This is why I think that that cannot be the support for the bitcoin price for a long, long time.  I think that the main steady state drive will be "buying stuff", with my formula.

i'm offering a 2 BTC bounty for the IRL identity of brg444 OR a direct proof of a tie to Blockstream.

i'll increase it to 4 BTC if you can give me satisfactory evidence of both his IRL identity AND a direct tie to Blockstream.

both will be subject to my satisfaction of the evidence.

The users don't really have a choice.
The users are the franchisees of the corporate.  
They accept the coupon, and collect the $20.00 + ($0.10 in BTC) for $20.00 store credit from the consumer, or they lose their franchise.
So no free market demand is needed for some applications.

Side Chains can take all sorts of forms.  Essentially anything that can run a software program can be a part of the SPV proof.  It is pretty wide open in what it can do and for what it can be used.

Correct it is a freaking huge change of monumental proportions.
Its a high-risk high-reward gambit that expands the potential in all sorts of currently unforeseen ways..
It really can't be implemented without the change,
Well... some special cases things can be done, (with the federation/oracles) but the vast capabilities of validating arbitrary code on (and with) the Bitcoin block chain is what takes the fork.

One of the features of side chains is that they don't need a free market to succeed.  They don't need open source or even demand for the side chain. 
For example one application would be coupons: 

1) Bitcoin merchant franchise company central office buys some BTC, and sends it to their side chain.
2) company inflates the side chain
3) company distributes the coupon "backed with bitcoin" (coupon is worth $20 off and has $0.10 worth of BTC in it with a locktime transaction at the expiry date so company gets it back if not used).
4) franchisees that accept the coupon are compensated the $20 back from the corporate promotion and they get 0.10 in BTC as their redemption bonus if redeemed before the expiry date.

This would not need to be open source, or require any free market distribution or any users to buy it even.

This explains why it is not appreciating this year...or not?

well, there you go.  we can see how SC's are going to be implemented, if you're correct.  these corporate ledger systems can expected to be managed the same way as they are now, opaquely and possibly subject to manipulation.

lol, your attempts at subterfuge are so obvious.  or maybe you're just naive.  the corpSC does not function or work w/o liquidity or value.  the whole SC exercise is to be able to move BTC to SC.  for corpSC to work well, it needs to attract as much value and liquidity as possible, and in this case, by definition that is as many BTC as possible.  such logic failure.

what's obvious here is that these gangs of top level corps dependent on the current fiat system can't compete in a Bitcoin self contained world.  the best way to deal with this is to transform these problematic Sound Money BTC to corpCoin via SPVproof.

I think it is clearly a new feature (not that that's necessarily a bad thing--one could argue that Pay2ScriptHash was a new feature too).  The fact that federated sidechains are already possible in no way means that adding OP_SIDECHAINPROOFVERIFY is an "upgrade." The federated servers sit on top of the bitcoin protocol, whereas the SPV-proof-based sidechains would be integrated within the protocol.  If you argue that SPV-sidechains would be an "upgrade," would you not also argue that native support for colored coins or Counterparty features would also be an "upgrade"?  Like federated sidechains, these features are already possible on platforms that sit on top of bitcoin too.  

brg444: Do you support a hard-fork to increase the max block size limit?

if profits aren't important for them, re-organize as a non-profit.

agree.  Truthcoin is a great example of all the SC's that will be created that will cause confusion in the market place as to where to put your money:  BTC or TC?

Bullshit.  no source code change has occurred therefore no systemic risk, unlike with SPVproof.

this is exactly the dilemma all of us will be placed in by for-profit Blockstream creating all these SC's for whomever will pay the fee.  don't expect them to be selective in their choice of clients.  they are for profit, they have $15M worth of investors looking for returns based on SC construction fees, AND the SC clients who pay the fees expect them to work, as in siphoning off as many BTC from MC as possible to create liquidity and value.  this is a problem.  especially when 40% of core devs + 3 key committers are part of Blockstream.

if any one of these speculative SC's get traction, you will fact a choice; move to SC or stay put on MC.  will SC become the new Bitcoin or will it be possible to upgrade Bitcoin to CorpGovCoins?  do you even want that?

Bitcoin was always meant to be its own Self Contained Financial System.  And by that i meant an inextricable link btwn its BTC and Blockchain (MC).

We agree again!

The 2wp creates an offramp to any one of a #of speculative assets (by that I mean anything not BTC or scBTC). The 2wp allows this transformation to occur according to the rules of the SC dev. This breaks the Sound Money linkage of real BTC from its blockchain.

The more SC's created and used in this way, the more USD's Blockstream will make.

The reason is this: Most people - the vast, vast majority - are stupid and rightly lack confidence in their own abilities. It is too dangerous to personally secure your coins for the average person. Once it becomes possible to buy in without the risk of losing your money through negligence or hardware error, such as Circle or the ETF or something of that nature, it will become possible for far more people to hop on the wagon than currently.

The hundredth monkey effect is a studied phenomenon[1] in which a new behavior or idea is claimed to spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all related groups once a critical number of members of one group exhibit the new behavior or acknowledge the new idea.

You are correct.  In order for the SPV locking/unlocking mechanism to be secure, strong support for sidechains across the bitcoin community is required.  

I brought up the fact that implementing SPV proofs in bitcoin still requires broad support because there's been confusion caused by the word "soft" in "soft fork."  For some reason many people seem to think that soft-forking changes can "just be done" and that because the fork is "soft" it's like a little furry and unthreatening bunny.  I think this is disingenuous, as soft-forks still require broad support and a lot of bad stuff could be implemented with them (e.g., blacklisting).  

At the risk of taking maaku's comment out of context:


While this is true, it seems to imply that achieving scalability via sidechains is superior (easier and safer) than some version of Gavin's scalability proposal.  One of my concerns with the sidechain proposal is that it might seem like an "alternative" to moving forward with the max-block-size hard fork.  I think we should be looking at both proposals as orthogonal (and we should move forward with a hard fork to address scalability, regardless).

I would also argue that adding OP_SIDECHAINPROOFVERIFY poses a larger existential risk to bitcoin than a hard-fork to increase the max block size.  The reason I think this is that OP_SIDECHAINPROOFVERIFY fundamentally changes bitcoin, whereas increasing the max block size has always been on our road map.  Will support for SPV sidechains set a precedent that adding "features" to bitcoin is OK if it can be done with a soft fork?  Remember, "features" like blacklisting and other nasty stuff can be implemented as a soft fork too.  

I'm trying to make two points: (1) soft forks pose no less an existential threat to bitcoin than hard forks (although they pose less technical risk), and (2) soft forks still require consensus, it's just that that consensus is probably easier to obtain since it only requires support from the majority of network hash power.  

I'll conclude by saying that I think sidechains are exciting, I hope to see federated sidechains become a thing, and I'm "undecided" on SPV sidechains that require a change to bitcoin (let's see what happens with federated sidechains first ).  I support moving forward with a hard fork to address scalability now.

Thanks for your reply. I'm not convinced Bitcoin is all that disruptive, the problem I see in fiat, is governments are creating more than relative GDP. To that existent Bitcoin can be a store of value to offset the overprinting.

So I'm not seeing the potential disruption to Bitcoin. As a small holder of Bitcoin having survived one bear market, how do Side Chains disrupt Bitcoin and what does this mean for it's function as a store of value?

This is how pitiful this guy is. Either he's lying or he's dirt poor with a nefarious agenda:

This is a popular thread in that it's always at the top. I've been fascinated by Bitcoin for for over a year, and have decided to join bitcointalk.org to get more involved.
I see Side Chains as more interesting than gold and would really appreciate a summary of the pros and cons they have for Bitcoin.

Why is this even a debated topic?

Sidechains enable miners to continue claiming BTC transactions fxs in a future where the Bitcoin blockchain will be unable to accomodate all types or needs of transactions. It incentivizes miners to continue securing the network in the best possible way by insuring their profitability.

It is an improvement on the current situation where transactions are ALREADY tending to be processed off-chain for convenience, speed and utility. Given the absolute existence and growth of demand for transactions types that are not implementable on the Bitcoin sidechain, the exodus of transactions to off-chain schemes is a rational concern going forward.

This is not only true with concern to miners and their transaction fees but also for the integrity of the Bitcoin ledger. Off-chain schemes inherently require additional trust in that the ledger will be preserved. The most likely suspects to inflate Bitcoin in its current state are these off-chain schemes. SPVProof sidechains enables the possibility to ensure the conservation of the ledger on a protocol level. With this we potentially eliminate fractional reserve schemes. If your chain/service/application do not recognize and preserve my stake in the ledger, at the extent that I am not looking to speculate on it,  then you will not have my money and neither will you profit from the ledger's network effect.

Of course, this feature can be changed at the whims of the sidechain creator but it is in the interest of the consensus majority of the network to preserve the value of their investment, no matter the speculative prospects.

....

SPVProof sidechains, combined with merged-mining, enables miners to accomodate different chains with their security while reserving the rights to claim the transactions of any chain that gains significant traction. Their services are like a stamp of approval. Inclusion into the circle of chains who are MM by miners in some sort validates the legitimacy of a chain.

It is reasonable to assume a majority of sidechains will be bootstrapped on top of a federated model as it enables more security in the probable scenario where you will not be "backed" by the majority of miners from the start. You'll have to "earn your stripes", especially if you are a private entity/corporation.

The most established and community supported/used chains will end up being nearly as secure as BTC's mainchain simply because their value will command the ultimate security/decentralization

Anyone spending this much energy must have some financial interest, you're admitted to owning just pennies worth of Bitcoin, why are you here?

You're beginning to sound like Shroomskit and Lamchop.

who really needs absolute anonymity?  sure, for illegal stuff.  but most of us don't do that.

i believe the vast majority of BTC holders value anonymity.  therefore perfect anonymity should be better than pseudonymity.

since that's the case, why wouldn't you then move ALL your BTC into scBTC?

fine.  LET THEM USE FEDERATED SERVERS.  are you deaf?  that won't hurt Bitcoin like the SPVproof.

this breaks the legitimate inextricable link btwn the currency unit BTC and its blockchain (MC). that, in itself, will destroy Bitcoin.

Cmon man, do your job.

 In JR's scenario, Blockstream would make Billions!