Greetings!

I'm offering escrow services at 0% (free). I may charge 1% if I'm busy or there are special considerations.

Service terms:

I can escrow Bitcoin and many alt-coins (depending on complexity of doing so securely). The transaction can involve most anything as long as it's legal. Please just ask for details. Escrow held over 30 days is subject to 1% monthly storage charge. This escrow is for online transactions only.

Trust:

I've been involved with Bitcoin and plan on being involved for the long run. Account sign up is June 2011 (7 years). I'm a developer. I know how coins (and their security) work on a fundamental level.

PGP KEY:


Tips appreciated!

BTC: 1GDsPQXHdZNRsCmC218bUwDjwpRMi58GfD

ETH: 0xf27Ef3FA0b185912fF41464B89c0ceE325Ffd39A

BCH: qrfl2w725jh5aljls8fc5fdy88gqngqs3sfxd9g2l8

LTC: LVJLUyyz6nfNVPvhGA5xnvXFaNwBAW8cXT

That's not how it works. The block size limit doesn't allow for lower fees. It only allows miners to process larger blocks if and when desired to clear out a larger number of transactions. Think of it this way: most of the time, not during stress tests, blocks are not full; the 1MB limit exists but there is still room to go as miners create smaller blocks. This doesn't change the fee people pay to have transactions relayed and included. The only difference large blocks have on a 'stress test' is they allow a miner to clear out a backlog of transactions, meaning users are less likely to experience confirmation delay. A limit ten times higher means it costs at least ten times more to create a backlog.


What would happen if the load was 10 times more intense? Right now Bitcoin doesn't have tremendous adoption, only a few million users or so, but everyone expects that to change. What happens if blocks are normally full and a test occurs, say 10 times larger? Coinwallet's budget is $50K, but it's conceivable to imagine enemies with $500K resources. Western Union, for example, profits 40 million dollars per day.

Okay, so far people are selecting "too inconvenient". Thanks! That's helpful. Anyone else please feel free to weigh in.

If nobody ran full nodes there would be no Bitcoin, so they're important. Of course, not everyone in Bitcoin needs to run a full node for Bitcoin to work, but a healthy network has a good number of full nodes. Core developers have for some time been concerned that full node count has been low and declining. This survey seeks to provide clues why. Please take a moment to vote and comment as appropriate. Thanks!  

Edit: to clarify a full node is software that downloads the full blockchain in order to verify and forward valid blocks and transactions. Bitcoin Core is an example of such software.

Yes. This is exactly an idea I've mentioned here before. In fact, I've planned to write up more in depth reasoning for it. I PMed Gavin a while ago with the thought (he didn't comment back).

I do think we'll ultimately see Bitcoin scale relying primarily on technologies like the Lightning Network. However, I don't think there will be any single silver bullet solution. Instead, we're likely to see a mixture, and using more than one blockchain I feel is likely to play a part. As I said I plan to write more extensively at some point.

No, it's just a 256 bit number. It doesn't "decrypt" anything. However, it's used to sign messages proving a relationship to a particular public key.


Yes.


Yes, that's the part of security which protects user accounts (private keys). It's based on elliptic curve cryptography. The other large part of Bitcoin security is secure hashing algorithms used by miners to provide arbitration for the blockchain.


Nobody needs to show that. It's already known. That's why it's possible to verify a private key without knowing it.


The part where you go off the track is when you say "accessible formula". The elliptic curve used by Bitcoin is Secp256k1. Its points on a graph would appear randomly scattered and the number of points is between 2^255 and 2^256 or about one point for every eight atoms in the universe. If you think you have or can find an accessible formula to compute these points backward from a public key, then yes you could cause problems with the current version of Bitcoin.



Yes, counting up by one for instance. The problem is there are so many possible addresses it would take you (or a computer) an unbelievable amount of time just to count upward and hit one.


Can be ordered or must be ordered?  


The security comes from both the size of the number set and the difficulty in calculating the private key from only a public key.


This presumes such a formula could be discovered.


Let's see it then.

Not exactly. It's reliant on whether or not your transaction remains part of the permanent blockchain. There are a few ways it may not, even when appearing valid at first. As a rule of thumb the deeper a transaction is buried in the blockchain the more likely it is to be permanently valid. A simple way to think of it is, 0 confs is fine for trivial amounts you don't care about being reversed, say a dollar or two. Higher amounts should have at least 1 conf, which is about 1 million times safer than 0 confs. Each additional block adds several degrees more safety, and after 6 it's safe to consider the transaction permanent (under normal network circumstances).

To understand more you'd need to know a bit about networking and Sybil attacks, as well as how mining works. The problem is you can't call VISA to determine if a txn is valid. A computer network provides all arbitration, and there are ways clever thieves can manipulate that situation to their advantage. It's not generally worth it for a cup of coffee, but for higher amounts it could be. That said, if you have a connection to blockchain.info, which seems well connected, and see a valid txn come through you can be relatively sure it's okay and will confirm, especially for smaller amounts. There are projects (like greenaddress.it) looking to make 0 confs quite safe, by being based on something other than normal blockchain txns.

Do you call it dog house or doghouse?

As a natural progression of English words commonly used together often join to form a new single word, or compound word. Satoshi used block chain because that made the most sense then. Prior to 2005 there certainly were no blockchains around. What usually happens is words start as two independent words like school bus, or rail way. Then people add a hyphen like rail-way. Eventually this merges into the single word: railway. It's "most correct" I believe to denote each stage as it happens in print over time.

We should probably be calling it block chain right now because most people still don't even know what crypto currency is. However, many of us that live and breathe this stuff daily have already skipped any hyphenated forms and went straight to blockchain based cryptocurrency

I don't think that's very likely. Attacking the system isn't without risk. It would be hard to pull off such a large undertaking without ever being exposed, which then subjects the attackers to whatever backlash there is, political or otherwise, from a growing global community with increasing stakes in the system, all for a risky maneuver which might not amount to more than a temporary network inconvenience.


I was responding to this:


There is no need to spread double spends or utilize transaction malleability. It only takes one inconsistent transaction, of any form, to create a fork. Once you have two chains your vision for the attack could commence. Adding further inconsistencies within either of the two extending chains would cause further splits, wasting valuable hashing power for an attacker trying to keep two relatively similar length, but different, chains.


That's a way the network could break out of that attack, actually. Say things were proceeding normally and an attacker gaining 51% forked the chain, then worked to keep each about equal length. If there was some agreement compelling say 25% of the "honest" network to create an inconsequentially inconsistent, but valid third fork the attacker would quickly find it difficult to maintain equal lengths. The distribution of hashing power would meander over the three then gravitate toward the longer, least split chain, breaking the tie.

Remember, a valid chain contains all valid transactions and no double spends. As long as there is a longest valid chain, even if the 51% attacker is the one that forked and extended it, everything still works. Now an attacker could use 51% to block or filter transactions etc., things already discussed, but that's not the attack you're describing.

That wouldn't be Bitcoin, but some other protocol/alt-coin. The Bitcoin protocol isn't only the longest chain; it's the longest chain that everyone agrees follows all the protocol rules, which includes not double spending coins and hash values which match all transactions (switched with malleability or not). A hash power advantage doesn't enable the circumvention of that.

Edit: I just got what you're saying. That would be a bit of a problem if the attacker could maintain 51% for a long period of time. Multiple conflicting transactions would break the attack, though, as there would be multiple orphan chains, but maintaining two chains of approximately equal length with one fork would mean users in the real world would need to wait to see what was the "real version of reality". I think most 51% risk comes from pooled miners, which in a stressful situation (like that of GHash.io) could migrate away, removing the hash power advantage before long.

A great detailed post as usual D&T.

Yes, I think the 7tps was meant as a technical maximum assuming 1 input and 2 outputs (1 to destination, and 1 back for change) for 225 bytes.

I agree 1MB blocks unnecessarily hinder Bitcoin, and although I don't see much difference in the potential for global value between 10tps and 20tps, seeing as VISA alone does 2,000 tps on average, I've revised my signature advertisement down from 7tps

"pro" widening its lead

Classy.

Like I said, not all users are the same...

A sampling of 30% of average forum users isn't the same as 30% of the community, and certainly not the ecosystem. In reality individual users and organizations carry different weight. At the end of the day people who believe in Bitcoin (and invest their money into it) will do what they can to protect that value. The fork which has the most economic value will be the one most likely to survive with confidence of those who continue to accept it.

My understanding is a lot of heavily weighted entities in the ecosystem already support Gavin's proposed course. The larger challenge is for the minority to convince enough users - of all sorts, not just ideologues - to stand with them.

As it stands I think we already have, or can gain enough consensus to proceed with minimal discomfort. If there remains a market demand for 1MB blocks afterward it's certainly easy to have that. I don't understand the need to drag along those who want to ensure larger commerce adoption and market confidence. Cryptocurrencies don't operate in a vacuum, and they're not going away.

On a side note I also like Litecoin, another thing I was first to promote in the context of community growing pains.

Yes, see Factom for example, no hard fork needed.

I don't disagree with Wladimir. Anyone who has been on this forum long enough may know I was among the first to propose off-chain transactions as a critical part of scaling Bitcoin. My views there haven't changed. I still believe they will be key.

However, it's also worth noting purely off-chain solutions are likely to look more like present day centralized payment systems than decentralized P2P currency. I believe what we'll ultimately see is a combination of many technological options mobilized to keep Bitcoin working smoothly (Gavin also talks along these lines, see signature link).

I believe it's smartest, though, to build Bitcoin with the most utility possible, as a sort of if all else fails option.

People don't build cars with only one seat and tanks which hold just 2 gallons because people mostly make short trips to grocery stores and often travel alone. Buses and airplanes exist complementing cars, transporting large numbers of people, including cross country. However, the full utility of a car means if no other option exists a standard car can still get that job done. That's how I view Bitcoin. Nobody knows exactly how the future will look, but it won't be black versus white. If more alternatives ease the transaction load on Bitcoin then everybody still wins.

Gavin's latest size limiting plan doesn't alone account for handling all of the world's transactions; not by quite a long shot.

Raising the number of blocks alone doesn't solve the problem of global usage. Litecoin already has 4 times as many blocks on average over time as Bitcoin, meaning it can already support more users than Bitcoin with its copied 1MB limit. But it can't support global usage either without raising its block size, which could very well happen, regardless what the Bitcoin community does.

This is really simple to me.

If you ask all 'anti' fork folks if they hold Bitcoin with an expectation of eventually being part of a large global group of users they will probably say yes (they don't expect to only be able to transact with friends). This is what gives bitcoins value and expectation of higher future value. Therefore holding bitcoins == belief in global user base.

At the same time the anti group wants Bitcoin to remain decentralized. However, nobody has proposed making it centralized.

The anti group isn't arguing this. They are arguing for protection from Bitcoin becoming centralized. However, how to protect Bitcoin from becoming centralized was never spelled out as 'it must never transmit over 1MB blocks'.

It's true keeping 1MB blocks reduces risk of centralization, but so does 1KB blocks. Both of these limits are unworkable for supporting a global user base, but only the 1KB block is more obviously problematic at current usage.

The anti group seems to have a disconnect between present day usage and future usage.

As Gavin said raising the size in line with current capability and expectation that technology at least continues to follow Moore's Law and Nielsen's Law seems a reasonable compromise. What is there otherwise? Not much.

Satoshi is the one who decided on Bitcoin's high inflation rate in the early years, which I believe was (wisely) done to distribute the currency widely; Bitcoin, or any currency, is more valuable the more users it has.

Development discussions currently happen on the IRC channel for Bitcoin, the development mailing list, the /r/bitcoin subreddit at Reddit, and this very forum (more serious discussions usually are to be found in the Development & Technical section).