Bitcoin XT - Officially #REKT (also goes for BIP101 fraud)

[figmentofmyass]

There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

it seems there is some fundamental disagreement. the hard-coded list of deprioritized IP addresses fits the technical definition of a blacklist. (see: the dictionary) Wladimir also stated that is was a blacklist, and used that as a basis to reject Hearn's pull. clearly it is a list of IP addresses that is viewed with suspicion (after all, they were listed in the first place due to fears of DDOS)

[VeritasSapere]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility.

you get this impression......how? because you're still stuck in this "small blockists vs. XT" dichotomy? look, those of us who oppose BIP101 aren't unequivocally opposed to increasing the block size limit. but "competing with altcoins" is not a legitimate reason to implement just any protocol change that increases the block size limit. do you understand?

Not because I am stuck in the false dichotomy but because some people are literally saying this. Just check further up in this thread, I was just responding and commenting on this. I can also agree that increasing the block size for the sole reason of competing with altcoins is not a good enough reason to implement a protocol change. However that over the long term it should also be considered important to stay competitive within a free market of cryptocurrencies otherwise Bitcoin would most likely be superseded by a competitor over the long term. I do not think that this is a unrealistic position to hold, I suspect we are most likely in agreement about this point.

please point out specific examples, particularly by those who are active in the discussion. i've been watching this debate unfold for the last couple months. i see "1MBers" thrown around as a constant ad hominem, but i rarely see anyone actually defending this position. please recognize that if the answer is not 1MB OR BIP101, then another answer must be found.

i dont give a shit about other altcoins. the reason scaling (read: scaling =/= only increasing block size limit) should be considered important is because scaling is integral to organic adoption. the main questions are 1. time and 2. proper implementation.

I was specifically replying to this post actually: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg12505806#msg12505806

I also agree with you that a third solution will most likely become the better solution once it has been fully implemented in an alternative client or Core. As far as I understand it we are actually mostly in agreement with each other. I can understand how you thought I might have been overly polarizing but I was just responding to a previous post. I would absolutely support a third solution that would represent the middle ground between the two extreme positions that XT and Core presently represent.

[erik777]

By the way, I am still taking 1 BTC bets (subject to deposit in a 2-of-3 escrowed wallet) that the longest proof-of-work chain will contain a block larger than 1 MB by this time next year.  

And still with a high degree of vaugeness about what is meant by 'the longest proof-of-work chain' I see.

I will say that in my mind, a change in protocol which is not agreed to by ALL of the currently active core contributors is not valid and it does not matter if it is long enough to reach from Earth to the edge of the solar system.

Btw if peter would be more serious about this, i'd take the bet.

I am quite serious.  If the longest chain contains a block greater than 1 MB by this time next year I win, otherwise you win.  The longest chain is defined as the chain built on top of the Satoshi genesis block with the greatest cumulative difficulty.  If Bitcoin forks, then I only win if the "large block" fork has a greater cumulative difficulty than the "small block" fork.

As for escrow, I am open to suggestions.  Danny Hamilton and Jonald Fyookball come to mind.  We would each deposit 1 BTC into a 2-of-3 multisig address and the escrow would hold the third key.  

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.

[img]http://-snip-[img]

Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

That's a possibility but a split fork is more probable IMO simply because it would be easier to achieve.  

The final results are pretty much the same nonetheless.

A fork easier to achieve then readily available alternatives  

In what world do you live in !?  

A consensus fork is hard but a split fork would be fairly easy as consensus is already reached on both side and both side would be willing to lose the other side.

LOL, I love this one.  Let's break it down:

Q> What is a consensus fork?

A> A change in protocol that everyone agrees to. 

Q> What is a split fork?

A> A fork where "both side would be willing to lose the other side."

Q> Which would be easier?

A> A split fork

Q> Why?

A> Because "both side would be willing to lose the other side."

Q> So you are saying a split for would be easier because it is a split fork?

A> huh?

[Carlton Banks]

You are either extremely uninformed or you do not understand Bitcoin, or you are intentionally spreading disinformation. Either way this type of propaganda tactic does seem more inline with the tyranny you claim to be arguing against. What you are claiming here is simply not true and it has no basis in fact.

If XT where to add such features than people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation that has these changes. People can not be blindsided in this case and it will never be to late to turn back the clock so to speak. It seems like you might not understand the mechanism that prevents such tyranny from forming within Bitcoin in the first place. Which in part is actually the ability to hard fork away from any development team be it XT or Core. It would be better to learn to love the fork.

It's obvious you'll never come around as you are just here to promote XT.  Nevertheless, I'll address this tired underlying assumptions that "people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation" somehow magically protects Bitcoin for generations to come:

False assumption #1: Everyone who downloads the program completely understands the code.

The vast majority of people do not understand the code, and most are not programmers.  Most of us, even those of us who program and can read code, downloaded and ran Core without having any idea about the details of what it does. (e.g., does it log IP addresses?)  The reason I take time to post on this forum about the risks of XT is so people can make a more informed decision, and if they decide to install XT, will at least hopefully be wise enough to question each upgrade.  Ditto for Core upgrades.  Hopefully, discussion like this help broaden awareness of the risks of new code.  

False assumption #2: Those who do have a better understanding of the features of the program they download are guaranteed to understand the implications of those features.  

The reality is that unless they do understand the implications, they are likely to take the purpose of the code at face value for what its author claims it will do.  Undoubtedly, there are some who installed XT who feel protected from DoS attacks because of the patch Mike put in it.  Unfortunately, had they read the thread with the Core devs when they rejected it, they would of known that (a) the only claim of a Tor attack was on Gavin's node with no evidence that any other node ever had an attack via Tor, (b) neither Gavin nor Mike provided logs or other evidence of the attack when the Core devs requested it, (c) the Core devs listed many reasons why most DDoS attacks are likely to come from non-Tor sources, (d) even Mike acknowledged that innocent Tor users would be harmed by it and (e) when the attack came from likely non-Tor sources, only Tor would effectively be blocked, not the DoS sources it was supposedly intended to counter.  Additionally, (f) this is intended to evolve, and could evolve with enough critical mass combined with XT whitelisting to make it very difficult to unseat XT as the primary code for Bitcoin nodes.  

Does the XT website discuss any of this?  No.  Not only does it ignore all concerns raised by the Core team, Mike has even publicly made statements about the process in which this patch was rejected by Core that very deceptively try to make the Core team look like the bad guys but conveniently leave out the truth of why Core rejected it.  Fortunately, the dialog between the Core devs and Mike on his pull request is very public for those interested in reading it.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6364

 

I lean to your position erik, but I take the more optimistic stance that the average bitcoin user can and does understand the implication of the proposals being presented right now. The reality is that XT has proven unpopular with all but those who are dogmatically producing any argument that ends with "XT?". A large majority of users understand the debate and have rejected it for what it it, and, more to the point, want something much, much better.

 

[VeritasSapere]

There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

it seems there is some fundamental disagreement. the hard-coded list of deprioritized IP addresses fits the technical definition of a blacklist. (see: the dictionary) Wladimir also stated that is was a blacklist, and used that as a basis to reject Hearn's pull. clearly it is a list of IP addresses that is viewed with suspicion (after all, they were listed in the first place due to fears of DDOS)

Fair enough, however only the blocksize itself is fundamental to the protocol level in terms of a hard fork, which makes the other features essentially optional. To be fair however the "black list" within XT is only activated once the node is already under DDOS attack, what this feature actually practically does is quite different to what most would think when people hear the term "black list", nobody is being censored most importantly. When discussing XT in relation to a hard fork, it should really just be a discussion about BIP101, since that is the only feature within XT that would not be optional post fork if you do wish to maintain compatibility with this chain. I would prefer to talk about other solutions then XT however since a more conservative increase of the blocksize would be a better solution in terms of us all reaching consensus.

https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/tree/only-bigblocks

[brg444]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility. This in my opinion is not correct, people do care about the cost of the transaction and the present holders of Bitcoin is not all that matters. For Bitcoin to grow and survive it needs to attract more users, when better and cheaper alternatives exists people will choose those instead of Bitcoin. Bitcoin should be able to compete with other cryptocurrencies and I believe that it can as long as we do not allow the Bitcoin network to become overloaded which would lead to transactions becoming unreliable and over the long term prohibitively expensive.

It is seemingly a disease for you to make arguments on the premise of assumptions that do not hold true.

One that you propose here is that without large transaction throughput and high velocity Bitcoin has no utility.

Well "this in my opinion is not correct". While regular retail consumers may care about the cost of transactions, Bitcoin offers little to no advantage in that regard compared to traditional payment and monetary systems. Aside from certain niche use cases (remittances or conventional international money transfer) most people are perfectly fine using credit cards and fiat for their daily purchases. These systems provide consumer protection and security that is hardly possible using Bitcoin. While these might be costly and put enormous weight on the financial system as well as shift enormous responsibility & trust toward the institutions running these networks most people could not care less.

So essentially what you are doing is pushing for dangerous changes to Bitcoin so that it attempts to compete with systems that are inherently more efficient and scalable given their centralized arrangements. This, to me, is asinine and totally misses the point of what Bitcoin's true value proposition is.

Bitcoin has grown from nothing to a 3.5B$ market cap largely without notable "transactional" utility except for some special uses cases. The reasons for this are obvious to anyone who has been paying attention: its sound monetary theory & its decentralized, censorship-resistant property.

Since then, a trove of entrepreneurs and venture capitalist have tried to shape Bitcoin into the second coming of Paypal, riding the coattails of its novelty features and permissionless aspects. Remember when 2014 was supposed to be the "year of the merchant"? Expedia, Microsoft, Dell, Overstock, Newegg, etc. Somehow you would think all this "utility" would lead to more adoption right? After all people cant wait to spend their bitcoins and use them to shop online....right..right? Well it turns out that no, they don't. It simply doesn't make sense, other than maybe temporarily as a novelty, to purchase bitcoins to make purchases. It is not convenient or economically desirable. Imagine the amount of money that was wasted trying to sell this "utility" to mainstream customers. Just thinking of the giant fail that was the "Bitpay Bitcoin Bowl" says all that needs to be said. The "customer" is simply not buying it. Bitcoin is still looked at as a freak show by most of the general public, they simply don't care for it.

So what are we left with? Should we bother continue on this path or go back to square one and consider what makes Bitcoin great in the first place?

To reiterate Trace Mayer's point: who are the users that are willing to hire Bitcoin and pay for its services? What are the use cases that are absolutely impossible without Bitcoin existing?

As we consider the different avenues we could take it is seemingly clear to me that we always end up at the same point: monetary freedom.

Monetary freedom implies the protection of one's wealth from government inflation, taxes, confiscation or general destructive economic policies. Trace speaks of economic interests in Venezuela and Switzerland using Bitcoin to the tune of millions of dollars to circumvent some of their countries restrictive economic policies. By all account this is what Bitcoin excels at: being a safe haven for one's wealth, an accessible and comparatively cheap way to escape capital controls.

The generalization that you make of what a user is, as if it only relates to transactional interest, is misguided and to some extent downright disingenuous. On the other hand the users I refer to are not some imaginary "mass adoption" fantasy. They are real and are using Bitcoin as we speak. They are not deterred by high transaction fees because they literally have no other options or if they have, they involve costs that are on a whole different level than what you would refer to as "prohibitive" (bankers, lawyers, accountants, government officials).

I think it's time for some of ya'll to get back down to earth, your head as been in the cloud seemingly too long your brain is lacking oxygen.

No one's disregarding Bitcoin's competition. If someone is it is you as you conveniently ignore readily available and very dominant fiat alternatives for the purpose of "transactional utility".

As far as cryptocurrency is concerned there are a multitude of reasons why Bitcoin has little to no competition. If you wish to understand why I suggest this excellent article from Mencius Moldbug about monetary history. While it may not be factually accurate on all points, it certainly is in regard to inherent network effects and how powerful they are in the context of money:

Once Nitropia is on rhodium, anyone who buys palladium is no different from anyone who is trying to manipulate any commodities market. In a free market, if you want to buy up a bunch of palladium - or wheat or oil or FCOJ - and by so doing raise the price, you may do so. But if you want to actually realize your profits, you have to sell at some point, and there is no reason to think you'll have any luck getting out at a higher price than you got in at. This is called the "burying the corpse" problem, and a thing of beauty it is.

In other words, money is the bubble that doesn't pop. Once rhodium feels the Quickening, any other potential monetary standard is at an incurable disadvantage, because its adherents are mere manipulators. Sooner or later they will get tired and let their guard down, and rhodium will take their heads. But rhodium itself cannot pop - there can be only one, but there has to be at least one. And that's money.

[VeritasSapere]

It's obvious you'll never come around as you are just here to promote XT.  Nevertheless, I'll address this tired underlying assumptions that "people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation" somehow magically protects Bitcoin for generations to come:

False assumption #1: Everyone who downloads the program completely understands the code.

The vast majority of people do not understand the code, and most are not programmers.  Most of us, even those of us who program and can read code, downloaded and ran Core without having any idea about the details of what it does. (e.g., does it log IP addresses?)  The reason I take time to post on this forum about the risks of XT is so people can make a more informed decision, and if they decide to install XT, will at least hopefully be wise enough to question each upgrade.  Ditto for Core upgrades.  Hopefully, discussion like this help broaden awareness of the risks of new code.  

False assumption #2: Those who do have a better understanding of the features of the program they download are guaranteed to understand the implications of those features.  

The reality is that unless they do understand the implications, they are likely to take the purpose of the code at face value for what its author claims it will do.  Undoubtedly, there are some who installed XT who feel protected from DoS attacks because of the patch Mike put in it.  Unfortunately, had they read the thread with the Core devs when they rejected it, they would of known that (a) the only claim of a Tor attack was on Gavin's node with no evidence that any other node ever had an attack via Tor, (b) neither Gavin nor Mike provided logs or other evidence of the attack when the Core devs requested it, (c) the Core devs listed many reasons why most DDoS attacks are likely to come from non-Tor sources, (d) even Mike acknowledged that innocent Tor users would be harmed by it and (e) when the attack came from likely non-Tor sources, only Tor would effectively be blocked, not the DoS sources it was supposedly intended to counter.  Additionally, (f) this is intended to evolve, and could evolve with enough critical mass combined with XT whitelisting to make it very difficult to unseat XT as the primary code for Bitcoin nodes.  

Does the XT website discuss any of this?  No.  Not only does it ignore all concerns raised by the Core team, Mike has even publicly made statements about the process in which this patch was rejected by Core that very deceptively try to make the Core team look like the bad guys but conveniently leave out the truth of why Core rejected it.  Fortunately, the dialog between the Core devs and Mike on his pull request is very public for those interested in reading it.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6364

I am sorry to oversimplify your argument but you are essentially saying that people can not be trusted to make the best decision in terms of what implementation to run. This is however where I believe the fundamental choice and source of the voluntarism of Bitcoin should and does lie. Not governance structures build on top of an implementation or on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, since then we would run into some of the same old problems that large organizations and states run into. The consensus mechanism for resolving such disagreements already exists and it depends on what code people choose to run and where the miners direct their hashing power. Maybe you are correct and the economic majority will not make the best decision, however this freedom of choice is so important and fundamental for maintaining the freedom and decentralized nature of Bitcoin that this would still be the best path to take. There is an irony in accusing XT of dictatorship while simultaneously saying that people should not be trusted with the freedom of choice.

[erik777]

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.



Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients.

Here again:

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.

It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins.

The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview:

Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.

I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use  it.

Yeah sure but the real question is how much money they will be willing to pay when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the exact same features around the corner?

Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure.

So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money?

Where does your delusion stops  

A cheaper proposition doesn't need to be sponsored by anybody. Do you know how cheap it is to copy open code and tweak it? The economics and incentives at play will just work by itself.
Do you know how many altcoins are there waiting to catch some spectrum of the market bitcoin would miss? http://coinmarketcap.com/

Bitcoin is not alone and will never be. It needs to compete in terms of value proposition in all. possible. ways. or it will just lose that market share.

That is precisely why you are abjectly wrong.

A ton of altcoin exists right now with enormously more transaction throughput yet not one of them is challenging Bitcoin.

I'm starting to figure you will never understand this but the people who give Bitcoin its value, the holders, the "bitcoin rich list", could not careless about the transaction throughput or higher transaction fees. They will not be driven away from their investment because some noobs complain that they have to pay more than a penny for their transactions to go through.

Without these people it doesn't matter if you altcoin can do 1 trillion transactions a second because it is worthless as no serious investors has any interest holding it on the long term.

I'm not so sure that altcoins have a lot more throughput than Bitcoin after reading this summary of testnet limitations of BitShare 2.0, which is claiming it an reach 100k TPS in the real-world:

The performance of the test network is mostly hindered by existing P2P protocol and not by the CPU load of processing transactions. To reach 100,000 TPS would require high-end servers with Gigabit, low-latency, connections between them. At a minimum it would require 30 MB per second just to receive the stream of data in real time. This is clearly beyond the reach of our humble testers using low-end VPS nodes.

Source: https://bitshares.org/blog/2015/09/11/BitShares-2.0-Launching-on-October-13th

[erik777]

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility.

you get this impression......how? because you're still stuck in this "small blockists vs. XT" dichotomy? look, those of us who oppose BIP101 aren't unequivocally opposed to increasing the block size limit. but "competing with altcoins" is not a legitimate reason to implement just any protocol change that increases the block size limit. do you understand?

+1

[VeritasSapere]

I'm not so sure that altcoins have a lot more throughput than Bitcoin after reading this summary of testnet limitations of BitShare 2.0, which is claiming it an reach 100k TPS in the real-world:

Bitshares full nodes are very different to Bitcoin. Bitshares is delegated proof of stake, as far as I understand it there are only 100 full nodes which are incentivized and voted into position by the users based on the amount they hold. Other examples would be Dash which has fully incentivized full nodes implemented in a more decentralized fashion compared to Bitcoin. Ethereum also has some interesting solutions to scalability as well.

[erik777]

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

Seriously?  Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845

[VeritasSapere]

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

Seriously?  Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845

That is funny, it seems like we have both reached very different conclusions from reading that thread. lol

[brg444]

Just when I comment on the absolute lack of traction merchant acceptance and Bitcoin retail usage has experienced Bitpay announces a complete pivot from their original business plan as they are obviously bleeding cash.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3m40vp/new_features_new_pricing_plans/?sort=confidence

[brg444]

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

Seriously?  Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845

That is funny, it seems like we have both reached very different conclusions from reading that thread. lol

The issue is not whether the "DDos protection" is a blacklist or not. The concern is this feature introduces a centrally managed aspect into Bitcoin code. Considering Bitcoin is all about minimizing trust this implementation strikes at the heart of Bitcoin ethos by attempting to plug a trust-dependent function into the protocol.

No matter how you look at it this is bad and should be avoided at all cost.

[VeritasSapere]

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

Seriously?  Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845

That is funny, it seems like we have both reached very different conclusions from reading that thread. lol

The issue is not whether the "DDos protection" is a blacklist or not. The concern is this feature introduces a centrally managed aspect into Bitcoin code. Considering Bitcoin is all about minimizing trust this implementation strikes at the heart of Bitcoin ethos by attempting to plug a trust-dependent function into the protocol.

No matter how you look at it this is bad and should be avoided at all cost.

You can simply just turn it off within the client itself, or even just run a BIP101 only version of XT or even Core instead. It does not add a trust-dependent function into the protocol because it is not implemented on the protocol level.

https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/tree/only-bigblocks

[brg444]

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

Seriously?  Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1156489.msg12330845#msg12330845

That is funny, it seems like we have both reached very different conclusions from reading that thread. lol

The issue is not whether the "DDos protection" is a blacklist or not. The concern is this feature introduces a centrally managed aspect into Bitcoin code. Considering Bitcoin is all about minimizing trust this implementation strikes at the heart of Bitcoin ethos by attempting to plug a trust-dependent function into the protocol.

No matter how you look at it this is bad and should be avoided at all cost.

You can simply just turn it off within the client itself, or even just run a BIP101 only version of XT or even Core instead. It does not add a trust-dependent function into the protocol because it is not implemented on the protocol level.

https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/tree/only-bigblocks

I don't care. The intent is there and this is in line with a long history of Mike Hearn pushing very dangerous and disturbing ideas. Certainly enough for me to never, ever support anything he gravitates around.

In fact, if there is one great thing about Bitcoin XT it's that it has hopefully marked the beginning of the end for any influence he might've had over Bitcoin development.

[erik777]

It's obvious you'll never come around as you are just here to promote XT.  Nevertheless, I'll address this tired underlying assumptions that "people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation" somehow magically protects Bitcoin for generations to come:

False assumption #1: Everyone who downloads the program completely understands the code.

The vast majority of people do not understand the code, and most are not programmers.  Most of us, even those of us who program and can read code, downloaded and ran Core without having any idea about the details of what it does. (e.g., does it log IP addresses?)  The reason I take time to post on this forum about the risks of XT is so people can make a more informed decision, and if they decide to install XT, will at least hopefully be wise enough to question each upgrade.  Ditto for Core upgrades.  Hopefully, discussion like this help broaden awareness of the risks of new code.  

False assumption #2: Those who do have a better understanding of the features of the program they download are guaranteed to understand the implications of those features.  

The reality is that unless they do understand the implications, they are likely to take the purpose of the code at face value for what its author claims it will do.  Undoubtedly, there are some who installed XT who feel protected from DoS attacks because of the patch Mike put in it.  Unfortunately, had they read the thread with the Core devs when they rejected it, they would of known that (a) the only claim of a Tor attack was on Gavin's node with no evidence that any other node ever had an attack via Tor, (b) neither Gavin nor Mike provided logs or other evidence of the attack when the Core devs requested it, (c) the Core devs listed many reasons why most DDoS attacks are likely to come from non-Tor sources, (d) even Mike acknowledged that innocent Tor users would be harmed by it and (e) when the attack came from likely non-Tor sources, only Tor would effectively be blocked, not the DoS sources it was supposedly intended to counter.  Additionally, (f) this is intended to evolve, and could evolve with enough critical mass combined with XT whitelisting to make it very difficult to unseat XT as the primary code for Bitcoin nodes.  

Does the XT website discuss any of this?  No.  Not only does it ignore all concerns raised by the Core team, Mike has even publicly made statements about the process in which this patch was rejected by Core that very deceptively try to make the Core team look like the bad guys but conveniently leave out the truth of why Core rejected it.  Fortunately, the dialog between the Core devs and Mike on his pull request is very public for those interested in reading it.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6364

I am sorry to oversimplify your argument but you are essentially saying that people can not be trusted to make the best decision in terms of what implementation to run. This is however where I believe the fundamental choice and source of the voluntarism of Bitcoin should and does lie. Not governance structures build on top of an implementation or on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, since then we would run into some of the same old problems that large organizations and states run into. The consensus mechanism for resolving such disagreements already exists and it depends on what code people choose to run and where the miners direct their hashing power. Maybe you are correct and the economic majority will not make the best decision, however this freedom of choice is so important and fundamental for maintaining the freedom and decentralized nature of Bitcoin that this would still be the best path to take. There is an irony in accusing XT of dictatorship while simultaneously saying that people should not be trusted with the freedom of choice.

Trust?!?  I'm simply pointing out the obvious that applies to ALL OF US -- myself included.  Nearly every one of us who uses software runs it without thoroughly understanding what it is doing under the hood, even those of us who have been programming for many years in many languages, and have the best capabilities to break it down -- IF WE HAD ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD.

Heck, yesterday I just debugged a production system where code I wrote relied on JSON4J, which is open source, because I didn't know about its undocumented behavior of a constructor I was using.  Could I of looked at the source beforehand to predict it behave different with different numeric data types?  Yes.  But, as  general practice, we use a lot of open source libraries without ever looking at any of their code because no one has the time to inspect it all or discuss it on a forum.  

Now, I do believe there is a good percent of Bitcoin users, particularly today in its early stages, who are largely informed, in large part, not because they read the code, but because they spent time on this forum and read up on how it works elsewhere, truly interested in learning.  It was some time after I first ran Core before I really understood what it did and didn't do under the hood, and as a programmer still have more questions than answers, and in large part because of this forum, despite having over a decade of C++ experience since I will never have the time to peer review all the code.  

And, while I would like to believe that nearly everyone on this forum understands Bitcoin, and am encouraged by the many people who do, I'm at the same time amazed at how many people defend XT and defend the blacklists based on the claimed intent of the person who submitted the code without even trying to understand the implications of it, both in the present and the future (Mike clearly states he plans to evolve it.)  Yet, many who defend XT haven't even taken the time to read the discussion on Github when Core reviewed his pull request to see what his peers thought -- and, for most of the discussion, they held back quite a bit, trying to be nice about it, and not being too blunt about how incredibly bad of an idea it was. Yet, this incredibly bad idea is in the download from the nicely marketed XT website.  While miners appear to be rejecting it for now, the best news of all, I'm shocked that 10% of nodes are actually running it (setting aside the impossible to calculate spoofing on both sides). 



 

[erik777]

I'm not so sure that altcoins have a lot more throughput than Bitcoin after reading this summary of testnet limitations of BitShare 2.0, which is claiming it an reach 100k TPS in the real-world:

Bitshares full nodes are very different to Bitcoin. Bitshares is delegated proof of stake, as far as I understand it there are only 100 full nodes which are incentivized and voted into position by the users based on the amount they hold. Other examples would be Dash which has fully incentivized full nodes implemented in a more decentralized fashion compared to Bitcoin. Ethereum also has some interesting solutions to scalability as well.

Yes, and that is sort of my point.  You can throw out PoW, relieving a lot of CPU/GPU/ASIC intensive work (without getting into security implications), and, like Bitcoin, the primary bottlenck is still networking.  

[VeritasSapere]

I'm not so sure that altcoins have a lot more throughput than Bitcoin after reading this summary of testnet limitations of BitShare 2.0, which is claiming it an reach 100k TPS in the real-world:

Bitshares full nodes are very different to Bitcoin. Bitshares is delegated proof of stake, as far as I understand it there are only 100 full nodes which are incentivized and voted into position by the users based on the amount they hold. Other examples would be Dash which has fully incentivized full nodes implemented in a more decentralized fashion compared to Bitcoin. Ethereum also has some interesting solutions to scalability as well.

Yes, and that is sort of my point.  You can throw out PoW, relieving a lot of CPU/GPU/ASIC intensive work (without getting into security implications), and, like Bitcoin, the primary bottlenck is still networking.  

I am not referring to PoW in these examples, I was referring to full nodes which are dealing with the primary bottleneck of networking.

[knight22]

Well would you look at that, even people within your own little circle jerk are calling you out on your myopic conceptualization of the economy.



Don't you think maybe it's time you exit the vacuum and see if your economic theories apply in the real world?

If you read the thread, you'd see that I posted a two-sentence "proof" (<-- I used the scare quotes to indicate that it probably wasn't a proof), and then asked people to poke holes in it.  

I agree with @molecular.  The economic pressure can also be relieved, for example, by people voluntarily leaving the economic system.  This would drop the supply curve such that it meets the demand curve at a point near the quota (Qmax).

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.  

Of course if bitcoin becomes too much expensive to use other cheaper systems will get their shares of the market reducing the usage of bitcoin. I don't see how this could be good for bitcoin in any possible way.

It is good because Bitcoin was never about serving the cheap transactions market. People who cannot pay for the security and censorship-resistance it offers are not valuable clients.

Here again:

What is interesting, is that either way (by fork or by people leaving the system), somehow the result is that Q* ends up to the left of Qmax!  If this simple result is true, it would imply that it is not possible to use a block size limit to drive up fees.

It also means less people will indirectly hold bitcoins.

The result is not true so I'm not even sure why you would bring this up. Trace Mayer even addressed this exact situation during the interview:

Another thing that's interesting to look at is looking at a chart, not just of transactions but of transaction fees normalized to USD and comparing that chart to the market cap of Bitcoin. You know what? The market cap follows almost exactly how much people are willing to spend on transaction fees. So the conclusion we can draw is the more people are willing to spend the higher market cap. Then we get to see who's actually willing to pay to use it. That's a hard cost that people incur using the Bitcoin network.

I think it's great to see more hard cost because then we get to filter who the real users are because they are willing to pay money to use  it.

Yeah sure but the real question is how much money they will be willing to pay when there are cheaper alternatives that offers the exact same features around the corner?

Great way to push bitcoin to be a real failure.

So your whole argument hangs on the premise that some imaginary crypto will come through, sponsored by corporations and banks, and will steal Bitcoin's lunch money?

Where does your delusion stops  

A cheaper proposition doesn't need to be sponsored by anybody. Do you know how cheap it is to copy open code and tweak it? The economics and incentives at play will just work by itself.
Do you know how many altcoins are there waiting to catch some spectrum of the market bitcoin would miss? http://coinmarketcap.com/

Bitcoin is not alone and will never be. It needs to compete in terms of value proposition in all. possible. ways. or it will just lose that market share.

That is precisely why you are abjectly wrong.

A ton of altcoin exists right now with enormously more transaction throughput yet not one of them is challenging Bitcoin.

I'm starting to figure you will never understand this but the people who give Bitcoin its value, the holders, the "bitcoin rich list", could not careless about the transaction throughput or higher transaction fees. They will not be driven away from their investment because some noobs complain that they have to pay more than a penny for their transactions to go through.

Without these people it doesn't matter if you altcoin can do 1 trillion transactions a second because it is worthless as no serious investors has any interest holding it on the long term.

No altcoin is actually challenging bitcoin simply because bitcoin already offers everything users and businesses needs at a competitive cost but the day the price of conducting transactions will rise, things will change. There will be an economic incentive to use another system that is simply cheaper, faster that has less friction. Why use bitcoin as money then? Just because it has a 21M limit herp derp?

Holding a useless thing does not make that thing valuable or tulips and Bernie babies would still be on the moon. You can continue to think so and ignore the reality though but the reality won't ignore you.