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

[gmaxwell]

It reduces the functionality of zero confirmation transactions.

No it doesn't.

If I am a merchant should I reject RBF?

You should wait for confirmation if your risk model says you should. This is already the case, and many properties of a transaction (like low fee or spending unconfirmed inputs) will make most zero conf accepters wait (and still they frequently get ripped off; because the Bitcoin system itself does not provide security for unconfirmed transactions). Fortunately, Opt-In RBF at least means that there is no risk that the confirmation needs to take an excruciatingly long time.

Even Gavin Andresen is against RBF and last time I checked he was still a Core developer, so now you do not even have your all important "developer consensus".

If he is, he failed to speak up. Of the 19 people that commented on the PR in the nearly two months that it was open, none said anything negative.

[1714674823]

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[VeritasSapere]

It reduces the functionality of zero confirmation transactions.

No it doesn't.

When there are technical experts stating opposing things it is hard for people like me to know what is true, Mike and Gavin certainly do think that it does reduce the functionality of zero confirmation transactions.

If the economic majority where to make these type of decisions for Bitcoin through proxy then it is important for the developers to explain well what they are doing so that the economic majority do not become misinformed, having technical experts make contradictory statements is confusing for the layman. However considering that this is a science unlike politics and economics there should be a singular correct answer for this question regarding RBF and zero confirmation at least. I suppose in this situation it might be appropriate to believe the developers that I respect the most and that best represent my own personal ideology. I did read Mike Hearns criticism of RBF, the logic contained within that paper did make sense to me. If Core has written a paper countering Mike's argument please link that here, I am always open to opposing points of view which is part of the reason why I post here more often.

If I am a merchant should I reject RBF?

You should wait for confirmation if your risk model says you should. This is already the case, and many properties of a transaction (like low fee or spending unconfirmed inputs) will make most zero conf accepters wait (and still they frequently get ripped off; because the Bitcoin system itself does not provide security for unconfirmed transactions). Fortunately, Opt-In RBF at least means that there is no risk that the confirmation needs to take an excruciatingly long time.

We have a high volume of low value transactions at this brick and mortar store, the type of place it is it would not be suitable for people to wait for confirmation. Accepting zero confirmation transactions has so far not been a problem, even if some double spends did occur it would be within acceptable loss. Of course if zero confirmation did become less reliable then it is now I would have to either use a payment proccessor or only use cryptocurrencies that have the same functionality that Bitcoin has now, that is if in the future zero confirmation did become less reliable in Bitcoin, which as far as I understand would be the case if the blocks became full, RBF does also not help this situation at least according to what some developers are saying about it.

Even Gavin Andresen is against RBF and last time I checked he was still a Core developer, so now you do not even have your all important "developer consensus".

If he is, he failed to speak up. Of the 19 people that commented on the PR in the nearly two months that it was open, none said anything negative.

That is peculiar considering that he has spoken out against it on twitter, I was not aware that he had not told the Core team about his concerns, I find that a bit strange, maybe you have a better insight on why this is the case. I am going to ask Gavin myself why he did not speak out against RBF when it was being implemented into Core, since I do find that rather strange.

[VeritasSapere]

@VS: Can you at least acknowledge that RBF is not a fork? I'm convinced you understand that RBF doesn't change the consensus rules (the definition of which blocks are valid). At this point it seems like you're trying to avoid acknowledging this.

The resistance to XT was mostly due to XTs attempt to force a contentious change to the consensus rules. I think XT already had relay policy changes before BIP 101 was added. There was no real resistance to XT at that point.

Just to let you know, it's clear to me that you support bigger blocks and alternative implementations.

I can acknowledge that RBF is not a fork. I was indeed mistaken about how this change is properly defined.

I do not consider the seventy five percent miner consensus that is required in order for BIP101 to be triggered to be an attempt to "force" a contentious change, quite the opposite actually it is a way to resolve a contentious decision through the proof of work mechanism.

Fair enough. And you're probably right that I shouldn't have used the word "force." If at some point in the future 101 starts getting significant miner support (which seems unlikely), it also wouldn't "force" me or others to go along with the change. I could switch to another cryptocurrency or simply leave the space. This ultimate ability to opt-in or opt-out is one of the most appealing aspects of cryptocurrency.

We are actually having a reasonable discussion here, well done Trent Russel.

I also agree with you that the underlying volunteerism of Bitcoin is indeed one of its most appealing aspects.

I personally would prefer it if either Core or XT compromised their position on the blocksize so that we can have a higher degree of consensus, while at the same time buying us more time to further distribute development over the long run. A third alternative representing a middle ground between these two extreme positions would also be a positive development if both Core and XT are still unwilling to compromise by that time.

[tvbcof]

The moronero shills shouldn't laugh to early. The chance, that the community will be unable to respond to the blockstream attack (change a 'Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System' into a settlement layer for the banksters) is miniscule.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3ush79/then_they_fight_you/

It's tempting to modify the sometimes Bitcoin motto of 'be your own bank' to 'be your own bankster.'  This does not work however.  Banksters ply their trade through opacity, through flexibility in the fiat system, and through protection of their racket using state legal systems.  Bitcoin is distinctly bad on all of these fronts.

At the end of the day, an ecosystem of subordinate chains makes it possible to 'be your own bank' at any scale one wishes or needs, but racketeering will not be as easy as with traditional monetary systems (provided Bitcoin is not bloated into the waiting hands of centralization.)

There actually are some theoretical problems with the system.  It is kind of the way the world works that as the games progress, the winner accumulates all of the chips.  A rock solid Bitcoin (or whatever non-inflationary backing store) only makes this outcome more likely.  This was something I considered before buying my first Bitcoin.  Then, as now, my hope to overcome this problem should it occur is to just replace the backing store.  Hopefully the threat of this and the economic damage it would do to the 'winners' would make it a very risky and undesirable to accumulate such a position in the first place.

[knight22]

So now Bitstamp is officially on the BIP101 train.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3utza9/bitstamp_supports_bip_101_and_will_switch_systems/

[gmaxwell]

When there are technical experts stating opposing things it is hard for people like me to know what is true, Mike and Gavin certainly do think that it does reduce the functionality of zero confirmation transactions.

Mike and Gavin have not commented on Opt-in RBF as far as I am aware; you are confusing his comments on full RBF. But on what basis do you believe their expertise is greater than a dozen other parties?

Opt-in RBF is explained in some detail in the FAQ on Reddit, linked previously to you in this thread; you say that you are open to other views, but you seem to have made no effort to familiarize yourself with them.

That is peculiar considering that he has spoken out against it on twitter, I was not aware that he had not told the Core team about his concerns, I find that a bit strange, maybe you have a better insight on why this is the case. I am going to ask Gavin myself why he did not speak out against RBF when it was being implemented into Core, since I do find that rather strange.

I just checked his twitter feed and can find no comment on it in the last several months. As far as insight, Gavin is not very active in Bitcoin development and hasn't been for a significant time, before the recent blocksize drama. That he didn't comment on the PR was unsurprising on that basis, but he certainly was aware of it-- since he asked when the merge was being discussed in the weekly meeting if we'd talked to any other wallet vendors about it (though this also indicated he hadn't recently read the PR).

[brg444]

I accused Core of hypocrisy because they said they would not implement any contentious changes. This is part of the reason they gave for not presently increasing the blocksize. However now they are releasing RBF which certainly is a contentious change. Without any debate, voting, time or even miner consensus, this is hypocritical.

The beacon of hypocrisy resides in the person championing freedom of choice & liberty of Bitcoin implementations yet expressing ignorant contempt & outrage any time Core merges code he doesn't agree with.

While differing opinions is ok, having such outrage and confidence in your views, making accusations against others, while having little knowledge about what it is you are complaining about, is unbecoming and frustrating.

It exposes your complains as not about the issues but simple about 'partisan loyalty'.  

This. Thank you.

[hdbuck]

I accused Core of hypocrisy because they said they would not implement any contentious changes. This is part of the reason they gave for not presently increasing the blocksize. However now they are releasing RBF which certainly is a contentious change. Without any debate, voting, time or even miner consensus, this is hypocritical.

The beacon of hypocrisy resides in the person championing freedom of choice & liberty of Bitcoin implementations yet expressing ignorant contempt & outrage any time Core merges code he doesn't agree with. understand.

ftfy.

what a waste of time arguing with this irrelevant wacko.

[hdbuck]

So now Bitstamp is officially on the BIP101 train.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3utza9/bitstamp_supports_bip_101_and_will_switch_systems/

lel old nyooz, still irrelevant.


edit: pfahah theymos, always keeping a stiff upper lip:

[–]theymos
If they do it, then yes, they will be banned.
Very disappointing. I thought that BitStamp was one of the better exchanges.

https://archive.is/4rvPe

dat gate keeper

[VeritasSapere]

When there are technical experts stating opposing things it is hard for people like me to know what is true, Mike and Gavin certainly do think that it does reduce the functionality of zero confirmation transactions.

Mike and Gavin have not commented on Opt-in RBF as far as I am aware; you are confusing his comments on full RBF. But on what basis do you believe their expertise is greater than a dozen other parties?

You keep saying that it is opt-in however it is only opt-in for the sender not the reciever, the merchant will need to tell the customer to uncheck RBF in whatever wallet they are using in order to accept zero confirmation transactions and in some retail enviroments this would significantly reduce the user experiance to the extent that it is not even practical, it is adding to much complexity to the user experiance requiring people to do this. Transactions can only be "pushed" by the sender therefore opt-in is only optional for the sender not the reciever, and you should not expect retailers to start rejecting transactions based on this as well since this would also make Bitcoin increasingly unreliable in such an environment.

Furthermore when blocks do fill up we now already have child pays for parent for unsticking transactions without the negative consequences that RBF seem to have, so I do question how usefull this really is.

Just broadcast a non-rbf enabled transaction to my 26 digit, alpha-numeric, case sensitive address grandma, no big deal! What, you didn't uncheck RBF? God damnit grandma I told you that you had to do that 1,000 times. Now you have to wait 1 to 120 minutes for a transaction to confirm!

For me it is not even a question of greater expertise since it has also become about ideology relating to economics and politics, these are questions that most technical experts are not specifically trained to answer. I think that some of these more fundamental questions like the blocksize for instance are more concerned with politics and economics then computer science, which is in part why I do not consider the Core developers fundamentally changing the economic policy of Bitcoin a good thing. You might have spend a lifetime studying computer science but there are other people that have spent a lifetime studying economics and politics that do disagree with you. The humanities are more concerned with the study of human culture, as oposed to more objective scientific facts which is what computer science is more involved with.

I do not consider you to be an expert on economics and politics, I most certainly do acknowlige you to be one of the best experts in the fields of computer science within Bitcoin. However sometimes it can be the case that engineers can awnser some questions very differently compared to schollars in different fields of thought. The engineers are not always correct, especially in fields that are not within their own area of expertise.

In my discussions with various members of Core, I have reached the conclusion that most of them simply disagree with the design of Bitcoin, which by design allows the consensus rules to be changed by a sufficient majority of miners and users, independent of what any group of technocrats wish.

It is important to remember not to attribute malice where ignorance is equally explanatory. All of the devs I engage with are very strong in cryptography and computer science, which may make them less accepting of the fact that at its core, Bitcoin relies in the economic self-interest of the masses to govern consensus, not a group of educated technocrats. As an educated technocrat myself I can understand the sentiment. It would be better if math and only math governed Bitcoin. But that's not how Bitcoin is actually governed.

At the end of the day, if social engineering and developer manipulation can kill Bitcoin, well then we're all betting on the wrong horse.

Opt-in RBF is explained in some detail in the FAQ on Reddit, linked previously to you in this thread; you say that you are open to other views, but you seem to have made no effort to familiarize yourself with them.

To be fair I do not think we have had enouth time to fully discuss and understand this issue, I was only made aware of it being implemented relativly recently.

That is peculiar considering that he has spoken out against it on twitter, I was not aware that he had not told the Core team about his concerns, I find that a bit strange, maybe you have a better insight on why this is the case. I am going to ask Gavin myself why he did not speak out against RBF when it was being implemented into Core, since I do find that rather strange.

I just checked his twitter feed and can find no comment on it in the last several months. As far as insight, Gavin is not very active in Bitcoin development and hasn't been for a significant time, before the recent blocksize drama. That he didn't comment on the PR was unsurprising on that basis, but he certainly was aware of it-- since he asked when the merge was being discussed in the weekly meeting if we'd talked to any other wallet vendors about it (though this also indicated he hadn't recently read the PR).

I see, I suppose his position on this issue was already made clear months ago, I have already asked him again anyway.

https://twitter.com/gavinandresen/status/581840219068076032

In regards to you saying that Gavin is not active in development I certainly do have a different perspective, considering what he has done for the blocksize issue over the last few months. Since this is a very important parrameter for me and how I perceive Bitcoin, I consider Gavin to have been very active in development, maybe more in the wider sense of the word, in the development of the Bitcoin protocol. This is not to belittle the work you have done for scaling Bitcoin which has also been very important, though at some point I do believe that we should scale the Bitcoin blockchain directly which can only be done significantly by increasing the blocksize.

[hdbuck]

Heh, theymos in full debunking mode:

BIP 101 is terrible and inherently dangerous.

If the majority of miners adopt BIP 101, they will leave Bitcoin. This does not affect Bitcoin except for temporarily-increased confirmation times and reduced total mining power (still out of the reach of any realistic attacker). Full nodes ignore non-Bitcoin miners no matter how much mining power they have.

If, say, 51% of the economy adopts BIP 101 and 75% of miners do as well (this sort of economy-miner split is possible -- for example BIP 65 is supported by ~50% of miners but only ~20% of nodes right now), then you're splitting the Bitcoin economy 49-51. If you think that shattering the Bitcoin ecosystem like this can cause anything but havoc, severely reduced prices, etc., then you're nuts. (You might somewhat-reasonably argue that things will become better in the long-term due to this, though the vast majority of Bitcoin experts disagree with you: there's a good chance that BIP 101 itself is so bad that it will destroy Bitcoin's good properties, and the precedent that a slight majority can completely change any of Bitcoin's "hard rules" should significantly diminish anyone's faith in Bitcoin as well.)

No, Bitcoin uses the longest valid block chain.

Non-Bitcoin miners are mining an invalid block chain. If the longest block chain was equal to Bitcoin, then there'd be no point to full nodes at all except maybe to run miners. This would also be a horrible and nonsensical system, since you'd be saying that you're OK with giving complete control of Bitcoin to a handful of often-anonymous pool operators far away from you without many of the same incentives as you.

No. I have also never received any money from Blockstream, and I'm not employed by any Bitcoin company.

I don't think that Bitcoin can survive long-term with BIP 101, or at least not in a form recognizable as Bitcoin. So I'd have to join Satoshi  in calling Bitcoin a failed project. Maybe it could someday be tried again with more fancy crypto such as SNARKs and more care to prevent this sort of thing.

https://archive.is/IKl91


Still must be quite annoying to always reply to such bunch of irrelevant reddit trolls.

These people are nobodies, never heard of any of them, never contributed to anything, yet they come here and shout at historical bitcoiners - the few that's left - spilling their venom, ad homs on core devs on social media and talk about technical things they do not qualify to discuss.

Surely their corporate/banking masters are desperate to highjack bitcoin by now. Full retard mode is on. Like kids that did not get their candyfork.

Gavin is sneaking back in (?) whilst Hearn is fully integrated with the R3 banking cartel. Anyway, the masks have fallen.

Ah and Blockchain Alliance^tm... Full retard mode, I tell you.

[tl121]

RBF isn't a fork at all, hard or soft. It doesn't change which blocks are valid.

RBF is a code fork, and it's a particularly significant code fork because it changes the functionality of bitcoin and requires significant changes to wallet software and other application software that is built on top of the blockchain.

In one sense, RBF poses a potentially greater risk than a blockchain fork, because the damage it can do is local (between cheating Alice's and duped Bob's) and hence likely to be insidious. Blockchain forks are obvious because of their global impact and  have, historically, mobilized developers and node operators to recover from the resulting  system outages fairly quickly so that ordinary users remain unaffected.

[brg444]

I think that some of these more fundamental questions like the blocksize for instance are more concerned with politics and economics then computer science, which is in part why I do not consider the Core developers fundamentally changing the economic policy of Bitcoin a good thing. You might have spend a lifetime studying computer science but there are other people that have spent a lifetime studying economics and politics that do disagree with you. The humanities are more concerned with the study of human culture, as oposed to more objective scientific facts which is what computer science is more involved with.

I do not consider you to be an expert on economics and politics, I most certainly do acknowlige you to be one of the best experts in the fields of computer science within Bitcoin. However sometimes it can be the case that engineers can awnser some questions very differently compared to schollars in different fields of thought. The engineers are not always correct, especially in fields that are not within their own area of expertise

So basically you're saying you choose to ignore scientific evidence and prefer to rely on confirmation bias by cherrypicking pseudo-scientific (politics, economics) arguments that fits your "ideology".

You're a goddamned lunatic.

[brg444]

To be fair I do not think we have had enouth time to fully discuss and understand this issue, I was only made aware of it being implemented relativly recently.

You just haven't been paying attention

Recent RBF discussions going back to May 2015.

Github: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6176 - Add first-seen-safe replace-by-fee logic to the mempool #6176 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6352 - Scheduled full-RBF deployment #6352 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6871 - nSequence-based Full-RBF opt-in #6871

IRC meeting: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3t1in5/bitcoin_dev_irc_meeting_in_laymans_terms_20151112/

There are many other logs which can be found at http://bitcoinstats.com/ for #bitcoin-dev and https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-core-dev/ for #bitcoin-core-dev

Mailing list discussions in no particular order:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-November/011783.html - [bitcoin-dev] Opt-in Full Replace-By-Fee (Full-RBF)
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-May/008248.html - [Bitcoin-development] First-Seen-Safe Replace-by-Fee
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-May/008232.html - [Bitcoin-development] Cost savings by using replace-by-fee, 30-90%
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-July/009420.html - [bitcoin-dev] Significant losses by double-spending unconfirmed transactions
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-June/009253.html - [bitcoin-dev] BIP: Full Replace-by-Fee deployment schedule
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-February/007404.html - [Bitcoin-development] replace-by-fee v0.10.0rc4
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-November/011685.html - [bitcoin-dev] How wallets can handle real transaction fees

Satoshi originally introduced unconfirmed transaction replacement https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src/main.cpp#L434 but this was disabled due to a DOS attack (which Peter fixed by requiring a higher fee for each replacement).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3urm8o/optin_rbf_is_misunderstood_ask_questions_about_it/cxhsbbi

[hdbuck]

I think that some of these more fundamental questions like the blocksize for instance are more concerned with politics and economics then computer science, which is in part why I do not consider the Core developers fundamentally changing the economic policy of Bitcoin a good thing. You might have spend a lifetime studying computer science but there are other people that have spent a lifetime studying economics and politics that do disagree with you. The humanities are more concerned with the study of human culture, as oposed to more objective scientific facts which is what computer science is more involved with.

I do not consider you to be an expert on economics and politics, I most certainly do acknowlige you to be one of the best experts in the fields of computer science within Bitcoin. However sometimes it can be the case that engineers can awnser some questions very differently compared to schollars in different fields of thought. The engineers are not always correct, especially in fields that are not within their own area of expertise

So basically you're saying you choose to ignore scientific evidence and prefer to rely on confirmation bias by cherrypicking pseudo-scientific (politics, economics) arguments that fits your "ideology".

You're a goddamned lunatic.

Scholars didnt came up with bitcoin.

Cypherpunks did.

[tl121]

Nothing in the protocol changed. There is absolutely 0 change to Bitcoin protocol. They did not implement any changes to the protocol.  This is not a change! Since they did 0 change to the protocol, they did 0 contentious change to protocol. Since they did not do a contentious change they have stuck to their work so there is no hypocrisy.

A protocol includes both the syntax and the semantics of messages.  The semantics includes the dynamic behavior of the nodes and the meaning of the messages.  In particular, prior to this change certain messages would be rejected by nodes and not forwarded. Subsequent to this change these messages will be forwarded.  Ultimately this effects what users will see. RBF changes how nodes work and the functionality of the bitcoin system. It does this because it changes the protocol.

The confusion here comes from coders looking at the mechanisms inside one node and not seeing a larger picture, which includes the combination of many nodes with applications software and ultimately the human users of Bitcoin.   A further source of confusion comes from the lack of a Bitcoin protocol specification and the lack of a process for evolving this specification.

[tl121]

It reduces the functionality of zero confirmation transactions.

No it doesn't.

The behavior seen by the users of the system changes.  It is up to the users to decide whether this change represents an increase or a decrease in "functionality".

[meono]

So now Bitstamp is officially on the BIP101 train.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3utza9/bitstamp_supports_bip_101_and_will_switch_systems/

LOL where is the clown brg444 when we need him?

"So what? its just a banker" argument is getting old. Come up with something for a change, dumbass.

[Zarathustra]

So now Bitstamp is officially on the BIP101 train.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3utza9/bitstamp_supports_bip_101_and_will_switch_systems/

The tide is turning. Check the votes. The stream will be unblocked; soonish.

[meono]

So now Bitstamp is officially on the BIP101 train.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3utza9/bitstamp_supports_bip_101_and_will_switch_systems/

The tide is turning. Check the votes. The stream will be unblocked; soonish.

Only ones without a clue of bitcoin economic would not see this coming.

If any big players in Bitcoin decides to let Blockstream choke bitcoin for their own benefits, well the big players deserve to go bankrupt.

Fortunately, Bitpay Coinbase and Bitstamp arent fools.