Szabo just tweeted this

[slaveforanunnak1]

Interesting, I wonder what Crypto would be like without Bitcoin?

ethereum ??!?!

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[johnyj]

It's like Szabo doesn't have any clue on how XT is being implemented. Which I think is very weird.

I'm not sure if you actually read the whole thing.

The attack goes as follows: If blocks were allowed to be ‘too big’ (big enough to add plausible delays to propagate to all nodes) then a miner would be incentivized to stuff the block they are mining full of txns that pay himself (or a cohort), up to the allowable block limit.

I mean come on.

tl;dr Szabo is afraid of the free market having a choice. Well guess what, it happens now and will happen countless of time in the future.

I have lived in different continents and I have never seen anything that is close to free market idealism. The market is either controlled by the government like in eastern or by banks in western. If you know what is "Market Maker" from large banks then you know market is typically made by a specific institution, and that institution usually have total control over what market can do, they could even shutdown the market in case of emergency

Take bitcoin for example, can free market decide what code goes into bitcoin protocol? Not as I know. Any code must be approved by core devs before they can be commited into GIT, otherwise they will just become an alt-coin. Someone must design and maintain the game rules so that others can play the game, but if someone is challenging the game rule maker, then it becomes politics

[johnyj]

This article basically echo the Jeff Garzik's view

Unfortunately it is still too complex for majority of users to understand. At this level of complexity, any kind of explanation from one side will be claimed as biased by the opponents

Maybe that's the reason that war never ends in human's history. Human is just incapable of keep peace and work towards the same goal. Or to say, they will eventually develop a conflict of interest in the end, and start to fight against each other

[Kprawn]

This is the crux of the matter to me --> " If such a system existed (like VISA), it would no longer be immune to government coercion or control.  The opponents of XT will argue that it is inevitable, and nay, necessary that sub-domains riding on top of the Bitcoin network be setup to handle local payments between local parties, thus keeping the required number of txns on the main net of Bitcoin manageable.  A current project under development, Lightning Network, is exactly one such solution."

Mike developed the Lightning Network, and he needs XT to succeed to support his project. This will give governments more control and it seems as if this is no problem to them. They want their projects to succeed at the

possible expense to the bitcoin network. {Possible 51% attacks / Spam etc..} How can people support XT if it goes against all common sense?

Give Wladimir and his team some time to experiment with bigger block sizes and scale when we know it's not a risk to the network or if the need force it to increase.    

[AGD]

If it seems like the limit is getting hit persistently, and confirmation times are becoming a problem, an emergency limit increase is something that the core devs can patch very simply and quickly.  They can execute such an emergency block size “QE” if you will, at a moments notice.  They have demonstratively done this kind of deployment before, during the one previous hard fork, and with the F2Pool bug.  So what is the rush?

That's my question: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154636.0

[gmaxwell]

Do we want it to handle all world daily transactions,
or do we want protection from current monetary systems and government involvement?

If we achieve the second, we can have both.  But if we only achieve the first, we likely cannot have the second (and wouldn't find it to be a substantial improvement over the fiat systems we have now, even if).

The reason for this is that if Bitcoin is secure and trustworthy, trustless decenteralized micropayment facilities can be built on top of it and extend Bitcoin's transaction security with arbritary speed or scale.  But if the system is fragle and underminable by attackers (government or otherwise) then it won't be robust enough to underpin these things.

(and things like micropayment channels were't my invention, they were recommended by the system's creator-- thats part of why Bitcoin has smart contracts to begin with.)

[gmaxwell]

If it seems like the limit is getting hit persistently, and confirmation times are becoming a problem, an emergency limit increase is something that the core devs can patch very simply and quickly.  They can execute such an emergency block size “QE” if you will, at a moments notice.  They have demonstratively done this kind of deployment before, during the one previous hard fork, and with the F2Pool bug.  So what is the rush?

That's my question: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154636.0

This is correct, and it was a point I made previously and was pretty agressively attacked for being "against planning" (though what I suggest is precisely the opposite: having a planned contingency that you use when you have a strong consensus that its the right choice is good planning)-- clearly people promoting this stuff with the massive uncertanty created by XT and the irritation of "stress tests" can't honestly be concerned with there being a bit of turbulance.

[gmaxwell]

ethereum ??!?!

Even that slopply designed mess of bugs has effective blocksize and resource usage controls. Try something more like "Liquidcoin" if you want to see what a system looks like with no thought given to the incentives and stability of the system.

[monsanto]

I have seen some interesting treads somewhere. Comparing Satoshi emails and white paper to the writing styles of other big names in the community's writing styles. I would be interested to see if the newest email matched simmarly to some of his older stuff.

Doublespace after periods. Check.
British spelling.. check!

but those things can be faked of course.

Initially I had dismissed the email out-of-hand as being from an imposter. But now we have Szabo, the clear frontrunner in the Satoshi sweepstakes, tweeting an article which conspicuously proposes the email should be taken as genuine. 

The plot thickens! Why tweet this article? The most notable thing about it is its take on the Satoshi email. I am now reconsidering the emails legitimacy. And upon reading the email again, I can't help but wonder what the implications of the following could be:

"...I will have no choice but to declare Bitcoin a failed project."

If someone is sitting on the world's largest stash of bitcoins because they believe in the project, but they then decide it's a failure, what incentive would they have to keep holding said bitcoins? Maybe he is trying to warn us...... of the Big Cashout™.

[Crestington]

Bitcoin XT will and won't be a failed project. I admire the boldness of putting in the fork and to have people to fight it because it is motion and has stirred debate like nothing before.

Aguing will end up spurring innovation either way so let the Blocksize war begin!

[YarkoL]

Even though biased, that was an excellent article, best one
that I've read yet on the subject.

Couple of things spring to mind:

1) The author rightly points out that the fact that both Core and
XT share the same network will lead to a real messy situation.

That being so, would it make sense for Core to make a pre-emptive
strike by releasing a fork that switches to use another IP port
as soon as supermajority of nodes have adopted the release? How
would that affect XT?

2) The author rightly points out that the real issue is about philosophy
of "vision" of what Bitcoin is meant to be. To caricature a bit, will it be
some nice, safe Disney-friendly means of payment (XT) or the angry
testosterone-laden cypherpunk hell we here have gotten used to?

It would seem that there is actually demand for both. Which means
that even if Gavin's and Mike's project were thwarted, big players like
Paypal or Google might very well start building something very similar,
because there is a business opportunity here.

The end result being that we would have a semi-centralized payment
network for "ordinary folks" and a plethora of more anonymous alt
chains for those of geekish bent. Something for everyone.
Only the myopic fixation on One True Coin prevents people realizing that
this is the most likely outcome for crypto in the long run.

[gmaxwell]

That being so, would it make sense for Core to make a pre-emptive
strike by releasing a fork that switches to use another IP port

Someone would just bridge it. Switching proof of work algorithims might be much more effective and would have a potentially beneficial effect of resetting the currently highly centeralized mining climate... if one really did want to go the total war route. I don't currently believe it will be an issue.

The end result being that we would have a semi-centralized payment
network for "ordinary folks" and a plethora of more anonymous alt

Freedom that is only availble to people who dedicate their lives to it isn't really freedom. To be free you have to be free to do as you will, not forced to be nothing but a freedom fighter.

With few exceptions there has seldom in history been a kind of freedom that wasn't available to those few who really worked to achieve it at any cost. What fighting for peoples rights is fundimentally about is fighting for rights to be reconized by default or at least at a reasonable cost to people-- so that they are pratically available rather than merely theoretically available.

Only the myopic fixation on One True Coin prevents people realizing that
this is the most likely outcome for crypto in the long run.

Money gains its value from network effect. For a pure money, like Bitcoin, virtually all its value comes from network effect. Money is probably the worlds greatest natural monopoly. Oh just have seperate things is not a cheap and easy choice.

[YarkoL]

Money gains its value from network effect. For a pure money, like Bitcoin, virtually all its value comes from network effect. Money is probably the worlds greatest natural monopoly. Oh just have seperate things is not a cheap and easy choice.

This boils down to whether one views Bitcoin as
currency or a commodity.

I believe there are good social and historical
reasons for believing that the former is untrue,
therefore it is a commodity with specific use
and this generalizes to all cryptocoins.

If you opt for the currency view, then of course there
can only be One.

Time will tell....

[jubalix]

Do we want it to handle all world daily transactions,
or do we want protection from current monetary systems and government involvement?

If we achieve the second, we can have both.  But if we only achieve the first, we likely cannot have the second (and wouldn't find it to be a substantial improvement over the fiat systems we have now, even if).

The reason for this is that if Bitcoin is secure and trustworthy, trustless decenteralized micropayment facilities can be built on top of it and extend Bitcoin's transaction security with arbritary speed or scale.  But if the system is fragle and underminable by attackers (government or otherwise) then it won't be robust enough to underpin these things.

(and things like micropayment channels were't my invention, they were recommended by the system's creator-- thats part of why Bitcoin has smart contracts to begin with.)

whats interesting is Peercoin Achieves the second, now by design.

It heads of the whole Block size issue by going for the backbone, which is now becoming the problem for BTC as it tries to be 1 and 2, without being 2 first.

It seems that something like peercoin will take the lions share of large value transactions and BTC is falling into the middle of not being doge Ie doge can handle a high TPS at sacrifice of security [but who cares when your buying an ice cream and dont get hit up huge credit card fees], and not being good as a backbone.

Dont get me wrong I am a hardened BTC supporter, its just the boundary conditions do not support backbone currecy as well as Peercoin and so a debated like this rages.

I have being saying this for some time now, and it has come to fruition.

[Elwar]

I am even more convinced now that Szabo is Satoshi.

And I find it interesting that he sort of called Gavin Judas.

[gmaxwell]

whats interesting is Peercoin Achieves the second, now by design.

By, by design, requring the blockchain to be periodically signed by a trusted authority... you have a weird notion of resistance to state attacks.

[Dire]

I am even more convinced now that Szabo is Satoshi.

And I find it interesting that he sort of called Gavin Judas.

And by that rationale, he is therefore Jesus.

I don't know. It is interesting the way the article writer framed the Core/XT issue as a good Vs evil thing.

Personally I would have gone Skywalker Core block Vs the Darth Vader block, just to sex it up a bit. Everybody likes Star Wars.

[YarkoL]

And I find it interesting that he sort of called Gavin Judas.

Nick Szabo did not write that article. He just
approved it by retweeting the link.

The author is Jerry David Chan, former employee of
JP Morgan & Goldman Sachs, now founder-president
of startup called Bittoku.

http://en.gravatar.com/digitsu99

[Elwar]

And I find it interesting that he sort of called Gavin Judas.

Nick Szabo did not write that article. He just
approved it by tweeting the link.

The author is Jerry David Chan, former employee of
JP Morgan & Goldman Sachs, now founder-president
of startup called Bittoku.

http://en.gravatar.com/digitsu99

Yes, I finally realized that. I still think Szabo is likely Satoshi.

[Mickeyb]

Good artical! Read threw it, don't skip to the end.

This part made me sad because It's true (to me) and apparently to szabo

So with all these scary uncertainties, you may ask why hasn’t Satoshi come out to speak on the behalf of one side or the other in order to settle the dispute?  Indeed it would be akin to him coming out to act as a 3rd party mediator, such as when a parent comes in to break up a fight among siblings.  There has in fact been a post by someone claiming to be Satoshi, from a valid known Satoshi email address, claiming pretty much that the XT fork is unnecessarily dangerous, see here: Satoshi? Despite the many allegations that if this was really Satoshi, he would have signed his message with a known PGP key or perhaps moved some of his coins to prove that it was him, he has not done so.  I for one do not believe that he would.  If you read the message, (ignoring for a second who it is from) he is saying that Bitcoin’s vision is not one where it is subject to the egos of charismatic leaders, including Satoshi Nakamoto.  People who harp on the fact that Satoshi has not made a provably authenticated statement is clearly missing the whole point of this message.  If he were to do so, rest assured the whole of the community will rally with him, but that is exactly what he doesn’t want to happen, a whole community blindly following authority!  Consistently so, the author points out that if it takes a benevolent dictator to pull us out of this mess “deux ex machina” then Bitcoin, as a project in decentralized money resistant to authority, has failed.  That tautological statement, is provably true if you can wrap your head around it.  Therefore, if Satoshi wants it to succeed, he won’t use his ‘God card’ and settle disputes.  If Bitcoin continually needs Satoshi to keep us from going astray, then Bitcoin isn’t worth saving.   Considering that Satoshi has likely the most coins at risk than anyone else, and him coming forward to break the impasse would likely save us (and the value of his own coins) it is truly commendable that he has not done so.  The fact that he hasn’t tells me that he (where ever he or she is) is truly acting in an altruistic manner.  He is more willing to let Bitcoin die, than to let it continue on as a system that does not value consensus as its first and foremost priority.

Yes, definitely the best part of the whole article. Satoshi coming back and settling the dispute would be the worst thing for Bitcoin in the long run. This would go against all that Satoshi has imagined Bitcoin to be. And that is a self-sustained system not dependent on any person, government, etc..

This definitely shows hom much Satoshi cares about Bitcoin, when he even doesn't care about his coins for the good of the whole ecosystem.

So to conclude, if Bitcoin can't win this battle that means that it doesn't need to exist. If it doesn't win this battle, sure as hell it won't win any bigger battle in the future.