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

[brg444]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

[1714858502]

1714858502

[1714858502]

1714858502

[1714858502]

1714858502

[jonald_fyookball]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

[brg444]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?

No, it is referring to the same paper.

If you want to understand the assumptions that make any of what Peter has posted here wrong I suggest you read the above.

Sometimes it is nice to have two sides of the story.

[Peter R]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

Greg claimed the paper was "fundamentally flawed" and asked me several times to publicly retract it.  Instead, I have examined his objections, and in addressing them, I have been able to remove assumptions and strengthen the claims of the paper.  

The fee market paper is interdisciplinary and really outside the realm of Greg's expertise: it is a mixture of physics and economics.  My opinion of Greg is that he is a professional cryptographer and programmer, an amateur physicist, and a lousy economist and game theorist.  Remember, he already "proved" that decentralized consensus was impossible...

[jonald_fyookball]

I have to wonder if Greg is just trying to discredit people like Peter who threaten his intellectual high ground.
Comments like "Wow. bitcoin-development has reached a new low." really strike me as unwarranted emotionalism.

[brg444]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

Greg claimed the paper is fundamentally flawed and asked me several times to publicly retract it.  Instead, I have examined his objections, and in addressed them I have been able to remove assumptions and strengthen the claims of the paper.  

The fee market paper is interdisciplinary and really outside the realm of Greg's expertise: it is a mixture of physics and economics.  My opinion of Greg is that he is an professional cryptographer, an amateur physicist, and a lousy economist and game theorist.  Remember, he already "proved" that decentralized consensus was impossible...

And it is, Bitcoin uses carefully aligned incentives to work around the problem. In fact, if you wanna accuse him of being wrong on this aspect, then you should realize you are making the same mistakes he previously did which is to examine the problem in a vaccum.

Your paper is fundamentally flawed because it addresses nothing resembling the current dynamics at stake in Bitcoin. More precisely it ignores the incentives for miners to centralize (as they have shown to have) to mitigate propagation times. In effect your paper clearly demonstrates it is more profitable to do so under free-floating blocks and you essentially rely on their altruism to maintain the validity of your model to make decisions going forward. In short, your work might be sound from a technical standpoint but can not be used to construct security models that depend on worst-behaviours assumptions.

I cannot accept that you could comment on Greg's game theory intelligence when you continue to wave away the clear negative externality present in your models. You chose to ignore the obvious tragedy of commons at stake and that is why your opinion can never be considered as long as you don't recognize the cost externalized to node and the overall centralization pressure suggested by YOUR alignment of the incentives.

[brg444]

I have to wonder if Greg is just trying to discredit people like Peter who threaten his intellectual high ground.
Comments like "Wow. bitcoin-development has reached a new low." really strike me as unwarranted emotionalism.

If you don't chose to make a rational judgment between the arguments presented your opinion is of no use here.

[jonald_fyookball]

I have to wonder if Greg is just trying to discredit people like Peter who threaten his intellectual high ground.
Comments like "Wow. bitcoin-development has reached a new low." really strike me as unwarranted emotionalism.

If you don't chose to make a rational judgment between the arguments presented your opinion is of no use here.

Ive already argued in this thread against the fatality of any tragedy of the commons regarding fees in a no-subsidy situation.  So far, no one has refuted me.

Also, its laughable that Greg would attack Peter for using too technical of a presentation.
Practically every sentence Greg types is cryptic and technical. 

[Peter R]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

Greg claimed the paper is fundamentally flawed and asked me several times to publicly retract it.  Instead, I have examined his objections, and in addressed them I have been able to remove assumptions and strengthen the claims of the paper.  

The fee market paper is interdisciplinary and really outside the realm of Greg's expertise: it is a mixture of physics and economics.  My opinion of Greg is that he is an professional cryptographer, an amateur physicist, and a lousy economist and game theorist.  Remember, he already "proved" that decentralized consensus was impossible...

And it is, Bitcoin uses carefully aligned incentives to work around the problem.

Your paper is fundamentally flawed because it addresses nothing resembling the current dynamics at stake in Bitcoin. More precisely it ignores the incentives for miners to centralize (as they have shown to have) to mitigate propagation times. In effect your paper clearly demonstrates it is more profitable to do so under free-floating blocks and you essentially rely on their altruism to maintain the validity of your model to make decisions going forward. In short, your work might be sound from a technical standpoint, in a vacuum, but can not be used to construct security models that depend on worst-behaviours assumptions.

I cannot accept that you could comment on Greg's game theory intelligence when you continue to wave away the clear negative externality present in your models. You chose to ignore the obvious tragedy of commons at stake and that is why your opinion can never be considered as long as you don't recognize the cost externalized to node and the overall centralization pressure suggested by YOUR alignment of the incentives.

My paper implies that the most "efficient" network configuration (at least from a superficial perspective) is a single miner in a large data center.  No one is disputing this fact.  No one is also disputing the fact that a monopoly miner like this has the ability to censor transactions and to double-spend (and earn a greater profit this way too).

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  

But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

[brg444]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

Greg claimed the paper is fundamentally flawed and asked me several times to publicly retract it.  Instead, I have examined his objections, and in addressed them I have been able to remove assumptions and strengthen the claims of the paper.  

The fee market paper is interdisciplinary and really outside the realm of Greg's expertise: it is a mixture of physics and economics.  My opinion of Greg is that he is an professional cryptographer, an amateur physicist, and a lousy economist and game theorist.  Remember, he already "proved" that decentralized consensus was impossible...

And it is, Bitcoin uses carefully aligned incentives to work around the problem.

Your paper is fundamentally flawed because it addresses nothing resembling the current dynamics at stake in Bitcoin. More precisely it ignores the incentives for miners to centralize (as they have shown to have) to mitigate propagation times. In effect your paper clearly demonstrates it is more profitable to do so under free-floating blocks and you essentially rely on their altruism to maintain the validity of your model to make decisions going forward. In short, your work might be sound from a technical standpoint, in a vacuum, but can not be used to construct security models that depend on worst-behaviours assumptions.

I cannot accept that you could comment on Greg's game theory intelligence when you continue to wave away the clear negative externality present in your models. You chose to ignore the obvious tragedy of commons at stake and that is why your opinion can never be considered as long as you don't recognize the cost externalized to node and the overall centralization pressure suggested by YOUR alignment of the incentives.

My paper implies that the most "efficient" network configuration (at least from a superficial perspective) is a single miner in a large data center.  No one is disputing this fact.  No one is also disputing the fact that a monopoly miner like this has the ability to censor transactions and to double-spend (and earn a greater profit this way too).

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  

But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

Great, but that's completely irrelevant to the decisions we have to make. In fact it strongly suggest against removing entirely the block size cap so you should really stop pulling up this material as it absolutely does not support your position.

What you essentially propose is to see "how far" the miners will be willing to centralize toward "the most efficient network configuration"

[brg444]

Practically every sentence Greg types is cryptic and technical. 

 

He's actually excellent at making intelligent analogies and "dumbing-down" material for casual users.

[jonald_fyookball]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

Greg claimed the paper is fundamentally flawed and asked me several times to publicly retract it.  Instead, I have examined his objections, and in addressed them I have been able to remove assumptions and strengthen the claims of the paper.  

The fee market paper is interdisciplinary and really outside the realm of Greg's expertise: it is a mixture of physics and economics.  My opinion of Greg is that he is an professional cryptographer, an amateur physicist, and a lousy economist and game theorist.  Remember, he already "proved" that decentralized consensus was impossible...

And it is, Bitcoin uses carefully aligned incentives to work around the problem.

Your paper is fundamentally flawed because it addresses nothing resembling the current dynamics at stake in Bitcoin. More precisely it ignores the incentives for miners to centralize (as they have shown to have) to mitigate propagation times. In effect your paper clearly demonstrates it is more profitable to do so under free-floating blocks and you essentially rely on their altruism to maintain the validity of your model to make decisions going forward. In short, your work might be sound from a technical standpoint, in a vacuum, but can not be used to construct security models that depend on worst-behaviours assumptions.

I cannot accept that you could comment on Greg's game theory intelligence when you continue to wave away the clear negative externality present in your models. You chose to ignore the obvious tragedy of commons at stake and that is why your opinion can never be considered as long as you don't recognize the cost externalized to node and the overall centralization pressure suggested by YOUR alignment of the incentives.

My paper implies that the most "efficient" network configuration (at least from a superficial perspective) is a single miner in a large data center.  No one is disputing this fact.  No one is also disputing the fact that a monopoly miner like this has the ability to censor transactions and to double-spend (and earn a greater profit this way too).

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  

But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

Great, but that's completely irrelevant to the decisions we have to make. In fact it strongly suggest against removing entirely the block size cap so you should really stop pulling up this material as it absolutely does not support your position.

What you essentially propose is to see "how far" the miners will be willing to centralize toward "the most efficient network configuration"

The fees SHOULD be irrelevant right now, but some people (in this very thread) are pointing to arguments that
we have to have small blocks because of fees, so I think Peter's paper actually is relevant if it dispells those fears.

[brg444]

I'm just gonna drop this here  

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-30/?msg=48477664&page=1

It's infuriating when someone makes an intellectually weak argument, but slateers it in so much (very nicely constructed) pretext and trappings that people who aren't interested or lack the context to evaluate it on its merits are too busy being mesmorized with the leather binding.

Which paper of Peter's is Greg referring to?

I thought Peter is now arguing we don't need any block limit for a "healthy fee market".

Is this a different paper?
 

Greg claimed the paper is fundamentally flawed and asked me several times to publicly retract it.  Instead, I have examined his objections, and in addressed them I have been able to remove assumptions and strengthen the claims of the paper.  

The fee market paper is interdisciplinary and really outside the realm of Greg's expertise: it is a mixture of physics and economics.  My opinion of Greg is that he is an professional cryptographer, an amateur physicist, and a lousy economist and game theorist.  Remember, he already "proved" that decentralized consensus was impossible...

And it is, Bitcoin uses carefully aligned incentives to work around the problem.

Your paper is fundamentally flawed because it addresses nothing resembling the current dynamics at stake in Bitcoin. More precisely it ignores the incentives for miners to centralize (as they have shown to have) to mitigate propagation times. In effect your paper clearly demonstrates it is more profitable to do so under free-floating blocks and you essentially rely on their altruism to maintain the validity of your model to make decisions going forward. In short, your work might be sound from a technical standpoint, in a vacuum, but can not be used to construct security models that depend on worst-behaviours assumptions.

I cannot accept that you could comment on Greg's game theory intelligence when you continue to wave away the clear negative externality present in your models. You chose to ignore the obvious tragedy of commons at stake and that is why your opinion can never be considered as long as you don't recognize the cost externalized to node and the overall centralization pressure suggested by YOUR alignment of the incentives.

My paper implies that the most "efficient" network configuration (at least from a superficial perspective) is a single miner in a large data center.  No one is disputing this fact.  No one is also disputing the fact that a monopoly miner like this has the ability to censor transactions and to double-spend (and earn a greater profit this way too).

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  

But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

Great, but that's completely irrelevant to the decisions we have to make. In fact it strongly suggest against removing entirely the block size cap so you should really stop pulling up this material as it absolutely does not support your position.

What you essentially propose is to see "how far" the miners will be willing to centralize toward "the most efficient network configuration"

The fees SHOULD be irrelevant right now, but some people (in this very thread) are pointing to arguments that
we have to have small blocks because of fees, so I think Peter's paper actually is relevant if it dispells those fears.

You absolutely don't understand the implications of what Peter's paper suggest .

I couldn't careless if fees are irrelevant right now we need a model that takes them into account for the future.

[jonald_fyookball]

You absolutely don't understand the implications of what Peter's paper suggest .
 

Then I imagine you're going to enlighten me.  What do the implications suggest?

[Peter R]

My paper implies that the most "efficient" network configuration (at least from a superficial perspective) is a single miner in a large data center.  No one is disputing this fact.  No one is also disputing the fact that a monopoly miner like this has the ability to censor transactions and to double-spend (and earn a greater profit this way too).

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  

But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

Great, but that's completely irrelevant to the decisions we have to make. In fact it strongly suggest against removing entirely the block size cap so you should really stop pulling up this material as it absolutely does not support your position.

What you essentially propose is to see "how far" the miners will be willing to centralize toward "the most efficient network configuration"

My paper says nothing about this.  It just shows that a transaction fee market exists without a block size limit assuming the network isn't already centered around a single miner.  

Now on to a topic outside of the scope of that paper: You are under the impression that increasing the block size limit will for some reason lead to more centralization (which I don't understand--there's "centralization pressure" at any block size limit).  I, on the other hand, see this as allowing Bitcoin to grow and gain new users, new nodes, new miners, and in general protection in numbers.  

Furthermore, you're scheme of implementing a production quota on block size requires centralized control to enforce the quota.  You have said it yourself that we need a centrally-planned limit to keep Bitcoin decentralized.  Do you not find that logic absurd?

[jonald_fyookball]

Peter, I'm unfamiliar with the details of off chain scaling,
but I haven't seen anyone show me how off chain scaling
helps decentralization.  Doesn't a "payment network" or similar
require trusted parties?

[brg444]

My paper implies that the most "efficient" network configuration (at least from a superficial perspective) is a single miner in a large data center.  No one is disputing this fact.  No one is also disputing the fact that a monopoly miner like this has the ability to censor transactions and to double-spend (and earn a greater profit this way too).

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  

But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

Great, but that's completely irrelevant to the decisions we have to make. In fact it strongly suggest against removing entirely the block size cap so you should really stop pulling up this material as it absolutely does not support your position.

What you essentially propose is to see "how far" the miners will be willing to centralize toward "the most efficient network configuration"

My paper says nothing about this.  It just shows that a transaction fee market exists without a block size limit assuming the network isn't already centered around a single miner.  

Now on to a topic outside of the scope of that paper: You are under the impression that increasing the block size limit will for some reason lead to more centralization (which I don't understand--there's "centralization pressure" at any block size limit).  I, on the other hand, see this as allowing Bitcoin to grow and gain new users, new nodes, new miners, and in general protection in numbers.  

Furthermore, you're scheme of implementing a production quota on block size requires centralized control to enforce the quota.  You have said it yourself that we need a centrally-planned limit to keep Bitcoin decentralized.  Do you not find that logic absurd?

To be exact:

My paper says nothing about this.  It just shows that a transaction fee market exists without a block size limit assuming the network is perfectly decentralized

At which point every incremental increase of the block size encourages equivalent centralization by miner to mitigate costs brought about by propagation time.

I am not "under the impression" of anything. Increasing block size limit has a strong centralization pressures on the nodes who necessarily see their cost of maintenance increased considerably. This has the effect of increasing the barrier-to-entry for network governance.

There exists no such pressure at current block limit as far as nodes are concerned. While you are right that centralization of mining already exists it is a whole different set of problems in itself and it is easy to understand why these would be precipitated by raising the cap irresponsibly.

There is nothing to support your theory that new nodes are brought about by increase use of the network and the last two years show this is absolutely not an assumption you can make. Moreover, you are tragically misguided as to how Bitcoin should grow and WHY it will grow.

We have been throught this discussion of centrally-planned limit over and again and no, the logic isn't absurd. To consider:

"Are you saying we need centrally planned limit (21,000,000) to keep Bitcoin from turning into fiat"

"Are you saying we need centrally planned block interval to keep Bitcoin secure"

The quota is necessary and effective precisely because the negative externality you make a footnote of in your material is very real and needs to be a focal point of any decision made going forward.

[laurentmt]

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  
But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

I think the point of contention is really about this conclusion.
My understanding is that it may also happen with several miners if they have an incentive to synchronize their mempools (with a mechanism like IBLT).
See this post written by Gavin (chapter "Will this skew incentives ?" of https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2)

[Peter R]

Will mining centralize around one single miner?  No one knows.  This is why Bitcoin is still a risk.  
But if this doesn't happen--if there remains more than a single miner--then the fee market does exist.

I think the point of contention is really about this conclusion.

My understanding is that it may also happen with several miners if they have an incentive to synchronize their mempools (with a mechanism like IBLT).

Do you agree that this conclusion applies to the way the network is now and the way it has always been?

I ask, just because I want it to be clear to readers that this "point of contention" is about a hypothetical future scenario.  And that we already know that there are hypothetical future scenarios, such as mining centralized around a single super pool, that would be bad for Bitcoin.   

[brg444]

Here is a comment from Matt Corrallo that explains why Peter R's research should not be considered to make our decisions. Again, it might add up in a vacuum under precise conditions but is not applicable to reality.

If, for example, the majority of miners are in China (they are), and there is really poor connectivity in and out of China (there is) and a miner naively optimizes for profit, they will create blocks which are large and take a while to relay out of China. By simple trial-and-error an individual large miner might notice that when they create larger blocks which fork off miners in other parts of the world, they get more income.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-May/008364.html