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

[valiz]

Blockstream Core will be forced to implement larger blocks, because they've got competition. If they refuse, they'll be forked of. Their choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ttz1o/it_actually_doesnt_really_matter_if_blockstream/

Fork off already! 

[topiOleg]

Big Blockers : Artificial block size limit relies on a central authority decision on limit vs market dynamics. Undermines the proposition of being able to transact on chain, contrary to philosophy of "being able to send payments without going through a financial institution".

So how to change block size limit without using central authority ? Giving the power just to miners is easy solution but still miners dont represent whole Bitcoin economy. The ultimate freedoom would be if everyone could set in client how big blocks he considers valid (basically unlimited block limit proposal but for practical purpose everyone has to set limits), but this will cause a lot of chaos and put a lot of responsibility and risk to everyone how big block every individual has to set to have working client with most Bitcoiners (if he sets low value) - so the only safe solution in this scenario for everybody is set huge block limits (which dont matter if majority are small miners who make huge bocks invalid pretty quickly because before they download and confirm it most likely small block is found instead).

[Peter R]

Oh yeah, the whole "you're just not ready" excuse  

Just put him on ignore like me and you will be better off. XT is a failed takeover of Bitcoin. Everyone should accept its fate by now.

XT is not a takeover of Bitcoin, I wish you would stop saying this, I can respect your position, but saying that XT is a takeover actually harms all of Bitcoin regardless of what you believe.

Rule by the economic majority is how Bitcoin is meant to be governed. So if the majority of people freely choose to adopt an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin protocol then this should be considered legitimate, even if you disagree. XT requires seventy five percent consensus in order for it to even initiate a fork after all.

If Core was the client introducing BIP101 and XT represented the alternative choice for one megabyte blocks you might not have been so quick to describe XT as a takeover of Bitcoin. I do not think it is even possible to "takeover" Bitcoin. The only way for Bitcoin to lose its inherent freedom would be if people chose to give up their freedom, which is why I find such totalitarian conceptions of Bitcoin to be harmful, since Bitcoin does reflect the culture of its participants.

XT can only be considered a takeover if you believe that Core should or does rule Bitcoin, which is the same as saying that this small group of technical experts should decide on the future of Bitcoin. I find this mentality to be totalitarian in nature and antithetical to the ethos of Bitcoin.

The only way to destroy freedom, is to convince people they are safer without it. This is exactly what is happening to Bitcoin.

https://medium.com/@riprowan/the-entire-debate-transcends-block-sizes-and-gets-to-the-fundamental-principles-of-bitcoin-as-c7f7bc1a493#.e6tlubrv7

Your posts are an oasis of rationality, nuance, and higher level understanding in this thread. Thank you for posting -- I'm sure there are many other lurkers like me who appreciate it. The lack of intelligent, thoughtful responses you see to your posts says a lot about the caliber of most of those posting opposing viewpoints (not all! some are thoughtful -- you know who you are, thank you).

Rather he's a charlatan, or prolific shill, who you have been sucked in by,

All you are doing is demonstrating your lack of knowledge of the art, or intelligence to know you are out of your field, passing judgement on things you are not equipped to be assessing.

If that were true, who do you suppose he's shilling for?

The same people who are writing your papers.

Here is my most recent paper [link].  Can you explain your theory in more detail?  It sounds like you're suggesting that I didn't write it, yet there are many people who know that I did such as Prof. Wilmer from U Pitt, Prof. Bivar from George Washington U, contributors in Cypherdoc's thread, and other people here in Vancouver.  Suddenly, your "conspiracy theory" that other people are writing my papers and paying me to give talks about them [link], as well as funding VeritasSapere to post comments here gets pretty bizarre.  Is everybody else "in on it" too?

The truth is that the majority of the community recognizes that bigger blocks are needed for further adoption and we're all working hard in whatever ways we can to make that happen.  However, due to the censorship in online discussion, both sides of the debate are surrounded by a mist of mistrust.

[brg444]

I am concerned that it does make it harder (more costly) to run a node, but I think those costs are worth bearing, I lean more towards the idea that people can transact without a trusted third party, than people must be able to transact on their own node. I think the broadcasting of a transaction to the network is reliable and 'decentralised' enough for smaller value, and if you are in the business of making large transactions such that you need the security of running your own node then you bear the cost of this and factor it in.

I don't follow how it would be in any way sensible to throw all caution to the window because you consider the network "is reliable and decentralised enough" now, ignoring that what we're trying to prevent is for this aspect to slip away from us in the future.

I'm curious to know if you've read this article and if so what did you think of it? http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/measuring-decentralization/

It concerns me that bigger blocks *could* favour big miners, but I don't think that's a certainty. I don't think that either side has provide conclusively that it will or it won't. I think ingenuity in the market place will prevail, as it typically does, and that the larger miners will be contained by inertia, and the smaller miners will be dynamic enough to squeeze out value in niches. I think the 'centralisation' of mining by referring to pools is a red herring, I think the 50% attack is 'self-limiting' and mitigable - I think anyone that attempts it is 'one' and the 'others' will move away, I think the protocol allows for this (and any future development should always pay heed to not forfeiting this).

We have factual evidence that propagation issues have lead a certain portion of Chinese miners to coordinate their transaction validation by way of SPV mining, a clear centralization threat. On the other hand I'm afraid most of what you've written above sounds to me like "let's cross fingers, knock on wood and hope nothing bad happens".

I'm sure you'll understand others have similar concerns and would like to avoid for the security (and decentralization) of the network to rely on more than "hope".

I think that having bigger blocks does not provide a lasting solution to scaling the bitcoin network in terms of transactional throughput. I think its essential that other technologies are investigated. It occurred to me the other day that one solution already exists in the form of alt-coins. Sure they are not pegged, and sure they are volatile, but isn't that exactly the same argument levelled at bitcoin!? If we believe that over time bitcoin will capture a significant portion of the value in the world that fiat represents then it must inevitably stabilise. I think alts are probably on that same path just a little farther behind, and that this just mimics the current situation we have with competing fiat currencies. As one or two (or 4 or 17) alts emerge as the silvers to bitcoins gold, then I think they will gain the credibility, and assurance through hash rate that their chains are secure enough to handle, say, starbucks purchases.

I think the concept of alt as some sort of liquidity source for lower value transactions is not certain and IMO quite unlikely. I am of the belief that there can be only one POW coin and competitors will slowly but surely wither away. In other words, I don't think they're the solution we're looking for...

Then there is Blockstream and the lightning network. I think that, they certainly think they are doing something great. I didn't at first but thats because I was afraid. Who am I to say they are not? I think there is enormous capacity for the development of a wide range of new crypto-financial-institutions. Much as I have my head in the idealogical cloud of bitcoin destroying TPTB and bringing about a new era of cashless, bankless anarchy, I think that the reality is that many of the existing structures will remain they'll just pivot on a s/USD/XBT/g

So let Blockchain set up a trusted third party scheme, with subscription fees so that exchanges can swap XBT off chain. Let anyone else who feels they can add-value to BTC set up a service, sell it, win customers and profit. At the end of the day capitalism is a great system, that is let down by accountability and 'cheating' amongst other things. BTC can address a couple of those things imho.

Lightning network and Blockstream are two things independent of each other. There are multiple implementations of the Lightning protocol being worked on, one of which is supported by Blockstream. Moreover Lightning involves no custodial trust. It is quite simply an intelligent use of Bitcoin's existing scripting features that allow for a superficial write-cache layer to be surimposed on top of Bitcoin's blockchain. To address your distinction of solution vs. "evolution", I consider Lightning and Sidechains to be exactly that: natural evolutions of Bitcoin's stack supported by a limited but robust base protocol and improved through layered innovation.

More details here: http://lightning.network/lightning-network-summary.pdf

Now with regards to my philosophical take on what is going on. I think on the one hand people talk about how great openness and sharing is and how letting the market decide is better because its more 'decentralised'. I think now bitcoin is big though, people are scared because there is more to lose and so automatically revert to the old hierarchical models of thinking. I think people assume that, despite the countless examples throughout nature, science, history etc that humans can be smarter. I categorically believe that no individual (or small group) is smarter than the commons. I think there is something fundamentally successful about evolutionary process. I think that the imposition of restrictions on any system introduces points of failure.

Have you considered that removing the block size limit does not leave the decision into the hands of "the market" (if it exists in that context) but up to individual miners, according to their respective resources?

Who would you rather have influence the security and decentralization of the network?

Miners who are largely profit-driven actors and have shown worrying disregard for the network's health at times or the code dictated by existing consensus amongst network peers (full nodes) and investors?

[muyuu]

That deranged man posted the exact same thing to /r/bitcoin didn't he? 

[brg444]

That deranged man posted the exact same thing to /r/bitcoin didn't he?  

That's his modus operandi.

Develop talking points and repeatedly spam them everywhere until he gets censored moderated and then proceed to go cry about it and incite uproar amongst his little circle jerk.

[Zarathustra]

That deranged man posted the exact same thing to /r/bitcoin didn't he?  

That's his modus operandi.

Develop talking points and repeatedly spam them everywhere

Says a fulltime spamming user who spams the forums with up to 100 spams a day.

[Carlton Banks]

That deranged man posted the exact same thing to /r/bitcoin didn't he?  

That's his modus operandi.

Develop talking points and repeatedly spam them everywhere

Says a fulltime spamming user who spams the forums with up to 100 spams a day.

Allow me to introduce you to a well-used, stove heated kettle 

[hdbuck]

Blockstream Core will be forced to implement larger blocks, because they've got competition. If they refuse, they'll be forked of. Their choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ttz1o/it_actually_doesnt_really_matter_if_blockstream/

Fork off already!  

did he just said 'competition'?!

[MbccompanyX]

Blockstream Core will be forced to implement larger blocks, because they've got competition. If they refuse, they'll be forked of. Their choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ttz1o/it_actually_doesnt_really_matter_if_blockstream/

Fork off already!  

did he just said 'competition'?!

Yeah he told so, like if Bitcoin XT was actually a real thing and not just an altcoin masked as bitcoin at the end and didn't forked because chaos is needed for XT devs otherwise the whole thing could already die in the first weeks

[hdbuck]

Blockstream Core will be forced to implement larger blocks, because they've got competition. If they refuse, they'll be forked of. Their choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ttz1o/it_actually_doesnt_really_matter_if_blockstream/

Fork off already!  

did he just said 'competition'?!

Yeah he told so, like if Bitcoin XT was actually a real thing and not just an altcoin masked as bitcoin at the end and didn't forked because chaos is needed for XT devs otherwise the whole thing could already die in the first weeks

heh, and now they giggle about their bitcoin unlimiturd... if only they had actual devs to code and fork off already, y' know let the market decide and stuff..
but clearly they are incapable annoying little kids. medical physics, political philosophy... and shit.

also, not that bitcoin have any serious competition in the first place, it is so not 'competing' for bigger blocks.

[VeritasSapere]

Oh yeah, the whole "you're just not ready" excuse  

Just put him on ignore like me and you will be better off. XT is a failed takeover of Bitcoin. Everyone should accept its fate by now.

XT is not a takeover of Bitcoin, I wish you would stop saying this, I can respect your position, but saying that XT is a takeover actually harms all of Bitcoin regardless of what you believe.

Rule by the economic majority is how Bitcoin is meant to be governed. So if the majority of people freely choose to adopt an alternative implementation of the Bitcoin protocol then this should be considered legitimate, even if you disagree. XT requires seventy five percent consensus in order for it to even initiate a fork after all.

If Core was the client introducing BIP101 and XT represented the alternative choice for one megabyte blocks you might not have been so quick to describe XT as a takeover of Bitcoin. I do not think it is even possible to "takeover" Bitcoin. The only way for Bitcoin to lose its inherent freedom would be if people chose to give up their freedom, which is why I find such totalitarian conceptions of Bitcoin to be harmful, since Bitcoin does reflect the culture of its participants.

XT can only be considered a takeover if you believe that Core should or does rule Bitcoin, which is the same as saying that this small group of technical experts should decide on the future of Bitcoin. I find this mentality to be totalitarian in nature and antithetical to the ethos of Bitcoin.

The only way to destroy freedom, is to convince people they are safer without it. This is exactly what is happening to Bitcoin.

https://medium.com/@riprowan/the-entire-debate-transcends-block-sizes-and-gets-to-the-fundamental-principles-of-bitcoin-as-c7f7bc1a493#.e6tlubrv7

Your posts are an oasis of rationality, nuance, and higher level understanding in this thread. Thank you for posting -- I'm sure there are many other lurkers like me who appreciate it. The lack of intelligent, thoughtful responses you see to your posts says a lot about the caliber of most of those posting opposing viewpoints (not all! some are thoughtful -- you know who you are, thank you).

Thank you, I appreciate that you value my writing. Bitcoin is very important to me as I am sure it is to most of us here. I am advocating for the freedom of choice, it surprising sometimes how much opposition there is to this simple concept in action. I am confident that in the long run the principles of the true and original Bitcoin will triumph, incentives will align and we will see bigger blocks implemented in Bitcoin with or without Core.

[Zarathustra]

Blockstream Core will be forced to implement larger blocks, because they've got competition. If they refuse, they'll be forked of. Their choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ttz1o/it_actually_doesnt_really_matter_if_blockstream/

Fork off already!  

did he just said 'competition'?!

Yeah he told so, like if Bitcoin XT was actually a real thing and not just an altcoin masked as bitcoin at the end and didn't forked because chaos is needed for XT devs otherwise the whole thing could already die in the first weeks

XT

[Zarathustra]

Blockstream Core will be forced to implement larger blocks, because they've got competition. If they refuse, they'll be forked of. Their choice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ttz1o/it_actually_doesnt_really_matter_if_blockstream/

Fork off already!  

did he just said 'competition'?!

Yeah he told so, like if Bitcoin XT was actually a real thing and not just an altcoin masked as bitcoin at the end and didn't forked because chaos is needed for XT devs otherwise the whole thing could already die in the first weeks

heh, and now they giggle about their bitcoin unlimiturd... if only they had actual devs to code and fork off already, y' know let the market decide and stuff..
but clearly they are incapable annoying little kids. medical physics, political philosophy... and shit.

also, not that bitcoin have any serious competition in the first place, it is so not 'competing' for bigger blocks.

How many times do you have to be told that the limit will be raised next year?? Do you understand? Not tonight dear! Next year! 2016!

Opinions of the outcome of the block-size issue? von nyeko_92 in btc

[–]ForkiusMaximus 12 Punkte vor 19 Stunden

Either Core will implement a modest increase, like 2-4-8 (or Flexblocks), or they will be forked off.

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

[Carlton Banks]

How many times do you have to be told that the limit will be raised next year?? Do you understand? Not tonight dear! Next year! 2016!

Opinions of the outcome of the block-size issue? von nyeko_92 in btc

[–]ForkiusMaximus 12 Punkte vor 19 Stunden

Either Core will implement a modest increase, like 2-4-8 (or Flexblocks), or they will be forked off.

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

And now you're presenting Adam Back's proposition as a victory for "big blockists"? 


You're out of your mind.

[Zarathustra]

How many times do you have to be told that the limit will be raised next year?? Do you understand? Not tonight dear! Next year! 2016!

Opinions of the outcome of the block-size issue? von nyeko_92 in btc

[–]ForkiusMaximus 12 Punkte vor 19 Stunden

Either Core will implement a modest increase, like 2-4-8 (or Flexblocks), or they will be forked off.

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

And now you're presenting Adam Back's proposition as a victory for "big blockists"?  

You're out of your mind.

Luke, gmax and other miniblockists will have to compromize up at least to Adams numbers. And then:

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

[Carlton Banks]

How many times do you have to be told that the limit will be raised next year?? Do you understand? Not tonight dear! Next year! 2016!

Opinions of the outcome of the block-size issue? von nyeko_92 in btc

[–]ForkiusMaximus 12 Punkte vor 19 Stunden

Either Core will implement a modest increase, like 2-4-8 (or Flexblocks), or they will be forked off.

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

And now you're presenting Adam Back's proposition as a victory for "big blockists"?  

You're out of your mind.

Luke, gmax and other miniblockists will have to compromize up at least to Adams numbers. And then:

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

It's slightly amazing how vindictive you're being, all while failing to admit how badly your argument has failed?


"Look at how successful we've been, the opposite of everything we've said so far has been demonstrated to be true!"



You're clearly unhinged in some way or another, and you're expecting to attract people to your argument, how, exactly?

[Zarathustra]

How many times do you have to be told that the limit will be raised next year?? Do you understand? Not tonight dear! Next year! 2016!

Opinions of the outcome of the block-size issue? von nyeko_92 in btc

[–]ForkiusMaximus 12 Punkte vor 19 Stunden

Either Core will implement a modest increase, like 2-4-8 (or Flexblocks), or they will be forked off.

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

And now you're presenting Adam Back's proposition as a victory for "big blockists"?  

You're out of your mind.

Luke, gmax and other miniblockists will have to compromize up at least to Adams numbers. And then:

Once that goes off without a hitch, many of the small block adherents' objections will be gone, and we can fork again as needed to raise it more.

It's slightly amazing how vindictive you're being, all while failing to admit how badly your argument has failed?

"Look at how successful we've been, the opposite of everything we've said so far has been demonstrated to be true!"

You're clearly unhinged in some way or another, and you're expecting to attract people to your argument, how, exactly?

Blablubb. What do you mean? I always said that core will be forced to raise the limit next year. To prolong the stalemate by talking about different 'proposals' will not work anymore into the halving period. Furthermore they will be forced to raise that limit as much that it will not block the stream. The community (market) will not tolerate a cap that is small enough to enforce the stream artificially into sidechains. As soon as that happens another fork will be enforced by the market.

[Lauda]

Here is my most recent paper [link].  Can you explain your theory in more detail?  It sounds like you're suggesting that I didn't write it, yet there are many people who know that I did such as Prof. Wilmer from U Pitt, Prof. Bivar from George Washington U, contributors in Cypherdoc's thread, and other people here in Vancouver.  Suddenly, your "conspiracy theory" that other people are writing my papers and paying me to give talks about them [link], as well as funding VeritasSapere to post comments here gets pretty bizarre.  Is everybody else "in on it" too?

The truth is that the majority of the community recognizes that bigger blocks are needed for further adoption and we're all working hard in whatever ways we can to make that happen.  However, due to the censorship in online discussion, both sides of the debate are surrounded by a mist of mistrust.

This tells me nothing and is worthless evidence to almost everyone in the world. It's not my conspiracy theory. The right people have been discussing this occasionally since "you" released it. Every time you do something ignorant, like call out to censorship because the forum doesn't agree with your nonsense, you start looking more like a clown. The owner of a forum has every right to delete, punish and whatnot anyone who comes to their forum for no apparent reason. This is not censorship, this is him/her not wanting to listen to your bullshit. The right to free speech has nothing to do with a forum.
Obviously the lack of trust is deserved. A possible analogy: a warrior should drop his shield (spam filter, e.g. block size) for X reason and go into a fight hoping that everything will be alright. I wonder what would happen the next time we have a spam attack, 100 times stronger than we've had so far, if we followed your proposal. Should we risk everything in order to find out, hoping that everything will be right?
Update:
XT propaganda folk doesn't know the definition of  freedom of speech. "Freedom of speech is the right to communicate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship." This is obviously the case here since theymos is the government.  

[sgbett]

you consider the network "is reliable and decentralised enough"

I think the broadcasting of a transaction to the network is reliable and 'decentralised' enough

"broadcasting of a transaction to" is an important distinction

We have factual evidence that propagation issues have lead a certain portion of Chinese miners to coordinate their transaction validation by way of SPV mining, a clear centralisation threat.

I don't think that's a certainty

there is certainly a threat, a threat is not certainty.

In other words, I don't think they're the solution we're looking for...

I don't think any one of those ideas is a *solution* for scaling

Perhaps bitcoin does not need to scale quite so big if people use alt coins for low value transactions.

Lightning network and Blockstream are two things independent of each other.

Blockstream and the lightning network...

a misleading grammatical construct, nevertheless... https://blockstream.com/2015/09/01/lightning-network/

Have you considered that removing the block size limit does not leave the decision into the hands of "the market" (if it exists in that context) but up to individual miners, according to their respective resources?

my exact thoughts are that I think no block size limit is preferable...<snip>...I think ingenuity in the market place will prevail, as it typically does, and that the larger miners will be contained by inertia, and the smaller miners will be dynamic enough to squeeze out value in niches

All the answers to your questions are already there.