IMO Bitcoin needs a few more months for good and easy to use light clients to come out before it can actually be a viable alternative for the average user.

BTW I'm talking to the guy that makes these videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics/videos
I'm hoping to spark an interest in him and maybe he'd want to make a few videos explaining Bitcoin to the average user which I think he'd be really good at. He could also start collecting tips on his other videos and maybe get some love from the Bitcoin economy

Bitcoin does not solve that for the ordinary user. But sure, it's an opportunity, I'll give you that.

Unfortunately they are moving towards digital fiat. Yuck.

Hey could you add the size of the blockchain to the stats page?

Yeah you are right, nvm then  

Same here, I also don't want emails..

btw just click the "notify" one more time to disable the function.

As soon as he reaches 51% he'd start breaking my first rule and get ignored. DDoSing pools does nothing since miners connecting to pools still have the option to solo mine.

Right after I wrote my post I thought of that too but then I wasn't sure if it is actually the same if you have two clients with 26% of hashing power running the same malicious rules as having 1 with 52%?

I thought about this a bit more and I came up with a revised rule:

Coupled with the above rule we add another rule. If more than half the new blocks in a time period are created by IP addresses that didn't appear in a certain already elapsed time period, for the next x blocks only blocks from IPs that have found blocks in that same time period but didn't find more than half are valid.

So even if someone amasses over 51% and is switching IPs he'll get ignored by the legitimate part of the network because a) he is finding too many blocks from his IP and b) he is finding too many blocks from previously unknown IPs

This way the proof of work stays valid as a mechanism to limit the supply of bitcoins and also gets protected from malicious intent by someone with more than 51% hashing power.


Comments?

Yep I really enjoyed it too.

It was an honest question and I had no knowledge either way.. Thanks for the answer.

Are those fees even competitive to paypal and credit cards??

heh

heh

heh

Are you seriously going to argue about this?

I thought I expressed myself fairly accurately by using the adjective "similarly" instead of "equally". And if you think buying say a loaf of bread with gold is impossible because it's not divisible enough then I suggest you watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ubJp6rmUYM

Rome wasn't built in one day..   

Exactly but unlike say diamonds or rare valuable art, bitcoins are highly divisible, so as their value and scarcity rises people can sell only a small fraction which is why I made the analogy to PMs as they are similarly divisible.

If there is a way to recognize blocks by their owners and we can determine that a certain owners is finding a lot of blocks, we can simply put in place a rule that once you find a certain amount of blocks out of all the blocks found in a certain time period you get a forced break from getting your blocks accepted by the rest.

The blockchain exists as a copy in every single client. Meaning that because of our decentralization, just because someone has over 51% of hashing power, there's nothing that forces the 49% to accept their blocks into their copy of the blockchain, they do it voluntarily.

What I'm suggesting is to solve this problem with ostracism. Simply ignore blocks found by someone having too much hashing power. Yes, this would create a fork, but the owner of the over 51% of hashing power will find himself all alone in his fork while the rest of us carry on as if nothing happened.