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

[brg444]

I'm now going to switch back to "BIP101/XT died for our sins", because it will be clear that it did, should the block size increase.

Nope, block sizes are dead certain to increase at some point and they always were. But if you feel better believing in the tooth fairy, feel free.

As if BIP101/XT was ever about the block size anyway 

These rugrats will literally believe anything you'll tell them 

[1714308896]

1714308896

[1714308896]

1714308896

[brg444]

I'm now going to switch back to "BIP101/XT died for our sins", because it will be clear that it did, should the block size increase.

Nope, block sizes are dead certain to increase at some point and they always were. But if you feel better believing in the tooth fairy, feel free.

A Pre-emptive strike!

Yes they are, and if you want to believe that mike, gavin, XT and BIP101 had nothing to do with making that happen sooner rather than later, then feel free.

I like how you portray me as having all the answers yet you pretend to be absolutely right about this one.

Let me guess, you feel it in your guts, right? You're just going to ignore that it was Matt Corallo that engaged the debate on the dev mailing list and that two months later Mike & Gavin decided they wouldn't play ball anymore and decide to stifle discussions and launch their failed coup?

[sgbett]

I'm now going to switch back to "BIP101/XT died for our sins", because it will be clear that it did, should the block size increase.

Nope, block sizes are dead certain to increase at some point and they always were. But if you feel better believing in the tooth fairy, feel free.

A Pre-emptive strike!

Yes they are, and if you want to believe that mike, gavin, XT and BIP101 had nothing to do with making that happen sooner rather than later, then feel free.

I like how you portray me as having all the answers yet you pretend to be absolutely right about this one.

Let me guess, you feel it in your guts, right? You're just going to ignore that it was Matt Corallo that engaged the debate on the dev mailing list and that two months later Mike & Gavin decided they wouldn't play ball anymore and decide to stifle discussions and launch their failed coup?

I don't have all the answers, you are right. I'm not pretending to be right, I'm having a contrary opinion to the previous poster (whilst also agreeing with his initial premise). That's allowed isn't it?

If you are referring to this post Matt Corallo was *responding* to Gavin's blog posts... (I assume that's what you mean by engaging the debate?)

Recently there has been a flurry of posts by Gavin at http://gavinandresen.svbtle.com/ ...

Maybe, if Gavin hadn't made those posts, we'd be in exactly the same place right now. Maybe Matt would have posted something anyway. Maybe everything would have progressed exactly the same. IMHO I doubt it, but as you rightly said, I can't know that for sure.

[coalitionfor8mb]

I would like to reiterate on the following two points that I consider important.

1) Bitcoin needs to demonstrate that consensus rules are fairly rigid and can hold on their own long enough despite internal pressures. If the rules are easy to change then instead of playing all the same game everyone will begin bending the playing field in their favor. The term "stagnaters" when applied to the rigid framework of long-term consensus is actually a positive thing for Bitcoin. Innovation and development needs to happen within that framework, but not to the framework itself. Only when the rules become significantly out of balance and lag far enough behind the technological advancements curve, the whole ecosystem would feel the need to adjust and re-balance.

2) If blockchain validation costs can only rise over the long term, at which point and who is going to stop this trend? Static limit on block size is the only measure that can prevent this trend from accelerating (as it has been over the last few years), but only if it becomes effective and stays active long enough to let the technology progress, while the network bandwidth target remains limited. If this long-term trend cannot be controlled and sustained, then one of the key components of the original core value proposition, namely open and accessible blockchain, will be lost. At that point the benefits of transacting on the blockchain will be nullified. Who and how is going to maintain its integrity? Who is going to let the transactions in and allow for inspections?

Trends in decentralized systems are important and need to be analyzed very carefully before any decision to change the consensus rules can be made. Bitcoin will have to adjust at certain rare and discreet moments only when absolutely necessary in order to Keep Up With The Times.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IWI3npXLX-c/maxresdefault.jpg

[sidhujag]

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)

Actually bigger blocks do not effect miners ability to be anonymous whatsoever. It does effect the pools ability to be anonymous. However today there are no anonymous pools and I do not think this should be a necessary requirement for a sufficient degree of decentralization, since pools can be setup anywhere in the world and I do not think that the powers that be will be able to bring consistent regulation to bear in every jurisdiction in the world, which is what would be required to successfully censor or suppress Bitcoin under this model. It is important to make the distinction between mining centralization and pool centralization since they are in reality very different phenomena and we would be making a mistake to equate these two issues.

Is false, it affects solo miners, not pool miners.

Just like the US has jurisdiction of internet censorship across the world as long as it involves US in any way? (They can make up things along the way since it is not set in stone what constitutes involvement). The pool being just a service can be shut down but another one will start as long as the barrier of entry is relatively small. Increasing blocksize increases the barrier of entry for pools.

So what you say is true only for pooled miners. But the effect of bigger blocks needs to be considered on how it affects pools ability to remain a viable business because of reduced security margins and having to compete with bigger pools effective monopoly (centralized mining).

Although anonymity doesn't matter for pooled miners as much as solo miners, it will create centralization through creating pooling monopolies which will share header->header information and drive out smaller competitors. Also they are not validating blocks in that case either which is supposed to be ultimate priority of miners.

If we have pool monopolies and regulation risks on solo miners we run the risk of losing decentralization of mining on the network.

[brg444]

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)

Actually bigger blocks do not effect miners ability to be anonymous whatsoever. It does effect the pools ability to be anonymous. However today there are no anonymous pools and I do not think this should be a necessary requirement for a sufficient degree of decentralization, since pools can be setup anywhere in the world and I do not think that the powers that be will be able to bring consistent regulation to bear in every jurisdiction in the world, which is what would be required to successfully censor or suppress Bitcoin under this model. It is important to make the distinction between mining centralization and pool centralization since they are in reality very different phenomena and we would be making a mistake to equate these two issues.

Is false, it affects solo miners, not pool miners.

Just like the US has jurisdiction of internet censorship across the world as long as it involves US in any way? (They can make up things along the way since it is not set in stone what constitutes involvement). The pool being just a service can be shut down but another one will start as long as the barrier of entry is relatively small. Increasing blocksize increases the barrier of entry for pools.

So what you say is true only for pooled miners. But the effect of bigger blocks needs to be considered on how it affects pools ability to remain a viable business because of reduced security margins and having to compete with bigger pools effective monopoly (centralized mining).

Although anonymity doesn't matter for pooled miners as much as solo miners, it will create centralization through creating pooling monopolies which will share header->header information and drive out smaller competitors. Also they are not validating blocks in that case either which is supposed to be ultimate priority of miners.

If we have pool monopolies and regulation risks on solo miners we run the risk of losing decentralization of mining on the network.

"I don't think so"




 

[VeritasSapere]

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)

Actually bigger blocks do not effect miners ability to be anonymous whatsoever. It does effect the pools ability to be anonymous. However today there are no anonymous pools and I do not think this should be a necessary requirement for a sufficient degree of decentralization, since pools can be setup anywhere in the world and I do not think that the powers that be will be able to bring consistent regulation to bear in every jurisdiction in the world, which is what would be required to successfully censor or suppress Bitcoin under this model. It is important to make the distinction between mining centralization and pool centralization since they are in reality very different phenomena and we would be making a mistake to equate these two issues.

Is false, it affects solo miners, not pool miners.

I absolutely agree with this and that is my point. The vast majority of the Bitcoin network today is comprised of pooled miners. Furthermore I would not consider solo mining as necessarily favoring decentralization either, I have even calculated recently that it would require at minimum more then eight million dollars to setup a solo mining operation. The reason it is so expensive to solo mine is because you would require a very large amount of hashing power in order to decrease the variance of the reward. For such a large industrial mining operation I would consider the cost setting up a full node even with larger blocks trivial in comparison to the other costs involved with such an operation. Therefore I do not consider solo mining as an important aspect of decentralization.

Just like the US has jurisdiction of internet censorship across the world as long as it involves US in any way? (They can make up things along the way since it is not set in stone what constitutes involvement).

I do not think that the US for example will be able to enforce such a policy in every part of the world, including rogue states. It would only take one small pool to include the censored transactions and render the efforts of the tyrants futile after all. It is true however that if a single global power could control and censor the entire internet then that would compromise Bitcoin, however increasing the blocksize would not effect the outcome of such a scenario, which I do not think would take place.

Maybe a project like maidsafe might be able to save Bitcoin if such a scenario did take place, imagine the confusion that the Bitcoin maximalists will experience when they realize that Bitcoin has been saved by an "altcoin".

So what you say is true only for pooled miners.

Absolutely correct, and public pools represent more then seventy percent of the hash power today, and the rest of the mining power is represented by large industrial miners like Bitfury, KNC, 21 Inc, and some more. If these are the solo miners that we should protect for the sake of decentralization, that would not make any sense to me, I would even consider that a contradictory argument.

In this sense pools actually aid decentralization. Having twenty pools with thousands of individual miners is far more decentralized then just having a hundred solo miners.

But the effect of bigger blocks needs to be considered on how it affects pools ability to remain a viable business because of reduced security margins and having to compete with bigger pools effective monopoly (centralized mining).

I do not think we need to be concerned with the pools ability to remain a viable business, if their costs increase they can just increase their fee, I do not see how that is a problem, I also do not think we should be overly concerned about mining profitability in terms of the block size at least considering that Bitcoin mining is very much a self balancing system. You are however again conflating the separate issues of mining centralization and pool centralization. Since when we do separate these two issues it obscures the reality that the hashpower is in control of the miners not the pools. The miners are incentivized to do what is good for Bitcoin, they will not allow a monopoly to form because it would undermine part of the value proposition of Bitcoin. This is the game theory and aspects of human psychology that keeps Bitcoin secure, that is in part of why the pools are not approaching fifty one percent anymore.

If we have pool monopolies and regulation risks on solo miners we run the risk of losing decentralization of mining on the network.

I agree with this statement, however I do not think that the miners would allow pool monopolies to form, It is already very difficult to start a new pool because you would require such a large amount of hashpower to overcome variance, this is not because of the cost of running a full node however. If a majority of the pools did become comprised I do think that the miners would move to new pools, which would lead to a situation where small new pools might be able to gather enough hashpower in order for that pool to become viable. Increasing the block size does not impact the ability for miners to be anonymous since the data they send to the pool is very small regardless of the block size.

I am actually a small miner myself and I do see the danger of mining centralization, however I do not think it comes from increasing the blocksize, mining centralization is due to economies of scale and centralization of manufacturing. Consider becoming a miner yourself and help keep Bitcoin decentralized.

[Zarathustra]

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.

Pedanticism and arrogance don't make for good arguments. Of course I know that there has been prior discussion of removing the 1MB limit. Thats not the same as 'the block size debate' though. You know it, but you'd rather avoid acknowledging the specific difference for fear of exposing the reality of the situation that the 1MB limit is temporary and should be removed. That much is true.

Back to form you are. Mudslinging, pithy, obnoxious. These are characteristics of someone who has a weak argument and just wants to try and bully those who disagree into submission.

This argumentative thread makes no difference, the market will decide, so you and beg can get as angry as you like about everyone not agreeing with you but ultimately its only yourselves you are hurting.

Either they are paid by a big block institution to show how disgusting the small blockers are; or they do not realize how repulsive and counterproductive they act for the cause they postulate. Both possibilities seem nearly impossible: To be that corrupt and to be that stupid. It remains a mystery.

[iCEBREAKER]

Either they are paid by a big block institution to show how disgusting the small blockers are; or they do not realize how repulsive and counterproductive they act for the cause that they postulate. Both possibilities seem nearly impossible: To be that corrupt and to be that stupid.

Stop speculating about motivations.  You are not a psychic mind-reader.

As one of the few remaining (nearly extinct?) zero-percenter Gavinista dead-enders, this is what you should be worried about.

So much for that fad.  The Redditurd Army must have found a shiny new thing/cause/trend.

[muyuu]

A Pre-emptive strike!

Nope, the cap has changed several times. It's there because transactions are included under cost so it's a trivial and cheap DoS attack to just fill up blocks until miners and nodes just give up.

It's a known fact that subsidy will continue dropping until either this changes (txs being included under cost) or Bitcoin fails (because it currently depends on subsidisation).

Yes they are, and if you want to believe that mike, gavin, XT and BIP101 had nothing to do with making that happen sooner rather than later, then feel free.

Gavin and Mike have obviously been delaying all development with their nonsense. Lots of people have been distracted by this bullshit. They have certainly slowed down my contribution in a number of projects. The Core devs that have been contributing during the last couple of years (not Gavin or Mikey, who have done fuck-all in Core or anything outside of their personal projects) have been forced to waste their time because of the attack threats and the lobbying.

Either way it doesn't matter, provided the increase happens in time to ensure that block size can grow naturally, then everyone is happy right? We all win right?

If we need to increase block sizes more rather than less because other preferable scalability solutions have been stalled, then in fact we're worse off. However, it's not possible to know the exact degree of the damage the cancers have caused.

The silver lining is that they are well and truly ostracised from development, which is a great thing for Bitcoin. They can go back to work in some stupid kickstarter clone or whatever is more appropriate for them to do.

The silent sobbing is real.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3n18en/mike_hearn_banned_from_bitcoindev_sept29/

[RoadTrain]

Is false, it affects solo miners, not pool miners.

Just like the US has jurisdiction of internet censorship across the world as long as it involves US in any way? (They can make up things along the way since it is not set in stone what constitutes involvement). The pool being just a service can be shut down but another one will start as long as the barrier of entry is relatively small. Increasing blocksize increases the barrier of entry for pools.

So what you say is true only for pooled miners. But the effect of bigger blocks needs to be considered on how it affects pools ability to remain a viable business because of reduced security margins and having to compete with bigger pools effective monopoly (centralized mining).

Although anonymity doesn't matter for pooled miners as much as solo miners, it will create centralization through creating pooling monopolies which will share header->header information and drive out smaller competitors. Also they are not validating blocks in that case either which is supposed to be ultimate priority of miners.

If we have pool monopolies and regulation risks on solo miners we run the risk of losing decentralization of mining on the network.

"I don't think so"

 

Good call.

[sgbett]

A Pre-emptive strike!

Nope, the cap has changed several times. It's there because transactions are included under cost so it's a trivial and cheap DoS attack to just fill up blocks until miners and nodes just give up.

It's a known fact that subsidy will continue dropping until either this changes (txs being included under cost) or Bitcoin fails (because it currently depends on subsidisation).

Yes they are, and if you want to believe that mike, gavin, XT and BIP101 had nothing to do with making that happen sooner rather than later, then feel free.

Gavin and Mike have obviously been delaying all development with their nonsense. Lots of people have been distracted by this bullshit. They have certainly slowed down my contribution in a number of projects. The Core devs that have been contributing during the last couple of years (not Gavin or Mikey, who have done fuck-all in Core or anything outside of their personal projects) have been forced to waste their time because of the attack threats and the lobbying.

Either way it doesn't matter, provided the increase happens in time to ensure that block size can grow naturally, then everyone is happy right? We all win right?

If we need to increase block sizes more rather than less because other preferable scalability solutions have been stalled, then in fact we're worse off. However, it's not possible to know the exact degree of the damage the cancers have caused.

The silver lining is that they are well and truly ostracised from development, which is a great thing for Bitcoin. They can go back to work in some stupid kickstarter clone or whatever is more appropriate for them to do.

The silent sobbing is real.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3n18en/mike_hearn_banned_from_bitcoindev_sept29/

When all you have is a ban hammer everything starts to look like a nail.

[muyuu]

Dorian knows what's up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3nzqqh/hi_rbitcoin_i_am_dorian_nakamoto_ama/cvsyyjg

I thought it was a wonderful concept for our global transaction based on fully meshed internet world. Distributed processing vs. centralization. More robust. And the purpose to serve the people even down to the poor rather than the profit base, open source software, ... Best financial invention in this uncertain dollar based or the next exchange based competition.

Note the emphasis against centralisation.

[sgbett]

Dorian knows what's up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3nzqqh/hi_rbitcoin_i_am_dorian_nakamoto_ama/cvsyyjg

I thought it was a wonderful concept for our global transaction based on fully meshed internet world. Distributed processing vs. centralization. More robust. And the purpose to serve the people even down to the poor rather than the profit base, open source software, ... Best financial invention in this uncertain dollar based or the next exchange based competition.

Note the emphasis against centralisation.

Centralised is the concept that something happens in one location, or is controlled by one entity.

Decentralised means that it is not. So if two nodes are running, its decentralised. Obviously, if 10 nodes are running its *more* decentralised.

What "small blockers against centralisation" crowd seem to want us to believe is that to be decentralised then that means every single one of them has to be abe to run a full node or it doesn't count as *true* decentralisation, and that having bigger blocks means they can't so this. This is blatantly fans in two counts.

Firstly not everyone of them needs to be able to run a node for the network to be counted as decentralised. There just needs to be two or more independent node operators.

Secondly, the idea that it is *impossible* for them to run a node. It's not it s sliding scale of difficulty, based on a whole bunch of variables, many of which are in the uncertain future. So you can't possibly say its impossible.

They are asking us to believe that modify the block size will inevitably lead to the most extreme negative outcome. When in reality they cannot possibly know this. I cannot possibly know that it will not either, let me be clear. What you can do is look at the balance of probability.

Will 8MB blocks right now cause this. Probably not.
Will 8GB blocks right now cause this. Probably.

Nobody is asking for the second case. Furthermore its massively unlikely that raising the limit to 8GB would automatically mean that 8GB blocks start being generated.

It's also quite unlikely that raising the limit to 8MB means that 8MB blocks start being generated, because miner's won't do that, because its not worth their while.

If it was worth their while, and that applied to the majority of miners, then they would probably get together and agree to start accepting bigger blocks anyway, and wouldn't give a damn what core thought.

Thats the reality of it, and thats why I am not particularly worried any more about all this hot air about why the block size limit should remain at 1MB. The people who stand to make/lose the most will do what is needed. They have the power to, and the inclination.

Miners aren't stupid. If they see they can make more money mining huge blocks with loads of transaction fees. They will make it happen.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

Dorian knows what's up:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3nzqqh/hi_rbitcoin_i_am_dorian_nakamoto_ama/cvsyyjg

I thought it was a wonderful concept for our global transaction based on fully meshed internet world. Distributed processing vs. centralization. More robust. And the purpose to serve the people even down to the poor rather than the profit base, open source software, ... Best financial invention in this uncertain dollar based or the next exchange based competition.

Note the emphasis against centralisation.

Dorian knows photoshop.  Note the emphasis on aliased pixels in the "proof".

[Zarathustra]

Either they are paid by a big block institution to show how disgusting the small blockers are; or they do not realize how repulsive and counterproductive they act for the cause that they postulate. Both possibilities seem nearly impossible: To be that corrupt and to be that stupid.

Stop speculating about motivations.  You are not a psychic mind-reader.

As one of the few remaining (nearly extinct?) zero-percenter Gavinista dead-enders, this is what you should be worried about.

I don't speculate. I said it is either this or that.
While you are still fighting your ridiculous Gavin proxy war, because you know that you'll get big blocks.

[knight22]

[coalitionfor8mb]

Just found this on Adam's twitter account:

http://www.flixist.com/ul/198774-ash.jpg
http://kansascity.legalexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/73/2015/07/Im-Back.jpg

Ok, I'm kidding...  

[muyuu]

Will 8MB blocks right now cause this. Probably not.
Will 8GB blocks right now cause this. Probably.

Are you going to Peter R's school of science?

[knight22]

Will 8MB blocks right now cause this. Probably not.
Will 8GB blocks right now cause this. Probably.

Are you going to Peter R's school of science?

You probably should to finally get a clue.