It institutionalized this trust of a particular company into the protocol.
Or do you think that people should just not use Side Chains?

There should be a better way of doing this.  Maybe that is the federated system?   In the first instance SPV is federated too, and it may always be, there may never be another Blockstream after all.

So there is a dangerous practice that is not really being done today much at all, but theoretically it could be done, and if it were, it might be dangerous.
And that is why we should just do it?

Do you see why this is unconvincing?

Which code is open?  You mean Bitcoin code, Not Blockstream's, right?

At this time there is no competition.
It is not likely that there will be any competition soon, if ever.
Adding SPV is really only for Blockstream.

Do you know the complexity of setting up a proof system for which these verifications are made?  Look into it.  It is a major effort taking some of the best minds many years and a LOT of computational power.

Simply put, it is an argument such as "we want it really badly so we should have it".  It does not concern itself at all with those from whom this is desired.

The thing about wanting something really badly, is that you usually get it really badly.

Most radical new ideas get tested out in the alt currency scene, no matter how insanely great they are.
This is soft of an incident of first precedence yes?

The SPV does the verification of the proof.  The proof is conducted externally.  Implementing SPV institutionalizes within the Bitcoin protocol, an external proof provider.  This provider is then trusted by the Bitcoin network, and verified in the protocol for every bitcoin user to trust.

The proof engines are not inexpensive to run, they will of necessity be centralized for the foreseeable future.  They are a sort of block chain of their own in that they are cryptographically encoding every computer instruction and chaining these into programmatic proofs.  I don't know how much competition there will be for Blockstream.  If they have the lock on the Bitcoin protocol, probably not much in the crypto currency arena.

That may let them bootstrap into all the other obvious venues for deterministic computing.  Many of these are government computing assurance regimes for computer assurance such as FIPS in the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140

This provides the level of security to avoid STUXNET type attacks.  It does it in a way that is WAY better than any alternative yet and for arbitrary code.  It is hard to imagine that governments will not be their best customers for these technologies.

Every mother in Florida that packs a lunch for their child should also be locked up.  I doubt all their kitchens are "licensed" and this food is consumed outside the home.

It is about Gold collapsing and Bitcoin UP.
Just for wildly inclusive definitions of Gold and Bitcoin.

Right they are different things.
SCIP is the underpinning of SNARK though.

This:

1) If it does something, it can do something bad.     There are threats and risks to Bitcoin from implementing OP_SIDECHAINPROOFVERIFY, the question is more whether "the hook is worth the bait".  (But I see I can sign you into the group that pretends that there are no risks to Bitcoin.)  If the hook is tiny, not so sharp and the line is weak...and the bait is very tasty, we may bite the baited hook.  We may find out we were foolish anyway and end up served for dinner.  The older the fish, the more bait it has stolen from a fisherman's hook.

2) Yes, currently the technical implementations require either blind trust, or wading through some very dense mathematics, and then checking whether the full C libraries have been correctly implemented.

When I saw this presentation, it sort of blew my mind in the type of things that it could change.  It is really the beginning of the end of analog.  The only limits seem to be the computational power of the proof systems.
This is not a small thing, it may easily be as revolutionary as the BGP solution.

LOL.
A license can protect someone from a food borne illness if the license is used to clean up the rat poop, or to wrap the fish to keep it from going bad.

Maybe it is the lawmaker that needs to "learn his lesson"?
Maybe we need a different test case.

Put little Susie in jail for sharing her sandwich with little Joanie during 2nd grade recess.

Lots of people think this.  Lots don't.  
Most of the people will just follow along with the majority authority, whether it is right or isn't right.

It may take a much longer time to find out whether it is or isn't good, than it takes for these decisions to be made, so there won't be any going back.


Smaller stakeholders may be more inclined to just say "hey its only an experiment, lets try it and see if it works".  It remains an important test (to me at least) whether the larger stakeholders would agree.

So our task is to show how it is safe, if we can.
We do this by analyzing the risks, not by pretending there aren't any.
This analysis is not yet begun.  We don't even have a good test proposal yet.

Yes.  It is very clear to everyone that implementing an OP_SIDECHAINVERIFY into the Bitcoin protocol is good for Blockstream, and good for the Side Chains.
It is less clear that it is good for the Bitcoin protocol.

Then when "but we can do everything with federation and oracle already today, so we should just do it" is added to the argument, it makes anyone with a wary eye look at this as if it were a slimy sales technique.

If it is not needed, drop the issue and stick with OP_RETURN.  If it is needed, our job is to show why it is not win/lose but win/win.

Does anyone think there is any validity to the suggestion that SPV proofs should be implemented into the Bitcoin protocol simply because a "federated model is not as good for the side chain"?  There are better arguments, this one should not be repeated any more please.

Please understand that I am hoping to help you refine your message here.  Quite a bit of this is really not good at all for the cause you are advocating.

Greatest Bassist ever.

WHO provides information to the CDC which the CDC then folds into its reports.

Is Blockstream only writing OPEN SOURCE code forever and into the future?

Or is your argument that Blockstream can not benefit from changing the Bitcoin protocol to suit their business because Bitcoin is open source?
(This it seems would be a weird thing to claim.)

There wasn't a possibility to keep for themselves this revolutionary technology.
It was funded by a EU grant to an Israel academic team, and the results published and presented openly at Bitcoin2013 conference, and elsewhere.
I was in the room for that presentation, as was gmaxwell and many others.  The technology is open, it is the implementation/company that isn't.

I wish them every success.

Soluvox is a Quebec company specializing in the management of customer communications.
Maybe they are more into "antisocial media" than "social media"?

Any side chain can of course be implemented entirely without Bitcoin at all.  Perhaps, some would not be viable as federated systems, such as those needing a true zero trust environment and wanting to also hold BTC in their chain.  
Its not really a zero trust application if you are trusting an oracle.  Those would be fairly esoteric though, probably most of the ones that are being seriously contemplated would be accepted with a federated system, with the exception of those that may be requiring extraordinary security.  If it is something where folks don't trust that the federating entity isn't their enemy in disguise.  It would be one trust removed to have the protocol change.

Without the Bitcoin network running the verification, why use Bitcoin at all though?  Might as well use an Altcoin as the "separated currency".
It would be a better bootstrap to prove the case anyway.

Though some of the issues are insidious and won't manifest their effects until there are a lot of locked coin.


Federated systems work fine until the federated server (or the Bitcoin network) goes away.
Bitcoin works fine, until the Bitcoin network goes away.

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.