Is Bitcointalk a place of free and open discussion?

[HostFat]

The problem is that someone is misrepresenting the word "consensus" in the wrong way.
It is used as something where some developers must agree on, when it is NOT.

Consensus has only a technical meaning to say that the majority of the network, nodes and miners, have come to freely agree to use some rules wrote on a client/software.

Who has wrote this client/software is TOTALLY irrelevant.

[Cubic Earth]

Well the next couple of weeks are going to be interesting, think about all the Chinese miners if they switch and mine bitcoin XT, bitcoin blockchain will not move for days

They will all be mining the same chain until 75% of blocks have signaled support for the XT rules.  If and when there is a greater-than-1MB block, the hashpower supporting the Core chain will only be 25% of what it was moments before, and blocks will only be found every 40 minutes on average.  If 95% of hashpower switches, Core blocks will only be found every 3 hours and 20 minutes.  If the fork happens to occur right after difficulty adjustment and only 5% of the hashpower remains on the Core chain, there would be 3 hour and 20 minute blocks for 7 months.

[AgentofCoin]

The problem is that someone is misrepresenting the word "consensus" in the wrong way.
It is used as something where some developers must agree on, when it is NOT.

Consensus has only a technical meaning to say that the majority of the network, nodes and miners, have come to freely agree to use some rules wrote on a client/software.

Who has wrote this client/software is TOTALLY irrelevant.

I do not know if your above statement is in reference to what I wrote, or someone else, since I did not use the term "Consensus".
So I assume it is not, but in the event it is:

I have not heard of any new implementation of the bitcoin protocol being created by anyone other than the Devs.
My understanding is the Devs publish the updates to the protocol and the miners and community agree to use it or not (the Consensus).
But ultimately, the miners and community will use the new over time. There isn't really a choice for them. All will eventually update.

So the statement that the Devs do not follow Consensus may be correct,
but the fact is they come before and proceed the network consensus since they release the new updates.
Network follows the Devs, not the other way. (Atleast that is how I see it.)

Before the "updates/fixes" are released, the Devs agree on what will go into the next version or not.
That is what I was referring to in my question above.

[achow101]

Well those posts should be considered off topic depending on where they are posted.
 
Think about it this way, bitcoin is defined by the reference implementation which is currently Bitcoin Core. And discussion of Bitcoin should follow the reference implementation and any proposed changes to it. Thus discussion of the hard fork is allowed. Bitcoin XT on the other hand is neither the reference implementation (so not strictly bitcoin as defined by the reference implementation) and is an alternative client which does not belong in Bitcoin Discussion. Therefore theymos is in the right to move or delete posts about XT if they aren't in the right section. Discussion about the client itself should be in the Alternative Client section while discussion about its protocol might be considered as altcoin discussion. However discussion about how the protocol should be changed on bitcoin that also references xt should be allowed to stay in Bitcoin Discussion or Dev and Tech discussing.

I have a question:
In a purely hypothetical situation, let imagine majority of the Devs have decided to raise the 21 million bitcoin cap to a 42 million cap.
And as so, they all in agreement decide to change the bitcoin protocol and etc and cause a hard fork to enable the new 42 million coin cap.
Now since almost all have agreed and proceeded, the community will most likely have to follow, in theory.

Now in that purely hypothetical situation, Bitcoin Core is no longer actually Bitcoin Core, but Bitcoin Core Version 2.
Would you say that any discussion by the Devs in this forum (which doesn't actually happen usually) about the above situation
be considered "not strictly bitcoin" and "off topic" since it is technically Bitcoin Core Version 2, and thus should not be allowed in this forum, before the hardfork?

I would say that the discussion by the devs would not be considered off topic because they would be either discussing a proposed change to the protocol  or discussing a client that has been agreed upon to be the reference implementation (or will become it) even before the hardfork. Of course it would be off topic if the discussion didn't take place in the right section (e.g. dev and tech discussion). Additionally, if the client is being discussed before any such protocol change has been agreed upon and a definitive date given for said change, then it would be "not strictly bitcoin" since it has not yet been determined whether that client will be the reference implementation and the change has not yet been agreed upon.

[AgentofCoin]

I would say that the discussion by the devs would not be considered off topic because they would be either discussing a proposed change to the protocol  or discussing a client that has been agreed upon to be the reference implementation (or will become it) even before the hardfork. Of course it would be off topic if the discussion didn't take place in the right section (e.g. dev and tech discussion).Additionally, if the client is being discussed before any such protocol change has been agreed upon and a definitive date given for said change, then it would be "not strictly bitcoin" since it has not yet been determined whether that client will be the reference implementation and the change has not yet been agreed upon.

OK, I think I understand and agree somewhat.
I'm not going to continue my original train of thought because i think I'm not actually knowledgeable enough with Bitcoin/bitcoin to articulate it.

But ultimately I think when Bitcoin XT Blockchain splits from Bitcoin Core Blockchain, it should not be placed into the Altcoin section.
Placing those thread into that area is a form of thought control. Anything within that section is usually deemed irrelevant by our community.
Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Core will compete to see who will be the reference implementation (which in theory should make us stronger).
By placing it into the Altcoin Section, it is a form of belittlement.

But I'm just a noob. I see this whole CORE vs XT as two brothers fighting, sadly.

[tss]

i fully support theymos' actions.
bitcoin xt discussion does not belong in these sections.
bitcoin xt is worse than an altcoin, its not an altcoin its a hijack coin.
i doubt it will ever gain adoption when people understand what is the driving force behind it.
argue all you want about bigger blocks and more features but bitcoin is the way it is now and if you dont like it you can start bitcoin xy and bitcoin xz then start your own forums and act as you like. 
for now if youre browsing bitcoin sections and people are spamming xt crap then it deserves to be deleted.

i for one, will never mine any xt coin and sell my btc on the xt chain the moment someone is willing to pay me anything for it.

[AgentofCoin]

...
i doubt it will ever gain adoption when people understand what is the driving force behind it.
...

What is the driving force behind it?

[theymos]

I'm impressed at the level of Bitcoin knowledge of bitcointalk.org users compared to /r/Bitcoin users. Most of the people in this thread and other similar threads are interpreting the issues correctly (or at least with some evidence of actual thought), unlike most Redditors.

I don't think it makes sense to call Bitcoin XT an alt-coin anymore than it does the current version of Bitcoin Core, which has hard-forked several times since it was introduced.  Furthermore, Bitcoin Core will only fork away from Bitcoin XT when XT has 75% of the hash power behind it.

Bitcoin's hardforks (though some people don't classify them as hardforks) were done with consensus among the the Bitcoin community/economy/experts. In the current state of the debate, any max block size increase won't have consensus, though I think that consensus on a compromise proposal might be achievable in 6-18 months.

Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do. Then miners would start mining coins that they couldn't spend anywhere useful, and SPV users would find that they can't transact with the businesses they want to deal with. The currency would be split, and in this case XT would be in a far weaker position than Bitcoin. The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

Bitcoin is not ruled by miners. In a hardfork, miners barely matter at all. (Softforks are different.) What's important is what the economy does.

[tss]

snip
(or at least with some evidence of actual thought)
snip
Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do.
snip

i like to call that the least common denominator  

(ediit)  how or why would miners ever go against the market?  this makes no sense to me.  unless you mean people like myself or mp who will not support "the market" only to see original bitcoin succeed in the end and the market coming back to those core miners who secure and support it.

if you could please elaborate on what you mean by the miners going against the market and why miner action in your opinion is not the way to judge the direction of the bitcoin network?

thanks again for all your efforts to enforce the rules and not allow the forum to be hijacked.

...
i doubt it will ever gain adoption when people understand what is the driving force behind it.
...

What is the driving force behind it?

to hijack a $4 billion financial network away from those defending it from abuse and use it for your own benefit or even subvert its future.  

lets compare 2 scenarios.  
assume 20 years from now 1 btc is worth $5000.  mining rewards then would be less than .5 btc per block so fees would have to make it worth it for miners to continue to secure the network.

scenario 1, 1mb block limit.  you would have to pay something to have your tx confirmed.  this fee would be determined by the market and be well worth its value to send funds globally without an intermediary.  this fee would be split amongst the miners for work securing the network.

scenario 2, 100mb block limit or whatever the arbitrary limit is then that allows everyone to send every transaction with little to no fee, aka free spam.  who is going to secure your blockchain then?  why would they if there is no way to cover the cost of equipment/power? who will power your spam network?  NOT ME!

if you go xt hearn and asswipe will make more changes against all protocol rules.  some have even discussed raising the cap.  just for a bit to make it worth it for miners.  in their system this would be necessary as miners would have no reason to mine for fees alone and they know this.

[AgentofCoin]

...The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

Bitcoin is not ruled by miners. In a hardfork, miners barely matter at all. (Softforks are different.) What's important is what the economy does.

I agree that the economy and infrastructure that has been built around the current (and prior) implementation must be protected.
But I also believe that Bitcoin/bitcoin is still an experiment, it is still evolving, and we shouldn't lay down and say it is now "perfected".

If a compromise could be realistically reached (which is hard to see lately), then I think many users would be greatly relieved.

[AgentofCoin]

...
i doubt it will ever gain adoption when people understand what is the driving force behind it.
...

What is the driving force behind it?

to hijack a $4 billion financial network away from those defending it from abuse and use it for your own benefit or even subvert its future.  

lets compare 2 scenarios.  
assume 20 years from now 1 btc is worth $5000.  mining rewards then would be less than .5 btc per block so fees would have to make it worth it for miners to continue to secure the network.

scenario 1, 1mb block limit.  you would have to pay something to have your tx confirmed.  this fee would be determined by the market and be well worth its value to send funds globally without an intermediary.  this fee would be split amongst the miners for work securing the network.

scenario 2, 100mb block limit or whatever the arbitrary limit is then that allows everyone to send every transaction with little to no fee, aka free spam.  who is going to secure your blockchain then?  why would they if there is no way to cover the cost of equipment/power? who will power your spam network?  NOT ME!

if you go xt hearn and asswipe will make more changes against all protocol rules.  some have even discussed raising the cap.  just for a bit to make it worth it for miners.  in their system this would be necessary as miners would have no reason to mine for fees alone and they know this.

But if scenario 2 happens,
why couldn't miners that now have a max block of 100mb, cap their individual blocks to a lower number like they do now?
Miners can have a max block of 1mb now, but they were all using around 715kb, a little while ago.
Miners should set the fee as they want it and compete against each other with how many tx they can handle and fill.

You are proposing a monopoly fee market with a do not compete agreement between all miners.

Plus 20 years from now the world will be very different and is unpredictable.
The problems of today with handware/electricity/cost might be rendered null.

It could even be possible that in the future, large mining farms will go away since it is not profitable, and the individual garage miners rise again.

[johnyj]

Obviously there is a conflict of interest among core devs. However the majority of the hash power owner (chinese mining farms and bitfury etc... more than 60% of hash power added together) have expressed their concern and support only 2MB or 4MB block. Conservative approach is always better than aggressive, and Gavin is too eager to make a big change, very risky

[Cubic Earth]

I'm impressed at the level of Bitcoin knowledge of bitcointalk.org users compared to /r/Bitcoin users. Most of the people in this thread and other similar threads are interpreting the issues correctly (or at least with some evidence of actual thought), unlike most Redditors.

I don't think it makes sense to call Bitcoin XT an alt-coin anymore than it does the current version of Bitcoin Core, which has hard-forked several times since it was introduced.  Furthermore, Bitcoin Core will only fork away from Bitcoin XT when XT has 75% of the hash power behind it.

Bitcoin's hardforks (though some people don't classify them as hardforks) were done with consensus among the the Bitcoin community/economy/experts. In the current state of the debate, any max block size increase won't have consensus, though I think that consensus on a compromise proposal might be achievable in 6-18 months.

Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do. Then miners would start mining coins that they couldn't spend anywhere useful, and SPV users would find that they can't transact with the businesses they want to deal with. The currency would be split, and in this case XT would be in a far weaker position than Bitcoin. The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

Bitcoin is not ruled by miners. In a hardfork, miners barely matter at all. (Softforks are different.) What's important is what the economy does.

I agree that Bitcoin is not ruled by miners.  Their role is to process and confirm transactions that comply with the rules of the system, and protect against double spends by burying such transactions under heaps of proof of work.  If and when miners stop serving the interests of the user base / economic majority, than at that time those users should search for some alternative method of transaction processing that would provide the required confidence and transparency.

Theymos, why would 75% miners want to make changes that don’t have the support of the users, big businesses, or exchanges, especially if doing so would leave them mining tokens that no one wanted?  It doesn’t make sense.  I don’t see any reason why a 3/4 majority of the hash power would choose such a path.

While I do agree with your concept of the economic majority, the fact is we don’t have any good way of accurately measuring what they (the majority) prefer with the singular exception of a market.  Let there be two coins and see which one captures the exchange value.  We all know the problems with the other voting methods, most of which are variations on the sybil attack.  Voting with hashpower, owning to its manipulation-resistant properties, is the second-best stand in for voting with a market.  So the current vote can maybe be likened to a ballot initiative, with the signature-gathering stage (or perhaps a primary election) being the 75% threshold for miners, and the final election being the opening of the markets, chain vs chain.

That is a much better system - for bitcoin at least - than waiting for a handful of core-devs and other ‘experts’ and ‘important people’ to all come to an agreement they may in fact never reach.  One approach is decentralized, the other looks eerily like the central bank model of an inner circle of chairpersons, governors, presidents, etc.

So let’s let the economy vote, with its money, and may the favored chain win.  Markets run their best when information is free flowing.  Theymos, you are in a trusted position in the bitcoin community of having control over two of the most important forums for discourse.  If the economy is going to have its vote, please help it arrive at the correct result, whatever it may be, by keeping these channels open to people from all persuasions, even if and when it seems like things might be going in a way that you don’t think is best.

[OgNasty]

I pity the fool that accepts BTC using the Bitcoin XT client (post fork)...

After the fork coins would be stuck on their respective chains.  I do look forward to the watching the Core/XT exchange rate.  Tell me OgNasty... would you sell all of you XT coins for Core coins at a 1:1 ratio?

I will sell all of my XT coins to whatever poor sap wants to buy them, at whatever price I can get for them.  I don't hold altcoins.

[BrianM]

I don't think it makes sense to call Bitcoin XT an alt-coin anymore than it does the current version of Bitcoin Core, which has hard-forked several times since it was introduced.  Furthermore, Bitcoin Core will only fork away from Bitcoin XT when XT has 75% of the hash power behind it.

You gotta be joking. Bitcoin XT is the biggest scam-alt-coin ever made. Delete that shit.
Stop spreading FUD about hash power here and hash power there.

[ajareselde]

I pity the fool that accepts BTC using the Bitcoin XT client (post fork)...

After the fork coins would be stuck on their respective chains.  I do look forward to the watching the Core/XT exchange rate.  Tell me OgNasty... would you sell all of you XT coins for Core coins at a 1:1 ratio?

I will sell all of my XT coins to whatever poor sap wants to buy them, at whatever price I can get for them.  I don't hold altcoins.

If i'm not mistaken, if XT goes live, it means that the majority of the network is running it, so there should be enough "fools" to buy your coins.
I doubt that will happen tho, i'm just saying that theoretically, it would make core the less desired one ?!

Anyways,trying to censor it may give it more attention than ignoring it alltogeather i believe.

cheers

[Lauda]

I will not mention reddit, however theymos has the right to do whatever he wants to in a privately owned forum. He can ban a person and delete all of his/hers posts just because he wants to (I'm not saying that he would, nor that I support such actions).
People really need to re-evaluate what they're doing. Essentially theymos has allowed you to do various things in his forum under a set of rules determined by him and/or other staff members. If you do not like something, then you are free to leave.

Bitcoin XT is classified as a altcoin and will never be anything else. Looking at the node count, it will never probably take off. The stance of the staff towards Bitcoin XT is correct. It is a Bitcoin fork and everything related to it should be moved away from the Bitcoin sections.

And let's not forget the only reason people are talking about XT is because Hearn and Gavin have threatened to fork without agreement among developers because they thought they could a majority of miners, businesses that required more transactions

This thread should have been rightfully placed in off-topic section if it had not mentioned Bitcointalk.

So is Bitcoin XT a completely new code of coin or just a fork for bitcoin?

It's a fork.

A fork, just like all of the altcoins out there.

[Swordsoffreedom]

As theymos wrote it would be concerning to see a fork without consensus especially if its between miners and services.
Whether discussion could have been moved to it's own section for XT and core or treated as an Alt-coin depends on your viewpoint but its in the purview of the admin to decide.

In my opinion XT was going to be superceded by another solution in the future but the discussion and debate has ended in more/less a loop with developers pretty much in fixed positions for now.
In the end the economy will decide what will occur one way or the other, or it will be a community fork in the worst case but for now all we can do is wait and let the issues resolve themselves.

[ibminer]

IMO anything using a chain that the bitcoin core implementation does not use, is an alt coin. XT conversations shouldn't be related to Bitcoin discussions.

What is stopping Gavin from broadcasting an alert to core clients saying an upgrade is required in an attempt to move people to XT?

[Lauda]

IMO anything outside of the bitcoin core implementation is an alt coin. XT conversations shouldn't be related to Bitcoin discussions.

What is stopping Gavin from broadcasting an alert to core clients saying an upgrade is required in an attempt to move people to XT?

I agree with you. Well the alert mechanism is not really often used, and a lot of the people contributing to Bitcoin Core want it removed. There is very little potential for abuse.
If a bad alert is sent a special alert can be sent that disables further use of the alert system and erases all other alerts. As a result, active misuse is effectively not possible.

To be specific about the fail-safes: A maximum sequence-number alert cancels all other alerts, can't itself be canceled, and displays a static "Alert key compromised".