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

[sgbett]

How dare you!? I am most certainly in the "just you wait until december" camp, my xt-nodes blazing as a futile show of dissent!

Alright, fair enough.  You are in a (supremely nutty) third camp, which believes both 'XT died for our 1MB sins' and 'XT will return for the Gavinista rapture.'

Alas, if only you could understand the superlinear relationship between tx size and verification time, we could put this civil war behind us.

Unless you are determined to destroy Bitcoin's decentralization-cum-survivability, and thus subvert the engineering requirement that it be above the law...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

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[brg444]

How dare you!? I am most certainly in the "just you wait until december" camp, my xt-nodes blazing as a futile show of dissent!

Alright, fair enough.  You are in a (supremely nutty) third camp, which believes both 'XT died for our 1MB sins' and 'XT will return for the Gavinista rapture.'

Alas, if only you could understand the superlinear relationship between tx size and verification time, we could put this civil war behind us.

Unless you are determined to destroy Bitcoin's decentralization-cum-survivability, and thus subvert the engineering requirement that it be above the law...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Sure its a bit beat up right now, but just you wait till xmas, remember we hit $560k in november so we are bound to need a little more room!

XT stifled the discussion, please spare us your revisionist history.

The whole act has been a huge drain on the attention and focus of the developing community.

[adamstgBit]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can convert to SPV with no affect on the network assuming SPV clients are talking to full-nodes.

imagine a mining pool becomes regulated and starts to stop processing some TX coming from blacklisted addresses.
how fast do you think the hashing power behind that pool would drop to near 0.
10mins? 3 hours?

COME ON PEOPLE we got centralized servers servicing US with illegal live streams of GB movies

the block size limit has no real bearing on security

[knight22]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners rely on mining pools.

block propagation delays with bigger blocks causing miners to tend towards using networks that offer no anonymity because Tor et all increase latency. That's just one thing it does. It also increases pool to pool header synchronization (centralization) to get a head start on mining next block. The first point is stronger because if miners can't remain anon then it can be subject to a regulation attack. (not to be confused with anonymous coin transfers)

This is why I say that the time to increase blocks will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days, as it will give ample time to solve the anon problem.

But most big mining pools are already publicly known and subject to regulations. No?  Secondly, if mining pools are being regulated in a jurisdiction what stop them to move to an unregulated one? Moreover, what stop  miners to move from a regulated pool to an unregulated one? Trying to regulate miners is only a fools game IMO.

[sidhujag]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can convert to SPV with no affect on the network assuming SPV clients are talking to full-nodes.

imagine a mining pool becomes regulated and starts to stop processing some TX coming from blacklisted addresses.
how fast do you think the hashing power behind that pool would drop to near 0.
10mins? 3 hours?

COME ON PEOPLE we got centralized servers servicing US with illegal live streams of GB movies

the block size limit has no real bearing on security

Those servers keep getting shut down, all it takes is one person to be made an example of to get everyone else scared... also the stakes are higher with money than with movies.

[sidhujag]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners rely on mining pools.

block propagation delays with bigger blocks causing miners to tend towards using networks that offer no anonymity because Tor et all increase latency. That's just one thing it does. It also increases pool to pool header synchronization (centralization) to get a head start on mining next block. The first point is stronger because if miners can't remain anon then it can be subject to a regulation attack. (not to be confused with anonymous coin transfers)

This is why I say that the time to increase blocks will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days, as it will give ample time to solve the anon problem.

But most big mining pools are already publicly known and subject to regulations. No?  Secondly, if mining pools are being regulated in a jurisdiction what stop them to move to an unregulated one? Moreover, what stop  miners to move from a regulated pool to an unregulated one? Trying to regulate miners is only a fools game IMO.

The mining pool does not know the location of the miner if the miner is anonymous. Regulating miners is an end game prospect for gov't to try to put a cap on bitcoin if it grows too big or they feel really threatened by it. Thus it needs to be avoided at all cost for survival.

[iCEBREAKER]

XT opened a debate

There you go again, thinking you know WTF you're talking about when you actually do not.

The block size debate has been ongoing, in the proper Lserv/IRC/BIP channels, for many years.

Just because your Redditurd Army recently discovered the topic and quickly developed Strong Opinions does not indicate XT "opened a debate."

The debate has been open since 2009.  The subjective appearance of novelty by which you are afflicted is a cognitive artifact resulting from your status as a N00B who should listen more and talk less, or GTFO.

you are the person that thinks its dead

I wish you all the best in your grieving transitions from the denial stage, on through bargaining, and to a final acceptance.

[knight22]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners rely on mining pools.

block propagation delays with bigger blocks causing miners to tend towards using networks that offer no anonymity because Tor et all increase latency. That's just one thing it does. It also increases pool to pool header synchronization (centralization) to get a head start on mining next block. The first point is stronger because if miners can't remain anon then it can be subject to a regulation attack. (not to be confused with anonymous coin transfers)

This is why I say that the time to increase blocks will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days, as it will give ample time to solve the anon problem.

But most big mining pools are already publicly known and subject to regulations. No?  Secondly, if mining pools are being regulated in a jurisdiction what stop them to move to an unregulated one? Moreover, what stop  miners to move from a regulated pool to an unregulated one? Trying to regulate miners is only a fools game IMO.

The mining pool does not know the location of the miner if the miner is anonymous. Regulating miners is an end game prospect for gov't to try to put a cap on bitcoin if it grows too big or they feel really threatened by it. Thus it needs to be avoided at all cost for survival.

I agree but miners that mine on a pool are not affected by larger blocks if I am not mistaken so they can stay anonymous fairly easily. On the other hand, how can bitcoin become so big that it threatens governments with artificial limitations that makes it uncompetitive (if we consider that blocks are being full and fees/delays rise a lot)?

[brg444]

I agree but miners that mine on a pool are not affected by larger blocks if I am not mistaken so they can stay anonymous fairly easily. On the other hand, how can bitcoin become so big that it threatens governments with artificial limitations that makes it uncompetitive (if we consider that blocks are being full and fees/delays rise a lot)?

Because Bitcoin does not compete on cost but monetary sovereignty, you doofus.

[sidhujag]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners rely on mining pools.

block propagation delays with bigger blocks causing miners to tend towards using networks that offer no anonymity because Tor et all increase latency. That's just one thing it does. It also increases pool to pool header synchronization (centralization) to get a head start on mining next block. The first point is stronger because if miners can't remain anon then it can be subject to a regulation attack. (not to be confused with anonymous coin transfers)

This is why I say that the time to increase blocks will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days, as it will give ample time to solve the anon problem.

But most big mining pools are already publicly known and subject to regulations. No?  Secondly, if mining pools are being regulated in a jurisdiction what stop them to move to an unregulated one? Moreover, what stop  miners to move from a regulated pool to an unregulated one? Trying to regulate miners is only a fools game IMO.

The mining pool does not know the location of the miner if the miner is anonymous. Regulating miners is an end game prospect for gov't to try to put a cap on bitcoin if it grows too big or they feel really threatened by it. Thus it needs to be avoided at all cost for survival.

I agree but miners that mine on a pool are not affected by larger blocks if I am not mistaken so they can stay anonymous fairly easily. On the other hand, how can bitcoin become so big that it threatens governments with artificial limitations that makes it uncompetitive (if we consider that blocks are being full and fees/delays rise a lot)?

That assumption is incorrect. Bigger blocks cause larger delays which remove the ability to remain hidden to be profitable. (assuming price will always lag difficulty which is a good assumption as it is worse case and realistic).

If people stop trusting government they will put their money in somewhere the government cannot control which will frustrate them because they want control to try to plan ahead. If government isn't using bitcoin themselves yet, they will try to shut it down so they can retain control of society. A corrupt politician can try to do the same thing also as another angle of attack, to persuade people to vote by saying he will reduce fees (by regulating miners).

I'm not saying fees can't rise to be unrealistic and cause uproar because people don't value security as much as they are paying.. however innovation will help fight this problem (live to fight another day).

[iCEBREAKER]

COME ON PEOPLE we got centralized servers servicing US with illegal live streams of GB movies

the block size limit has no real bearing on security

Get some new material plz.  This crap line of fail-logic got proper fuckkin' #REKT months ago...

[iCEBREAKER]

Big market (makers?!) here..

Is that really the same cypherdoc that accused me of not understanding the network effect?

it's called Metcalfe's Law.  "value" of the network is squared by every new user.  iCE would rather keep it strangled down to him and his Myrcea buddies.

I wonder how the network value of that 6-member circlejerk forum compares to BitcoinTalk (544282 Members) and /r/bitcoin (173,242)?  

In fairness to frap.doc, that place is still better than Ver's shitty bitcom.com.  

A notorious liar. More than 200.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1162684.msg12619823#msg12619823

I barely have the heart to tell Zarasstua I intentionally used Cunningham's Law to get him to provide the actual lulzy figure, so we could proceed to make fun of it!

[iCEBREAKER]

I downloaded and ran an XT node, but it was DDoS'd.  More accurately, my ISP was DDoS'd and my neighbors suffered collateral damage.

#REKT confirmed.

Mwah-haw-haw-ha.  I love these stories of genuine surprise that XT's hostility would be returned in kind.

Did you inform your ISP/neighbors the reason they suffered collateral damage is you were attacking Bitcoin with only an infinitesimal fraction of the power required for success?

I warned you Gavinistas what would happen if you started a hot war with the socioeconomic majority.  You didn't listen.

[knight22]

The common sense says that if bitcoin becomes uncompetitive and there is no other secure and decentralized alternative, then it will just give economic incentives to create such a system. From there it is just a matter of time that such a system will be created.  

Regardless of technology improvement and development progress, bitcoin can't afford in any ways to become uncompetitive to remain relevant.

It's been 5 years since Bitcoin was introduced, and countless forks have appeared, some of them very interesting. There were low fees, fast blocks, different crypto, PoS and so on... None of these have succeeded at (or even got close to) challenging Bitcoin.

I can't imagine a scenario where Bitcoin is being overtaken by another cryptocurrency, unless it's a real breakthrough in terms of design, and it still retains Bitcoin's properties. But in this case, it can be adopted by Bitcoin as well...

If you can define what kind of competitiveness you mean and picture a scenario, I'd be interested in reading that.

The competitiveness I am referring is mostly in terms of fees and delays. Right now there is no point of using an altcoin unless you are chasing pump n dump speculative bubbles but if using bitcoin becomes too expansive then it will make a lot of sense to start using some altcoins. Not because of technological breakthrough but simply because of economic pressures.

But none of these alt coins are as decentralized.. they run the risk of miner regulation the same as bitcoin but with much smaller network security. So we won't know unless there are some that offer high security/decentralization and lower fees, which may be just a short term play before those fees rise to meet bitcoins

Unless an altcoin proves that good enough decentralization is good enough and being overly decentralized is being proven unnecessary and only hurts competitiveness.

I think this is important for bitcoin to find a balance with enough decentralization to keep the system secure AND competitive. Otherwise another altcoin will find that balance in the long run.

no the system MUST remain fully decentralized or it breaks the strength of cryptographic encryption. There is no balance you speak of, there is innovation however.

@adamstgBit: what level? well aslong as miners are susceptible to a regulation attack then I'd say its sufficiently decentralized. The rest of the problems can be solved over time, but this one would be the end of it if we don't solve.

I'd imagine that if mining remained decentralized and the powers-that-be realized "it just ain't gonna" happen that they would be incentisized to keep full-nodes up and transfered their wealth into bitcoin at that point because they know their wealth would be preserved. If these incentivesized full nodes are running (as I translated Satoshi's message IMO) that's fine because we have powerful players supporting the nodes we know the network won't be "not" relaying/securing blocks for a long time.

Everything hinges around mining decentralization. If this is possible then having full-nodes won't be a problem.

And how many nodes does that represents exactly being fully decentralized? If 1000 nodes is enough, then can we consider 1M nodes to be unnecessary? No?

Miner decentralization matters more than full-node decentralization. It takes half of the miners to become regulated to cause havok, while half of the full-nodes can be removed with no affect to the network.

Agreed but how does the block size limit influence miners centralization if most miners rely on mining pools.

block propagation delays with bigger blocks causing miners to tend towards using networks that offer no anonymity because Tor et all increase latency. That's just one thing it does. It also increases pool to pool header synchronization (centralization) to get a head start on mining next block. The first point is stronger because if miners can't remain anon then it can be subject to a regulation attack. (not to be confused with anonymous coin transfers)

This is why I say that the time to increase blocks will be when 0 fee tx takes longer than 5 days, as it will give ample time to solve the anon problem.

But most big mining pools are already publicly known and subject to regulations. No?  Secondly, if mining pools are being regulated in a jurisdiction what stop them to move to an unregulated one? Moreover, what stop  miners to move from a regulated pool to an unregulated one? Trying to regulate miners is only a fools game IMO.

The mining pool does not know the location of the miner if the miner is anonymous. Regulating miners is an end game prospect for gov't to try to put a cap on bitcoin if it grows too big or they feel really threatened by it. Thus it needs to be avoided at all cost for survival.

I agree but miners that mine on a pool are not affected by larger blocks if I am not mistaken so they can stay anonymous fairly easily. On the other hand, how can bitcoin become so big that it threatens governments with artificial limitations that makes it uncompetitive (if we consider that blocks are being full and fees/delays rise a lot)?

That assumption is incorrect. Bigger blocks cause larger delays which remove the ability to remain hidden to be profitable. (assuming price will always lag difficulty which is a good assumption as it is worse case and realistic).

If people stop trusting government they will put their money in somewhere the government cannot control which will frustrate them because they want control to try to plan ahead. If government isn't using bitcoin themselves yet, they will try to shut it down so they can retain control of society. A corrupt politician can try to do the same thing also as another angle of attack, to persuade people to vote by saying he will reduce fees (by regulating miners).

I'm not saying fees can't rise to be unrealistic and cause uproar because people don't value security as much as they are paying.. however innovation will help fight this problem (live to fight another day).

Care to elaborate on that? Miners does not only provide hash power to mining pools? How does big blocks influence them exactly (miners, not the pools)?

[TheGr33k]

Bitcoin XT had me a little worried for awhile there. I was genuinely concerned for the future of Bitcoin and I'm happy that the network shares in those concerns.

[Zarathustra]

How dare you!? I am most certainly in the "just you wait until december" camp, my xt-nodes blazing as a futile show of dissent!

Alright, fair enough.  You are in a (supremely nutty) third camp, which believes both 'XT died for our 1MB sins' and 'XT will return for the Gavinista rapture.'

Alas, if only you could understand the superlinear relationship between tx size and verification time, we could put this civil war behind us.

Unless you are determined to destroy Bitcoin's decentralization-cum-survivability, and thus subvert the engineering requirement that it be above the law...

XT opened a debate, you are the person that thinks its dead

Yes, and since then they are full time hyperventilating.

[Zarathustra]

I downloaded and ran an XT node, but it was DDoS'd.  More accurately, my ISP was DDoS'd and my neighbors suffered collateral damage.

#REKT confirmed.

Mwah-haw-haw-ha.  I love these stories of genuine surprise that XT's hostility would be returned in kind.

Did you inform your ISP/neighbors the reason they suffered collateral damage is you were attacking Bitcoin with only an infinitesimal fraction of the power required for success?

I warned you Gavinistas what would happen if you started a hot war with the socioeconomic majority.  You didn't listen.

Who are you? Nobody. Nobody out there discusses your 'visions'. We are discussing Gavin, Mike, Peter R.

[muyuu]

I downloaded and ran an XT node, but it was DDoS'd.  More accurately, my ISP was DDoS'd and my neighbors suffered collateral damage.

#REKT confirmed.

Mwah-haw-haw-ha.  I love these stories of genuine surprise that XT's hostility would be returned in kind.

Did you inform your ISP/neighbors the reason they suffered collateral damage is you were attacking Bitcoin with only an infinitesimal fraction of the power required for success?

I warned you Gavinistas what would happen if you started a hot war with the socioeconomic majority.  You didn't listen.

Who are you? Nobody. Nobody out there discusses your 'visions'. We are discussing Gavin, Mike, Peter R.

Another three nobodies to go with you, the fourth. Bitcoin is faceless, which is the whole point.

[brg444]

I downloaded and ran an XT node, but it was DDoS'd.  More accurately, my ISP was DDoS'd and my neighbors suffered collateral damage.

#REKT confirmed.

Mwah-haw-haw-ha.  I love these stories of genuine surprise that XT's hostility would be returned in kind.

Did you inform your ISP/neighbors the reason they suffered collateral damage is you were attacking Bitcoin with only an infinitesimal fraction of the power required for success?

I warned you Gavinistas what would happen if you started a hot war with the socioeconomic majority.  You didn't listen.

Who are you? Nobody. Nobody out there discusses your 'visions'. We are discussing Gavin, Mike, Peter R.

 

Discussions about Peter R "visions":
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3nudkn/bigger_blocks_higher_prices_visualizing_the_92/

#REKTTT

[brg444]

Another three nobodies to go with you, the fourth. Bitcoin is faceless, which is the whole point.

yup

Bitcoin was designed to be protected from the influence of charismatic leaders, even if their name is Gavin Andresen, Barack Obama, or Satoshi Nakamoto.