is perceived to be an issue (especially in China when you have payment networks that work instantly with almost no fees already)? (such as Alipay, QQ, etc.) And Wechat payment, geez, these days people just throw red envelopes back and forth as a way of messaging, try to beat that tps.  Albeit tencent can't even achieve internal database consistency IIRC. |
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I hope this has provided some useful food for thought-- but really, what I think is missing is your thoughts. What requirements do you feel aren't being met by Core that would leave you asking such a question? (I could guess, but communication is much better than guessing.)
Some expressed the view that while SigWit has its potential, it is something never been tried before, therefore should be given more time for thorougher test; worse, some felt that it represents a development that has deviated from Satoshi's vision and eventually, led to increased complexity of the protocol to such degree that it would be forbidding to most startups. BR, Eric Eric, Segwit is crucial to the development of Bitcoin for many important reasons, other than the size benefit, two of them(both cannot be resolved without Segwit) being fixing malleability issue and much faster signature verification(which is also vital to future block size increase), I am sure you understand the importance of both as a wallet provider.
Overall, there seems to be a sense of helplessness. Some reflected on why the Chinese had so little say in the matter and some urge that the Chinese should form their own core development team and create their own fork.
Let me know what you think as always.
Frankly that's why I believe the Chinese should not buy into the rhetoric of Bitcoin Classic developers, who clearly have a political agenda(in addition to the absymal record in development of many among them), and supported by people with questionable motives, as Toomim openly acknowledged in the Chinese miners Wechat group. You might think that choosing Classic over Core is the best option to get a short-term block size expansion, but Classic's plan doesn't stop here, they also intend to decide changes to the code by popular vote: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/compare/master...bitcoinclassic:master , within an environment clearly to the disadvantage of users and businesses in China and many other nations, it's not hard to imagine what most of the outcomes of such votes would be-representing only the opinion of English speaking Bitcoiners, even if we neglect all the technical reasons why it's an amusingly bad idea. While I cannot eliminate the possibility that certain Core devs working for Blockstream may indeed share a vision with their employer as to what Bitcoin's future would be, the consciousness they have thus far displayed, I believe, is in alignment with the general interest of Chinese Bitcoiners, e.g., one of the most important reasons why Core devs oppose to a rash block size increase is the network connectivity problem of people living in China, and Blockstream is, as far as I know, the only company with both the technical expertise and willingness to work on some of the best solutions to the problem: weak blocks and IBLT, and they are working on it. In contrast with this is Classic devs' clear lack of long term sustainable plan to the block size problem, what if 2 MB blocks are filled up again, do we just double it every year, ad infinitum? I am sure you understand that this is unsustainable. Also, if it's possible for such a political fork to take place, it would set a very bad precedent, as any interest group can possibly pay some developers to create a campaign to further split the network, by tweaking with some block parameters, for example, imagine some developers try to appeal to the interest of gamers with high-end GPUs by promising them a change of PoW function, under the banner of "re-decentralizing" the network, in which case the miners' opinion would not even matter to them. After all, it never costs much to pay for an army of shills to flood the online discussion forums to create a superficial "economic majority", like what we are seeing now, and economically heavy Western Bitcoin exchanges and payment processors certainly have never liked Chinese miners and would, probably never try to stop such a motion if it's indeed put forth. I am not a Core dev and I could not speak for them, my personal suggestion would be: wait for Segwit to roll out, and if anything goes wrong with it, or the blocks are filling up again, we can push them harder for a block size raise, while wait for weak blocks and IBLT to be implemented, at which time they would have no further excuse, and it would be the moment of truth when we understand if they are truly sincere or not.  |
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Isn't transaction selection already a NP-hard knapsack problem? What kind of a beast it will become if we throw....computational complexity itself into the mix? "Hmmm, let me estimate if I am gonna spend more time processing these transactions or more time doing the estimation..." |
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Feels good to post in this thread again.
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Great, can I reuse an old blockchain copy?
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We are happy to report that https://bitbargain.co.uk (a fiat<->btc marketplace) told us that they successfully used TLSNotary in an unusual case where bank lost the buyer's payment. Even though https://bitbargain.co.uk processes ~300 trades per day, twice a year they'll have a situation where there is no way to resolve a disagreement between reputable parties. Using TLSNotary the seller showed to the BitBargain staff their online bank's statement page (with a cryptographic proof) without revealing their bank's login/password. Good times. So the buyer proved they had actually made the bank transfer using TLSnotary also? And seller was able to prove he hadn't received (yet) because bank had lost the payment. Interesting that a bitcoin-centric system for removing trust has been used to prove legacy banking error ... good work. AFAIK, the seller provided a proof, then the buyer was advised to press his bank more, who is later found to be the party at fault. |
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out of curiosity to the security experts here.
which do you consider more secure, Armory or Trezor?
I'm not a security expert, but I would say trezor (with passphrase). It's also easier to use securely. Trezor seems safe. A simple paper wallet generated offline on a new computer running linux is safe too  the problem with a paper wallet is to spend the coins safely. An average bitcoin user these days isn't able to create a linux live CD, import a private key, export the transaction by USB and broadcast it on another online computer running a full node. Exactly. Like I said above: trezor (with additional passphrase against theft of seed backup) is quite secure, but most importantly: it's both easy to use securely (hard to fuck up) and very convenient. I use it as a day-to-day wallet (plus mycelium on the phone) Has anybody noticed that Bitcoin actually has the potential to eliminate theft, like, for real? |
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This is jaw-dropping!
I successfully self-tested myself on a few websites and I'm especially amazed, because the whole process (or the part that I saw until now) was straight forward and without unexpected behavior or any other obstacles.
Thanks a lot, still, worth it to remind again to log out before you send anything to a real human! |
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... and you're in a jurisdiction where this is illegal (surely everywhere once they find out about it)?
Why would this be so? Because they make the rules and they will change them to prohibit whatever they don't like. Witness the fact that we have statutes prohibiting "money laundering" and "structuring" - legal concepts that were invented in the last twenty years. Even if they didn't act immediately, the banks would amend their TOS to disallow it, until the government caught up (but they're almost the same thing). It's absolutely certain. The only way to avoid such an outcome for the individual client is to prevent his real-world identification by the auditor. The client has to remain pseudonymous. If you have to trust the auditor then what have you accomplished with all the rest of the trustless technology? Hello hgt, at this moment, what you have to rely on, is the good-old rep/rating system, much like, you know, how they did in online black markets to counter Sybil attack. We do expand serious effort to come up with something that can allow an auditee to have only the part of his statement that is strictly necessary (i.e., the amount and the destination account) to be verified by the auditor to be authenticated(which we call the "dark mode" in a tongue-in-cheek way), in the end we prove it's somehow theoretically not impossible, but is rather tricky would require quite a lot of developmental effort. Also note that the 'dark mode' still can't protect the identity of the seller, which is inevitable as the auditor has to make sure the money goes to the right account. The good news is that I believe we are definitely not on the radar of the agencies, if we ever become so popular to draw their attention  , we will certainly invest much more effort into the anonymity protection. Thank you for your question! |
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The newest location for downloading https://github.com/tlsnotary/tlsnotary. THe software now is near feature-complete, but in order to test its compatibility with the large number of banks out there, we need testers! Please, if you want to help freeing Bitcoin from the harassment of the banks, come and talk to us. E-mail: tlsnotarygroup-at-gmail.com Freenode IRC: #bitsquare.io |
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Hoping I don't point something out that is already known - but this protocol would be vulnerable if Bob and Carol were the same person. It's vulnerable in the sense that Bob could trace the transactions from Alice which defeats the purpose of the protocol. It might be worth highlighting how important it is to trust the identity of Carol.
I have a proposal above to link several intermediaries together, so in essence it becomes some sort of a Tor-like network, you can only compromise Alice/Bob's privacy when you control all the three relaying nodes. |
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They indeed betrayed us, but there is no proof that some guys out of the hierarchy will do any better
Of course you cannot proof that anyone will behave any way in the future. Seems self evident. So maybe, stop working on stuff that will have to depend on a ultimately unpredictable human factor to function. Hawala relations are much more real, they are in your RL social network and you can't just walk away from it, online identities are a completely different matter.
How so? Many Hawaladar never met. And there is nothing in ZR that demands that you cannot know people you trust in ZR in the real world. They may not, but they are connected together by a RL social network, take that away then it won't work, it's a necessary condition, "nothing stops you doing that" is not enough here. Many people here put their Bitcoin address in their signature. You might donate $20 worth to a project you like. But you would not grant a credit of $20 to that project? Seems inconsistent to me. But then, maybe you would also never donate, in which case you are at least consistent.
There is no inconsistency here, I don't determine Bitcoin's value, so I can just send someone the bitcoins and walk away, otoh I have to be held personally responsible in the future for all IOUs I issue, which is a responsibility I don't want, because I don't know what will become of me in the future, you are comparing apples with oranges. Besides, what my need is really has nothing to do with what I believe is a better system. |
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First, you would not necessarily grant your friend a credit that is anywhere near to the amount you trust him with. If a friend really cheats you for that smaller amount, that does influence the friendship, but in that case I'd say: Good riddance.
Another misconception is the meaning of "friend". In ZR context, it is simply someone you trust with money, for any reason. It is not the same as "close friend" or even "drinking buddy".
So it would be even more difficult to gauge your level of trust with them.
It is an argument I hear very often. Yet those same people trust a centralized exchange like MtGox or even btc-e. Does anyone know anything about btc-e? And why trust banks, especially today? Historically, banks screwed their customers every 5-7 decades. We Germans got screwed big time after WWII but we generally had the feeling like we deserved it for the war, so it went unnoticed. Now the system in the entire West is heading for another big reset.
They indeed betrayed us, but there is no proof that some guys out of the hierarchy will do any better, so it begs the question if it's really worth the effort to reinvent the wheel at all, given that you maybe able to just abandon it, when it comes to money transfer. Lastly, there is such a system that works since centuries, even millenia: Hawala / Hundi. Ripple is by no means a new idea. It is just that computer-less Hawala doesn't scale well while with computers it does because the software takes care about the complexities of routing. ZR enables everyone who chooses participate to become a Hawaladar. I think we need to walk away from the current banking system as much as possible.
Hawala relations are much more real, they are in your RL social network and you can't just walk away from it, online identities are a completely different matter. |
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CEX.IO together with GHash.IO are not intending to capture the 51% of the overall Bitcoin hashrate.
Our team consists of dedicated Bitcoin adherents, large investors into this cryptocurrency and people who get their wages in Bitcoin. Thus, there is logically no point for us to crash the system and kill the coin.
CEX.IO has been working on possible ways of decentralising Bitcoin mining since February. We will present our solutions to the Bitcoin community in the nearest time and ask you for understanding our intentions in the right way.
News for you: you don't need to do anything other than stop running this Ponzi called CEX.io. |
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You don't need to really enforce the bank transfer, you just need to verify that it has happened, before you release the escrow.
 I was replying to phelix, not about your design, which I understand perfectly. |
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Also, under the assumption that you trust your friends, there are still other ways to conduct the transaction, just wire transfer money to your friend using online banking, and ask someone whom you both trust to escrow the bitcoins/audit your wire transfer, such a process is formalizable as well.
With ZeroReserve you can trade with strangers by only having to trust your friends. Further, if you can have a cryptographic proof of transfer, why the need for IOUs?
There's always to sides of a transaction. It's difficult to computationally enforce transfer of non cryptographic currencies and assets - but you can easily transfer IOUs with people you trust. Effectively, the Ripple trust path does this by going through someone you both trust, so it's not really different from having that someone escrowing your bitcoins, and at the same time audits your fiat transfer, isn't it? You don't need to really enforce the bank transfer, you just need to verify that it has happened, before you release the escrow. |
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I could agree with you or not, but it's a fact of the world that many would rather trust their money with banks, then with their friends.
True. We have indeed been conditioned to reject family values and rely on the state and other institutions with a totalitarian streak and consume soma (TV) like the good slaves we are. But it seems enough people have woken up to the fact. Indeed, Bitcoin is proof of it. But I agree. This is the issue Zero Reserve may fall over. And chances that this will happen are pretty good, considering the deafening silence Zero Reserve has met so far. Frankly, I am coming to the conclusion that the community does not want an OpenSource distributed exchange with no strings attached. What they really want is: - Centralized exchanges that are more trustworthy than your friends, like MtGox
- Banks that take better care of you than your friends, like Laiki Bank or Lehman Bros
- Centralized exchanges where withdrawed Bitcoins can be assigned to a name and address by the government, so the government can keep us safe.
- Centralized exchanges that can be shut down by either the banks or the government so money laundering can be prevented for our own good
- Keep their money in Banks where it is safe, until the government feels the need to confiscate it for the good of us all like in Cyprus last year
- the government to know exactly how many Bitcoins you have so the IRS can tax you on it, for the good of us all
Further, if you can have a cryptographic proof of transfer, why the need for IOUs?
You don't, in a world where crypto currencies are dominant. This is not our world, though. We are living in a world where debt is money. A distributed FIAT<->Bitcoin exchange therefore MUST have a debt leg to each deal. Once legacy fiat money has been phased out, ZeroReserve is obsolete. Would you be interested, if producing a cryptographic proof for a bank transfer, is actually possible?(e.g., if banks start supporting digitally signing bank statements) |
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For many people, the problem is they are owed by some huge corporations, it's not like when it comes to debts your friend is exactly more credible than some huge corporations. Also, if the debts can only be exchanged between friends, why not just go buying bitcoins from them with cash/bank transfer?(especially the assumption here is you already trust them)
The first line reads like an insult to a lot of people's friends. I'd trust my friends more than anyone or -thing I don't know as well, including but not limited to corporations. I think it's important to formalize trust. Just because there exists some complicated transaction using firends' trust, few would execute it by hand. If ZeroReserve manages to simplify this process enough, it becomes preferable to trusting an ominous entity that tends to eat your funds in one big bite -- like Gox and the numerous other failed exchanges. Banking -- the trade with IOUs -- is actually quite efficient. It mostly fails on the wrong places piling up trust. If trust becomes more explicit and less reliant on magic entities doing magic things with trust they implicitly get, it's a great approach. I could agree with you or not, but it's a fact of the world that many would rather trust their money with banks, then with their friends. Also, under the assumption that you trust your friends, there are still other ways to conduct the transaction, just wire transfer money to your friend using online banking, and ask someone whom you both trust to escrow the bitcoins/audit your wire transfer, such a process is formalizable as well. Further, if you can have a cryptographic proof of transfer, why the need for IOUs? |
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We are actively looking for testers! Please, if you want to join, and help creating a future where people can trade and use bitcoins without being subjected to the whim of the banks, come to talk to us on #bitsquare.io on freenode, or ask here. |
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No, you can buy Bitcoins without having any.
So I will buy real Bitcoins with these IOUs I guess? Exchanges are designed to facilitate trades between strangers...
That is what ZR does. Even if you do buy from a friend, you would not know. Every deal is "remote", Zero Reserve is somewhat hard to explain - you need to use it. Just get the code and everything will fall into place. So when saying 'friends', what you exactly meant is 'retroshare friends'? Zero Reserve friends is the subset of RetroShare friends who you would grant a credit OR who would grant a credit to you. (Zeroreserve does not assume that credit is mutual) Thanks, so I guess you have something similar to Ripple's 'trust path' then? |
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