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

[VeritasSapere]

Behind the full nodes are people and they can choose to run whatever code they want.

So? What's your point?

My point being is that the longest valid chain will be decided by the people who are behind the full nodes and miners. Therefore if they choose to support forking Bitcoin in order to increase the blocksize then that will become the longest valid chain, even if you still personally do not consider it valid it does not change the fact that according to the terminology that we are using it is.

Technically they can, practically it depends on whether the majority of nodes actually represent the economic majority or not, since nodes can easily be spoofed, this is why proof of work is so useful since it is a better measure of consensus because it can not easily be faked.

It doesn't matter that nodes can be spoofed. What matters is the nodes being run by the ones holding sizeable investements into the system. If the miners try to go against their will they will be bankrupted.

It most certainly does matter that full nodes can be spoofed, this is why proof of work was necessary in the first place. It is simple really, participants in the network have the free choice to support any code that they want, therefore consensus is not totalitarian, it is more democratic in nature. People have the free choice to support whatever code they want to, which will in the long run determine the future of Bitcoin.

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[hdbuck]

Either decisions are made using proof of work or they are not.

    Bitcoin consensus does not comes about through proof of work [longest chain]

If the nodes and miners reject a block as invalid then it would not persist as the longest chain. If the nodes and miners accept a block and continue to build on top of it, then that chain is Bitcoin.

Proof-of-work both enforces and defines the laws of the systems

Proof-of-work exists to order transactions deemed valid by the consensus of rules dictated by the nodes.

For the millionth time it's the longest *valid* chain you disingenuous fuck

I agree.  Nodes will only accept and miners will only build upon a chain that contains valid blocks.  A chain that persists as the longest and continues to be built upon must be valid.

Except that's not true as was evidenced by the July 4th forks in which 5 consecutive invalid blocks were mined on top of each others.

Same is also true for the March 2013 fork.

It was true: miners and nodes abandoned those chains and they did not persist as the longest. 

Great, so we agree that miners hold no power over what constitutes the longest valid chain.

[Peter R]

If the nodes and miners reject a block as invalid then it would not persist as the longest chain. If the nodes and miners accept a block and continue to build on top of it, then that chain is Bitcoin.

Proof-of-work both enforces and defines the laws of the systems

Proof-of-work exists to order transactions deemed valid by the consensus of rules dictated by the nodes.

For the millionth time it's the longest *valid* chain you disingenuous fuck

I agree.  Nodes will only accept and miners will only build upon a chain that contains valid blocks.  A chain that persists as the longest and continues to be built upon must be valid.

Except that's not true as was evidenced by the July 4th forks in which 5 consecutive invalid blocks were mined on top of each others.

Same is also true for the March 2013 fork.

It was true: miners and nodes abandoned those chains and they did not persist as the longest. 

Great, so we agree that miners hold no power over what constitutes the longest valid chain.

Disagree.  Miners hold power > 0.  

[Carlton Banks]

What you are explaining here is the longest chain, without the word valid. While the longest chain is usually valid, it's not necessarily so. Validity is decided by the nodes which are the economic majority. Miners are incentivized to follow the economic majority, but they are not required to do so.

I don't think that's how it works at present. As I understand it, the longest chain is decided by the software, the user has no way to determine which chain the software follows. Might be wrong, but it's a debugging feature if it exists at all.

The longest chain is decided by the software that the majority of miners choose to run. It is the users that determine which chain the software follows because it is the users that choose the code in the form of what type of full nodes they decide to support, the same is true for the miners.

This might be the aspect of the Bitcoin network you are failing to take account of, the human element. This aspect of the Bitcoin network does not fit neatly in the discipline of computer science, a multidisciplinary approach is required in order to better understand the various dynamics that make up the body politic of Bitcoin. From game theory, psychology, politics and economics. Bitcoin might not always be entirely rational considering that it does reflect the will of the economic majority.

You're asking to let the users play with any underlying parameter or constant of the system that they so choose, "because liberty". The equivalent argument transposed to the original hard money, gold bullion, you'd be making your case to the underlying nature of the universe. Not so easy to address.

In computing, you're literally creating your own little universes every time you write some new applications. You decide all the rules, how many dimensions there are, which way's up etc. The idea of having competing multiple rule sets, operating at a fundamental level of the software, is not a good plan. The participants in the universe have to adopt one set of rules or another, and whichever do so, cannot interact predictably with those who choose differently. Too much unpredictability of outcome.

If you think your vision for a Bitcoin competitor is such a good idea, go and get your own hashrate to subject it to. Your agenda is to change a system that doesn't want your proposal, and you just won't go away. You're in a minority, and a decreasing minorty at that. The real plan to scale Bitcoin up responsibly is now underway with BIP 65 rolling out. Get your own coin.
 

[tl121]

What you are explaining here is the longest chain, without the word valid. While the longest chain is usually valid, it's not necessarily so. Validity is decided by the nodes which are the economic majority. Miners are incentivized to follow the economic majority, but they are not required to do so.

I don't think that's how it works at present. As I understand it, the longest chain is decided by the software, the user has no way to determine which chain the software follows. Might be wrong, but it's a debugging feature if it exists at all.

There is no such thing as "the software".  This concept is inoperative, because every node potentially runs different software, e.g. different software bases, different software versions, node specific configurations or patches, or in some cases different operating system and network environments which determine how the software behaves.

[brg444]

Behind the full nodes are people and they can choose to run whatever code they want.

So? What's your point?

My point being is that the longest valid chain will be decided by the people who are behind the full nodes and miners. Therefore if they choose to support forking Bitcoin in order to increase the blocksize then that will become the longest valid chain, even if you still personally do not consider it valid it does not change the fact that according to the terminology that we are using it is.

That is quite a 180 from your previous argument. Shall I remind you?

The longest valid chain is determined by the miners according to where they point their hashing power. Miners also choose what code they run and therefore what type of blocks they produce. Therefore the miners can fork the network and create the longest valid chain even if the majority of full nodes choose not to follow such a fork. Essentially both the miners and the full nodes have the free choice to run whatever code they want, however it is the miners that determine which side of the fork will have the longest valid chain.

So basically now you're saying if every node and miners update to a bigger block software then that will become the longest valid chain...

Wow you're some kind of genius aren't you?

[brg444]

I'm definitely getting trolled right now.

[MbccompanyX]

I'm definitely getting trolled right now.

And i'm feeling like the whole thread because of the ammount of the posts should be checked from a mod because is going crazy the whole thing.

you and veritassapere the only one really keeping this thread active every 5-10 minutes... both of you notice this or not? Let's stop this useless debate about a dead fork and let's go to talk about other things.... Maybe the hype of 0.12 or what really is needed to do about btc at the moment instead of this block debate went out of binares....

[tl121]

We have seen this 'longest chain' verbiage where 'valid' is notably excluded for some time.  I take it as a backup or auxiliary attack strategy.  Every opportunity is taken to lay the foundation participant misunderstanding however.  That misinformation effort seems to have picked up again over this last month here on bitcointalk.org.

Basically, if a bloatblock (for instance) can be inserted just one time, it would fork the chain and obsolete Bitcoin core software.

So what if a given version of bitcoin software is obsoleted by evolution of the network?  The "core" developers have done this themselves several times.  Arguments along the line of "longest valid chain" do not resolve the issue under debate. They just move the debate to the meaning of the word "valid".

Despite some advertising claims, the security of bitcoin does not depend on mathematics alone, it depends upon running software, which intern depends on running hardware which is supported by the economic majority. Any other way of defining "valid" necessarily requires the argument from authority, which ultimately results in a debate over who is the authority.  With this, any hope of a decentralized system goes out the door.

[Peter R]

We have seen this 'longest chain' verbiage where 'valid' is notably excluded for some time.  I take it as a backup or auxiliary attack strategy.  Every opportunity is taken to lay the foundation participant misunderstanding however.  That misinformation effort seems to have picked up again over this last month here on bitcointalk.org.

Basically, if a bloatblock (for instance) can be inserted just one time, it would fork the chain and obsolete Bitcoin core software.

So what if a given version of bitcoin software is obsoleted by evolution of the network?  The "core" developers have done this themselves several times.  Arguments along the line of "longest valid chain" do not resolve the issue under debate. They just move the debate to the meaning of the word "valid".

Despite some advertising claims, the security of bitcoin does not depend on mathematics alone, it depends upon running software, which intern depends on running hardware which is supported by the economic majority. Any other way of defining "valid" necessarily requires the argument from authority, which ultimately results in a debate over who is the authority.  With this, any hope of a decentralized system goes out the door.

Great post!  

Regarding "longest chain" versus "longest valid chain," I am using the language from Satoshi's white paper.  He refers to it simply as "the longest chain" and only refers to transactions as being valid or invalid.  From page 3:

- Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent.

- Nodes express their acceptance of the block by working on creating the next block in the chain, using the hash of the accepted block as the previous hash.

- Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one and will keep working on extending it.

In other words, "the longest chain" means the chain with the greatest cumulative work that is composed exclusively of valid transactions.

[VeritasSapere]

What you are explaining here is the longest chain, without the word valid. While the longest chain is usually valid, it's not necessarily so. Validity is decided by the nodes which are the economic majority. Miners are incentivized to follow the economic majority, but they are not required to do so.

I don't think that's how it works at present. As I understand it, the longest chain is decided by the software, the user has no way to determine which chain the software follows. Might be wrong, but it's a debugging feature if it exists at all.

The longest chain is decided by the software that the majority of miners choose to run. It is the users that determine which chain the software follows because it is the users that choose the code in the form of what type of full nodes they decide to support, the same is true for the miners.

This might be the aspect of the Bitcoin network you are failing to take account of, the human element. This aspect of the Bitcoin network does not fit neatly in the discipline of computer science, a multidisciplinary approach is required in order to better understand the various dynamics that make up the body politic of Bitcoin. From game theory, psychology, politics and economics. Bitcoin might not always be entirely rational considering that it does reflect the will of the economic majority.

You're asking to let the users play with any underlying parameter or constant of the system that they so choose, "because liberty". The equivalent argument transposed to the original hard money, gold bullion, you'd be making your case to the underlying nature of the universe. Not so easy to address.

An unfair comparison, it is easier to change the code of Bitcoin compared to changing the laws of nature.

In computing, you're literally creating your own little universes every time you write some new applications. You decide all the rules, how many dimensions there are, which way's up etc. The idea of having competing multiple rule sets, operating at a fundamental level of the software, is not a good plan. The participants in the universe have to adopt one set of rules or another, and whichever do so, cannot interact predictably with those who choose differently. Too much unpredictability of outcome.

Most people will simply choose the implementation that they prefer, I do not see a problem with this, you are obviously against this type of freedom of choice which is inherent in Bitcoin. In political thought concentrations of power are generally not considered a good thing, which is why I would like to see development become more distributed.

If you think your vision for a Bitcoin competitor is such a good idea, go and get your own hashrate to subject it to. Your agenda is to change a system that doesn't want your proposal, and you just won't go away. You're in a minority, and a decreasing minorty at that. The real plan to scale Bitcoin up responsibly is now underway with BIP 65 rolling out. Get your own coin.

The economic majority might not agree with you, time will tell. Bitcoin is also not your coin, it belongs to everyone, Satoshi's gift to the world.

[Carlton Banks]

We have seen this 'longest chain' verbiage where 'valid' is notably excluded for some time.  I take it as a backup or auxiliary attack strategy.  Every opportunity is taken to lay the foundation participant misunderstanding however.  That misinformation effort seems to have picked up again over this last month here on bitcointalk.org.

Basically, if a bloatblock (for instance) can be inserted just one time, it would fork the chain and obsolete Bitcoin core software.

So what if a given version of bitcoin software is obsoleted by evolution of the network?  The "core" developers have done this themselves several times.  Arguments along the line of "longest valid chain" do not resolve the issue under debate. They just move the debate to the meaning of the word "valid".

Despite some advertising claims, the security of bitcoin does not depend on mathematics alone, it depends upon running software, which intern depends on running hardware which is supported by the economic majority. Any other way of defining "valid" necessarily requires the argument from authority, which ultimately results in a debate over who is the authority.  With this, any hope of a decentralized system goes out the door.

Valid is subjective of course, and the changes to that are decided by the dev team. Very perceptive! That's how it's always been, seeing as even now Bitcoin is still a work in progress.

The system is already decentralised in the ways that Satoshi imagined. Yours and the "Bitcoin Unlimited" crowd's mentality involves letting the user loose with deciding every aspect of the system. It's lunacy, it's the opposite of what's been going on up to now, and it would end with all the different "Bitcoins" disintegrating, apart from the overbloated centralised one perhaps

[hdbuck]

We have seen this 'longest chain' verbiage where 'valid' is notably excluded for some time.  I take it as a backup or auxiliary attack strategy.  Every opportunity is taken to lay the foundation participant misunderstanding however.  That misinformation effort seems to have picked up again over this last month here on bitcointalk.org.

Basically, if a bloatblock (for instance) can be inserted just one time, it would fork the chain and obsolete Bitcoin core software.

So what if a given version of bitcoin software is obsoleted by evolution of the network?  The "core" developers have done this themselves several times.  Arguments along the line of "longest valid chain" do not resolve the issue under debate. They just move the debate to the meaning of the word "valid".

Despite some advertising claims, the security of bitcoin does not depend on mathematics alone, it depends upon running software, which intern depends on running hardware which is supported by the economic majority. Any other way of defining "valid" necessarily requires the argument from authority, which ultimately results in a debate over who is the authority.  With this, any hope of a decentralized system goes out the door.

Valid is subjective of course, and the changes to that are decided by the dev team. Very perceptive! That's how it's always been, seeing as even now Bitcoin is still a work in progress.

The system is already decentralised in the ways that Satoshi imagined. Yours and the "Bitcoin Unlimited" crowd's mentality involves letting the user loose with deciding every aspect of the system. It's lunacy, it's the opposite of what's been going on up to now, and it would end with all the different "Bitcoins" disintegrating, apart from the overbloated centralised one perhaps

valid is as subjective as what gives bitcoin value.

certainly the devs are irrelevant in such mechanism: if their code is bad it wont take over the mix of paranoia, greed and selfishness...

[VeritasSapere]

We have seen this 'longest chain' verbiage where 'valid' is notably excluded for some time.  I take it as a backup or auxiliary attack strategy.  Every opportunity is taken to lay the foundation participant misunderstanding however.  That misinformation effort seems to have picked up again over this last month here on bitcointalk.org.

Basically, if a bloatblock (for instance) can be inserted just one time, it would fork the chain and obsolete Bitcoin core software.

So what if a given version of bitcoin software is obsoleted by evolution of the network?  The "core" developers have done this themselves several times.  Arguments along the line of "longest valid chain" do not resolve the issue under debate. They just move the debate to the meaning of the word "valid".

Despite some advertising claims, the security of bitcoin does not depend on mathematics alone, it depends upon running software, which intern depends on running hardware which is supported by the economic majority. Any other way of defining "valid" necessarily requires the argument from authority, which ultimately results in a debate over who is the authority.  With this, any hope of a decentralized system goes out the door.

Valid is subjective of course, and the changes to that are decided by the dev team. Very perceptive! That's how it's always been, seeing as even now Bitcoin is still a work in progress.

The system is already decentralised in the ways that Satoshi imagined. Yours and the "Bitcoin Unlimited" crowd's mentality involves letting the user loose with deciding every aspect of the system. It's lunacy, it's the opposite of what's been going on up to now, and it would end with all the different "Bitcoins" disintegrating, apart from the overbloated centralised one perhaps

Valid being a subjective term is indeed a good observation. The question still stands of who decides? Obviously you think that the Core developers should decide for us, I think that the decision making process for Bitcoin should become more distributed instead, the future of Bitcoin should be decided by the economic majority which as far as I understand it is also how Bitcoin ultimately still functions today.

[brg444]

We have seen this 'longest chain' verbiage where 'valid' is notably excluded for some time.  I take it as a backup or auxiliary attack strategy.  Every opportunity is taken to lay the foundation participant misunderstanding however.  That misinformation effort seems to have picked up again over this last month here on bitcointalk.org.

Basically, if a bloatblock (for instance) can be inserted just one time, it would fork the chain and obsolete Bitcoin core software.

So what if a given version of bitcoin software is obsoleted by evolution of the network?  The "core" developers have done this themselves several times.  Arguments along the line of "longest valid chain" do not resolve the issue under debate. They just move the debate to the meaning of the word "valid".

Despite some advertising claims, the security of bitcoin does not depend on mathematics alone, it depends upon running software, which intern depends on running hardware which is supported by the economic majority. Any other way of defining "valid" necessarily requires the argument from authority, which ultimately results in a debate over who is the authority.  With this, any hope of a decentralized system goes out the door.

Valid is subjective of course, and the changes to that are decided by the dev team. Very perceptive! That's how it's always been, seeing as even now Bitcoin is still a work in progress.

The system is already decentralised in the ways that Satoshi imagined. Yours and the "Bitcoin Unlimited" crowd's mentality involves letting the user loose with deciding every aspect of the system. It's lunacy, it's the opposite of what's been going on up to now, and it would end with all the different "Bitcoins" disintegrating, apart from the overbloated centralised one perhaps

Valid being a subjective term is indeed a good observation. The question still stands of who decides? Obviously you think that the Core developers should decide for us, I think that the decision making process for Bitcoin should become more distributed instead, the future of Bitcoin should be decided by the economic majority which as far as I understand it is also how Bitcoin ultimately still functions today.

Satoshi decided for us. Should we tear apart the whole thing and have it rewritten by "the economic majority"?

[iCEBREAKER]

Obviously you think that the Core developers should decide for us, I think that the decision making process for Bitcoin should become more distributed instead, the future of Bitcoin should be decided by the economic majority which as far as I understand it is also how Bitcoin ultimately still functions today.

Satoshi decided for us. Should we tear apart the whole thing and have it rewritten by "the economic majority"?

[hdbuck]

lmao ice whats that new profile pic? you french now?

[tvbcof]

...
Regarding "longest chain" versus "longest valid chain," I am using the language from Satoshi's white paper.  He refers to it simply as "the longest chain" and only refers to transactions as being valid or invalid.  From page 3:

- Nodes accept the block only if all transactions in it are valid and not already spent.

- Nodes express their acceptance of the block by working on creating the next block in the chain, using the hash of the accepted block as the previous hash.

- Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one and will keep working on extending it.

Nice try, but the whitepaper was an early description focused on the basics of the system Satoshi was creating.

Here, half a decade later, we are discussing attempts to subvert the system by strong-arm tactics of breaking the protocol and manipulating total work ratios to accomplish it.  That was well beyond the scope of Satoshi's whitepaper.

In other words, "the longest chain" means the chain with the greatest cumulative work that is composed exclusively of valid transactions.

There's that 'valid' word again.

To say the truth, I've always expected attackers to achieve an advantage in the potential for 'cumulative work' eventually.  I'm surprised it has not happened yet, and very heartened because sha256 mining has lived long enough for a subordinate chains ecosystem to be viable.

This means several things:

- The owners of the hash hardware are under risk of losing their investment should the nuclear option be undertaken (that is, modification of the current POW hashing methods.)  They will be most conducive to mounting a majority attack only if their investments are insured against this eventuality (which is quite possible) but it would not be terminal for Bitcoin anyway.

- A mostly successful cumulative work attack suddenly turns into something with is maybe not even half bad.

    - Hodlers might be able to capitalize in it since funds would flow in to make it work

    -  Freeloaders would be drawn to the GoogBook fork and thus, away from core.

     - A lot more focus would be put on hardening Bitcoin against a variety of attack types and much more focus would be put into exploring the network attack failure modes and how to thwart them.

[MbccompanyX]

Obviously you think that the Core developers should decide for us, I think that the decision making process for Bitcoin should become more distributed instead, the future of Bitcoin should be decided by the economic majority which as far as I understand it is also how Bitcoin ultimately still functions today.

Satoshi decided for us. Should we tear apart the whole thing and have it rewritten by "the economic majority"?

Exactly what is actually going on with all those posts.... the problem is that is still going on and who knows when it will end

[Carlton Banks]

Obviously you think that the Core developers should decide for us, I think that the decision making process for Bitcoin should become more distributed instead, the future of Bitcoin should be decided by the economic majority which as far as I understand it is also how Bitcoin ultimately still functions today.

With great power comes great responsibility. If we followed your reasoning, not only would we be letting the users re-code Bitcoin by general election, we'd also democratise the hydrogen bomb as well. One in every home! What a thought!