There Must Be A Way We Can All Vote

[BitProdigy]

I think the core issue we face is twofold:

1) We don't have a clear consensus building process. We need to decide if we want 75% consensus within 1000 blocks by the miners followed by 95% consensus within 1000 Blocks, or if we just want 80% consensus within 5000 blocks. We need a clear process.

2) We Need a way for more than just the miners to vote. BIP100 is the perfect example as to why. If the miners are the only ones who have a say, then they can vote in BIP's that appeal to their interests but not necessarily to the interests of the entire community. Having only the miners vote has worked in the past but no longer. Now the miners are a small percentage of the bitcoin community whereas in the past they were a much larger percentage.

I think the problem with 1) is that we need a consensus building process to arrive at consensus as to which consensus building process we are going to choose. It's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. And I think with 2) we need a genius to come up with a solution that allows that all people have a fair say somehow.

Are there any geniuses out there with any ideas as to how we might do this??

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[brg444]

I think the core issue we face is twofold:

1) We don't have a clear consensus building process. We need to decide if we want 75% consensus within 1000 blocks by the miners followed by 95% consensus within 1000 Blocks, or if we just want 80% consensus within 5000 blocks. We need a clear process.

2) We Need a way for more than just the miners to vote. BIP100 is the perfect example as to why. If the miners are the only ones who have a say, then they can vote in BIP's that appeal to their interests but not necessarily to the interests of the entire community. Having only the miners vote has worked in the past but no longer. Now the miners are a small percentage of the bitcoin community whereas in the past they were a much larger percentage.

I think the problem with 1) is that we need a consensus building process to arrive at consensus as to which consensus building process we are going to choose. It's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. And I think with 2) we need a genius to come up with a solution that allows that all people have a fair say somehow.

Are there any geniuses out there with any ideas as to how we might do this??

 

I'm confused, first you make a thread saying you don't want to democracy but then you turn around and create one arguing that we must find a way to vote?

You're making this more complicated than it really is. Stop trying to "fix" Bitcoin as it is perfectly fine as it is. Achieving consensus should be hard and some "vote theater" is not gonna help it. Just be patient and stop believing the alarmists.

[BitProdigy]

I'm confused, first you make a thread saying you don't want to democracy but then you turn around and create one arguing that we must find a way to vote?

You're making this more complicated than it really is. Stop trying to "fix" Bitcoin as it is perfectly fine as it is. Achieving consensus should be hard and some "vote theater" is not gonna help it. Just be patient and stop believing the alarmists.

You are erroneously equating democracy with voting. Voting =/= Democracy.

When I say we don't want a democracy, I mean we don't want a majority rule where 51% is all it takes to win and then we have 49% unhappy and disappointed people. This kind of system will rip bitcoin in two.

Instead we should have a Consensus Building Process by which we gradually mold the proposals until we arrive at 95%+ approval. There are several different ways of doing this and this has been done several times in Bitcoin's history already, but all of them involve voting.

The Major difference is that with a Consensus Building Process people need the ability to change their votes, in a democracy you vote once and then that's it, you can't change your mind.

With a Consensus Building Process the proposals are tweaked and amended according to critiques and concerns of the voters until there emerges a proposal that is good enough to reach 75%+ votes. In a democracy the choices are static, and you just vote on the choices presented which do not change, and are often all poor solutions.

In both scenarios there is voting. In one scenario there are winners and losers, and in the other we are all winners.

[brg444]

I'm confused, first you make a thread saying you don't want to democracy but then you turn around and create one arguing that we must find a way to vote?

You're making this more complicated than it really is. Stop trying to "fix" Bitcoin as it is perfectly fine as it is. Achieving consensus should be hard and some "vote theater" is not gonna help it. Just be patient and stop believing the alarmists.

You are erroneously equating democracy with voting. Voting =/= Democracy.

When I say we don't want a democracy, I mean we don't want a majority rule where 51% is all it takes to win and then we have 49% unhappy and disappointed people. This kind of system will rip bitcoin in two.

Instead we should have a Consensus Building Process by which we gradually mold the proposals until we arrive at 95%+ approval. There are several different ways of doing this and this has been done several times in Bitcoin's history already, but all of them involve voting.

The Major difference is that with a Consensus Building Process people need the ability to change their votes, in a democracy you vote once and then that's it, you can't change your mind.

With a Consensus Building Process the proposals are tweaked and amended according to critiques and concerns of the voters until there emerges a proposal that is good enough to reach 75%+ votes. In a democracy the choices are static, and you just vote on the choices presented which do not change, and are often all poor solutions.

In both scenarios there is voting. In one scenario there are winners and losers, and in the other we are all winners.

Votes can be cheated, gamed, bought. I personally don't believe they're a good and transparent way of achieving consensus.

[jonald_fyookball]

the problem of not being able to implement "one man, one vote" in a decentralized manner is why we have things like proof of work in Bitcoin.

It's a tough nut to crack.

[brg444]

the problem of not being able to implement "one man, one vote" in a decentralized manner is why we have things like proof of work in Bitcoin.

It's a tough nut to crack.

I find myself agreeing with you on that one! Good comment.

[adamstgBit]

1) We don't have a clear consensus building process. We need to decide if we want 75% consensus within 1000 blocks by the miners followed by 95% consensus within 1000 Blocks, or if we just want 80% consensus within 5000 blocks. We need a clear process.

>75% of miners willing to accept the change simply lets devs know it's safe to implement.

dev's should reach consensus and use miner votes and BTC votes to help them reach consensus, would gavin had created bitcoinXT had he known <1% of miners would support it, while >60% support BIP100. i don't think he would of wasted his time. maybe he would of changed his mind and created a new BIP, but that's too late now, poor gavin cast away, forever?

[brg444]

1) We don't have a clear consensus building process. We need to decide if we want 75% consensus within 1000 blocks by the miners followed by 95% consensus within 1000 Blocks, or if we just want 80% consensus within 5000 blocks. We need a clear process.

>75% of miners willing to accept the change simply lets devs know it's safe to implement.

dev's should reach consensus and use miner votes and BTC votes to help them reach consensus, would gavin had created bitcoinXT had he known <1% of miners would support it, while >60% support BIP100. i don't think he would of wasted his time. maybe he would of changed his mind and created a new BIP, but that's too late now, poor gavin cast away, forever?

75% is dangerously low...

[adamstgBit]

1) We don't have a clear consensus building process. We need to decide if we want 75% consensus within 1000 blocks by the miners followed by 95% consensus within 1000 Blocks, or if we just want 80% consensus within 5000 blocks. We need a clear process.

>75% of miners willing to accept the change simply lets devs know it's safe to implement.

dev's should reach consensus and use miner votes and BTC votes to help them reach consensus, would gavin had created bitcoinXT had he known <1% of miners would support it, while >60% support BIP100. i don't think he would of wasted his time. maybe he would of changed his mind and created a new BIP, but that's too late now, poor gavin cast away, forever?

75% is dangerously low...

wtv thats up to the devs to decide on any given polling

if the poll is between BIP123 or no BIP at all and we get only 75% on BIP123, i agree with you its dangerously low...

if the poll between 6 slightly different BIP 40% might be enough for devs to choose and say they have reached consensus, with ALL devs backing 1 BIP it could go from 40% to 99% pretty fast

would be fun to watch.

[BitProdigy]

I wonder if Ethereum could be used as a voting mechanism?

[NorrisK]

I guess the biggest problem is that we cannot confirm individuals to only vote once. Everybody can literally make millions of wallets to vote.

By having the miners decide, we become even more centralized, as for the general bitcoiner, it is impossible to get enough hash to make his vote count, and we still have only a handful of people voting.

[Kakmakr]

You are going to find it's extremely hard to change people's mind, once they made a decision to follow a specific route. You will have to make compromises in proposals to get more people to change their minds. For example : If
Mike and Gavin came to the table and proposed to remove all the N$A backdoor features and also remove the code to make his other projects run smoother, you might see more people switching sides.

The consensus thing is just a question of how many people have the ability to sway people in a specific direction. Gavin was the Lead maintainer and he engaged with many role-players in the Bitcoin scene. <People trusted him> He has since broken away from that role, and people still follow him like sheep. He has this advantage, because he had close relationships with these companies <Sponsorship to the Bitcoin foundation and other events and it paid his salary for a while through donations>

This is more politics and power grab than anything else.      

[Amph]

I wonder if Ethereum could be used as a voting mechanism?

i think you can't with spv client or other client, and this is also the reaosn why there are so few full nodes out there

the only thing that is needed is an incentive for full node, to increase the number of those node and put a dent in other decisions of other party

[Mickeyb]

I think the core issue we face is twofold:

1) We don't have a clear consensus building process. We need to decide if we want 75% consensus within 1000 blocks by the miners followed by 95% consensus within 1000 Blocks, or if we just want 80% consensus within 5000 blocks. We need a clear process.

2) We Need a way for more than just the miners to vote. BIP100 is the perfect example as to why. If the miners are the only ones who have a say, then they can vote in BIP's that appeal to their interests but not necessarily to the interests of the entire community. Having only the miners vote has worked in the past but no longer. Now the miners are a small percentage of the bitcoin community whereas in the past they were a much larger percentage.

I think the problem with 1) is that we need a consensus building process to arrive at consensus as to which consensus building process we are going to choose. It's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. And I think with 2) we need a genius to come up with a solution that allows that all people have a fair say somehow.

Are there any geniuses out there with any ideas as to how we might do this??

I agree on your opinion that the whole community voting would be the best and the fairest solution. Then, whatever majority decides, we implement it. Fair and square!

There is a way for masses to vote at the moment, but not in Bitcoin unfortunately. There is a way in NXT though.

https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Voting_System

The only problem with us bitcoiners is that we don't recognize anything that is not Bitcoin related.
This might be a mistake as well!

[Panthers52]

the problem of not being able to implement "one man, one vote" in a decentralized manner is why we have things like proof of work in Bitcoin.

It's a tough nut to crack.

I don't think using the miners to vote on a proposed hard fork is the best way to determine consensus because it is not the miners who ultimately the value of bitcoin.

Each individual should not decide a hard fork either because the option of someone with dust amounts should not have the same influence as someone who transacts hundreds of thousands of bitcoin every day.

I don't think the core devs should have the influence they do because of the potential for conflict of interest and the potential that a core dev is simply wrong. If a core dev has the influence that they do then Bitcoin will become very centralized.

[coinableS]

How do you separate an individual from a computer/ IP address when trying to let everyone vote online?
I don't think it's possible.  The best I can think of is 1 vote per coin per IP. Would need a better way to prevent whales and exchanges from having multiple votes other than the "one per IP" rule...

[Kyraishi]

It is kind of difficult to have voting in a decentralized manner.
Cheating is inevitable.

[TransaDox]

OK. So how about this. We come to consensus by conviction for a proposal.

We have coloured coins, right? The POW should be CPU friendly and ASIC unfriendly and similar but not identical POW so each coin is essentially a fork  that people can run on their smart phones, Raspberry Pi or whatever. People vote by mining and their option creates a fork. As things progress, the forks can be merged or orphaned depending on whether proposals are dropped or re-written and new forks created. If they change their mind, they switch to another fork and start mining that. They effectively vote by participating in the mining process and which fork they mine determines their vote and continues that vote over time by their persistence in mining. They can switch as and when they feel changes are adequate and give a "none of the above" or "I don't care" by switching off mining completely. Maybe even decide that consensus has been reached when there are only 5% (arbitrary arse pulling figure) of the maximum all-time number of miners (gauged by difficulty?)

Miners still have a hashing power advantage but they are small in number compared to the community (is this true?) and would need to invest in hardware for non profitable and no immediate returns. Additionally, to use their influence, they would need to burn a lot more electricity than the average voter over a protracted time (months?).

It's not perfect, but better than miners only having a voice. I think we need to leverage the long time-frame that discussions can take to mitigate short-termism and cheating which is easy with distributed one person, one vote type of instantaneous voting.

[Kprawn]

OK. So how about this. We come to consensus by conviction for a proposal.

We have coloured coins, right? The POW should be CPU friendly and ASIC unfriendly and similar but not identical POW so each coin is essentially a fork  that people can run on their smart phones, Raspberry Pi or whatever. People vote by mining and their option creates a fork. As things progress, the forks can be merged or orphaned depending on whether proposals are dropped or re-written and new forks created. If they change their mind, they switch to another fork and start mining that. They effectively vote by participating in the mining process and which fork they mine determines their vote and continues that vote over time by their persistence in mining. They can switch as and when they feel changes are adequate and give a "none of the above" or "I don't care" by switching off mining completely. Maybe even decide that consensus has been reached when there are only 5% (arbitrary arse pulling figure) of the maximum all-time number of miners (gauged by difficulty?)

Miners still have a hashing power advantage but they are small in number compared to the community (is this true?) and would need to invest in hardware for non profitable and no immediate returns. Additionally, to use their influence, they would need to burn a lot more electricity than the average voter over a protracted time (months?).

It's not perfect, but better than miners only having a voice. I think we need to leverage the long time-frame that discussions can take to mitigate short-termism and cheating which is easy with distributed one person, one vote type of instantaneous voting.

People already find ways to bypass the node count with virtual machines etc. etc.. they are skilled enough to create fake mining rigs too... The technology can be

manipulated to simulate anything or they might re-route hashing power from bot infected machines to spoil the real votes. Let this be the challenge for the developers to

solve.. Satoshi already did most of the hard work by solving the "Byzantine Generals Problem" and people thought that was impossible.   

[EpicFail]

OK. So how about this. We come to consensus by conviction for a proposal.

We have coloured coins, right? The POW should be CPU friendly and ASIC unfriendly and similar but not identical POW so each coin is essentially a fork  that people can run on their smart phones, Raspberry Pi or whatever. People vote by mining and their option creates a fork. As things progress, the forks can be merged or orphaned depending on whether proposals are dropped or re-written and new forks created. If they change their mind, they switch to another fork and start mining that. They effectively vote by participating in the mining process and which fork they mine determines their vote and continues that vote over time by their persistence in mining. They can switch as and when they feel changes are adequate and give a "none of the above" or "I don't care" by switching off mining completely. Maybe even decide that consensus has been reached when there are only 5% (arbitrary arse pulling figure) of the maximum all-time number of miners (gauged by difficulty?)

Miners still have a hashing power advantage but they are small in number compared to the community (is this true?) and would need to invest in hardware for non profitable and no immediate returns. Additionally, to use their influence, they would need to burn a lot more electricity than the average voter over a protracted time (months?).

It's not perfect, but better than miners only having a voice. I think we need to leverage the long time-frame that discussions can take to mitigate short-termism and cheating which is easy with distributed one person, one vote type of instantaneous voting.

Please provide low-level details of your proposal, using methods and algorithms than can be implemented using technological options that are available today or in the immediate future. You will quickly see that this cannot be done.

[uxgpf]

would gavin had created bitcoinXT had he known <1% of miners would support it, while >60% support BIP100. i don't think he would of wasted his time.

Gavin didn't create Bitcoin XT, he created BIP 101 and merged it to Bitcoin XT, which is Mike Hearns much earlier fork of Bitcoin Core. Miners show their support for BIP 100 for obivious reasons (it gives them more power), but we will see if it will be actually coded and if new fork will be created to implement it.

Also it's currently not possible to vote for BIP 101 as slush voting port got DDoS:ed and they disabled mining with it. In addition all Bitcoin XT nodes have been under constant UDP flood attacks and many have been forced to shut down. I'd say that statistics are meaningless with this level of censorship.

maybe he would of changed his mind and created a new BIP, but that's too late now, poor gavin cast away, forever?

I think that BIP 101 is a very reasonable proposition:
http://imgur.com/b5eOEaf

It makes Blocksize limit growth predictable and if in distant future it errs to the upside it's always easier to soft fork to smaller value, than hard fork to increase, which would be must with BIP 100 and its 32 MB final limit.

[habraken]

This is how we do voting on the blockchain. Can't be cheated.
It's not anonymous though, you can see what account voted what. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it isn't.
And it's probably no good for bitcoin holders

[adamstgBit]

would gavin had created bitcoinXT had he known <1% of miners would support it, while >60% support BIP100. i don't think he would of wasted his time.

Gavin didn't create Bitcoin XT, he created BIP 101 and merged it to Bitcoin XT, which is Mike Hearns much earlier fork of Bitcoin Core. Miners show their support for BIP 100 for obivious reasons (it gives them more power), but we will see if it will be actually coded and if new fork will be created to implement it.

Also it's currently not possible to vote for BIP 101 as slush voting port got DDoS:ed and they disabled mining with it. In addition all Bitcoin XT nodes have been under constant UDP flood attacks and many have been forced to shut down. I'd say that statistics are meaningless with this level of censorship.

maybe he would of changed his mind and created a new BIP, but that's too late now, poor gavin cast away, forever?

I think that BIP 101 is a very reasonable proposition:
http://imgur.com/b5eOEaf

It makes Blocksize limit growth predictable and if in distant future it errs to the upside it's always easier to soft fork to smaller value, than hard fork to increase, which would be must with BIP 100 and it's 32 MB final limit.

let's pretend the dev team had put all the block limit BIPs up for voting at the very beginning, and right away they saw BIP101 with <1% hashing power without any funny censorship happening... would gavin have continued to push BIP101 as hard as he did?

your individual opinion on BIP101 VS other BIP's is good to know, but knowing EVERYONE's opinion put together is more valuable info.

miners favor a BIP that give's them more power sure thats fine, thats why we need BTC votes to weigh in and paint a more accurate picture for the dev's to consider.

bottom line is its hard to argue devs wouldn't benefit from having this kind of information on hand.

also,  i'm starting to think everyone should be allowed to "vote" for more than one BIP, they aren't voting so much as expressing their willingness to embrace a change, so if a miner is willing to accept BIP100 OR BIP101 he should be able to express that. maybe the voting could be 2 parts, first part miners express whether or not they think each BIP is acceptable or not. second part they Vote for their favorite one. this would give us alot of valuable info. miners can easily put all this info in the CoinBase of the blocks they mine, "BIP100-OK BIP101-OK BIP123-NOTOK, BIP100-FAV", BTC voters can write out the same kind of msg and sign it. then we can chart all this data and get information out of it.

[uxgpf]

Yes, I'm sure it would make decisions easier if developers could clearly see the needs of the user base. I just don't know if we are well enough informed to vote or if we are able to vote for future users who are not here to represent themselves. As Gavin (or maybe it was a guy interviewing him?) rightly said, bitcoin is also for them.

Developers are individuals and everyone - even if they all want best for bitcoin - has somewhat different goals. I think that project like bitcoin could benefit from a clear direction. Linux kernel development has worked very well with a system, where improvements are discussed for some time, but Linus makes a final decision and then things can move forward. I haven't followed close enough if bitcoin development went as smoothly when Satoshi and later Gavin were maintainers, but I recall it used a similar model where the maintainer had a final word.

Someone on Reddit posted this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto

Little too familiar, eh? I hope Core's developer consensus model doesn't follow the same path as the Sejm did.

In the end it's probably miners and the big businesses who will push for change and there's not much rest of us can do.

[Dire]

I think the problem with 1) is that we need a consensus building process to arrive at consensus as to which consensus building process we are going to choose. It's a chicken or the egg kind of problem. And I think with 2) we need a genius to come up with a solution that allows that all people have a fair say somehow.

As I brought up the last time you started a thread asking this very same question not a month ago, the Counterparty protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain has a token voting system that can be used and is transparent on the blockchain.

Create a named Counterparty asset, distribute asset for a nominal Satoshi (proof of Bitcoin ownership/usage) then distribute voting tokens.

It's not rocket science.

[BitProdigy]

As I brought up the last time you started a thread asking this very same question not a month ago, the Counterparty protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain has a token voting system that can be used and is transparent on the blockchain.

Create a named Counterparty asset, distribute asset for a nominal Satoshi (proof of Bitcoin ownership/usage) then distribute voting tokens.

It's not rocket science.

Ok yes this is exactly the kind of thing needed. How does this solve the double voting problem? Can I have more voting tokens than you get?

[asperous]

Good thoughts in here.

Nxt voting -- Because votes count if holders have "minimum required balance of NXT", people with money will just make a bunch of accounts and spread out their money into buckets with the minimum. This just boils down to voting based on whomever has the most money.

Counterparty voting -- Even if distribution is perfect, people will just sell their coins or votes (since they aren't tied to them and the votes aren't secret) also from BIP-100 "what if they’re not online? lacks bias for active users? biased towards early adopters? miner self-dealing?". Again, this boils down to just voting based on whomever has the most money.

[habraken]

Nxt voting -- Because votes count if holders have "minimum required balance of NXT", people with money will just make a bunch of accounts and spread out their money into buckets with the minimum. This just boils down to voting based on whomever has the most money.

That's just one of several voting options, have a look at https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Voting_System

Vote By Account - This voting model assigns a weight of 1 to each vote cast.
Vote By Account Balance - This voting model assigns a weight equal to each voting account's balance of NXT
Vote By Asset Balance - This voting model assigns a weight equal to each voting account's balance of a specified asset
Vote By Currency Balance - This voting model assigns a weight equal to each voting account's balance of a specified (Monetary System) currency

So for instance you could distribute a specifically created asset (or MS currency) over a limited group of people (accounts), and only accounts that own that asset can vote. Like the 'voting tokens' that were mentioned in the Counterparty example, if I understand correctly.

You can try it in Jay's webwallet at http://www.jnxt.org/nxt/ use (empty) account NXT-XPXD-3353-4DS9-64GXF and explore the interface

If you vote by using a Monetary System currrency, not an asset, you can make it 'controllable': https://wiki.nxtcrypto.org/wiki/Monetary_System#Currency_Types
"Currencies may optionally only be traded with the issuing account (e.g. backed tokens such as gift vouchers)." http://nxt.org/about/monetary-system/

So that would eliminate people selling their votes.

[Nagle]

Only miners get to vote, because only miners approve transactions. The top 3 miners have a majority. What they say, goes. Deal with it.

[TransaDox]

Only miners get to vote, because only miners approve transactions. The top 3 miners have a majority. What they say, goes. Deal with it.

That one sentence sums up why we do need to deal with the miners now rather than later. They won't like it though.

[habraken]

The top 3 miners have a majority. What they say, goes. Deal with it.

And Nakamoto shed a tear...