not sure where you're going with this.
if the faster tx is made more useful for certain type of transactions, people will be transferring an according amount of BTC they want to use for this purpose from their hot wallet.
if related SC offers faster tx without compromising security why then would the feature not be integrated to BTC core?
your first question seem contradictory with the second. assuming the value proposition of Bitcoin is fine as is right now, why then would "people from all over the world" want to transfer all the BTC from their cold wallet to a faster TX SC.
I generally appreciate your contribution to BTC related matter but I can't shake off this strange feeling of dishonesty that I get from reading some of your comments since yesterday. It seems as if you're trying too hard to attach ill intentions to a group of people that have generally served us well in the past.
you're missing the overall pt. it doesn't matter what the feature is that gives the SC an advantage. first off, the advantage could be gained b/c the Blockstream core devs have preferentially worked on that feature for the SC as opposed to the main chain. then if that SC takes off, as JR said, they might block that feature from being incorporated into the main chain. the problem is that there are too many of them working under the same roof. the scenario where that might happen is if that SC has its own altcoin that they've invested in that's riding along with the transferred BTC. anything i say has bias as i'm invested in Bitcoin just like most everyone else around here. the difference being, that i'm not the one recommending changes. i invested under one set of assumptions and imo, this changes things potentially. |
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lol, none of them wanted to tackle 3 of my questions and they got downvoted. granted the last one was speculative but still:
[–]cypherdoc2 -1 points 2 hours ago
is there such a thing as overdevelopment?
Bitcoin has so much potential to change the world simply as it is: a new form of money.
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[–]cypherdoc2 -2 points 2 hours ago
let's say one SC gets popular, say from faster tx times. it becomes apparent that you should move to the SC. now all the ppl who have cold wallets scattered round the globe have to go dig them out and make a special tx to transfer them to the SC. this is not only a hassle but a potential anonymity risk. after doing so, a non economic actor decides to take advantage of the fact that this merge mined chain is worth destroying. they might be successful especially if there's a transition in hashing protection going on simultaneously.
how would you address this concern?
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[–]cypherdoc2 -4 points 2 hours ago
i keep saying this but i don't think the market will like a constant loss of BTC over time from Sidescams. we already have a perception of not having enough coins from mainstream economists. just heard one say this last weekend at Hasher's United.
it could cause a paradox in price action; down. is this what we're seeing right now?
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If you really believe in the potential of digital currencies to take over practically every economic transaction, you'd realize that the Bitcoin protocol CAN'T adopt every feature developed in sidechains because some will be conflicting (fast vs slow block times for example).
i don't believe that Bitcoin is suitable to take over all those activities. i see the main problem in today's world to be centered on unlimited money for the few. Bitcoin solves this and could replace gold as a world reserve currency. in that sense, it doesn't need tweeking. I'm glad that a significant portion of the dev community is coalescing behind sidechains and honestly I think that part of why they need a company is because of the impossibility of this community to arrive at consensus as individuals.
you're ignoring the financial moral hazard involved with them running a for profit. it will distort more than you think. We can't even agree to raise the block size limit -- a limitation that, if unchanged will either dramatically limit Bitcoin's applicability, or will cause such high txn fees that a worldwide Bitcoin will be limited to high value transactions. Either case opens up all kinds of avenues for traditional finances, fiat currencies, etc. And the only downside is that the home user MAY not be able to run a full node.
if Bitcoin becomes a Bitcoin Standard, it will force down leverage in the fiat space, which would still benefit mankind greatly. it's also the easier path of resistance to the existing TPTB. Well let me break it to you, if Bitcoin is so unsuccessful as to not require greater block size then hobbyists will be gone -- the radical, money revolution that Bitcoin promises will be unfulfilled and these people will be on the the next new thing. And if Bitcoin is wildly, globally, successful with today's block size a single transaction will be so expensive individuals will own zero coins and so be uninterested in running a full node.
I mean come on... If I was a tinfoil hat wearing type, I'd really begin to suspect some of you guys.
i repeat, it will force down leverage in the fiat space, |
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the tenets that Satoshi did get right were the economic ones, mainly that of a fixed supply with a fair distribution.
the market has invested accordingly based on those. by allowing SC's to change or distort those economic assumption will cause confusion and uncertainty in the Bitcoin price.
we're seeing it right now.
I don't see how SC's can distort the original bitcoin fixed supply rules without being a total sham that no one will adopt. If side chains allow creation of new coins/tokens not originating through the 'two way peg' then why would anyone in their right mind use them? Nobody would use that sidechain if those new coins/tokens were not backed in some other manner. Edit: would appreciate an answer to this one please  Sidescams can propose any economic model they want, no different than altcoins. unfortunately, some ppl will be lured over to them and lose BTC. when lots of that activity occurs over years, then i will propose a truly revolutionary idea; let's totally separate these Sidescams technically from the main chain so as to not let ppl lose their BTC! everyone will then say, "great idea!" Just like everything else in this world from used cars to altcoins you can get scammed. One "sidescam" does not mean sidechains are a bad idea. The classic example of a valuable sidechain is one that allows native support for other securities, bonds, backed commodities, including atomic anonymous decentralized exchange. This can be done more efficiently than overlay coins. You could imagine geographically isolated sidechains that take alleviate the scalability issues with Bitcoin. You could imagine a chain that orders potential transactions on an average of a 5 second window, potentially in a pseudo-centralized manner. For example, the entity that found the prior block gets to order potential transactions until the next block is found. This could solve the zero-confirmation problem. You could imagine something supporting decentralized data storage, or any other collective enterprise from DACs to web forums. Demurrage pays your monthly membership fees (which pay the developers of the system), but you can buy and sell data storage out of this account so if you offer enough storage into the system your monthly fees are paid and you even make money. You could imagine "inverting" the bitcoin database so the UTXO set is what is mined, and the blockchain is the history of UTXOs. This and other features could make a blockchain that is much lighter-weight for non-miners. The advantage here is that hardware wallets could be made smaller, for less money and more functionality put on the wallet vs the POS. I think that services that use microtransactions haven't appeared yet because it is a totally new concept, because it is inconvenient with bitcoin, and because they are accused of being blockchain spam. But, I think we will start seeing them on the bitcoin ledger because altcoins are failing and because the SEC may start looking at appcoins (or at least pre-sales of them) as a security. Then the blockchain will truly go exponential and you guys will get to experience the fruits of your labor to marginalize these technologies. Maybe the real Tragedy of the Commons is 'devs gotta dev'.
We have this great open source project so why not tinker with it? I've always said that "the geeks fail to understand that which they hath created". Bitcoin has so much potential to change the world simply as it is: a new form of money. Why so much emphasis on other asset uses I'll never understand.
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where is the AMA? wasn't it supposed to start 12 min ago?
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Cypher, I respect your opinion but am at a loss on this one with where you are. The sidechains, while this will surely be a major change to bitcoin is absolutely necessary to ensure the role of bitcoin as the leader in the space. It also ensures that the fixed supply we seek with an e-currency is actually a possibility. At the moment, "cheap" alts are taking a decent amount of funding that would otherwise be going into bitcoin. What exactly is the issue if some of the bitcoins are lost? Better in that situation than an alt coin simply evaporates. In both situations wealth evaporates, but only in sidechain scenario does wealth increase (of bitcoin holders) irregardless of an evaporation. In regards to coding with a profit model, I think Greg said it best: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2k070h/enabling_blockchain_innovations_with_pegged/clh5wbvit already is the leader. and i'm not fan of altscams as you should know. they are taking much needed capital away from Bitcoin but this seems to be resolving itself slowly. nothing wrong with patience is there? i keep saying this but i don't think the market will like a constant loss of BTC over time from Sidescams. we already have a perception of not having enough coins from mainstream economists. just heard one say this last weekend at Hasher's United. it could cause a paradox in price action; down. |
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sure you are right, if possible avoiding forking is a good thing, but take into account that there are certain type of features that require a fork. if memory serves gavin recently proposed an hard fork to introduce a 50% a year automatic increase of the max block size. edit: found gavin's proposal https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/10/a-scalability-roadmap/but Gavin's proposal is dev on the main chain which is consistent with the past. you're right, again The first time I heard about SCs project was while listening to let's talk bitcoin E99(or even an earlier nee, 77 maybe?). In such episode Adam Back said the he was concerned over digital scarcity, a Bitcoin property harmed by the proliferation of altcoins. Secondly he said that to sustain a proper level of innovation the community need to find a way to introduce changes into Bitcoin in more secure way. With "secure way" I think he meat having a proper test-bed, different from the test network, to check the impact of new changes. He thinks that SCs is a solution to both problems. I don't know if he's right or wrong, but it seems to me that he cares about Bitcoin future. SC's can't ever be an independent testbed separate from Bitcoin itself. they will be linked by the code, security, and economic assumptions of their relative values and any market evaluation will make an assessment of the entire ecosystem; Bitcoin+SC's in aggregate. nothing will be learned from looking at a SC in isolation b/c of this economic linkage. |
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there is a real practical drawback to Sidescams as well.
let's say one gets popular, say from faster tx times. it becomes apparent that you should move to the SC. now all the ppl who have cold wallets scattered round the globe have to go dig them out and make a special tx to transfer them to the SC. this is not only a hassle but a potential anonymity risk. after doing so, a non economic actor decides to take advantage of the fact that this merge mined chain is worth destroying. they'll probably be successful especially if there's a transition in hashing protection going on simultaneously.
no, better any innovations get built into Core so as to not disrupt everyones long term storage plans and their investment assumptions.
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the tenets that Satoshi did get right were the economic ones, mainly that of a fixed supply with a fair distribution.
the market has invested accordingly based on those. by allowing SC's to change or distort those economic assumption will cause confusion and uncertainty in the Bitcoin price.
we're seeing it right now.
I don't see how SC's can distort the original bitcoin fixed supply rules without being a total sham that no one will adopt. If side chains allow creation of new coins/tokens not originating through the 'two way peg' then why would anyone in their right mind use them? Edit: would appreciate an answer to this one please Sidescams can propose any economic model they want, no different than altcoins. unfortunately, some ppl will be lured over to them and lose BTC. when lots of that activity occurs over years, then i will propose a truly revolutionary idea; let's totally separate these Sidescams technically from the main chain so as to not let ppl lose their BTC! everyone will then say, "great idea!" |
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Sure it would be great if these people did the work as charity, but its hard to demand that, especially for a project with a 6B market cap. Can no $ flow to contributors?
Many for-profit companies contribute meaningfully to open source.
In this case, the company will provide open source patches enabling sidechains to Bitcoin, and spend $ to create the consensus to get it actually included. This might be the hardest part. At that point, anyone can create their own sidechains. I like the Conformal model. They make money from Coinvoice, and btcd is the Bitcoin implementation they use to run their business. They eat their own dogfood, and donate the code into the community, but don't make money from other people using btcd. I wish more companies would develop alternate implementations using this model. also, they didn't require a fork to do their thing. sure you are right, if possible avoiding forking is a good thing, but take into account that there are certain type of features that require a fork. if memory serves gavin recently proposed an hard fork to introduce a 50% a year automatic increase of the max block size. edit: found gavin's proposal https://bitcoinfoundation.org/2014/10/a-scalability-roadmap/but Gavin's proposal is dev on the main chain which is consistent with the past. |
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Sure it would be great if these people did the work as charity, but its hard to demand that, especially for a project with a 6B market cap. Can no $ flow to contributors?
Many for-profit companies contribute meaningfully to open source.
In this case, the company will provide open source patches enabling sidechains to Bitcoin, and spend $ to create the consensus to get it actually included. This might be the hardest part. At that point, anyone can create their own sidechains. I like the Conformal model. They make money from Coinvoice, and btcd is the Bitcoin implementation they use to run their business. They eat their own dogfood, and donate the code into the community, but don't make money from other people using btcd. I wish more companies would develop alternate implementations using this model. also, they didn't require a fork to do their thing. |
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Yes, I'm if the belief that if Bitcoin fails, they all fail: alts and SC's.
In fact. I believe the price drop we've seen in the last 24h since the SC announcement is a direct vote of non confidence in what they're doing. I've been very vocal since I heard about them doing this project with a for profit company. The dangers of this are so obvious, Austin Hill's response to me on Twitter giving a hint. Can you imagine him saying that to me after SC's have been established and I inquire about some major change they want to implement that might profit their company? I think the market is worried about this very thing.
this is bold, pun intended Not really. Think about it. What they're proposing makes me nervous. Why? Because they're monkeying with my money as if they somehow know better. Nobody wants that. They want certainty and confidence that this won't happen. In fact, the " bargain" I signed up for was exactly this. Yet here we are with a group of core devs et al who feel Bitcoin isn't good enough for them. And they think their for profit company is perfectly ok way to go about changing the bargain. Almost sounds like your new Fed. Respectfully, I don't think you've got your head on straight in this one. These people are acting to preserve the value you have on the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin HAS issues, with micropayments, with anonymity, with atomic exchange, and with the simple issue of having to run a full node (and all the CPU, network and disk that implies) just to accept payments (ok I know about bitpay, coinbase, but then you aren't actually accepting payments are you? You are trusting a third party). Without sidechains it is very likely that altcoins will be eventually successful in filling these and other application specific roles, which will have a slow but ultimately very significant effect on the Bitcoin price as "value" is put into these other altcoins. Or centralized solutions will be successful in filling these roles. These places will inevitably go fractional reserve, increasing the effective (if not the actual) number of Bitcoins and depressing price. Additionally, they will periodically do a runner and engage in all the other practices that Bitcoin was made to avoid. Essentially, if centralized solutions are needed to fulfill functions other than fiat-BTC exchange then Bitcoin has failed. TL;DR: Sidechains preserve the value of your coins by encouraging limited supply. PS: And as others have said, nobody can use side chain technology to steal your coins if you don't put them on a side chain in the first place. and you see no problem with it being designed and run by a for profit company? Sure it would be great if these people did the work as charity, but its hard to demand that, especially for a project with a 6B market cap. Can no $ flow to contributors? Many for-profit companies contribute meaningfully to open source. In this case, the company will provide open source patches enabling sidechains to Bitcoin, and spend $ to create the consensus to get it actually included. This might be the hardest part. At that point, anyone can create their own sidechains. have you read u/historians comments on Reddit? lots of good stuff in there. for instance, what if the involved core devs decide, or are told, that any signif innovations are to be directed toward a SC they happen to have invested in instead of Bitcoin Core? ossification excuses could also be interpreted to mean that innovations proposed by nullc, et al haven't been good enough to implement. i do find it interesting that the price tanked right after their announcement. the market doesn't like confusion which will only get worse if we get a bunch of SC's with different economic assumptions that could siphon off BTC to itself to the detriment of the main chain. |
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the tenets that Satoshi did get right were the economic ones, mainly that of a fixed supply with a fair distribution.
the market has invested accordingly based on those. by allowing SC's to change or distort those economic assumption will cause confusion and uncertainty in the Bitcoin price.
we're seeing it right now.
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Bitcoin HAS issues, with micropayments, with anonymity, with atomic exchange, and with the simple issue of having to run a full node (and all the CPU, network and disk that implies) just to accept payments (ok I know about bitpay, coinbase, but then you aren't actually accepting payments are you? You are trusting a third party).
maybe Bitcoin can't be everything to everybody but right now i see growth and usage spreading. that's good enough for me. simplicity can be good. |
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Yes, I'm if the belief that if Bitcoin fails, they all fail: alts and SC's.
In fact. I believe the price drop we've seen in the last 24h since the SC announcement is a direct vote of non confidence in what they're doing. I've been very vocal since I heard about them doing this project with a for profit company. The dangers of this are so obvious, Austin Hill's response to me on Twitter giving a hint. Can you imagine him saying that to me after SC's have been established and I inquire about some major change they want to implement that might profit their company? I think the market is worried about this very thing.
this is bold, pun intended Not really. Think about it. What they're proposing makes me nervous. Why? Because they're monkeying with my money as if they somehow know better. Nobody wants that. They want certainty and confidence that this won't happen. In fact, the " bargain" I signed up for was exactly this. Yet here we are with a group of core devs et al who feel Bitcoin isn't good enough for them. And they think their for profit company is perfectly ok way to go about changing the bargain. Almost sounds like your new Fed. Respectfully, I don't think you've got your head on straight in this one. These people are acting to preserve the value you have on the Bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin HAS issues, with micropayments, with anonymity, with atomic exchange, and with the simple issue of having to run a full node (and all the CPU, network and disk that implies) just to accept payments (ok I know about bitpay, coinbase, but then you aren't actually accepting payments are you? You are trusting a third party). Without sidechains it is very likely that altcoins will be eventually successful in filling these and other application specific roles, which will have a slow but ultimately very significant effect on the Bitcoin price as "value" is put into these other altcoins. Or centralized solutions will be successful in filling these roles. These places will inevitably go fractional reserve, increasing the effective (if not the actual) number of Bitcoins and depressing price. Additionally, they will periodically do a runner and engage in all the other practices that Bitcoin was made to avoid. Essentially, if centralized solutions are needed to fulfill functions other than fiat-BTC exchange then Bitcoin has failed. TL;DR: Sidechains preserve the value of your coins by encouraging limited supply. PS: And as others have said, nobody can use side chain technology to steal your coins if you don't put them on a side chain in the first place. and you see no problem with it being designed and run by a for profit company? |
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Perhaps the group of core devs are wising up to the fact they if Bitcoin is stagnant it will be quickly made obsolete by NXT. Not that these sidechains are a guarantee against that, but they could help delay this event.
I thought you promised never to return to this thread ever again to be seen pumping NXT? Not that you're not welcome to be here mind you. |
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Yes, I'm if the belief that if Bitcoin fails, they all fail: alts and SC's.
In fact. I believe the price drop we've seen in the last 24h since the SC announcement is a direct vote of non confidence in what they're doing. I've been very vocal since I heard about them doing this project with a for profit company. The dangers of this are so obvious, Austin Hill's response to me on Twitter giving a hint. Can you imagine him saying that to me after SC's have been established and I inquire about some major change they want to implement that might profit their company? I think the market is worried about this very thing.
this is bold, pun intended Not really. Think about it. What they're proposing makes me nervous. Why? Because they're monkeying with my money as if they somehow know better. Nobody wants that. They want certainty and confidence that this won't happen. In fact, the " bargain" I signed up for was exactly this. Yet here we are with a group of core devs et al who feel Bitcoin isn't good enough for them. And they think their for profit company is perfectly ok way to go about changing the bargain. Almost sounds like your new Fed. |
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Maybe the real Tragedy of the Commons is 'devs gotta dev'.
We have this great open source project so why not tinker with it? I've always said that "the geeks fail to understand that which they hath created". Bitcoin has so much potential to change the world simply as it is: a new form of money. Why so much emphasis on other asset uses I'll never understand.
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Yes, I'm if the belief that if Bitcoin fails, they all fail: alts and SC's.
In fact. I believe the price drop we've seen in the last 24h since the SC announcement is a direct vote of non confidence in what they're doing. I've been very vocal since I heard about them doing this project with a for profit company. The dangers of this are so obvious, Austin Hill's response to me on Twitter giving a hint. Can you imagine him saying that to me after SC's have been established and I inquire about some major change they want to implement that might profit their company? I think the market is worried about this very thing.
Initially I thought the whole idea was coming from Back but according to nullc, he was the one to spear head this. I've had many public disagreements with nullc for a long time around the economics of Bitcoin and what I've perceived to be a dismissive attitude toward non dev opinion and a misunderstanding of economics and game theory. The bitcoin.org press centre debacle with Andreas is a great example. I've always wondered why he and Luke were never hired by a Bitcoin company. He claims he's had lots of offers so I have to accept that. But if you watch the Princeton University video on Bitcoin with Ed Felton, you'll see he's kinda different and he admits it . Otoh, I give him major props for contributing so much to bitcoin and our technical understanding of it. He's helped me in that regard and clearly he is respected by the other core devs.
That's what makes this play so interesting. nullc despite his own political deficiencies has managed to apparently recruit Pieter and Matt, both of whom I have the utmost respect for. Mark, I have no clue but he seems to be more emotional about this whole project and has tried to shout me down on reddit several times.
Personally, I think Bitcoin should be left alone to do its thing. It's too early to be monkeying with the code especially by a for profit company despite its members. But i could be wrong too. What they're proposing introduces complexity on a major scale and the effects on mining is unclear and have the potential to disrupt Bitcoin. Despite what they've said, I doubt any of them have significant amounts invested in Bitcoin. Nullc has been surprisingly skeptical of bitcoin and we know Back has publicly admitted he missed it. The others i really wouldn't know. The point is, why let a for profit bunch of guys make changes to the code?
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