I guess that is exactly what he is afraid of.
All these hardware random number generators are completely unauditable - its even worse than with the software.

Well, I would be surprised if you were not ahead of me, since I have not even worked on this.
And I cannot work on this, since it is literally impossible to change a peer-to-peer protocol while being  the only peer on the network.
There were times when I had my ideas and energy to work on such things, but you guys seem to always know better and it doesn't seem like you need anyone new in the team.
And now, after the latest red list revelations, it's even a team that I would be ashamed to join, so no thanks and good luck.

Anyway, all I am saying is that it goes very slowly and as much as I believe that some members of your team are sincere, competent and professional - there are also others who are intentionally disturbing to drive this project in the right direction, often using a dirty methods. But then you defend them when I point it out.
You obviously act as a team and you cannot blame people for judging you as a team.
Plus, you cannot expect others to not beat your team in the competition, considering that to beat you on a software development field does not seem like an extreme challenge, even for a single developer, not to mention an actual team.

So my advise to the bitcoin elite: you guys either take your shit together and start doing your job right, or you will be out of this business soon - meaning that even the admiration from people who have no idea how lame this project's development has recently been will be gone within a single day.

You know, it's not that I care very much to increase my ignore digit... it just happens out of my control.
But let's be realistic and someone finally has to say it.

Almost five thousands years ago, it took Egyptians about twenty years to build the Great Pyramid of Giza.
If the current bitcoin elite, put into power by the satoshi himself, will manage to solve the ever known bitcoin scalability issues in less then that, then you guys will have a reason to be really proud of yourself... Though honestly, looking at your progress from the past couple of years, I have serious doubts about you meeting the deadline

Anyway, putting strife away and focusing on the job that eventually has to be done and will be done by someone, some day.

There is only one ultimate purging solution which does not affect the network's decentralization and address the scalability issues.
Start distributing snapshots of UTXO database, with the snapshots' security protected by the blockchain and the miners.
But that's definitely too far fetched idea, as for this team - 25 years at least, 10 of which just to realize that all the other options suck...
I'll be using viagra, instead of the memory impairing drug, by then

Just because you're looking at a guy raping a girl, while doing nothing to stop it - it does not make you innocent in the crime.
Unless he was keeping a gun aimed at you, while you were watching it, was he?

Generate a random key yourself (e.g. by hashing some random input) at the cold wallet PC and import it to your bitcoin-qt wallet using "importprivkey".

Or use a different bitcoin wallet - one that does not rely on a random number source which you don't fully trust.

Start here:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#tx
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_CHECKSIG

Try to decode few raw transactions manually (from the hexdump) - that should give you a good start of what they are.

Also what is important and confuses many new people: each transaction (except of the coinbase/mining ones) refers to output scripts from its inputs, which are in previous transactions.
So validating a transaction involves executing a script that is a part of some previous transaction... same case for signing - just the opposite.

right.
changing the p2p protocol - that sounds like a really tough one.
seems like at least 10 years of work, for you guys.
but the good thing is that you have already spent at least the last two years on analyzing the problem, so there is a decent chance that it will get done within the next eight...

though, more likely scenario is that within the next 8 people will forget about the original bitcoin dev team and start making/using their own mods.
it's actually already happening - has happened while you were busy with designing black and red lists during a conference with US financial "authorities", otherwise known as the core of the wold's financial regime

Statistically, but in this case, there where were only two 32-chars long addresses generated withing the 20 million random samples so the number is not very precise.
It gives you an idea about the magnitude, but the 400,000 might just as well be 150,000 or 1,000,000

That's a good question...
Unfortunately I don't know the answer nor have resources to run such a long simulation.
Though back in my high school (which was very long ago), if I had asked my math teacher, she would have probable known how to calculate it

I believe it is to assure that the specific implementation of the decode function will always return 25 bytes, since no padding is being done there.

BTW, in theory there are eight possible "valid" addresses with the length of 26 characters:

And I was wrong again; removing any of the trailing '1' will cause the satoshi client to assume the address as "invalid", even though it is technically quite valid, since e.g. both; 1BZbvjr and 11111111111111111111BZbvjr represent exactly the same 200-bit number (which a bitcoin address essentially is).

But IMHO it is a flaw in the implementation - e.g. my client considers addresses with redundant trailing '1' characters are valid and equal.
Hell you can even skip the first '1' - the 32-bit checksum that si there anyway should be just fine to assure no typos.

I think I know why.

It is the part of satoshi's EncodeBase58() function:

So for every zero-byte at the beginning, the encode function adds '1' in front of the string - effectively forcing the string to come out longer.

Using this function, I've made a simulation on 20 millions random addresses and indeed not even once we get a string shorter than 32 characters. The statistical results are like this:

But when we modify the EncodeBase58 function to break the loop (after putting the first '1' in front), then after the 20 million rounds we get stats like this:

So in other words: if you want to replace trailing '11..' with single '1..' - then you get the expected factor 58, for the even shorter addresses.

And the bottom line is that EncodeBase58 function in the satoshi client is stupidly implemented, because there is no reason whatsoever for an address to start with more than one '1', and even if it does you can just remove the extra ones and the address will still work just fine.

I believe the proper calculation for the first factor comes from the value:


And the chance of 0x0469ee58469ee58469ee58469ee58469ee58469ee58469ee having... something to do with mod/div 58 - is the first factor.

Something like that... Haven't had my fifth coffee yet today


EDIT:
If this time I did not get it wrong again, it might go like this (python code):

You're right - sorry, my mistake.
The first byte is always zero, which means that the first factor is lower.
13.140625, if I did the math right... (58*58/256)
But any further shorter ones should use the factor 58 / char.

It's as you say, except that the factor is 58, not 20.
Each one character shorter address should be 58 times rarer...

IMHO Bitcoin blockchain fork will never happen, unless the american slaves change the POW function.
If they don't change the POW function, they cannot change a shit, since any fork's minority branch would be easily subjective to double-spend attacks.
So all they can do is adding Mike's colored blacklists to US based exchanges or payment processors...
But as someone had pointed it out already, it would only make the rest of the world to not accept US payment processors - just like American Express cards are not accepted in many countries anymore, because they suck and are not reliable.
And I could not care less about US payment processors, could you?

If USA wants to commit an economical suicide, they have enough options already today - they don't need Bitcoin to do it.

They don't act like the spying nodes from the OP, though - they do send invs, sometimes even very fresh ones.





source: https://blockchain.info/pools

It might be a miner's solution to speed up a propagation time of the blocks it mines.

But that is exactly why the bitcoin development should put much more focus on improving anonymity.
Tracking coins via blockchain analysis is the most important issue that ought to be addressed by the developers - but it hasn't been.

Ever since Satoshi is gone, no actual privacy improvement have been made in bitcoin. The people in charge who he left the project to have obviously sold it to corporations and are now busy not developing bitcoin, but a surveillance system around it. Am I the only person who actually sees it?



I did not mean that all the people living in US are slaves. There are millions of brilliant and thoughtful people living in US, just like there are tens on millions, if not billions, of american slaves living outside US. Ironically, some of them don't even speak English.

But the system of the economic slavery that is on stake here was made in USA - first raised along with the FED, then forced onto the rest of the wold in Bretton Woods and at the end totally released by another genocidal psychopath US president who decoupled the dollar from the gold, thus lifting any limits on the debt slavery. Bitcoin is going to destroy this system, but not without a fight. The war is already happening and people need to choose sides.

I don't have a problem with people saying to me (and I hear it every day) that they prefer dollars over bitcoins. What I do have a problem with though are the hypocrites who pretend to be developing bitcoin, while in fact they are conspiring to kill it... or not conspiring, but just promote the "media and politicians will use it to beat us up if we don't turn bitcoin into dollar" approach - these are the american slaves and trust me; they live all around the world.

Yes.
So you are going to surrender?
Well - do what you please...

I am going to stand up, because I am not a slave, I have my rights as a human being and I am going to use them to promote my human interests.
And Bitcoin is today my most powerful weapon, which I will not give up even after my dead body.

These days I live in Holland, but I was born and raised in Poland, though today I consider myself a citizen of the world.
Unfortunately as it turns out, the World does not issue passports, and without a passport a human being is nobody.
So I am doomed to have a nationality, even though I think nationalism is stupid and inhumane

Like I cared which country has issued your passport; for me you are a poor american slave anyway.
A man is what he does - even Forrest Gump knew it

And no - it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I am too lazy to read through all your bullshit.

Finally.
It's amazing how much time a person needs to waste sometimes to effectively say "fuck off"

Some things don't need to be spoken literally to be understood - all a person needs is an IQ higher than yours and he can easily read between the lines.

So you won't tell us where you live, will you? I'm betting it isn't China, nor Russia - because none of their citizens are asking "how high?" when the nazi US government says "jump!"
UK? You seem to be matching Mike's profile pretty well and the guy is the queen's servant, though as the leaks have shown, obviously very proud of sucking Obama's black cock...