"Bitcoin" XT Status Update

[Nxtblg]

I'm obviously trolling Nxtblg, for taking the precautionary principle as applied to block size and extrapolating a general position of 'no one should ever do anything dangerous, and especially not visit the moon.'

I figgered as much. To be honest, I think it's a flawed principle because it's much more restrictive than those good ol' maxims of prudence that automatically left wiggle room for "leaps of faith" and other kinds of risk-taking.

But that's me. I stand by what I wrote earlier: "whatever keeps your boat afloat." You're wise to stick with your criteria; I'll stick with mine.

To be honest, I did download the full-node XT QT but I stopped running it when I saws that the Chinese miners didn't want to sign on. By that decision criterion, I pegged XT as yet another fad destined for the Land of Forgotten Fads. The way things look now, I might well have been wrong - but I'm still waiting it out & using Multibit.

It's a better (more entertaining) response than the silence he deserved.  Why you are white knighting for him?  Butthurt about theymos taking XT out back and shooting it, or what?

Well, I'll say one thing: my limited intellectual resources do make it feasible for me to recognize when I'm wrong.

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[BCwinning]

been saying it all along, it's gavins coin not bitcoin.
and I'm purposely running core just to give my vote.

[iCEBREAKER]

I pegged XT as yet another fad destined for the Land of Forgotten Fads.

Bingo!  Thanks for playing along and being a good sport.   

[bat26]

With all the damn threads, it seems like half of them, I think we know the f#$&king status.

lol

[newrad]

Are there any exchanges with Bitcoin xt at the moment?

[iCEBREAKER]

Big NACK for XT from the creator of Litecoin:

If you thought Litecoin and altcoins dilute the value of Bitcoin, wait til you see what BTCXT does to the price! Actually, the market is already giving us a hint as to why BitcoinXT is such a bad idea.

A more responsible option would have been to set the trigger threshold at a real super majority of 90% miner vote. If it was set at 90%, the chance of a bad fork would be far less likely. But Mike & Gavin knows that there's no way they can get 90% support, so they would rather risk hurting Bitcoin in order to get their way. Mike has even mention using checkpoints to force the issue if XT doesn't get the hashrate majority (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1089283.0). That is scary.

[Alley]

Are there any exchanges with Bitcoin xt at the moment?

Any exchange that has bitcoin has XT.  Their still on the same chain.

[canth]

Are there any exchanges with Bitcoin xt at the moment?

Any exchange that has bitcoin has XT.  Their still on the same chain.

Everyone's on the chain until Jan 2016. At the earliest.

[canth]

Big NACK for XT from the creator of Litecoin:

If you thought Litecoin and altcoins dilute the value of Bitcoin, wait til you see what BTCXT does to the price! Actually, the market is already giving us a hint as to why BitcoinXT is such a bad idea.

A more responsible option would have been to set the trigger threshold at a real super majority of 90% miner vote. If it was set at 90%, the chance of a bad fork would be far less likely. But Mike & Gavin knows that there's no way they can get 90% support, so they would rather risk hurting Bitcoin in order to get their way. Mike has even mention using checkpoints to force the issue if XT doesn't get the hashrate majority (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1089283.0). That is scary.

Charlie Lee ‏@SatoshiLite  2h2 hours ago
@akirodic @coinbase I support increasing the block size also, just not the way BitcoinXT is doing it.

BitcoinXT BIP 101 forks becomes a non-issue if the core devs decide to increase the blocksize, as Coinbase and Charlie Lee and many others believe it should be. They've got months until January rolls around - let's see if they can get it together before then.

[iCEBREAKER]

BitcoinXT BIP 101 forks becomes a non-issue if the core devs decide to increase the blocksize

The core devs have multiple BIPs for bigger blocks working their way through the proper channels.

Quick, move the goalposts again so as to make XT appear reasonable despite its checkpoints/spying/TorBlock/"final call"/weak "75%" threshold/etc.

[Monopoly]

This BitcoinXT thing seems like an interesting new project, and I think we should be discussing it here since two big former BTC contributors (Gavin and Mike) are backing it.

Hello,

As you may have noticed, Bitcoin unfortunately has run out of capacity due to someone DoS attacking the network. We now get a preview of coming attractions (so far that means, people complaining that their transactions are not confirming).

Gavin has prepared patches that implement a hard fork in January for bigger blocks. I spent the last couple of days testing and doing a second code review of the patches, this revealed some further bugs and I have sent him patches to fix them. However Gavin is on vacation and so not much will happen until he is back next week.

In the past week we also found that Gavin's XT node was under attack via Tor. In case this was a trial run, I have prepared a patch to help with that a bit, though DoS attacks are an ongoing matter of concern that require significant effort to raise the bar. I will put that patch into the next XT release.

I will try and find time to look at ways to resolve the current tx flooding attack in the next day or two. I suspect it can be mitigated through heavier reliance on coin age priority, as coin age is not something that can be trivially bought on the spot, unlike fee priority. If anyone wants to beat me to it, please go ahead.

thanks,
-mike

This project can damage to Bitcoin network . how it is interesting ? .... Anyway
Now , We know problems and the question is what is the final solution ? Is there any possible solution ?

[canth]

BitcoinXT BIP 101 forks becomes a non-issue if the core devs decide to increase the blocksize

The core devs have multiple BIPs for bigger blocks working their way through the proper channels.

Quick, move the goalposts again so as to make XT appear reasonable despite its checkpoints/spying/TorBlock/"final call"/weak "75%" threshold/etc.

I'm so glad there's a proper channels police in bitcoin to save us all.

Yes, I'm well aware there are BIPs although some of them are a joke and you know it. Pieter's unnumbered BIP doesn't increase the block size to 2MB until 4 years from now, Garza's 2MB BIP 102 seems a joke given how well it was accepted by the other core devs. Things are progressing really well - I'm sure they'll come to consensus any year now.

[iCEBREAKER]

This project can damage to Bitcoin network . how it is interesting ? .... Anyway
We know the problems and the question is what is the final solution ?

The project is interesting because it *might* damage Bitcoin.  Not many things can do that.

The solution is running and mining blocks with NotXT nodes.

Contact your favorite pool ops/devs and ask them to add a port for NotXT miners.

When XT is lulled into a false sense of security, we spring the trap and kill it.

[canth]

This project can damage to Bitcoin network . how it is interesting ? .... Anyway
We know the problems and the question is what is the final solution ?

The project is interesting because it *might* damage Bitcoin.  Not many things can do that.

The solution is running and mining blocks with NotXT nodes.

Contact your favorite pool ops/devs and ask them to add a port for NotXT miners.

When XT is lulled into a false sense of security, we spring the trap and kill it.

It's the NoXT supporters who could do the most damage, actually. By itself XT either gets to 75% or it doesn't. With NoXT, it's more likely that we could get to a true 50/50 split for mining power and yet still trigger larger blocks. That'll cause all sorts of drama and for most of us will just mean that we won't do transactions for a few days while the mess sorts itself out. To use a classic movie quote:

"Konovalov Crewman: Torpedo, Dead Ahead!"

"Andrei Bonovia: [to Captain Tupolev] You arrogant ass! You've killed us!"

[iCEBREAKER]

BitcoinXT BIP 101 forks becomes a non-issue if the core devs decide to increase the blocksize

The core devs have multiple BIPs for bigger blocks working their way through the proper channels.

Quick, move the goalposts again so as to make XT appear reasonable despite its checkpoints/spying/TorBlock/"final call"/weak "75%" threshold/etc.

I'm so glad there's a proper channels police in bitcoin to save us all.

Yes, I'm well aware there are BIPs although some of them are a joke and you know it. Pieter's unnumbered BIP doesn't increase the block size to 2MB until 4 years from now, Garza's 2MB BIP 102 seems a joke given how well it was accepted by the other core devs. Things are progressing really well - I'm sure they'll come to consensus any year now.

Your disdain for the value of the adversarial process (IE fighting features) is noted, as is your preference for controversial, dramatic "reckless" vanity forks.

The proper channels of the BIP process have kept Bitcoin going this long, and are based on time-tested FOSS best practices.

You disdain for them and eagerness to grant Mike "Final Call" Heam unlimited power are noted as well.  

[dooglus]

Are there any exchanges with Bitcoin xt at the moment?

That would be an interesting experiment:

Set up an exchange such that before the fork all deposits of BTC credit the user's BTC and BXT accounts with the amount of the deposit. Then let the users trade BTC for BXT on a market. Forbid withdrawals until after the fork.

So I deposit 1 BTC today, get 1 BTC and 1 BXT in my exchange accounts, and sell the 1 BXT for 1 BTC. So I have 2 BTC and 2 BXT in my exchange accounts.

After the fork the exchange is careful to make sure that all withdrawals are valid only on the fork on which they belong, so I withdraw my 2 BTC and have doubled my money - so long as the BXT fork doesn't "win" (in which case I have lost 1 BTC, and the guy I traded with has doubled up).

There would need to be a rule about what happens if the fork doesn't happen by a certain date. I guess all trades would be cancelled and everyone would get their BTC back. Or alternatively it could be considered that since the fork didn't happen, all BXT account balances are worthless and BTC balances stand.

The exchange rate on such a market would be a much better indicator of how the economic majority feels about the BTC vs. BXT debate than anything we currently have.

I remember something similar happened after MtGox froze withdrawals, before it became obvious that MtGox dollars were worthless.

[iCEBREAKER]

This project can damage to Bitcoin network . how it is interesting ? .... Anyway
We know the problems and the question is what is the final solution ?

The project is interesting because it *might* damage Bitcoin.  Not many things can do that.

The solution is running and mining blocks with NotXT nodes.

Contact your favorite pool ops/devs and ask them to add a port for NotXT miners.

When XT is lulled into a false sense of security, we spring the trap and kill it.

It's the NoXT supporters who could do the most damage, actually. By itself XT either gets to 75% or it doesn't. With NoXT, it's more likely that we could get to a true 50/50 split for mining power and yet still trigger larger blocks. That'll cause all sorts of drama and for most of us will just mean that we won't do transactions for a few days while the mess sorts itself out. To use a classic movie quote:

"Konovalov Crewman: Torpedo, Dead Ahead!"

"Andrei Bonovia: [to Captain Tupolev] You arrogant ass! You've killed us!"

Great movie, bad analogy.  

Ever heard How Reddit Got Huge?
I do expect that NotXT will backfire.

'We fake it, until they make it' is certainly a factor.

But every bit of faked support gives the economic veto power (IE MPEX's GavinCoin short) more leverage.

I don't think it will even get to that point.

If NotXT (and the devastating addition risk it creates for first mover defections) doesn't sufficiently demoralize the Gavinistas, the FUD about XT's hidden anti-Tor/pro-panopticon code will.  

[canth]

'We fake it, until they make it' is certainly a factor.

But every bit of faked support gives the economic veto power (IE MPEX's GavinCoin short) more leverage.

I don't think it will even get to that point.

If NotXT (and the devastating addition risk it creates for first mover defections) doesn't sufficiently demoralize the Gavinistas, the FUD about XT's hidden anti-Tor/pro-panopticon code will.  

So XT puts out a proposal requiring a vote. NoXT gambles with everyone's value using deceipt while hoping that it doesn't put the hashing power over the top. There can be no argument here - this is the riskiest part of the entire endeavor.

[canth]

Are there any exchanges with Bitcoin xt at the moment?

That would be an interesting experiment:

Set up an exchange such that before the fork all deposits of BTC credit the user's BTC and BXT accounts with the amount of the deposit. Then let the users trade BTC for BXT on a market. Forbid withdrawals until after the fork.

So I deposit 1 BTC today, get 1 BTC and 1 BXT in my exchange accounts, and sell the 1 BXT for 1 BTC. So I have 2 BTC and 2 BXT in my exchange accounts.

After the fork the exchange is careful to make sure that all withdrawals are valid only on the fork on which they belong, so I withdraw my 2 BTC and have doubled my money - so long as the BXT fork doesn't "win" (in which case I have lost 1 BTC, and the guy I traded with has doubled up).

There would need to be a rule about what happens if the fork doesn't happen by a certain date. I guess all trades would be cancelled and everyone would get their BTC back. Or alternatively it could be considered that since the fork didn't happen, all BXT account balances are worthless and BTC balances stand.

The exchange rate on such a market would be a much better indicator of how the economic majority feels about the BTC vs. BXT debate than anything we currently have.

I remember something similar happened after MtGox froze withdrawals, before it became obvious that MtGox dollars were worthless.

If Bitcoin forks in January and there isn't something close to a 50/50 split, you can be damn sure that miners, merchants, exchanges are going to pick the winner real fast, no matter which side it's on. The market you are talking about would evaporate nearly instantly.

[crazywack]

Or put the NOTXT Nodes back on core and let XT sit at 5-7% until they give up and relize their shit isn't going anywhere and they find a better solution.