“As detailed in our white paper on the subject, we do not support an upgrade to BIP 101,” Vavilov said. “In our opinion, BIP 101 is not sufficiently tested nor theoretically substantiated. Its introduction could bring radical changes to the topology of the Bitcoin network. Additionally, we think that a more gradual increase of the block-size limit will help develop a transaction fee market. This would be great for the Bitcoin ecosystem from the security point of view.”

There are practical economic implications that limit the number of nodes.  Each node incurs processing and communications costs for each transaction that it verifies.  At the present minimum fee structure and bitcoin price there is a reasonable balance between minimum transaction fees and costs to relay transactions.  If there is a huge increase in number of nodes this will cease to be the case and the ecosystem will be out of balance.

But I think we need to concern ourselves with minimizing the data and bandwidth required by money issuers - for small coins, the protocol seems wasteful.  It would be nice to have the full protocol for big coins, and some shortcut for small coins wherein people trust account based money for small amounts till they get wrapped up into big coins.

The smaller the data storage and bandwidth required for money issuers, the more resistant the system is the kind of government attacks on financial networks that we have recently seen.

Do the positives outweigh the corporation involvement negatives?

If you want to call them altcoins then go ahead, I won't be stopping you. Sidechains are not the same as altcoins even though they seem similar. If you can't comprehend how the two way peg could work then I can see the reason why. You've made a thread about sidechains a few months back, have you learned nothing from it? If we are going to pick a solution between altcoins and sidechains  then it is pretty much obvious which one is better. Sidechains can provide every benefit that altcoins have and decrease the risk that comes with them (scams, premine, viruses, devaluation, etc.).

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However, my post was not about sidechains only. Sidechains are not the proposed solution (Luke-jr said on IRC), so people need to stop thinking badly of Core developers because they are involved in a Company. I'm not even sure what particular benefit made you think that altcoins are good? Anything that they have, can be implemented in Bitcoin. If you think that, explaining what Bitcoin is and how to use it is complicated now, good luck telling someone that they need to use 20 coins. We should be trying to make the system as simple as possible, not the other way around.

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to see if there were any comments regarding the new pre-mine fair launch coin, SETLcoin, and how it could possibly take away marketshare and volume from Bitcoin.
My understanding is that they will allow FPGs, ASIC's, and probably GPU's to mine Setl's. I wasnt able to find how many will be created or at what values they're be allocated, but I thought it was interesting.

"The patent application addresses chain of custody of an asset, counterparty risk and settlement through a cryptocurrency called SETLcoin. According to the patent application viewed by Bitcoin Magazine, SETLcoin ownership can be used to prevent fraud, including float fraud such as kiting."

http://www.tradersmagazine.com/news/brokerage/goldman-sachs-files-patent-to-settle-securities-in-bitcoin-114721-1.html


Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Why use BTC when you can just SETL...?

The problem is mostly the negative publicity associated with it IMO.. It's just an excuse for the media to talk bad about it because they are scared of it..

This is the fourth time I've seen this article today on bitcoin forums despite the fact that Blythe Masters has absolutely nothing to do with bitcoin. I don't think 'private blockchains' are relevant to blockchains either.

the amount of people HOARDING. are not 50% of the community, not 20% not 10% but a small minority.

on just one day (november 5th) 6% of the entire bitcoin market cap moved.
https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=60days

again.. in JUST 1 day!! so imagine how much funds moved in 7 years..

Imho the whole problem lies in the belief that bitcoin (itself and as is) is somehow dependent of a dev community to sustain it (patch it).

To me bitcoin works perfectly as expected, as a The Trust Index, and regardless of pocket money attributes.

I think the bitcoin project really lift off with satoshi's "hornet's nest" declaration and do not need any further 'improvement', beside bug adjustments. (He then brightly disappeared, removing himself as the only point of failure, and gavin meets with CIA.)

All the previous BIPs attempts failed, and they were not about such a controversial (and there is a reason for that) parameter as the block size.

So I am open to 'on-top' innovations, that do not curb bitcoin's technology to fit their agenda. Gifted devs have an avenue to come up with awesome stuff, getting rightfully rewarded for that, and build a better world based on the most secured and transparent network. What pisses me off is the braindead shortcuts comparing bitcoin to dumb payment processors such as visa or paypal.

The true power (ie. value) of Bitcoin lies within its inalienable, ungovernable protocol.

derp

He gave control over to Wladimir, who is now the maintainer of the Bitcoin Core repo, before that Gavin was the maintainer of the Bitcoin Core repository. I can agree that ideally and theoretically no one can or should be able to control Bitcoin the protocol. However the Bitcoin Core repository can be controlled by a single person, presently Wladimir is the person who has the final say over what is merged into the code of Bitcoin Core. This gives him a position of great influence considering that Core is still considered to be the "reference client" for many people. In political thought influence is a definite form of power, this is the power that I think should become more distributed and decentralized, I also think that this is inline with the original ethos of Bitcoin.

UPDATE (8th April 15:18 GMT): Bitcoin's new lead developer Wladimir van der Laan tells CoinDesk via email he was "surprised" to be offered the role and hadn't expected Gavin Andresen to step down:

"I had noticed that Gavin had been much less active in the Github project lately, but I did not expect him to step down as lead developer. But it makes sense, there is a lot more theoretical work with regard to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general making it a full-time job just to keep up with that (and giving talks, travelling, and such). On the other hand, I have been effectively the maintainer of the code for quite a while. In practice nothing changes."

There is a major hole in your ad hominem and conspiracy theory. Gavin willfully gave up his power in Core out of principle to further distribute development.

Great leaders do not desire power. He gave up his leadership position in Core out of principle only to have Core turn against him to disallow the changes he wanted to implement. This reminds me of the story of Cincinatius, who was a roman dictator who also freely laid down his power, this should be considered admirable.

I should not have even responded to such a silly post, however that was to glaring of a fault in your reasoning not to point out.

He gave up control over the Bitcoin Core code, I am not wrong about this.

I am not even going to debate such accusations like Gavin and Mike are working for the CIA, even if that was true. You do not have the evidence, so even discussing this is ad hominem and not productive for constructive discussion, you are attacking these people without proper grounds instead of actually countering their arguments. I could have easily started attacking Core on the same grounds but I have not because I realized that this would not have achieved anything.

Pointy Headed CEOs do not listen to their Dilberts and Wallys (IE coders/engineers).