... to delay switchover until April 1.

I guess it's time to consider switching?


Maybe we will see a mass exodus from deepbit now? Or did you guys have a pool meeting?

What change are you fearing? AT THE VERY WORST, all that can happen is that new (OP_EVAL/P2SH/CHV) transactions have "something bad" (if anything?) happen to them. Existing transactions aren't changed and do not get affected by this.

Do pray tell, how? What are your significant contributions towards mitigating this issue?

You seem to have an irrational fear of a multi signature transaction type being widely implemented and made useable by a larger segment of users. Why?

This is certainly annoying (at best), but it isn't the end of the world. He is doing a great job of ignoring everyone

I agree. We should be prudent when making changes that involve the block chain. That doesn't mean we should avoid them at all costs.

What's more concerning is that one pool can effectively stop such changes. While that may or may not be a good thing today, who knows what the future holds? Before you suggest that the miners are there because they support the pool op's position, consider what would happen if the pool op decided to support BIP16 today? Would there be a mass exodus? I highly doubt it. I doubt much would change at all. Would you make the effort to switch to a pool that aligns with your vote?

Bitcoin is money that is stored on computers and spent via the internet. Because I have to access the internet to spend my coins, there is potential risk. Adding features that make it more difficult for someone to steal coins is a worthwhile goal. There doesn't need to be a flaw in order to improve the system.

Automobiles work perfectly without airbags. People can travel from point A to point B without them. But airbags might save lives if there is an automobile accident. Would you argue that we shouldn't add airbags to cars because there is no flaw in the technology that prevents us from traveling from point A to point B?

Here's how I currently secure my Bitcoins. I create new wallets on a sterile offline computer and then send coins to them. This makes spending those coins troublesome, especially if I want to retain that level of security. I don't feel secure enough to allow myself easy access to spending my coins because I realize a simple key logger can defeat encrypted wallets.

Being able to choose how many different physical machines are required to spend my Bitcoins would make me feel much more comfortable when accessing my offline storage.

I try to practice safe computing habits as much as possible (keep OS and browers up to date, hardware and software firewall, avoid "sketchy" websites, etc.), but the threat of a compromised computer is unlike most threats because I probably won't see it coming until it's too late. With Bitcoins, once they are gone, there is no getting them back.

And this doesn't even speak of the other uses that multi-sig will enable. For example, shared addresses that require two (or more) parties' agreement to spend the coins. This kind of utility will allow Bitcoin to be adopted by more people in more places. Businesses with several owners can hold accounts that no one person can drain.

I don't know which multi-sig is the best, but normal users having access to the feature is something that should have been available from the start. As slow as it's going though, I'm planning on using Armory's offline transaction feature as my go-to security method in the future. I probably won't need multi-sig for uses other than security, but I certainly don't think that is the case for everyone.

In my humble opinion, this kind of trash talk against BIP 16 is bad for Bitcoin.

The poll in this thread says the community prefers BIP 16.

The chart on the bitcoin wiki says the core developers prefer BIP 16.

And the actions of the big mining pools and independent miners says that they overwhelmingly prefer BIP 16.

Luke, I'd be delighted to add Eligius to the list of pools that are supporting BIP 16 in my signature.

Also, there ARE other solutions to the P2SH need/problem.

Do you know what a keylogger is? It is something that renders an encrypted wallet essentially useless. Requiring more than one diverse device to confirm a transaction is another solution to this issue.

The bitcoin developers certainly have NOT been adding features willy-nilly left right and center. To say otherwise is simply delusional.

Would you guys please stop this and take it to one of the BIP 16 threads. It’s impossible to find out updates to Deepbits service with all this chatter. If I were Tycho I would be ignoring my own thread with all this extra debating going on!

If I have the password to your encrypted wallet, I have your private keys as well. Nice try though.

I honestly think you are being intentionally obtuse. And now rude as well.

You've never heard of safety engineering have you?

One guy crashes a plane into a mountain, pilot error.  Several people crash the same type of plane into mountains, design problem.

Lots of bitcoin users have crashed into mountains.  Each one of them made a mistake.  Gavin is trying to change the design so that the system is much more tolerant of these mistakes.

Multi factor authentication is more secure than single factor authentication. True or false?

It really seems like you are opposed to providing people with better tools to secure their wallets.

I don't need to behave in any fashion, other than connecting my bitcoin client to the internet, to risk losing my wallet.

Edit: Let's not forget that multi-sig has uses other than security as well.

Multi factor authentication is more secure than single factor authentication. True or false?

Your argument boils down to: Bitcoin is secure enough.

Mine boils down to: let's have some options to make it even more secure.

I don't know if BIP16 is the right answer, but I sure wish I had accessible multi-sig functionality in the official client.

to vote the same as deepbit, all you have to do is run the stock bitcoin client.

I'm pushing this hard because I'm tired of hearing that users lost their bitcoins to trojans and viruses

Without getting into an argument over which multi-sig to implement, or even whether to add the current multi-sig functionality to the client so normal people can use it, there is the obvious reason that I already gave you.

More security. Simple.

Multi-sig as a security feature will provide more security than password encrypted wallets alone. Just because you don't see the need doesn't mean that need doesn't exist.


Full post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=58579.msg690402#msg690402

If you want to get technical, one man is mining, the rest are selling him shares for a reduced rate in exchange for variance reduction. 

Going forward with P2SH is a significant step forward for the development of Bitcoin, we can't let one man stall it.