Nope that's not how it works. Do you know that the opinion of experts in a position of conflict of interest are automatically disregarded in a court trial? The reason is simple, there is no way to prove if an intention is ill or not so they ate considered as ill by default.

Core devs shouldn't have put themselves in the position of working for Core and a private company in the first place. In no ways it should be considered as acceptable.

Maybe... try harder?

You don't seem to grasp the confilct of interest between blocksteam and Core development. I doubt you someday will because you don't seem to know what a conflict of interest actually is. That's OK.

You are so funny. Here some cold truth for you.

I rarely post anything on the forums because I don’t speak English as fluently as I want, but this situation is an extraordinary case, so I think I can’t resist the temptation to write about it in my broken English

What happened with all this Blockstream, BIPs & XT mess is just a solid presentation of Bitcoin’s weakest sides and flaws.

Here are three main problems that I see:

1. Blockstream is a cancer for Bitcoin

Personally, I can’t (or I don’t want to) believe that just $21M, which Blockstream has got from a bunch of investors, will actually ruin Bitcoin as we know it now. The problem is that many people just don’t understand the simplest thing: if someone has invested the money in something, they want to get it back in the future. So one way or another, Blockstream is a commercial company, which wants to benefit from the Lightning Network (or the sidechains).

It is absolutely obvious that the smaller the block size is, the more money Blockstream will make. Let’s theorize for a moment, that BIP100 has been implemented and miners have voted for 1 KB blocks, so 1 block = 1 transaction. That would be the perfect situation for Blockstream, because as they can take fees in the LN, they would be the only entity who is economically motivated to pay a very big fee for creating a clearing transaction in the blockchain. So the entire blockchain from this moment would consist of single clearing transactions.

Now let’s get back to the ground and suppose that we will have 1 MB or 2 MB, or even 10 MB blocks implemented by BIP100, but this size will not rise in the future. Well, now it all depends on how big will Bitcoin grow. If in 2020 we will have 1.000.000 transactions each 10 minutes and the same 1 MB blocks, the calculation is simple and not really different from 1 KB blocks. Let’s suppose that Blockstream will get $0.05 for each transaction on the LN as a fee, so for a million LN-transactions the total fee would be $50.000. Now, if Blockstream will use the blockchain for the clearing transactions, they could use the entire 1 MB (~1.500 transactions) for this purpose. $50.000 / 1.500 transactions = $33 per transaction. So no one will have an incentive to push a transaction for $33 in the blockchain while there will be an option to use a sidechain for $0.05. I understand that these calculations are awfully approximate, but this is the economic model of Blockstream. And this is the end of Bitcoin’s “be your own bank” as we know it know, because Blockstream is a centralized thing, you know: “Sorry, you are banned from the Lightning Network because you haven’t verified your ID”.

And I have another thought about Blockstream I can’t stop think about. How in the world do you think they have convinced the investors (who merely understand technical details of Bitcoin protocol) that sidechains is what is needed for Bitcoin? Right, they said exactly the following: “Bitcoin has a flow: the block size is limited and can’t be increased, because it’s hardcoded. We solve this problem!”. Now it’s not surprising that investors must be puzzled about what’s going on now with all this FUD, because they weren’t told that there were other solutions. And that’s exactly why there is so many censorship on the main Bitcoin boards nowadays: if the investors realize that people don’t want to use sidechains, they will not invest more money. Since the Blockstream team consists of the Core’s developers… It’s that simple.

2. It is not that obvious who decides the future for Bitcoin. Despite the fact that in theory it is the “economic majority” who should decide the future for Bitcoin, miners still can destroy it in the process

Many people theorize that the majority of miners will not do anything stupid (like accepting 1 KB block size limit or raising the 21M bitcoins limit) because “the price will momentarily go down to zero and the miners will lose their money”. Yes, they will. And you will too. Or may be they do something stupid and the price will just slightly go down. The global problem is if for any reason in the world the majority would want to “commit a suicide”, they actually could do it. For example, they could be confused by the greedy guys like Blockstream… Anything. And there is literally nothing anyone could do to stop them.

3. The censorship on top of the fact that many people don’t understand how Bitcoin (and the Bitcoin consensus in particular) works

Well, I was very confused when I got to know that Theymos was banning all the “irrelevant” discussions. I don’t know whether he is paid by Blockstream or he isn’t, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that here in the Russian section there are almost no discussions about the Blockstream problem at all! Everybody just thinks that “Bitcoin XT will ruin Bitcoin, because it is a fork, so the best option is to sit still and have 1 MB blocks”. That’s all. And that’s because all articles here in the Russian section are translated from the western media. So the people who doesn’t speak English just can’t dig into the problem.

And, in my opinion, the problem is not with the Russian section. I believe that there can be a similar problem in the Chinese one. And this problem is a real one, because all top miners are from China.

I don’t know what can I do about it

Well, I believe if XT won’t succeed and Blockstream’s solution will get accepted, I will have only one option: to sell my coins, as it is the only way I can “vote”. That’s sad, but I don’t believe that sidechains are the true Bitcoin.

And as the conclusion, I’d like to say that it’s all about corruption. Well, here we have corrupted Core developers, who develop a commercial project on top of Bitcoin. Bitcoin was invented as a replacement for traditional money to “fix” some economical problems. If you look at the big picture, it would be interesting to think, that at some point in time, fiat money (which were backed by gold) were invented to “fix” some problems too. And in time, some people corrupted the idea of fiat money with the current banking system. My point is that if Bitcoin can be broken by corrupted people, it will inevitably be broken. And my biggest fear it has already happened.

WOW!!


Do you see that little highlighted box in the upper right that says:  "WHY IT MATTERS"

(yes the all caps is how they wrote it)

Then below it says "Making it easier to move money around digitally could have many benefits"


Lets be 100% clear here.  This is in no way, shape, or form "why it matters".  Why bitcoin matters is because it cannot be counterfeit.  Moving money digitally has been possible for decades.. but yeah, counterfeitable money.

This is beyond "oh we are just clueless here at MIT" and moves quite clearly into the arena of "we are deliberately deceitful".  

This represents the crossing of a line in the sand for MIT Technology Review, which many have seen and discussed but now has been made fully public.  

You have been warned, act accordingly.  

"We don't need no reconsideration of Bitcoin governance." Oke, so you think we should not consider the political aspects of what is happening here, because according to you this should be a purely technical debate.

"XT has turned it into a governance coup on the premise of "decentralizing"." development and "inclusion"." Then how come you are using terms like "governance coup"? Even though these are political concepts.

Since if this was a coup we certainly should consider the political aspects of what is happening here, so that we can be better informed on what side we should be on. Since sometimes coupes or revolutions are necessary, and this should also certainly be true for Bitcoin, after all that is why this political mechanism already exists within Bitcoin.

1)  I don't think see any way this can be avoided.  The top Bitcoin developers will always be in demand by the top Bitcoin-related companies, and developers are free to work for anyone they want.  I don't think it's really a problem in the long run.  If people really believe that the Bitcoin Core project is compromised by developer self-interest, someone will start a BitcoinXT-like project, and Core will no longer define what IS Bitcoin.

I would caution that you shouldn't assume out-of-hand that developers are acting purely in their own interest, like Dr. Stolfi does.  Isn't it possible that the Core devs who are also Bitstream devs have thought a lot longer and harder about this problem than most of us, and realized (like I said earlier) that there really IS no way (as of now) to have Bitcoin be both scalable AND decentralized, and set about building a project that might insure that Bitcoin will still be usable anyway?  Sure they MIGHT be acting solely (or even partly) in their own interest.  But making money out of having the foresight to anticipate this problem does not, a priori, mean that their solution is not the RIGHT solution.

2) I can't parse this.  If you think a protocol must have multiple, conflicting versions of itself, you may not understand what the word 'protocol' means.  If you mean something related to alt coins, I would point out that there are plenty of those already.

3) It's not just an issue of mining scalability - it's a matter of even being able to just run a validating node.  There is no monopoly, as Gavin and Mike have proven.  Anyone who is unhappy can fork, and if the world agrees with them, their fork will become Bitcoin.

I am in agreement with Stolfi? This isn't the end of Bitcoin. It's the end of the world!  

1. Seriously, the core dev's involvement with Blockstream is a real conflict of interest. Sidechains can be used as a way to route around a bottleneck. They will profit from bottlenecks that they created in the first place.

2. There is something wrong with a protocol if there is no diversity of code running on top of it, or that can run on top of it.

3. It's silly to argue about the trade-offs in scalability vs mining decentralization when code development is so centralized that it is essentially a monopoly.

We should not think that we must have the consensus of the core developers if that consensus becomes impossible to reach, since this would be tantamount to centralization of power. The ability to hard fork in this way represents the check that we have against such power that a core development team could hold. If you think that we should never hard fork it is the equivalent of saying that the core developers have absolute power over the development of the Bitcoin protocol. Or quoting Mike Hearn "they believe that the only mechanism that Bitcoin has to keep them in check should never be used". This is part of what makes Bitcoin truly so decentralized and free. That is why it is not intrinsically wrong to fork away from the core development team.

I do not think that Core will ever increase the block size unless there is a hard fork initiated by another client. Because there is a fundamental disagreement within the Core development team itself that cannot be resolved. This has led to a stalemate. Since they can effectively veto each other on decisions. Therefore the only way to increase the block size is by hard forking away from the core development team.

It is important to remember that if you run a full node or if you are a miner, you have to vote, you literally can not do these things without casting a vote to either side, therefore it is impossible to be neutral if you either mining or running a full node. Since I do think that the block size limit should be increased, and right now I have to choose between Core or BIP101, I choose BIP101, even if it a choice between the lesser of two evils. This is a case of political realism. In political thought the lesser of two evils is often the pragmatic reality we have to accept in order to even justify the existence of the state, and we should not think that 90% consensus is practical considering how democracies actually and practically function.

This fundamental disagreement lies in that some of the of the Core developers do not want the block size to be increased at all. Because some of the Core developers like Peter Todd believe that the Bitcoin blockchain can not scale efficiently and that therefore we should not try and make it scale directly at all. I would like to point out here that this the nirvana fallacy.

Just because we can not scale Bitcoin efficiently it does mean we should not scale Bitcoin directly at all. From a purely technical perspective Peter Todd and some of his colleagues might be correct. However from a political and economics perspective increasing the block size now does make a huge difference in terms of adoption and the survival of Bitcoin in the long term.

In political thought the lesser of two evils is often the pragmatic reality we have to accept in order to even justify the existence of the state, and we should not think that 90% consensus is practical considering how democracies actually and practically function

This is a political problem and not a technical one. Bitcoin can not and should not be divorced from already previously existing political theory. These are fundamental questions of who is in charge of Bitcoin, and how do we, and how should we reach consensus decisions. This question is as important as the block size debate itself, this question is more political in nature then it is technical, which is why I think we need to compromise some of our technical ideals in favor of political goals.

Since I have a backround in political philosophy. I have written more on this subject here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164464.0

I also thought that this video was very insightful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaaknMDbQGc

it will always be decentralized in the sense that no one corporation or government controls it, so who cares.  

The disdain you are showing for Gavin and Mike seems entirely disproportionate and based on your opinion of them rather than their actions. The XT fork is no more dangerous than any other core upgrade *unless* those that oppose core explicitly and deceitfully sabotage it. Yet you argue they are the bad guys.

You've repeatedly taken up opposition to those who would argue for a block size increase now, claiming its too soon, unneccessary. Arguing about bloat, dismissing any analysis with hypothetical 'centralisation' issues. At the same time have been vary careful to never say you aren't explicitly against a block size increase (a point which you repeatedly remind people of). The nearest thing I have seen to an actual opinion (as opposed to fairly indiscriminate opposition) is that you think 2MB would be ok.

You've never said when, and in particular *why* a particular timescale should be followed. I don't know why you would do this. What are you afraid of? Being disagreed with, being made to look foolish, being actually *wrong* about something?

If they are the only options I'll take my chances with XT and the 2 developers who, whilst they may not be perfect, seem to be at least honest about what they are doing.

The Flexcap idea doesn't make sense to me.  It seems Adam is trying to artificially make it more expensive for miners to publish large blocks.  The reason this doesn't make sense to me is that even without a block size limit it would be more expensive for miners to publish large blocks due to the orphan cost.  Why use "Flexcap" to simulate the natural supply and demand dynamics that already exist?

The fact that larger blocks are more costly to produce is illustrated in Fig. 8 of this paper:

Hm, why are people euphoric about BIP100 superseding BIP101?

Moreover, BIP100 will allow blocks larger than 1 MB, won't it?

Moreover, BitcoinCore does not implement BIP100, and so fat Blockstream has been totally opposed to any increase.  So, if BIP100 gets into effect, it will be by some other implementation, right?.

Am I missing something?

yes a hosted server.

nodes are not that important. they just relay blocks and transactions and provide connectivity. i dont see a huge impact if there arent that much.

anyhow.. its late not... have to go to sleep...

ok right; i dont like authority also but i do respect the vision of satoshi because this vision was the reason why i joined - if i didnt share his vision i wouldnt be here.

but i think at standard home lines bitcoin is a bad idea. it even puts a burden on the network with just 8 possible connections. its a little bit parasitic: its nice that it works now.

a root server is not that expensive. if you want to have a little bit more security i dont see a problem to spend 50€ (thats what i pay atm for a rootserver which could handle WAY bigger blocks as we have now) for a fullnode.

can you elaborate on that?
i guess you mean bandwith/storage costs for users?

satoshis vision was that most users will use spv clients. anybody who wants more security can get a root-server / bigger vps and host a node+spv-server and use a spv-client at home.

or did i misunderstood you?