I'd like to see the network hard-fork to address scalability before the protocol is changed to support OP_SPV.
I really think that you do not need to keep trillions chinese transactions stored in your computer. Use MC as SOV and do shopping and everyday spending on local SCs. What about pruning? Also, there have been innovative proposals emphasizing UTXO sets. Auto prune. Apparently running stable now if you want to try: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/4701 |
|
|
|
I'd like to see the network hard-fork to address scalability before the protocol is changed to support OP_SPV.
I really think that you do not need to keep trillions chinese transactions stored in your computer. Use MC as SOV and do shopping and everyday spending on local SCs. What about pruning? Also, there have been innovative proposals emphasizing UTXO sets. |
|
|
|
|
Adam,
1. in the WP, you mentioned that it is possible that if a SC became popular enough, then Bitcoiners might have to move all their BTC to the SC. what about those who don't get the memo? this question is similar to the big debate we had a couple years ago about harvesting apparent "un-used" addresses. that was obviously shot down real quick in that there is no way to ever be sure exactly that the true owner was dead or had lost the privkey.
2. philosopically, do you see Bitcoin as Money or as an economic "system" for trading assets of all types?
3. what real difference is there in forcing more transparency (as we are now doing with Merkle root audits, regulation, better VC funded exchanges) on 3rd party merchants vs. using SC's where supposedly we will be able to view the source code to ensure no backdoors (only a select few can do that)? i would argue that the former is no different than the real mechanisms we have today and therefore not experimental or as risky to the degree you're wanting to construct via an unprecedented and untested 2wp. i say risky b/c i am still not convinced that separating the BTC unit from its native blockchain (MC) is a safe economic thing to do. its not safe b/c it requires all sorts of new assumptions/requirements such as no bugs in the spvp itself, 100% MM of the SC to be simply "as safe", no bugs or backdoors in the SC code written by all the unscrupulous altcoin devs that you despise of which only a few in the Bitcoin community will be able to vet via inspection of their code. i expect hundreds of SC's to pop up as a result of your proposal and you yourself said that there are really only a few in the community who could or would take the time to vet potentially malicious code. given this proliferation, if i'm right, how can honest devs ever keep up with this?
4. given that most of the real world already views a fixed supply of any currency as a liability, what feedback effects do you think a continuous destruction of scBTC from failed SC's will have on Bitcoin itself? please just don't say "it will only make our BTC go up!" i think the answer needs to acknowledge that it might be that the market views that negatively as a hopeless downward spiraling deflationary currency that continuously damages the merchant economy by encouraging hoarding. in this sense, i am drawing parallels to gold being a fairly fixed supply that for the most part nevers decreases.
|
|
|
|
Agreed. But you're also not completely off the hook. There are also economic implications from offchain and voting-pools version of offchain. People also have a right to ask about that similarly. There are actually economic implications. If OpenTransactions sucks a bunch of transactions off-chain that deprives bitcoin of transaction fees, and so it lowers bitcoin security. I am not saying this is a bad tradeoff, just point out that nothing is free of implications.
I dunno, it seems part of the bitcoin social contract is to be deliberately (and ideally enforceably) agnostic about what people do with their bitcoins. It that means sending them to some crazy off-chain system with voting pools or whatever other silly idea, so be it. How is that anyone's business any more than spending them on wikileaks donations? If bitcoin can't handle people doing crazy things off chain like voting pools or MtGox, then it has some pretty big problems. It seems fairly proven that it can survive MtGox at least. This includes the so-called federated model of sidechains. I still see a gargantuan difference between that and changing the protocol. i agree completely. there's too much FUD being slung around about problems with offchain services. if anything, it's getting better as in the case of exchanges and wallets. not perfect, but better esp for the bigger ones. and who is anyone to restrict where ppl send their BTC? |
|
|
|
Yes. I argue altcoins and appcoins are fooling themselves as they imagine that the feature they are selling creates value. It is the network effect and liquidity that creates value. And their feature if it were really really killer awesome, would actually get copied and patched into bitcoin core Clearly false, if their features includes different monetary rules. In fact this is the case for most of the moderately "successful" (if you even want to call them that) altcoins right now. I'm not familiar with Paycoin (it is pretty new), but this is true for every single one of the top 10 altcoins right now except LTC, and most of the top 20 (and also Ethereum). Hmm so it took me a while to see this, but actually most economic differences can be mathematically modelled and opted into on a sidechain. For example demurrage could be implemented. Or different block intervals. Or different tapering of block reward, or ongoing block reward. Those define a deterministic calculable difference. Sidechain pegs do not have to be 1:1 nor silly things like 1:1000 just mean sidecoins are milli bitcoins, but also the rate can be deterministically time-changing. Now the even more interesting realisation once you see this, is it provides a formula to value altcoins. If you wouldnt opt into the sidechain with that behaviour, if you had to pay above par, you probably are just seeing more clearly that you similarly shouldnt buy that altcoin. An alt-coin is a watermarked bitcoin sold above par with a marketing story. Using the really high level definition that bitcoin is an abstract model for converting electricity into proofs of work, where in all of these proofs globally define the total electrical expenditure, which then adjusts the J/proof to hold block interval on target at 10mins. When you look at it like that, and if bitcoin cant quite do that its an implementation limitation, that maybe we can fix with quantum sci-fi in the future, then you can see that mining an alt-coin is sort of like watermarking a bitcoin and calling it a foo and expecting people to be suckered into paying above-par for it. Or like gold bars but making them into triangular shapes or stamping them with a doge and expecting people to pay more. A gold atom is a gold atom. A proof of electrical consumption is a proof of electrical consumption. That not many people are stamping doges on their gold bars doesnt mean doge stamped bars are more valuable, once the fad wears off, someone will realise they are being ripped off for gold or buy their own doge stamping machine and buy basic gold. Adam hmm, it took me until about 2013 when i first heard about SC's to realize that one of the beauties of Bitcoin is its simplicity.  i mean, look, we have unencumbered BTC units traveling freely on an ultra secure blockchain whose value involves no counterparty and no other asset.now, you're asking us to accept an unprecedented change to the protocol which will allow BTC units to intermingle with all sorts of assets limited only by our imaginations all while traveling on a less secure SC. serious question. what kind of revolutionary tech, ie spvp, relies on "convincing" an entire industry called "mining" to support and secure itself? b/c in the absence of close to 100% MM'ing support, i see SC's failing miserably from attacks. there is no way you'll get 100% of miners to MM one, let alone dozens of SC's. that's a huge risk to the entire Bitcoin system. |
|
|
|
yep, this is the argument i made to brg444 way back. representing SC's as some sort of altcoin killer via assimilation thru a SC makes no sense at all. no dev would take the time and no bitcoiner would move BTC to it.
I think thats wrong, lets say bytecoin with its ringsigs. That provides some interesting privacy properties, not quite zerocoin, but safer crypto and more compact. I could imagine a number of people would be interested to use that as a sidechain. Adam ps checkout cryptonote https://cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdf and http://cryptonote.org for explanations (seems they've been busy making a nice web site with explanations). no, you missed the point. take Dogecoin which is an inflationary alt. try building a SC with an inflationary coin; no Bitcoiner would move their BTC to it b/c they don't believe in inflation. |
|
|
|
yeah, the spvp insertion is a sticking point for me. it's clear this is the critical piece for your success as a company. That is actually not clear to me. Aside from the fact that pivoting is common (and a $21 million seed round with no obviously large source of burn gives a fair amount of room to pivot), it is entirely possible that sidechains are a lot of sizzle and the steak is closer to just being the premier bitcoin software and services company (which may or may not work out depending on how big bitcoin gets -- at present the scale really isn't there for this to be a big deal). i think in one of my discussions with nullc he admitted to that fact. certainly it would help BS from a marketing standpoint as those SC's would be viewed as integrated and part of Bitcoin. which is probably why we don't hear any buzz about any existing federated SC's as Odalv is quick to point out are already functioning. |
|
|
|
Yes. I argue altcoins and appcoins are fooling themselves as they imagine that the feature they are selling creates value. It is the network effect and liquidity that creates value. And their feature if it were really really killer awesome, would actually get copied and patched into bitcoin core Clearly false, if their features includes different monetary rules. In fact this is the case for most of the moderately "successful" (if you even want to call them that) altcoins right now. I'm not familiar with Paycoin (it is pretty new), but this is true for every single one of the top 10 altcoins right now except LTC, and most of the top 20 (and also Ethereum). yep, this is the argument i made to brg444 way back. representing SC's as some sort of altcoin killer via assimilation thru a SC makes no sense at all. no dev would take the time and no bitcoiner would move BTC to it. |
|
|
|
What you are saying is sort of analogous to me suggesting you donate your bitcoins to charity so no one can accuse you of bias?
i hope you can see that isn't even close. there's a mighty big difference in me taking a chance on a risky investment by pouring in my own hard earned fiat back in 2011 when Bitcoin was on death's door step. you were nowhere to be seen at the time  everyone was accusing me as a "speculator" for being the problem, believe it or not. nowhere in their brains was the alternative word of "investor" apparent. for reals as price descended from 32 to 1.98 there was all sorts of allegations being thrown about. the argument went something like "b/c you're not a geek or techy, you don't truly believe in what we're doing here and the price must be falling b/c you're manipulating!" i kid you not. they even accused me of being a "hoarder" back before the term "hodler" became popular. hoarders were generally viewed as bad at the time b/c geeks insisted that BTC had to circulate or have monetary velocity for Bitcoin to become successful. as a self admitted hoarder (i prefer saver) at the time, i took enormous flack for that position. fortunately with time, and guys like Daniel, that position has softened. contrast that with what Blockstream is doing. sure, you say you're forgoing income via pay cuts to be a part of BS. first off, we can't verify that and there is really no risk like i took in possibly losing it all. at least you have the salary. there's a part of me that thinks that gmax and lukejr are unemployable due to their recalcitrance as evidenced by the now well know Press Center debacle where he misbehaved even by Andreas's standards. that's pretty hard to do and that's not the only incident.: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.org/pull/162https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=181168.msg1973084#msg1973084from what you're saying, this isn't the case, so i'll have to take your word on that. but the fact still remains that BS is for-profit and you've all been awarded stock options and decent pay which could go ballistic depending on how well BS does profit wise. so there is really no risk on your part and plenty of incentive to do bad things. lots of ppl besides me are worried about the perverse incentives that might develop as a result. even to the point of subverting any backports of successful SC tech to Bitcoin Core due to profit incentives. it's quite unbelievable that the high profile investors you've attracted, some of whom heretofore like Schmidt & Kosla (iirc) have publicly disavowed Bitcoin to a degree, will be in a all out philanthropic mode towards Bitcoin. i'd expect that none of them have made any profit from Bitcoin to this day even if they started personally investing a year ago as they've probably been caught by the unexpected year long decline in the price. i'd even expect you have been caught similarly and might be in a loss position. this to me is a red flag. the key for BS to turn that all around is to insert a source code change that benefits your profit model via the marketing and selling of SC's to any willing taker.
I dont think a kickstarter or donations would've raised enough money to do it. Mark Friendenbach has first hand experience of trying to work for a year on bitcoin donations, that didnt work out very well. We could probably have implemented the core part in our spare time, but we figured that isnt enough for people to actually use it. You need mining software, wallets that understand sidechains, you need a sample sidechain or two, a sidechain explorer, tools to issue assets (if thats in the sidechain feature set), etc etc. Thats a ton of work and in our estimation if you drop a library or patch over the wall it lands with a thunk and sits there unused. You have to minimally demonstrate a useable system.
You should view blockstream as a sort of hybrid. We are developing FOSS open IP much as a not-for-profit would. But we are also aiming to make a profit by selling services, doing partnerships, advising integrators etc this is all complicated stuff and people need help to make it work. Like was said its kind of like Mozilla.
will you sell SC's to govt's if asked?
We also had opinions about the correct uses, and maintaining bitcoin ethos. If you drop a patch you dont have any strategic input into maintaining bitcoin ethos in the deployment.
We're also individuals with a community voice independent from the company. I dont think you see most companies nor individuals working for companies in the bitcoin space giving the kind of detailed rationale or insight into plans.
i posted above that there are several venture funds that have invested. how can they not want the std 10x return of their investment? those fund constituents do not just represent the viewpoint of their founder.
Not to OpenTransactions, not conformal/btcd, not bitfury, not 21e6 etc. I understand we're the only company to propose actually extending the core so there's a higher standard - but really btcd is kind of opaque which to my mind is a bit of a concern given that its proposed as a full node and creates risk of network fork as it has a reimplementation of consensus critical code.
Adam
yeah, the spvp insertion is a sticking point for me. it's clear this is the critical piece for your success as a company. i'd really prefer to see SC's implemented through the federated server model first though to get a better sense of how this is all going to work out. couching it as "us" trying to "prevent" you from offering something you perceive of as valuable to the community is counter-productive though, imo. it's not "us" wanting to change the ruleset. it's you; and for a for-profit. |
|
|
|
We've already gone over this with your poor memory. Gavin works for a non profit and gets paid modestly I'd bet. Certainly not the $500k Adam was throwing around earlier (which makes me wonder what Blockstream is paying their core devs).
Yeah that figure comes from memory if you google around there was someone offering Jackson Palmer $500 or $600k to develop and market dogecoin. He told them to go away as it was a joke. Unfortunately the dogecoiners havent realised the joke yet  I believe I heard others were offered similar amounts to develop an alt-coin. (I dont think that would be no-strings - they'd own a defined share of the premine, and there would be multiple developers to run the project for a period of time in the budget). However its very likely the case that people working at blockstream, including myself, could've made more pay going to the dark side and starting their own alts, or taking money from unscrupulous people to start pyramid pump & dump scams. However they have ethical problems with that. It also probably helps them avoid sharing a jail cell with the pump & dumpers We also want to be constructive and think bitcoin is where the future is. Good things dont magically happen someone has to design and code them. Thats why we co-founded blockstream to go do those things. So that was partly why I mentioned it because people were saying, but they'll be beholden to the company for pay so they can eat etc. Screw that they walked away from more money doing alt-coin crap - ie they already demonstrated willingness to walk away from things they think are unethical. Adam sure but that's all subject to interpretation. Greg has said that you guys have been granted stock options. clearly there is an incentive to make those go up and that means making a profit. why didn't you guys consider forming a non-profit at reasonable salaries. that way no one could accuse you of any of this in the first place. |
|
|
|
How come the thread was locked a while ago?
that's what happens when you hit the wrong button on your Android while biking |
|
|
|
[A majority cartel] can only force soft-forks, hard-forks are ignored by full-nodes and clients. An attempted forced-hard fork results in hostile miners forming an alt-coin with no users. The limiting factor is soft-forks are quite flexible and can do a lot, some of which could be undesirable.
Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly. Here is a more detailed scenario: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qdfat/without_downvoting_me_to_hell_can_someone_explain/cn5s41zIs there anything wrong with that, technically or economically? (Summary being from the reddit attack described at the above link that a miner with > 50% DoS's transactions on bitcoin chain (ie does not accept any transactions just mines empty blocks on the main chain people are trying to use) until people either abandon bitcoin or capitulate and adopt the rules the DoS miner is threatening.) Yeah that is kind of logical, there are some caveats. The miner has a lot of capital invested maybe > $300m to do that now. (You can be sure most pool miners would abandon a pool that did that.) This is going to be disruptive to bitcoin confidence and price and that affects the value of bitcoins they are mining, or the equipment itself which is worthless if bitcoin fails or crashes badly as a result. Dangerous game to play with a $300m good behaviour bond. Secondly while they are DoSing bitcoin, they are not mining coins nor on their proposed alternative chain at any kind of usable speed as they have almost no hashpower left (if they have 55% and they're using 53% to DoS bitcoin that gives them 500min blocks if the new chain has the same difficulty. If the new chain has reset difficulty the honest miners might DoS it in retaliation (block transactions there). Now if the attacker had maybe 70% they could dominate both chains reliably. This is beyond mining a new hard-fork protocol version (which honest users and full nodes would ignore) and more DoS warfare to kill the main chain to give users a choice of no transactions or to fold and use the new chain. I would imagine users would be annoyed enough about that so as to be a scenario where the bit red button might get pushed - destroying the $300m capital of the attacker (and the $245m of the rest of the miners who probably are going to sue the attacker, and its not easy to hide the delivery and location of $300m worth of mining equipment drawing perhaps a GW of power.) the nuclear big-red-button [...] MAD argument that keeps miners somewhat sensible as if that button is pushed they are sitting on $500m of scrap electronics
[...] Putting it more simply: an entity that can jam some process for sufficiently long time can force the people who depend on that process to accept changes to it, as long as the changes are not as bad as the jamming itself. Yep its a unfortunate. This is why decentralisation of mining is important. Outside of spam limits which could be protocol enforced, its caveat emptor, you shouldnt put money into a chain unless there is some assurance that security & bitcoin protocol knowledgeable people have audited it.
That is my understanding, and that is I why I cannot see any technical content in the sidechains proposal. Unless it specifies some things that every sidechain must do (or must not do), with a mechanism to enforce those constraints, it will not bring any new tools or ideas to cryptocurrency technology. So far it is only a nomenclature proposal: "let's use the word 'sidechain' for any project or entity that could 'own' some bitcoins for some time". I dont think you cant really technically enforce freedom from security issues or freedom from bad economic parameter choices kind of stuff, thats probably AI / halting-problem type difficulty which we dont know how to do. You could certainly make some best practices statement about how security should be achieved, and acceptable parameters and configurations for user safety, and have someone competent audit that and certify their audit. Why wouldn't Bitstamp be already a sidechain, for example?
Well bitstamp isnt trying to algorithmically peg - they're saying trust our host security, cold wallet physical security, audit, governance / separation of duty etc. Ie you are trusting humans to manage an IOU. (Not saying bitstamp is a bad exchange). Adam Jorge, your answer is here. notice how much of what you fear as Unknown is actually known. mining is naturally evening out as i predicted long ago according to Nash Equilibrium. pro-tip: don't use blockchain.info for pool stats: http://mempool.info/pools |
|
|
|
creeping fear. trendline holding:  |
|
|
|
with energy stocks hot on their heels to the downside:  |
|
|
|
if natural gas was supposed to be the new bull market in energy to replace that of oil, why is it plunging along with it?  |
|
|
|
short term Dow Theory non-confirmation right on time corresponding to a complex double bottom in Bitcoin after an overextended year long downturn. i really like this setup:   |
|
|
|
You really should stop. Adam and the rest of us were having a decent conversation and now you're going to scare him away.
Strange, it seems to me Adam has made quite a case that characters the likes of yours are the reason he stays away from here. Note to brg444: He's here and been here for several days with over a dozen or so posts despite, and maybe because of me. Who knows. All I care about is that I'm learning his perspective and if more people convert to being SC proponents as a result, great. Who knows, I might be converted. There's a lot at stake here and you're not helping with your spamming. Let's see how much he posts now that you're here. He's quite capable of schooling me on his own if what he says has merit. He doesn't need your help. Spamming? I am merely attempting to correct some misconceived opinions. If you've read Adam's post it is apparent he doesn't quite hold you in high-esteem. I'm certain you could careless because you're cypherdoc and you're so awesome, found Bitcoin and understood it as sound money in 2011, etc, etc. but that's beside the point. and maybe because of me. there's that ego again  No, it's just that I recognize that he wouldn't be here were it not for the fact that I have been one of the more vocal opponents of SC's as well as being an early adopter with a popular thread. |
|
|
|
You really should stop. Adam and the rest of us were having a decent conversation and now you're going to scare him away.
Strange, it seems to me Adam has made quite a case that characters the likes of yours are the reason he stays away from here. Note to brg444: He's here and been here for several days with over a dozen or so posts despite, and maybe because of me. Who knows. All I care about is that I'm learning his perspective and if more people convert to being SC proponents as a result, great. Who knows, I might be converted. There's a lot at stake here and you're not helping with your spamming. Let's see how much he posts now that you're here. He's quite capable of schooling me on his own if what he says has merit. He doesn't need your help. |
|
|
|
The point about the investment is both parties (Blockstream & investors) have made it quite clear that the reason for the existence of Blockstream first and foremost is to promote & improve the Bitcoin ecosystem as a public good.
Oh come on man. Even you're smart enough to know we, as a community, should not buy into that sort of promise. History is littered with failed projects that were based on such naivete. |
|
|
|
Oh great, incendiary loud mouth brg444 back in the mix. Just when I thought we had a proper chance of a decent discussion to get going.
There is no such chance with you in the mix. You have refused or flat out ignored the most logic counter-arguments to your "concerns" and prefer dancing around spewing the same platitudes. It's like groundhog day with you. If the best way to deal with a troll is to ignore him, then why don't you leave, especially since I'm the one doing most of the talking around here? Or maybe it's because you find what I have to say not all together unreasonable? Not quite, your thread is merely just one other source of information and sometimes valuable discussion. I certainly would not qualify your opinion as particularly insightful or worthy of merits. You are anything but "reasonable". Case in point Adam, in the few last post of his has provided more insights and valuable discussion material than certainly your few last thousands post on here. Blah, blah, blah. Not in my opinion. As JR said, there's nothing new in what he said. Just his opinions as to where the project stands, that Bitcoin has a "problem ", and that we should "trust" him. And neither you, nor Adam, had provided a good reason add to why we should up end 6 years of a " no trust" system just to let them establish a $21M for profit entity that seeks to leverage core development to change Bitcoin into their vision while profiting. The core devs refusal to step down speaks volumes and I think Reid Hoffman, et al, would never have plunked down that amount of money if they didn't think it would make a difference. No trust? You trust Gavin & the Bitcoin Foundation. You trust Jeff Garzik & Bitpay. You trust the miners. The mere notion you are pushing forward that the addition of op_code to bitcoin core translates into you & everyone having to trust Blockstream for all things Bitcoin is so spectacularly stupid I don't know where to begin. Add to that the fact that you are parading the $21 SEED investment as the "smoking gun" of conflicted interests and ill-intentions when that amount is literally pocket change to the nearly 40 investors involved. As if these guys are hell-bent on getting a 10x return on their seed-round investement. This is a grave misunderstanding of the business venture capitalists are in. We've already gone over this with your poor memory. Gavin works for a non profit and gets paid modestly I'd bet. Certainly not the $500k Adam was throwing around earlier (which makes me wonder what Blockstream is paying their core devs). He has no stock or investors to please. Jeff is a lone wolf over at Bitpay. Yeah, big difference is say with Blockstream having 2 core devs plus 3 top committers. As for the $21M seed, what's your point? How old are you? You really should stop. Adam and the rest of us were having a decent conversation and now you're going to scare him away. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
