blockstream - wants to tax you and become the new Bitcoin oligarchy

[Carlton Banks]

So, proprietary, centralised, rent seeking; all FUD?
 

uncertainty and doubt for sure, but I think it is warranted.

1. We don't know how Blockstream intends to make money.  We do know they
raised $21M in venture capital, so there must be a profit opportunity somewhere.
What are they doing?  

2. Forgoing or delaying a blocksize increase may not be in the best
interest of Bitcoin, but seems to be what Blockstream wants.

3. It seems possible that 1. and 2. are related.

Well, tvbcof has just told us that they are following a common model for companies doing open source development: charging for technical consulting. I'm not sure whether they can realistically be against blocksize increases per se, the data has got to go somewhere, and there will be necessarily more data than 1 MB could handle to facilitate all these extra transactions.

They certainly favour less simplistic designs than static blocksizes with scheduled increases. I seem to remember Adam Back was talking about something very different from anyone else, but his opinion got put in the "1MB 4EVER" category, probably because it defied the definitions of the categories on offer. Don't remember the details, but it certainly wasn't a 1MB static limit.

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[BNO]

Meanwhile,
more and more blocks are going to be hitting the 1mb limit until they "save us" with
their "solution".  

The situation is even worse, many clients have as default value 750kB as limit, despite the fact that the max is 1MB!! Mike always fought against this different default value, but some others wanted to be it that way. Many of the miners will not be aware of this. So we really not far from disaster.

I just learned about from this VERY interesting interview with Mike Hearn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JmvkyQyD8w

And it totally smashes the fantasy of some of the miners here that, when capacity will get scarce that they then will earn 5000$ per month through "fee market". He worked 7 years for google in.... yeah right.. capacity planning and explains very well why its not working like that and bitcoinnetwork will crash due to lack of RAM on machines... if there keep coming transactions for e.g. 1,2 MB for a while but Blocksize only supports 1MB..

[jonald_fyookball]

Well, tvbcof has just told us that they are following a common model for companies doing open source development: charging for technical consulting.

I would love to believe that is true, and I wish they would clarify their position.  I still do not understand
why they wouldn't agree to a modest increase like Jeff Garzik proposed.

[nicked]

The reason Blockstream doesn't want bigger blocks is because if they're bigger , they won't make a shit load of money. It's as simple as that.

[chek2fire]

every day Gavin break more and more his reputation not only to bitcoin community but to all crypto community. Is better to leave now. This road that he choose is a dead end. I dont know who and what they promise to him but is the best time to step back.

[onemorexmr]

every day Gavin break more and more his reputation not only to bitcoin community but to all crypto community. Is better to leave now. This road that he choose is a dead end. I dont know who and what they promise to him but is the best time to step back.

why?
only because he tries to make bitcoin ready for mass adoption?

he has my support...
and i think his way is ok. i dont see any better way to make this change happen.

[HostFat]

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

[chek2fire]

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

we are against nonsense. Is not a free choice when someone want to jump from 4 floor

[meono]

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

I wish some of the retards here atleast understand the bold statement above.

Forget the technicality of bitcoin because its way over their heads anyway.

[nicked]

Meanwhile,
more and more blocks are going to be hitting the 1mb limit until they "save us" with
their "solution".  

The situation is even worse, many clients have as default value 750kB as limit, despite the fact that the max is 1MB!! Mike always fought against this different default value, but some others wanted to be it that way. Many of the miners will not be aware of this. So we really not far from disaster.

I just learned about from this VERY interesting interview with Mike Hearn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JmvkyQyD8w

And it totally smashes the fantasy of some of the miners here that, when capacity will get scarce that they then will earn 5000$ per month through "fee market". He worked 7 years for google in.... yeah right.. capacity planning and explains very well why its not working like that and bitcoinnetwork will crash due to lack of RAM on machines... if there keep coming transactions for e.g. 1,2 MB for a while but Blocksize only supports 1MB..

It's too bad that you weren't able to see the forest because all of those stupid trees were blocking your view.

[onemorexmr]

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

we are against nonsense. Is not a free choice when someone want to jump from 4 floor

if you think its nonsense you dont have anything to fear...
or do you believe 75% of all bitcoiners will jump?

[meono]

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

we are against nonsense. Is not a free choice when someone want to jump from 4 floor

If 75% of ppl jump then thats not nonsense.

Do you know the old saying: If i see an asshole in the morning, hes an asshole. But if i see assholes all day, i AM the asshole.

[Carlton Banks]

Well, tvbcof has just told us that they are following a common model for companies doing open source development: charging for technical consulting.

I would love to believe that is true, and I wish they would clarify their position.  I still do not understand
why they wouldn't agree to a modest increase like Jeff Garzik proposed.

jonald, I might be wrong, but you seem to be over-familiar with the "static limit, scheduled increase" model. Do you appreciate why creating a market for block sizes would be a viable alternative? If not, take a look at upal's thread over in Technical Discussion, it features some well thought out stuff (from people who are actually discussing this in the context of software engineering, not a political stand-off).

[tvbcof]

Well, tvbcof has just told us that they are following a common model for companies doing open source development: charging for technical consulting.

I would love to believe that is true, and I wish they would clarify their position.  I still do not understand
why they wouldn't agree to a modest increase like Jeff Garzik proposed.

A hard fork is a difficult thing in the best of circumstances.

Scaling through simplistic and very modest capacity increases is a dead-end, so what's the point?  Scaling through simplistic and sufficient capacity increases promises to mutate Bitcoin into a system which is worse than nothing.  To me at any rate, and I strongly suspect to many of the folks who are now working under the Blockstream banner.  I have no reason to believe anything other than that is nearly the sole reason the organization came together.  If I wanted a job (I don't) I would likely try to hire on at Blockstream because I could be doing something which I believe can make a positive difference.  I imagine that most of the people working under that Banner feel the same way and this is one of the reasons I have more confidence in them than most.

Another reason is that the Blockstream dudes collectively are hugely responsible for getting Bitcoin itself to where it is today and as much as I might bash Bitcoin I find it a remarkable achievement.

In my mind one of the biggest questions which remains unanswered is:  Even if sidechains are nearly completely dependent on their backing store (Bitcoin) as a source of value, what induces them to support the Bitcoin infrastructure?  Can they not just hitch a free ride and hope someone else picks up the slack?  The best answer I can come up with is that they compete with other users of the blockchain not only in fees, but also in supporting mining operations which will get them and their transactions a slot within a reasonable amount of time.  Competition for transaction capacity would have to be a factor.  I doubt I am alone in waiting for scarcity here to finally come into play.  After half a decade at Satoshi's 1MB setting we still are not pushing into this aspect of the system and are still relying almost entirely on currency base inflation.  I'm in no hurry to see a hard fork before transaction fees start carrying a little bit of the support reward load.

[smoothie]

Even more important, how will miners make money?

If they will be getting the transaction fees what's the incentive to mine?

simple...price of bitcoin must rise in order to account for decreased reward supply.

[smoothie]

Well, tvbcof has just told us that they are following a common model for companies doing open source development: charging for technical consulting.

I would love to believe that is true, and I wish they would clarify their position.  I still do not understand
why they wouldn't agree to a modest increase like Jeff Garzik proposed.

it is simple. their side chains crap is only useful while bitcoin block size is capped.

raise the 1 MB limit and blockstream now becomes OBSOLETE and IRRELEVANT.

[Peter R]

I think they should try to be as transparent as possible, but there may be indeed a conflict of interest.  Time will tell.

The is a conflict of interest.  What time will tell is the extent to which they were acting upon it.  

There is nothing in general wrong with a conflict of interest, but it should be openly disclosed.


On a related note, I'd love to hear Jonald's and Carton's view of the ongoing censorship at /r/bitcoin and to a lesser extent at this forum.  For example, Bitcoin[redacted] was defined as an alt-coin by the moderators at /r/bitcoin and all talk related to it has been deemed off-topic.  Several people were banned for linking to sub-reddits that emerged as a result of the censorship.  

Here at our own forum, Cypherdoc's "Gold Collapsing. Bitcoin UP" thread was locked by the Admin, despite it having over 1.4 million views and over 30,000 comments.  The rational given by BadBear is that threads that are broad in scope ("mega-threads") are no longer permitted on this forum.  

What are your views on these recent events?



More on this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157185.msg12198527#msg12198527

[smoothie]

Anyone believe this? It's a great deal more plausible that XT, with it's friend of the state-paradigm in lead dev Mike Hearn, will be the chain that imposes taxes on it's users. Not system "taxes" (aka fees, lol), but actual taxes.

Good attempt jonald, but try picking a topic that doesn't blow the spit back into your own face.

Carlton, you've always been one of the brighter minds around here, but with all due respect, what's your point?  How about instead of the banter, try to answer the question: how will blockstream make money?  

don't you think that's a fair question?

The answer is that I don't know. If Blockstream were to attempt to impose a fee structure whereby they, and they alone, received the fees, and if the company was simply passively extracting them without it being a part of some network mechanism or other (i.e. the same reasons miners get paid blocks+fees), then I would be just as opposed to them as I am to XT.


However jonald, remember how you started this thread. I am happy to reciprocate your compliments; you're also one of the brighter and more thoughtful members of this forum. But I don't believe for a single second that you actually think your title represents the truth, and yet you composed your title and your post with the most exaggerated language that you thought you could get away with (you didn't get away with it).

My point is also a good one, unlike yours. Mike is a friend of the state-paradigm. He will happily cooperate with anything any state asks him to, he has said as much in the past. Have fun using his coin.

It is worth asking the questions about Blockstream's revenue generation plan.

If their main source of income is charging fees (ie.e taxing bitcoin users) by opening side chains or payment channels then they are not for the original vision satoshi created when he created bit coin.

Very simple.

[smoothie]

I think they should try to be as transparent as possible, but there may be indeed a conflict of interest.  Time will tell.

The is a conflict of interest.  What time will tell is the extent to which they were acting upon it.  

There is nothing in general wrong with a conflict of interest, but it should be openly disclosed.


On a related note, I'd love to hear Jonald's and Carton's view of the ongoing censorship at /r/bitcoin and to a lesser extent at this forum.  For example, Bitcoin[redacted] was defined as an alt-coin by the moderators at /r/bitcoin and all talk related to it has been deemed off-topic.  Several people were banned for linking to sub-reddits that emerged as a result of the censorship.  

Here at our own forum, Cypherdoc's "Gold Collapsing. Bitcoin UP" thread was locked by the Admin, despite it having over 1.4 million views and over 30,000 comments.  The rational given by BadBear is that threads that are broad in scope ("mega-threads") are no longer permitted on this forum.  

What are your views on these recent events?



More on this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157185.msg12198527#msg12198527

There is a ton of inconsistency on the moderators/admins parts on what you wrote above.

Clearly there is another agenda when consistency goes out the window while censorship is allowed into the window.

[smoothie]

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

we are against nonsense. Is not a free choice when someone want to jump from 4 floor

"nonsense" differs from person to person.