Why I support BIP101

[VeritasSapere]

Any feature that would prevent older clients from running would require a hard fork. In this case Mike would have to convince the entire Bitcoin community or at least the majority, including the miners to switch over to his fork. I could even release a Bitcoin client myself, which could have all sorts of changes in it but this does not grant me any control over the network since I would still need to convince other people to start using it as well. That is why Bitcoin XT would not give Mike any type of dictatorial control, since people would still need to choose to adopt it in the first place.

Convince the community? No. It doesn't matter if random 100 people are using it, or not. It can not function without the miners.
I'm pretty sure it will be very hard to make people upgrade with an emergency alert key (e.g. :"Bitcoin compromised, update imminently"). So instead of sticking with the safer version, you plan on going with Hearn. Let's see what happens right?

Tl;dr version of OP?

You are essentially saying that people can not be trusted with this freedom. That is why people should not have the choice? This is the same type argument that a dictator or tyrant would use. Which if your ideology does not include freedom and decentralization is fine. However from the political ideology of freedom and decentralization this is certainly not the case.

[Lauda]

You are essentially saying that people can not be trusted with this freedom. That is why people should not have the choice? This is the same type argument that a dictator or tyrant would use. Which if your ideology does not include freedom and decentralization is fine. However from the political ideology of freedom and decentralization this is certainly not the case.

I'm not saying that. No. I'm saying that a dictator can not be trusted. After hearing of his ideas of a 'Bitcoin dictator' I would rather stay away from XT completely than go with it and risk it. For the record again, I do not support small blocks. I've actually waited yesterday for a single confirm 6 blocks (standard fee, for testing purposes).
We need blocks that are changing. No predictions, no fixed limits.

[turvarya]

Any feature that would prevent older clients from running would require a hard fork. In this case Mike would have to convince the entire Bitcoin community or at least the majority, including the miners to switch over to his fork. I could even release a Bitcoin client myself, which could have all sorts of changes in it but this does not grant me any control over the network since I would still need to convince other people to start using it as well. That is why Bitcoin XT would not give Mike any type of dictatorial control, since people would still need to choose to adopt it in the first place.

Convince the community? No. It doesn't matter if random 100 people are using it, or not. It can not function without the miners.
I'm pretty sure it will be very hard to make people upgrade with an emergency alert key (e.g. :"Bitcoin compromised, update imminently"). So instead of sticking with the safer version, you plan on going with Hearn. Let's see what happens right?

Tl;dr version of OP?

So, it is not about convincing the community, but convincing the miners.
I am not sure, what your point is.
If there would really be a 75% XT/25% Core-fork. There is no reason, why the XT miners would just accept every hardfork change from Hearn, just because they accepted BIP101 after months of discussing. Hearn wouldn't get magic powers, just because he convinced them once.

[VeritasSapere]

You are essentially saying that people can not be trusted with this freedom. That is why people should not have the choice? This is the same type argument that a dictator or tyrant would use. Which if your ideology does not include freedom and decentralization is fine. However from the political ideology of freedom and decentralization this is certainly not the case.

I'm not saying that. No. I'm saying that a dictator can not be trusted. After hearing of his ideas of a 'Bitcoin dictator' I would rather stay away from XT completely than go with it and risk it. For the record again, I do not support small blocks. I've actually waited yesterday for a single confirm 6 blocks (standard fee, for testing purposes).
We need blocks that are changing. No predictions, no fixed limits.

You do not need to trust Mike, you do not need to trust any dictator. You do not need to trust anyone. Bitcoin is a trustless protocol.

[Lauda]

You do not need to trust Mike, you do not need to trust any dictator. You do not need to trust anyone. Bitcoin is a trustless protocol.

So? That is not even remotely close to my point. Do you think that I do not know that? Bitcoin essentially works as a trust-less protocol. However, you can not argue that such a potential scandal (Hearn or whoever trying to push something bad) would not hurt the price/adoption.
I would rather avoid more bad news (as media misinterprets stuff), than to deal with it again. The debate has caused more than enough.

[brg444]

We should not think that we must have the consensus of the core developers if that consensus becomes impossible to reach, since this would be tantamount to centralization of power. The ability to hard fork in this way represents the check that we have against such power that a core development team could hold. If you think that we should never hard fork it is the equivalent of saying that the core developers have absolute power over the development of the Bitcoin protocol. Or quoting Mike Hearn "they believe that the only mechanism that Bitcoin has to keep them in check should never be used". This is part of what makes Bitcoin truly so decentralized and free. That is why it is not intrinsically wrong to fork away from the core development team.

This is a misrepresentation of the event. Not only did Mike & Gavin's proposal not obtain consensus it achieved a majority opposition. We're not talking about an outlier forcing his veto against consensus but a team of diverse developers concluding that their approach was not appropriate and lacked legitimate technical backing.

It is not intrinsically wrong to fork away from the core development. It is wrong though to go against the technical opinion of a majority of experts in the field to propose a schism fork that divide the existing consensus and use populist tactics and propaganda to fool masses into blindly supporting an illegitimate fork on the basis of "inclusion". This is evidently an attempt by Mike Hearn to wrestle away the control over the reference code from core developers. Don't you find it  hypocritical that somehow the XT team propose to fork away from core development team and arbitrarily install themselves into the driver seat?

I do not think that Core will ever increase the block size unless there is a hard fork initiated by another client. Because there is a fundamental disagreement within the Core development team itself that cannot be resolved. This has led to a stalemate. Since they can effectively veto each other on decisions. Therefore the only way to increase the block size is by hard forking away from the core development team.

The core team has several block increase implementation being worked out as we speak. This is again a disingenuous representation of reality.

It is important to remember that if you run a full node or if you are a miner, you have to vote, you literally can not do these things without casting a vote to either side, therefore it is impossible to be neutral if you either mining or running a full node. Since I do think that the block size limit should be increased, and right now I have to choose between Core or BIP101, I choose BIP101, even if it a choice between the lesser of two evils. This is a case of political realism. In political thought the lesser of two evils is often the pragmatic reality we have to accept in order to even justify the existence of the state, and we should not think that 90% consensus is practical considering how democracies actually and practically function.

Bitcoin is not a democracy. "Political realism"   I seriously almost barfed. You are entertaining very dangerous thoughts gentleman

This fundamental disagreement lies in that some of the of the Core developers do not want the block size to be increased at all. Because some of the Core developers like Peter Todd believe that the Bitcoin blockchain can not scale efficiently and that therefore we should not try and make it scale directly at all. I would like to point out here that this the nirvana fallacy.

Absolutely wrong once again. This is an outright lie that is either intentional or demonstrate your ignorance of the events unfolding.

Just because we can not scale Bitcoin efficiently it does mean we should not scale Bitcoin directly at all. From a purely technical perspective Peter Todd and some of his colleagues might be correct. However from a political and economics perspective increasing the block size now does make a huge difference in terms of adoption and the survival of Bitcoin in the long term.

Miss me with your "political and economics perspective". This is absolutely an engineering problem. Competent engineers are telling you these are the cards you have been dealt and no amount of political posturing and complaining can change facts.

I will stop there because frankly your essay is quite boring, full of fallacies and absent of any insights. It appears you like writing a lot but you should maybe pay more attention and educate yourself a bit more about the dynamics at stake. Also, get your head out of this political/philosophical cloud because it is inferring with your judgment.

In political thought the lesser of two evils is often the pragmatic reality we have to accept in order to even justify the existence of the state, and we should not think that 90% consensus is practical considering how democracies actually and practically function

No one is ever going to take you seriously writing that type of bs.

Have a good day  

[VeritasSapere]

This is a misrepresentation of the event. Not only did Mike & Gavin's proposal not obtain consensus it achieved a majority opposition. We're not talking about an outlier forcing his veto against consensus but a team of diverse developers concluding that their approach was not appropriate and lacked legitimate technical backing.

The success of Bitcoin XT is not relevant to what I was saying, and can you tell me what I am misrepresenting specifically?

It is not intrinsically wrong to fork away from the core development. It is wrong though to go against the technical opinion of a majority of experts in the field.

Can you see the contradiction in what you are saying here? Who decides whom these majority of experts are? Is the majority of the Core development team considered to be the technical majority? Since that would be tantamount to centralization of power. You did understand that I argued that from a technical standpoint they might be correct, however that from a political standpoint they are not. Therefore the technical majority should not be the group that decides or whose perspective should be considered the most important, on this issue the economic majority should and will decide for themselves. Having more options and choices for people so that the market can decide is a good thing and supports freedom and decentralization.

Do you know what the "majority of experts" believed in Germany in 1938? The "majority of experts" are not always correct.

Don't you find it  hypocritical that somehow the XT team propose to fork away from core development team and arbitrarily install themselves into the driver seat?

Actually it is not hypocritical, especially since Mike has described himself as the dictator of Bitcoin XT lol. Fortunately however we do not need to trust him or any other developer. Bitcoin is a trust less open source protocol. That is why there can not be a dictator of Bitcoin unless the economic majority places their trust in them, which they would not do, especially the miners since they are incentivized to do what is best for Bitcoin.

I do not think that Core will ever increase the block size unless there is a hard fork initiated by another client. Because there is a fundamental disagreement within the Core development team itself that cannot be resolved. This has led to a stalemate. Since they can effectively veto each other on decisions. Therefore the only way to increase the block size is by hard forking away from the core development team.

The core team has several block increase implementation being worked out as we speak. This is again a disingenuous representation of reality.

Just because there are proposals it does not mean that they will be implemented, and they most certainly have not been implemented now. Right now the only way to increase the blocksize is by using BIP101. Which has not been implemented in Core. Since none of the proposals have been implemented in Core and no definitive plans have been made to implement any block size increase in Core. I can therefore say that I have not represented the reality disingenuously.

It is important to remember that if you run a full node or if you are a miner, you have to vote, you literally can not do these things without casting a vote to either side, therefore it is impossible to be neutral if you either mining or running a full node. Since I do think that the block size limit should be increased, and right now I have to choose between Core or BIP101, I choose BIP101, even if it a choice between the lesser of two evils. This is a case of political realism. In political thought the lesser of two evils is often the pragmatic reality we have to accept in order to even justify the existence of the state, and we should not think that 90% consensus is practical considering how democracies actually and practically function.

Bitcoin is not a democracy. "Political realism"   I seriously almost barfed. You are entertaining very dangerous thoughts gentleman.

Bitcoin is a type of democracy where the economic majority have the most influence. Similarly to how our democracies function today lol. You are correct that these are very dangerous thoughts, but these are the foundations of much political thinking. When faced with only two choices we must choose even if the options are imperfect. Just like government, it is a compromise, a moral dilemma. We cannot just ignore the dilemma, that is why this is a case of "political realism".

This fundamental disagreement lies in that some of the of the Core developers do not want the block size to be increased at all. Because some of the Core developers like Peter Todd believe that the Bitcoin blockchain can not scale efficiently and that therefore we should not try and make it scale directly at all. I would like to point out here that this the nirvana fallacy.

Absolutely wrong once again. This is an outright lie that is either intentional or demonstrate your ignorance of the events unfolding.

I can provide a source: https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-217-the-bitcoin-block-size-discussion, 39:50.
He clearly argues in this podcast that he thinks we should not increase the block size any time soon and that a "fee market" should develop instead, which according to him would "incentive" other market solutions like lighting network, sidechains and other types of "off chain transactions". Granted he did say that in the long term we should maybe increase the blocksize, however he definitely does think that the blocks should fill up. Therefore it is not incorrect to say that there is a fundamental disagreement within the core development team.

I will stop there because frankly your essay is quite boring, full of fallacies and absent of any insights. It appears you like writing a lot but you should maybe pay more attention and educate yourself a bit more about the dynamics at stake. Also, get your head out of this political/philosophical cloud because it is inferring with your judgment.

You have failed to point out any fallacies. The purpose of philosophy among other reasons is to improve a persons judgment. I think that it is good that philosophy is inferring with my judgment. The definition of infer being to "deduce or conclude (something) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.".

[btcusury]

I will stop there because frankly your essay is quite boring, full of fallacies and absent of any insights. It appears you like writing a lot but you should maybe pay more attention and educate yourself a bit more about the dynamics at stake. Also, get your head out of this political/philosophical cloud because it is inferring with your judgment.

Thank you for deconstructing his ridiculous post. As I was reading his post I was getting more and more motivated to do the same, but decided to first see if someone had already done so.

Since I do think that the block size limit should be increased, and right now I have to choose between Core or BIP101, I choose BIP101, even if it a choice between the lesser of two evils. This is a case of political realism. In political thought the lesser of two evils is often the pragmatic reality we have to accept in order to even justify the existence of the state, and we should not think that 90% consensus is practical considering how democracies actually and practically function.

LOL! Why the hell would you want to "justify the existence of the state", especially in these terms, unless you are a proud, ultra-dogmatic, foaming-at-the-mouth slave?

[Quantus]

I read OP and I have a question.

What % of the Blockchain 'size' is from orphaned blocks? Dose anyone know?
Dose the blockchain store all orphaned blocks forever?
As block size grows so dose the rate of orphan chains. My fear is the size of all the orphan chains will grow at a faster rate then the main chain.  

[brg444]

I read OP and I have a question.

What % of the Blockchain 'size' is from orphaned blocks? Dose anyone know?
Dose the blockchain store all orphaned blocks forever?
As block size grows so dose the rate of orphan chains. My fear is the size of all the orphan chains will grow at a faster rate then the main chain.  

 

Orphaned blocks are not stored....

[Quantus]

'Orphaned blocks are stored in blkxxxx.dat files forever, though each node will know about different orphaned blocks.'

Is this not true?

[hdbuck]

this is not relevant to the main thread being about spreading misinformation and promoting a scam of a bip.

[Quantus]

this is not relevant to the main thread being about spreading misinformation and promoting a scam of a bip.

Well OP created a thread about why he/she supports a thing and I"m saying why I don't support said thing. I'm asking for more info on the topic of the OP I think my post and question is relevant to this topic.

[BitcoinEXpress]

You do not need to trust Mike, you do not need to trust any dictator. You do not need to trust anyone. Bitcoin is a trustless protocol.

Yes Bitcoin is indeed a trustless protocol.

Bitcoin XT and BIP101 are not.

I would love to see the mathematical equation that solves for blacklisting, enhanced tracking, reversible transactions and easily implemented central control as being "trustless".

Bitcoin XT is basically a crypto version of Paypal in which you must trust in Gavin and Mike.


Nice try for a rebound but Bitcoin XT is dead.

Time to move on.


~BCX~

[notthematrix]

If bitcoin wants to survice as a dominant ledger/blockchain system increasing max block size is a must!
Why all people who want to run a full node can get proper hdd http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Archive-Internal-Hard-Drive/dp/B00TJUXCA2
and what trace mayer says here is  very true http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHXfEJD6DUk
who wants to pay for Bitcoin network use?
If you can build in private transaction at a higher miner cost! say 1% / 5% depending on blocksize people will pay for that why?
Transactions will be PRIVATE as a option.
that's what paying customers want , and that's where you can make money with the bitcoin system.
Morality was never a issue in the banking system , so its better to have this  feature avalible in bitcoin so privacy is a future otion for everybody and not only the Elite bankers
And to build in this extra option we need a bigger blocksize.
Bitcoin needs to gròw up.

[notthematrix]

You do not need to trust Mike, you do not need to trust any dictator. You do not need to trust anyone. Bitcoin is a trustless protocol.

Yes Bitcoin is indeed a trustless protocol.

Bitcoin XT and BIP101 are not.

I would love to see the mathematical equation that solves for blacklisting, enhanced tracking, reversible transactions and easily implemented central control as being "trustless".

Bitcoin XT is basically a crypto version of Paypal in which you must trust in Gavin and Mike.


Nice try for a rebound but Bitcoin XT is dead.

Time to move on.


~BCX~

Blacklisting bitcoins is useless why , every bitcoin blacklisted is one less to be never be replaced! so I cant see how you can effectively blacklist a BTC , sorry!

[BitcoinEXpress]

Blacklisting bitcoins is useless why , every bitcoin blacklisted is one less to be never be replaced! so I cant see how you can effectively blacklist a BTC , sorry!

Read up on Gavin and Hearn's philosophy and find out how.

It's in Bitcoin XT.

Also just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's impossible.


~BCX~

[notthematrix]

Blacklisting bitcoins is useless why , every bitcoin blacklisted is one less to be never be replaced! so I cant see how you can effectively blacklist a BTC , sorry!

Read up on Gavin and Hearn's philosophy and find out how.

It's in Bitcoin XT.

Also just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's impossible.


~BCX~

You cant! why it will leave no bitcoin whitelisted since bitcoins cant be replaced , within 24 hours all bicoins will be blacklisted!
So be logical! it cant work! , if it is in XT nobody will use it anymore when active so this can only be bullshit its simple deduction!
because there will be no whitelisted BTC left!
It is simple it can not be done!
but if you inc the blocksite to 8MB or more you can build in privacy at extra cost!
as explained here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHXfEJD6DUk then you can create plausible deniebility in the system , so parties Bitpay can saveley except all transactions under what ever law.
But Iam sure Blacklisting can not work , because whitin hours there will be no BTC left to blacklist!

[BombaUcigasa]

Yes Bitcoin is indeed a trustless protocol.

... BIP101 are not.

That is retarded... it's just math equations, where's the trust issue?

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6341/files

[VeritasSapere]

Yes Bitcoin is indeed a trustless protocol.

... BIP101 are not.

That is retarded... it's just math equations, where's the trust issue?

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6341/files

This is correct. BIP101 does not compromise the trustless nature of the protocol whatsoever.