I have looked everywhere, but have been unable to find any documentation yet, on how to make use of the possible new Segwit addresses. How can we send or accept the new type of pay to script hash address?

We keep talking about the extra space that will be available but I see no technical documentation on how to implement the pay to witness pubkey hash and pay to witness script hash.

And as far as I also understand, there is an option to enable new P2SH Segwit address to allow outputs from nodes that are not upgraded to pay into a segwit address.

PS. No politics about segwit in this thread. I will remove it.

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Some of us are going to start testing the lightning network, aka. payment channels, as software is becoming ready for it. Since this is early days and people need to coordinate to connect by posting their url's and trying to open channels between each other, as we did back in the early days of Bitcoin, I would like to request for a payment channel forum to be created so that we can coordinate our efforts.

Since payment channels are completely different in the way the infrastructure works, and since they will experience their own set of challenges and issues, I think it would be great to have a forum dedicated to supporting them. One implementation is already working and we will soon have two more ready to go that will make all of them compatible.

Right now there is no forum that suits for talking about payment channels, and it will be a mix of Bitcoin main forum, dev talk and maybe even the altcoin section or off topic section.

Please consider giving a forum to testing what is arguably the most anticipated feature of Bitcoin ever!

A cornerstone of payment channels seems to be the idea of pre-images and their secret being communicated through the network. But when it comes to the definition of the pre-image itself, and its properties in terms of how it works within a technical system, such as payment channels, there is little information anywhere. The closest I came to information about pre-image was the mathematical description of it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_%28mathematics%29#Inverse_image

When talking in terms of cryptography, anything I have been able to find was how pre-image is put together as a pre-image attack on hash functions, but not a description of how the pre-image itself, and its construction for being used as a secret in for example payment channels actually works.

Anyone care to chip in some info on pre-image and how it relates to the crypto/hash of payment channels in more details?

When looking at the operation of sidechains and the way that they are supposed to atomically swap, it makes perfect sense, in terms of two sidechains that both carry the code to allow for such.

This would however be executed on chain, rather than off chain, as in the lightning-esque fashion. Most atomic swap transactions would most likely be off-chain, in between multiple chains, while the on-chain atomic swaps would probably carry quite some significance to be done on-chain.

From the Lightning page it describes shortly that chains that support the same cryptographic hash function, would be allowed to swap in the secondary layer, the channel layer.

Can someone clarify exactly what an off-chain transaction exactly is in this instance? For example between Bitcoin and a sidechain (when SegWit is enabled on Bitcoin).

Would it not mean that a sidechain's payments channel that is swapping for a Bitcoin's bitcoin on a payment channel, or mixing them together to form a third layer of abstraction combination wise, indirectly give value to the token itself on the sidechain, in its secondary layer. I am specifically thinking about a sidechain that is assets based in this case.

Its been bothering me for a while that the lack of PoW on sidechains makes them no more interesting from a security point of view than any other environment. Would a secondary or third layer, after mixing the tokens together, form a more substantial protection for the sidechain asset chain?

With improvements in the Script language such as P2SH and OP_CSV, how are they going to be in used on payment channels? Since payment channels most likely write their own logic layer, wont the entirety of the script be negligible, as we can assume settlement on chain will be costly?

Or are payment channels going to utilize the Script language in Bitcoin at the secondary layer as well? I have been unable to find anything on both Lightning implementations as well as the Thunder implementation.

From all I can see, there are no scripting rules. But wont this kill the need for more op_codes as we move ahead with abstraction layers?

I am writing a piece for a blog, and for historical context I would like to gather as much as possible on work done towards ecash decentralized systems as possible. I am familiar with both Bitgold and b-money. What else do we have out there, and what else was released that pointed towards becoming a Bitcoin-esque system?

This new paper here: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/013.pdf states that it helps with the security of wallets. From my understanding it relies on n >= t+1 servers, where t is the compromised servers.

What I am not sure of I understand correctly is how it secures the malicious part is not capable of obtaining all the keys if all servers are breached? Hope someone can elaborate on this topic a bit better.

Is anyone playing around with the Thunder Network client/server?

I would like to invite some people to do some testing together with me, on the Thunder Network. Find it all here https://matsjj.github.io/

If anyone wants to actively work on this and help out with expanding and making the payment channel more simplified, let me know, and we can coordinate a roadmap and how we can also do some internal testing.

I am looking for noteable altcoins to look into what other implementation of software there is out there. Among the thousands of altcoins, I was hoping at least a few would stand out and have some interesting implementations code wise that could be used as future sidechain concepts.

I know of Ethereum, which is however not Bitcoin code based, which wont fit my need. I am also familiar with Namecoin, which is the direction I am looking for other reimplementations at. Please dont spam me with a copy/paste coin as I am not here to invest, but just curious about the technicalities of alt-codes.

Gavin and Hearns proposal for increasing the blocksize to 20MB is the ultimate way to destroy Bitcoin. For anyone that has the need to follow a "leader" and refuses to understand what the outcome of increasing the blocksize is, please read on.

Increasing the blocksize to 20MB does not solve anything in the long term. Neither Gavin nor Hearn can answer what they will do if the blocksize needs to be raised beyond 20MB at a later stage. Right now, what we are getting is a lazy fix, when we dont even need it.

Gavin has been screaming about the blocksize is reaching is maxiumum and that we need to increase the size of the blocks. Why we need to raise it TWENTY FOLD is not something Gavin can answer. Neither can he answer what he will do when 20MB becomes to little again. Raising it to 200MB?

Another huge problem about raising the block size is that the current amount of nodes we are having will start dropping even faster. People have been pointing out how we have lost nodes in the recently. Everyone agrees that this is because the blocksize is becoming too large. Now we are voting to increase the blocksize 20 times more?

NorthPayments, a leading provider of online payment solutions, will be the first European Payment Gateway to accept payments via Bitcoin. The UK-based company has started a strategic partnership with BitcoinPaygate and adds Bitcoin to over 220 easy and secure payment options that are available to merchants.

http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/04/22/726994/10130138/en/NorthPayments-a-leading-payment-processor-in-the-UK-collaborate-with-BitcoinPayGate-com-to-introduce-an-alternative-payment-option-for-customers.html

We have €448m to the International Monetary Fund is due this Thursday (April 9th).

Then we have public sector wages and pensions, €1.7b in social security payments made by the state (April 14th).

Then we have a €200m loan repayment to the IMF (May 1st).

Now correct me if I am wrong, but if Greece cant pay any of these 3 bills we are talking about the first "western modern" country to be technically in default. If they resort back to the Drachma, it will be one of the most worthless currencies on the planet.

What I cant really figure out is the outcome, both worldwide financially against the Euro, and obviously against Bitcoin. Will we see BTC as safe heaven? Something tells me only a little, because the average Greek is not highly IT literate, but I could be wrong here.

Give me your thoughts people, as this goes down in about 3 days from now!

An interesting read here: http://new.euro-med.dk/20141215-putins-confident-putin-to-nationalize-rothschilds-central-bank-and-purge-collaborators-with-west-war-till-one-side-collapses-inevitable.php

This is what Bitcoin will eventually face.

Are there any complications installing BitcoinD when Bitcoin-qt is already installed? I am running Ubuntu 12.04 and wanted to know if it gives any problems to have both installed on the same machine.

I wanted to install BitcoinD in order to play around with some of the RPC commands via Python.

So we have Proof of Work and Proof of Stake, but I read about a number of other proofs out there. Just cant find them and was hoping someone would have a list to more proofs or a comparison review somewhere of different proofs. I want to dig into the subject a bit more and see what I can possibly think of from that.

With the myriad of Bitcoin exchanges out there, there must be quite a large amount of bank allowing Bitcoin companies to operate. Does anyone have any substantial list of what banks are friendly towards Bitcoin?

Say that I have 3 values. We call those 3 values X, Y and Z.

My 3 values go up and down every day based on manipulation from third party services. The values get added to and subtracted from all the time.

Instead of writing a verification system to keep my values in check from abuse, can I somehow use the Bitcoin protocol to save my values in real time?

Mind you, I am not talking about buying Bitcoin here, or converting my values to Bitcoin, but simply use Bitcoin as a point of verification to make sure that if my values are manipulated, then I have a timestamped storage of what X, Y and Z was at a given time.

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