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

[VeritasSapere]

If we cannot trust that the majority of the mining power will do what is best for Bitcoin then Bitcoin has already fundamentally failed which I do not think is presently the case. In order to orphan all non-abiding blocks a single entity would need to be able exert control over more then fifty one percent of the mining power, if this happens Bitcoin has already been undermined anyway. I do not think it will be possible to enforce such policy across every jurisdiction in the world, this is however more of a question for geopolitics.

My point still stands: larger blocks increase mining centralization pressures. Truth is, even with a single miner you can trust that it will do what's best for Bitcoin. But it doesn't have to. It's all based on incentives. Mining centralization is hard to prevent, as the past tells us, and even harder to undo. You likely won't notice until the bad happens.

I agree with you that mining centralization is difficult to prevent, because of centralization of manufacture and economies of scale among other reasons, to a certain extend I have accepted this reality however. I still do not think that increasing the blocksize would increase mining centralization since miners do not run full nodes.

In my position for instance I just point my hashing power towards a pool of my choice that I think reflects my beliefs well and acts responsible, increasing the block size does not effect my mining operation whatsoever and the majority of the hashing power is under the control of people that are in a similar position to myself.

Increasing the blocksize does introduce centralization pressures but not in regards to mining. Keeping the blocksize at one megabyte also introduces centralization in the form of an increased reliance on third parties. So for me considering this balancing act, increasing the blocksize is the most decentralized option with everything considered.

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[VeritasSapere]

increasing the blocksize does not change this dynamic whatsoever one way or the other.

You did not prove that, and I explained why it does. Hint: cenralization pressures change this dynamic.

We depend on miners to do what is best for Bitcoin, this works because they are incentivized to do good. This is why pools are not approaching fifty one percent any more.

Don't be so naive. You don't know if they are doing good, in fact, most Chinese large farms connected to AntPool, F2Pool and others might be controlled by a single company. What you see is a nice graph on bc.i, nothing more.

In the same sense we will rely on the miners when censorship happens on the pool level, to move their mining power over to a pool that does not censor transactions, I think miners will do so because Bitcoin derives some of its value from its permissionless nature.

No amount of miners' faith can circumvent government regulation. That's a fundamental problem to Bitcoin that bothers me most.

It is good to keep in mind that it only takes one small pool to include the censored transactions to thwart the efforts of the tyrants.

Circumvented easily -- just orphan all non-abiding blocks.

I also do not think that every jurisdiction in the world would fall under this type of censorship and oppression as well, which is what would be required for such censorship to be successful.

There are countries that love to project their power onto others around the world (FATCA and so on), and countries that might be willing to do the same (China, ..). What happens you can't predict, but I cant discount any possibility.

Also smaller pools are not less profitable they just have more variance, obviously however you would not want to be in a pool that has under 5 percent of the hashpower depending on the timescale of your mining operation of course.

That's the whole point of the debate. The uneven propagation is influencing orphan races outcomes. While this can be at least partially mitigated by relay networks, the worst-case scenarios is still the same.

If we cannot trust that the majority of the mining power will do what is best for Bitcoin then Bitcoin has already fundamentally failed which I do not think is presently the case. In order to orphan all non-abiding blocks a single entity would need to be able exert control over more then fifty one percent of the mining power, if this happens Bitcoin has already been undermined anyway.

You don't understand Bitcoin.

It is not about trusting miners but aligning their incentives properly, which you suggest to change. The onus of proof is on you to support your position with factual demonstration that the balance of power is not at risk. You have so far tragically failed at doing so.

The miners incentives are already aligned properly, which I am not suggesting we change. I have proven the theories that I have presented here, just saying that I have not, does not make the opposite true.

In response to the incident of Antpool SPV mining and causing a fork a few months back, since then Antpool has lost a lot of its mining power which proves my point exactly, such a pool is incentivized to attract more miners by acting responsibly and when they act irresponsibly they lose support, proving the points that I have been making. I very much doubt that Antpool would make such a mistake again since they lost a lot of money because of the reward and reputation that was lost, if miners understand one thing it is profit. You also claim that the solo miners are an integral part of Bitcoin. This is simply just not true, solo mining is no longer feasible. Unless you think that an industrial mining operation costing at least more then ten million dollars is a solo miner and good for decentralization, since that would be the only way to feasibly solo mine today because of variance.

[sidhujag]

Right now im leaning on not increasing the block size until the time is right... when is it right? When a 0 fee transaction cannot get included in a block for more than 5 days (current bank wire transfer times). By then hopefully we solve the technical problems and are in need for smaller fees.

Yep, you're sensing it right, I have come to the same conclusions only maybe from a different perspective.
We will get to the block-size increase decision eventually as the Time Goes By.

Thanks just got into the debate and wanted to see if I fully understood what the problem was about... so why can Gaven not see this? I mean it took me like an hour to get the facts down and realize its a bad idea right now? whats his view?

You can't possibly have missed all this lulz ?  

Gavin has been compromised by Mike Hearn and his merry band of socialist shills who are attempting to press urgency under the pretense that the cap is stalling Bitcoin MAINSTREAM adoption.

I know that part its obvious... so what are their arguments for?

[brg444]

Right now im leaning on not increasing the block size until the time is right... when is it right? When a 0 fee transaction cannot get included in a block for more than 5 days (current bank wire transfer times). By then hopefully we solve the technical problems and are in need for smaller fees.

Yep, you're sensing it right, I have come to the same conclusions only maybe from a different perspective.
We will get to the block-size increase decision eventually as the Time Goes By.

Thanks just got into the debate and wanted to see if I fully understood what the problem was about... so why can Gaven not see this? I mean it took me like an hour to get the facts down and realize its a bad idea right now? whats his view?

You can't possibly have missed all this lulz ?  

Gavin has been compromised by Mike Hearn and his merry band of socialist shills who are attempting to press urgency under the pretense that the cap is stalling Bitcoin MAINSTREAM adoption.

I know that part its obvious... so what are their arguments for?

Bitcoin XT

An immediate switch to 8 MB and doubling every two year until 32GB blocks.

[VeritasSapere]

Right now im leaning on not increasing the block size until the time is right... when is it right? When a 0 fee transaction cannot get included in a block for more than 5 days (current bank wire transfer times). By then hopefully we solve the technical problems and are in need for smaller fees.

Yep, you're sensing it right, I have come to the same conclusions only maybe from a different perspective.
We will get to the block-size increase decision eventually as the Time Goes By.

Thanks just got into the debate and wanted to see if I fully understood what the problem was about... so why can Gaven not see this? I mean it took me like an hour to get the facts down and realize its a bad idea right now? whats his view?

You can't possibly have missed all this lulz ?  

Gavin has been compromised by Mike Hearn and his merry band of socialist shills who are attempting to press urgency under the pretense that the cap is stalling Bitcoin MAINSTREAM adoption.

I know that part its obvious... so what are their arguments for?

Read their arguments for yourself and make up your own mind, there is a lot of disinformation and ad hominem on these forums. This is an article written by Mike Hearn explaining why he thinks we should increase the blocksize:

https://medium.com/faith-and-future/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1

[sidhujag]

If we cannot trust that the majority of the mining power will do what is best for Bitcoin then Bitcoin has already fundamentally failed which I do not think is presently the case. In order to orphan all non-abiding blocks a single entity would need to be able exert control over more then fifty one percent of the mining power, if this happens Bitcoin has already been undermined anyway. I do not think it will be possible to enforce such policy across every jurisdiction in the world, this is however more of a question for geopolitics.

My point still stands: larger blocks increase mining centralization pressures. Truth is, even with a single miner you can trust that it will do what's best for Bitcoin. But it doesn't have to. It's all based on incentives. Mining centralization is hard to prevent, as the past tells us, and even harder to undo. You likely won't notice until the bad happens.

I agree with you that mining centralization is difficult to prevent, because of centralization of manufacture and economies of scale among other reasons, to a certain extend I have accepted this reality however. I still do not think that increasing the blocksize would increase mining centralization since miners do not run full nodes.

In my position for instance I just point my hashing power towards a pool of my choice that I think reflects my beliefs well and acts responsible, increasing the block size does not effect my mining operation whatsoever and the majority of the hashing power is under the control of people that are in a similar position to myself.

Increasing the blocksize does introduce centralization pressures but not in regards to mining. Keeping the blocksize at one megabyte also introduces centralization in the form of an increased reliance on third parties. So for me considering this balancing act, increasing the blocksize is the most decentralized option with everything considered.

So when two miners coordinate to talk to each other via headers because the latency to propagate the block (bigger block) is too high is that not what we call centralization? Regardless of what type of node miners are running.

[iCEBREAKER]

Everybody out there is talking about the ideas of Peter R.
Nobody is talking about the ideas of the brg and that mod.
Which is no surprise.

Everybody out there is laughing about the 'spherical blockchain' ideas of Peter R.

Which is no surprise.

[VeritasSapere]

If we cannot trust that the majority of the mining power will do what is best for Bitcoin then Bitcoin has already fundamentally failed which I do not think is presently the case. In order to orphan all non-abiding blocks a single entity would need to be able exert control over more then fifty one percent of the mining power, if this happens Bitcoin has already been undermined anyway. I do not think it will be possible to enforce such policy across every jurisdiction in the world, this is however more of a question for geopolitics.

My point still stands: larger blocks increase mining centralization pressures. Truth is, even with a single miner you can trust that it will do what's best for Bitcoin. But it doesn't have to. It's all based on incentives. Mining centralization is hard to prevent, as the past tells us, and even harder to undo. You likely won't notice until the bad happens.

I agree with you that mining centralization is difficult to prevent, because of centralization of manufacture and economies of scale among other reasons, to a certain extend I have accepted this reality however. I still do not think that increasing the blocksize would increase mining centralization since miners do not run full nodes.

In my position for instance I just point my hashing power towards a pool of my choice that I think reflects my beliefs well and acts responsible, increasing the block size does not effect my mining operation whatsoever and the majority of the hashing power is under the control of people that are in a similar position to myself.

Increasing the blocksize does introduce centralization pressures but not in regards to mining. Keeping the blocksize at one megabyte also introduces centralization in the form of an increased reliance on third parties. So for me considering this balancing act, increasing the blocksize is the most decentralized option with everything considered.

So when two miners coordinate to talk to each other via headers because the latency to propagate the block (bigger block) is too high is that not what we call centralization? Regardless of what type of node miners are running.

There is a confusion in the terms here, it is important to make the distinction between the pools and the miners. It might be better to adopt a new terminology of hashers and miners if people disagree with this distinction. The miners do not talk to each other via headers to decrease latency, the pools do instead. So there is a difference between mining centralization and pool centralization, it would be a mistake to equate these two issues. Even though there are not more then twenty pools today, there are far more individual miners that are responsible for and have control over the hashing power.

My point is that miners do not run full nodes, the pools do instead, this is why increasing the block size would not lead to increased mining centralization. It would also not effect centralization of pools since it is the miners who decide where and how the hashing power is distributed. The danger of centralization of mining does exist today and it is a threat that should be taken seriously, consider becoming a miner yourself to help keep mining decentralized. Mining centralization today however is due to centralization of manufacturing and economies of scale among other factors. Increasing the blocksize however does not effect mining centralization for the reasons I have explained here.

[sidhujag]

I also think that fees may be good to be dynamically appreciated because of demand in the block for transactions, rather than increase the block size to try to ease the fees. If we do so then I can imagine how a corrupt politician will lobby for decreasing fees breaking the natural demand/supply equilibrium of fees paid to miners when subsidy is complete and miners live off of the fees alone, causing havok in network security and perhaps an attack. His main motive will be to attract votes from telling unsuspecting voters that he will decrease the cost of doing business by increasing block size and decreasing fees as a result, thus allowing the poor to transact on the blockchain blah blah blah. However once its done once, it will be used as a tool to change again because the corrupt will refer to the time when it changed saying, they got it wrong that time we have to change it again.

[VeritasSapere]

I also think that fees may be good to be dynamically appreciated because of demand in the block for transactions, rather than increase the block size to try to ease the fees. If we do so then I can imagine how a corrupt politician will lobby for decreasing fees breaking the natural demand/supply equilibrium of fees paid to miners when subsidy is complete and miners live off of the fees alone, causing havok in network security and perhaps an attack. His main motive will be to attract votes from telling unsuspecting voters that he will decrease the cost of doing business by increasing block size and decreasing fees as a result, thus allowing the poor to transact on the blockchain blah blah blah. However once its done once, it will be used as a tool to change again because the corrupt will refer to the time when it changed saying, they got it wrong that time we have to change it again.

He would have to convince people to do a hardfork and change Bitcoin in order to achieve such a goal. This danger I think will always exist, I have a background in political philosophy so I am well aware how people can be lead astray. Bitcoin is democratic in some aspects of its governance on the protocol level. A more enlightened culture would help to counter such threats. I was about to say that this is not a problem that Bitcoin solves but in a way it does because of the ability to hard fork and split, at least the problem of the tyranny of the majority is solved. Even if the majority does not choose freedom, we still can, even if it means we will not be on the longest chain. The volunteerism of cryptocurrency is beautiful.

[iCEBREAKER]

besides the vitalik scammer, never heard of any of them whatnots cryptographic wannabes:

http://ledger.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/ledger/about/editorialTeam

these are not devs, nor early contributors to bitcoin.. just some pompous academic parasites.

and lol most of them from MUUURICAAAAA

Peter and Vitalik aside, the rest of the Ledger team is very qualified.  Professor Shadab (an old friend of mine) is particularly intelligent and well-spoken, but not at all "pompous." 

Not sure WTF your point about "MUUURICAAAAA" is.  Like Vitalik, PR (the object of our mutual well-earned scorn) is Canadian so you're really straining hard to get in that little bitchy dig at a nation of ~350 million individuals dispersed among 50 States.

Finney, Chaum, Szabo, and the Merkles are also Americans, so what?  Just hating because you are jealous?  Or are you a feckless self-loathing undergrad trendoid?



Professor Rizun hasn't published anything for years.  He's a washed-up has-been, so he's retreated back to academia.  Assuming some backwater (spherical) cow college/trade school in the sub-arctic middle of nowhere counts as academia.

[iCEBREAKER]

I don't even know how to name it.... Now Peter R is hijacking the dev mailing list with his made-up GIFs. I'm out of words
https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org/msg02469.html

So PR is joing Hearn's jihad against CLTV.  This development promises even moar epic lulz.

PR and MH's puppet masters have correctly ascertained that should Bitcoin's Layer 2 be effectively deployed, the subsequent scaling and consequent economic race conditions spell d-0-0-0-m for Team Fiat.

Gentlemen, ready your popcorn!   

[iCEBREAKER]

I have been trying to avoid ad hominems, but XTers on the mailing list today look like a pure sect. Why are devs wasting time with them...
Peter R's invented gridlock https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org/msg02501.html

Can't agree more with BtcDrak - this is toxic.

It's all well planned of course; Peter can make a censorship victim claim if they ban him too, or they can continue to tolerate his sophistry. Banning is better IMO, people will be interested in the reason why he was banned, and so it generates an opportunity to fill in the details for themselves. Win-win, really.

The rules and outcome of the game Peter and Mike are playing are well known:

According to Eric Berne's 1964 book Games People Play, Schlemiel is a head game for 2 played in social situations.

The Schlemiel does indeed spill soup on the Schlemazl, and apologizes.
The Schlemazl responds by forgiving the Schlemiel, thus allowing the Schemiel to continue with their pattern of minor offenses.

The payoff is the Schlemiel gets to be an oaf, and the Schlemazl gets to be the long-suffering martyr. Both parties benefit, and the game can go on for a lifetime. If the Schlemazl does not play "properly", and takes offense, refuses to forgive, and kicks the Schlemiel out on hir ear, the Schlemiel gets to resent them for being mean.

The way out of this game is for the Schlemazl to forgive the Schlemiel in advance for anything they might do on the condition that the Schlemiel may not apologize for the offending behavior, and then stand back. Preferably behind a solid object.

http://www.everything2.com/title/schlemiel

[Peter R]

Professor Rizun...

For the record, I'm not a professor; I work in the private sector.  I co-own a small, humble high-tech company that develops intellectual property for different types of sensors.  Most of my non-bitcoin work is what you would call "spherical-cow math" to try to understand physical phenomenon in order to make better devices.   Some examples include optimally fusing the signal of a gyroscope with an accelerometer to measure human motion, understanding the propagation of vibrations through metal drill string for acoustic telemetry while oil drilling, to inferring the temperature of the process chamber at an Intel semicon fab by measuring the fluorescence of a special crystal.  

So I suggest that a better attack would be "he's not even a professor...he just models spherical cows."  You should keep the "backwater sub-arctic middle of nowhere bit," however.  It does get cold and lonely up here in my igloo.  

Anyways, enough about me.  Let's focus on making Bitcoin succeed.    

[brg444]

Professor Rizun...

For the record, I'm not a professor; I work in the private sector.  I co-own a small, humble high-tech company that develops intellectual property for different types of sensors.  Most of my non-bitcoin work is what you would call "spherical-cow math" to try to understand physical phenomenon in order to make better devices.   Some examples include optimally fusing the signal of a gyroscope with an accelerometer to measure human motion, understanding the propagation of vibrations through metal drill string for an acoustic telemetry for oil drilling, to inferring the temperature of the process chamber at an Intel semicon fab by measuring the fluorescence of a special crystal.  

So I suggest that a better attack would be "he's not even a professor."  You should keep the "backwater sub-arctic middle of nowhere bit," however.  It does get cold up here in my igloo.  

Anyways, enough about me.  Let's focus on making Bitcoin succeed.    

That begins by focusing on your apparently accomplished career and leave Bitcoin alone.

Your antics are sucking the attention of productive people whose profession and expertise consists of growing Bitcoin. Despite the picture you attempt to paint every respectable individual in this ecosystem recognize the job they have accomplished and only loud nobodies such as yourself are doubting them going forward.



I can't fucking wait to dance on you XT retards' grave. You're just another Gerald Davis.

[Peter R]

You're just another Gerald Davis.

DeathAndTaxes was an awesome guy and I miss his presence in the online Bitcoin community.  When I was learning about Bitcoin, I would regularly read every comment he would write, hoping to suck up some of his wisdom.  Gerald is that rare gem who can understand technical topics at their full depth, who is learned in a breadth of fields beyond tech, and who is a brilliant writer and communicator.

I can't fucking wait to dance on you XT retards' grave.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around why you appear to be acting hostile towards me.  

I am not an XT'er, by the way; I simply want to see both larger block sizes and multiple implementations of the protocol.  By supporting XT, I support that objective. If XT doesn't take off but we get bigger blocks and start to deprecate Core some other way, I'd be pleased with that outcome too.

What is so wrong with making it easier for the community to express their free choice by giving them more options?  If development indeed does decentralize as per the animation below, how is that a bad thing?

[brg444]

You're just another Gerald Davis.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around why you appear to be acting hostile towards me.  

Because you are a disingenuous and very dangerous person  

There is no centralization of Bitcoin development.

Like every other open-source project it has a source code repository that everyone is free to submit pull requests to.

Each user is also free to fork the source code into their own version. Several groups have done so already. Multiple different implementations are already out in the wild. What are you doing to support them?

[iCEBREAKER]

Professor Rizun...

For the record, I'm not a professor; I work in the private sector.  I co-own a small, humble high-tech company that develops intellectual property for different types of sensors.  Most of my non-bitcoin work is what you would call "spherical-cow math" to try to understand physical phenomenon in order to make better devices.   Some examples include optimally fusing the signal of a gyroscope with an accelerometer to measure human motion, understanding the propagation of vibrations through metal drill string for acoustic telemetry while oil drilling, to inferring the temperature of the process chamber at an Intel semicon fab by measuring the fluorescence of a special crystal.  

So I suggest that a better attack would be "he's not even a professor...he just models spherical cows."  You should keep the "backwater sub-arctic middle of nowhere bit," however.  It does get cold and lonely up here in my igloo.  

Anyways, enough about me.  Let's focus on making Bitcoin succeed.    

OK, fair enough.  Your expertise is in extremely fine-grained matters of applied medical physics.  That's cool, as is your ability to take some ribbing and keep your sense of humor.

But please stop Dunning-Kruger effecting your way into the Peter Principle.  You are among the handful of people enabling Hearn's assclowning and shitlording.

The block size debate is too interdisciplinary (or rather, occurs within the wrong disciplines) for your ham-fisted inputs to be helpful beyond the educational clarifying effects of correcting your misapprehensions.

[tvbcof]

You're just another Gerald Davis.

DeathAndTaxes was an awesome guy and I miss his presence in the online Bitcoin community.  When I was learning about Bitcoin, I would regularly read every comment he would write, hoping to suck up some of his wisdom.  Gerald is that rare gem who can understand technical topics at their full depth, who is learned in a breadth of fields beyond tech, and who is a brilliant writer and communicator.

I never had much use for D&T, but he was never quite as obnoxious as some in his class.

Stephen Gornick was top notch in my mind and extremely active and helpful back in the day.  One of the few things I've seen from him in the past few years made it clear that he was disgusted with the putsch attempt.

As for prescience, nobody can beat Hearn.  He saw with amazing clarity how to destroy Bitcoin from the time I started paying attention in 2011 and has been working hard to achieve this goal from that time.

[Krona Rev]

Professor Rizun...

For the record, I'm not a professor; I work in the private sector.  I co-own a small, humble high-tech company that develops intellectual property for different types of sensors.  Most of my non-bitcoin work is what you would call "spherical-cow math" to try to understand physical phenomenon in order to make better devices.   Some examples include optimally fusing the signal of a gyroscope with an accelerometer to measure human motion, understanding the propagation of vibrations through metal drill string for acoustic telemetry while oil drilling, to inferring the temperature of the process chamber at an Intel semicon fab by measuring the fluorescence of a special crystal.  

So I suggest that a better attack would be "he's not even a professor...he just models spherical cows."  You should keep the "backwater sub-arctic middle of nowhere bit," however.  It does get cold and lonely up here in my igloo.  

Anyways, enough about me.  Let's focus on making Bitcoin succeed.    

It's good Peter R made this post. For those of you unfamiliar with academia, if someone calls you "Professor" and you're not a professor (or "Dr." and you don't have a Ph.D.), you're supposed to correct it. In this case, one could properly say "Dr. Rizun" -- at least according to the Ledger Editorial Board web page.

As for the XT/BIP101/1MB/8MB/8GB topic, having read much of this thread and many other related threads, I think I'd like to smile and slowly back away.