To make this stuff clear, I think that an explicit "Bitcoin contract" should be written and included in all Bitcoin clients which says exactly what properties are guaranteed by the Bitcoin network.
I like this idea. It is likely that at some point ECDSA will be weakened and everyone will need to send their BTC to different addresses that use different signing algorithms. However, lost coins will not be moved, and when ECDSA is finally broken, these lost coins will be spent by random people.
If you mean weakened by quantum computing, then only those lost coins whose public keys have already been published will be spendable. The addresses hashes are not vulnerable to quantum computing, AFAIK. Or do you have any reason to believe anything else other than quantum computing risks "weakening" ECDSA (and RIPEMD-160, and SHA256...)? Perhaps old coins should be "expired" before this can happen.
I don't like this idea. |
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[You Can Buy]
...
CryptoXChange Codes
..,
[You Can Sell]
...
CryptoXChange Code
CryptoXChange has been closed, AFAIK. |
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There was a quick discussion on IRC about how to handle the case where malicious software sends a super high fee transaction to the device for signing and then uses the fees to steal the money. The difficulty of verifying the fee without having the host send all depended-upon transactions was mentioned.
Device stores variable of highest acceptable fee per kB, so transaction with higher fee will be rejected. This will have some reasonable amount pre-setted from factory, but there'll be an API to change it's value if bitcoin fees become bigger than this limit (of course the change will show warning message on the display and will ask for confirmation by hw buttons). I'm not sure I understand the issue here. Can't the device simply show both amounts (output + fee), and the user confirms that? |
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DAG stands for Directed Acyclic Graph. The PoS article you linked to mentions this once, not going into detail. I think it refers to the structure of the block relations. The blockchain currently forms a tree, where different branches are not reconcilable, with one having to be eventually forfeighted. I guess the proposal is to make it possible for branches to join back. I don't know of any such proposals though.
Thanks. It's probably the blocktree thing then. This is indeed what a DAG is and I think we're thinking about the same proposal. I might try linking to it sometime. I guess this is Maged proposal, isn't it? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=57647.msg686497#msg686497 |
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Still don't know what DAG stands for though.
I'm not sure exactly about the context but DAG normally refers to a "Directed Acyclic Graph" (think of an OS folder structure). DAG stands for Directed Acyclic Graph. The PoS article you linked to mentions this once, not going into detail. I think it refers to the structure of the block relations. The blockchain currently forms a tree, where different branches are not reconcilable, with one having to be eventually forfeighted. I guess the proposal is to make it possible for branches to join back. I don't know of any such proposals though.
Thanks. It's probably the blocktree thing then. I was aware of that, but until now hadn't seen this proof-of-stake concept, and there's even an implementation already. And I thought I followed bitcoin world closely enough... |
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There are some proposals for alternative systems (e.g. proof of stake), but they are fairly controversial. I think the solution to DoS attacks is a DAG system as was described once by Maged.
Could somebody link to these proposals, please? Both this "proof of stake" and "DAG". I don't even know what DAG stands for... if I remember well there was this blocktree thing Maged once discussed in these forums, it didn't really prevented chain freezing (I'm assuming that's what you mean by DoS), but it created some difficulties to the attacker. I wonder if these proposals you talk about are better. EDIT: Ok, it didn't take me long to find this https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_StakeStill don't know what DAG stands for though. |
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Je profite du fils de discussion pour poser mes questions aussi: - Aurez-vous un système de conversion automatique entre EUR<->BTC? Genre, je configure qu'à chaque virement depuis ou vers un de mes comptes, la proportion de 50/50 soit rétabli entre EUR/BTC? Une telle fonctionnalité pourrait être utile pour ceux qui veulent utiliser BTC pour se protéger de l'inflation des EUR. Tu reçois ton salaire en EUR, une pourcentage est automatiquement converti en BTC...
- Au cas où un tel système est mis en place, ces conversions automatiques seraient tarifées comme les échanges manuelles?
Ce serait intéressant d'avoir un compte toujours en BTC, mais qui me permet de faire l'interface avec le vieux monde en EUR. Par contre, c'est un peu bête de recevoir son salaire en EUR, payer 0,5% de frais pour le convertir en BTC, et dans le même mois repayer des frais de conversion pour pouvoir payer tous ses factures en EUR. Il faudrait que la valorisation des BTCs par rapport à l'EUR entre temps soit supérieur à ces frais, ce qui est un peu difficile. Au moins tant que l'EUR n'est pas en hyperinflation en tout cas.  |
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No one, not even the miners, can generate new bitcoins beyond the limits of the protocol. FRB is not possible using actual bitcoins.
If FRB = Fractional Reserve Banking then you're wrong, it's perfectly possible to do it with bitcoins, as it was possible to do it with gold. The only thing that the protocol limits is the monetary base. Higher aggregates can exist. That said, the concept of a "central issuer" inflating the monetary base to save the banks that took too much risk cannot exist with bitcoins directly, as with gold. |
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- Each account will in a few months get its very own IBAN number, users will be able to use it as any other bank account, have their salaries and pensions sent there and have them automatically converted to Bitcoin if they so wish)
- Each user will soon be able to order its own debit card that will use their EUR and BTC balance to honor purchases and cash withdrawals
These two items are particularly awesome. It would allow us to don't hold any EUR at all, if I understand it correctly, while still interfacing with the legacy banking system (receiving your salary, paying your bills via direct debt etc). Congratulations for this achievement. It's really great. (And btw, you don't need to (wrongly!) believe that coercive regulations have any potential for good in order to recognize that this achievement of yours is good for Bitcoin as a whole). |
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Grondilu, it really depends on your audience. Most people don't have a clue on how paracétamol works, for example, and don't want to understand it, but they'll use it because they understand its effects. Just take a look at wikipedia page for Paracétamol. Most people would be immediately "frightened" by the first picture on the right and close the page all of the sudden. The greatest majority of people wouldn't even start reading it. I didn't. Technical audiences will be intrigued by Bitcoin and will want to learn how it works. But Le Monde writes to a broad, generic audience. Trying to explain how Bitcoin works to such audience is like trying to explain how paracétamol works. Don't waste your time. Actually, if you do, you're more likely to scare people away than to make them interested in it. |
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Journalists writing to a generic public should not try to explain how Bitcoin works.
Imagine some revolutionary new medicine has just been invented, and you're going to write about it, targeting a generic audience. Will you try to explain how its molecules interact with the human body, showing the chemical formulas and all in fancy charts? Or you will just talk about its general effects and its eventual risks?
Somebody talking/writing about Bitcoin to the general public should take the same approach. Do not try to explain how the system works. Do not mention "mining". Just explain Bitcoin is a currency with no authority, supported by a distributed network of people all around the world. Explain that the money is "stored" in a file, and that if you lose the file, you lose the money. Don't talk about "addresses", instead call them "accounts", but say that accounts should be disposable: you may have as many as you want, you should only use each once, and you don't need to remember its number, the software will do it for you. You may say the wallet file contains all accounts.
Some people will ask: "But how are the first coins created?". Answer briefly: "they're given as reward for those who voluntarily support the distributed network, it's an expensive task." If the person asks "But what exactly do these people do to support the network? Can I support it too?", you may just answer "That's complicated, I can't answer it without entering into technical details. People who do this are professionals. You should just know that it's them who verify that transactions are good to go".
In other words, avoid going too technical - and there's no way to explain how Bitcoin actually works without going too technical. So just explain what it can do and how to use it.
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Self-imposed withdraw limits may also be a good idea, and perhaps more convenient to some. Any attempt of changing these limits should required 2-factor-auth or at least produce a notification, and the change should only be applicable 48h later or something.
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The game could be free but charge a small 1% fee on withdrawing bitcoins from the game.
Instead of withdraw fees, they could sell "in game services and products". Like the NPC that sells you a weapon, he is actually "working" for the company hosting the game. |
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It is critical to keep "block" message relaying (propagation) times as low as possible, to avoid creating incentives for miners to skip transactions. Thus, a signature cache ensures that "block" messages are largely already verified, by the time they are received.
If miners are already shrinking their blocks due to propagation time, maybe it's time to consider that protocol improvement suggestion in the scalability page, about not sending the entire block every time, just the portion your peer doesn't have. I don't know what exactly could be send instead of the body, though. Even if my peer has all transactions in his cache, doesn't he need to know the exact order I put them in my block in order to rebuild the Merkle tree? So just sending the header is not enough. Is there a shorter way to identify a transaction than its hash? Perhaps just an ordinal of the hash... you assume your peer has the same transaction pool you had, then as the body of your block you send a series of numbers which represent the index a tx hash would have in a sorted array with all of them? Not sure that would work frequently... plus, the hash is probably small enough, it shouldn't be a big deal to send all of them. |
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HAPPY HALVING DAY EVERYONE! This is cool. It would be 21 million times cool if Satoshi were to ressurect just to say hello! |
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Electrum est un programme client-serveur. Le serveur est un nœud lourd dans le réseau p2p. Le client non, mais c'est lui qui gère les clés privés. Le serveur ne peut donc pas voler le client, même s'il est contrôlé par des criminels.
@caveden Désolé, c'est faux: si le serveur electrum est compromis il peut présenter une fausse chaine au client et lui faire accepter des "double-spends", c'est à dire des bitcoins déjà dépensés. Ce n'est pas tout à fait ce que caveden entendait par "voler le client", amha. Ce que tu décris ne permet absolument pas au serveur de s'approprier des bitcoins reçus au préalable. C'est cela oui, j'avais en tête le vol de ce qui est déjà à toi. Mais c'est vrai au même temps qu'un serveur corrompu présent d'autres risques, à part la surveillance. Te faire croire que tu as reçu de l'argent qu'en réalité tu n'as pas reçu peut être grave pour un marchant, par ex. Bien remarqué, Boussac. |
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Do you guys also translate "computer" and "internet" btw?
Err, actually, computer is translated to "computador" in Portuguese and "ordinateur" (seriously!) in French. Internet is not translated. |
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Portuguese: Moeda de Bits (A coin made of bits).
Nobody translates it, though. I always say "bitcoin", in all languages I can speak/write (which happen to be Portuguese, French, and English). |
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I honestly don't view "thread necromancy" as a problem. As long as you bring it back with an on-topic post, of course.
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