This is the privatization of Bitcoin - it already happened

[knight22]

Again: this is an attempt at pushing transactions actually occuring off-chain (centralized) into a decentralized blockchain for the benefit of every Bitcoin users that trades on exchange.

Is it really decentralised if Blockstream are the only people running the chain? Or am I misunderstanding that detail?

It seems you are right: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ok8ga/blockstream_announces_liquid_bitcoins_first/cvy5mt1

[Quantus]

Ok guys you need to slow the roll.

The way I see it people already have a choice to trust Bitcoin the network or trust 3rd parties to keep their bitcoins safe and the vast majority of Bitcoin users have chosen to use 3rd parties. The one thing I have learned from my many failed attempts to introduce bitcoin to people is that they don't want to take on the responsibility (and risk) of protecting their own coins. People are inherently more trusting in other peoples abilities then their own. This is human nature. This however dose not blur the line between Bitcoin and 3rd party participants, the line between Bitcoin and these 3rd party players is as clear as ever. These side chains will need to be secured and managed by the 3rd parties that operate them.

This is not Bitcoin changing or being taken over.  This is a experiment to draw users away from the main chain into separate Eco-systems very similar to bitcoin but not bitcoin.


(I am a 1MBTC block size supporter, I support all users using full node clients over VPNs like the TOR network)

[hunnaryb]

I'm not really sure what Liquid does, it sounds all a bit complicated to me..

[brg444]

Ok guys you need to slow the roll.

The way I see it people already have a choice to trust Bitcoin the network or trust 3rd parties to keep their bitcoins safe and the vast majority of Bitcoin users have chosen to use 3rd parties. The one thing I have learned from my many failed attempts to introduce bitcoin the people is that they don't want to take on the responsibility (and risk) of protecting there own coins. People are inherently more trusting in other peoples abilities then their own. This is human nature. This however dose not blur the line between Bitcoin and 3rd party participants, the line between Bitcoin and these 3rd party players is as clear as ever. These side chains will need to be secured and managed by the 3rd parties that operate them.

This is not Bitcoin changing or being taken over.  This is a experiment to draw users away from the main chain into a separate Eco-systems very similar to bitcoin but not bitcoin.


(I am a 1MBTC block size supporter, I support all users using full node clients over VPNs like the TOR network)

I agree with most of what you said but I don't see this as an attempt to draw people toward more centralized services.

It's actually a step forward toward diminishing the need to trust third-party services which, whether we like are or not, are an integral part of Bitcoin's ecosystem.

[Carlton Banks]

Again: this is an attempt at pushing transactions actually occuring off-chain (centralized) into a decentralized blockchain for the benefit of every Bitcoin users that trades on exchange.

Is it really decentralised if Blockstream are the only people running the chain? Or am I misunderstanding that detail?

Blockstream people are not the ones running the chain, the exchanges are.

Of course it is not as decentralized as Bitcoin is but there are several issues with merged mining that need to be reconciled before deployment.

The logic is that exchange users already trust them with their funds, Liquid attempts to diminish this trust by distributing the trust across the different fiduciary nodes in the sidechain.

I see. This would be much better if merge mined; providing a diverse range of participants with a (newfound) diverse range of incentives to mine could strengthen the ecosystem, and disincentivise any possible collusion on the private chain (although not sure how feasible that is right now). Sounds balanced enough to make it worth any trade offs for now.

So, couldn't a decentralised exchange become a collective participant on behalf of it's users? I don't think a fully decentralised exchange is online yet, but I hope the protocol behind Liquid could allow something like that. That kind of capability would be another important part of proving that Liquid isn't implicitly an invite-only chain (either you're a licensed exchange or you're not, so that would be essentially a proxy privilege system)

[brg444]

Again: this is an attempt at pushing transactions actually occuring off-chain (centralized) into a decentralized blockchain for the benefit of every Bitcoin users that trades on exchange.

Is it really decentralised if Blockstream are the only people running the chain? Or am I misunderstanding that detail?

Blockstream people are not the ones running the chain, the exchanges are.

Of course it is not as decentralized as Bitcoin is but there are several issues with merged mining that need to be reconciled before deployment.

The logic is that exchange users already trust them with their funds, Liquid attempts to diminish this trust by distributing the trust across the different fiduciary nodes in the sidechain.

I see. This would be much better if merge mined; providing a diverse range of participants with a (newfound) diverse range of incentives to mine could strengthen the ecosystem, and disincentivise any possible collusion on the private chain (although not sure how feasible that is right now). Sounds balanced enough to make it worth any trade offs for now, though.

So, couldn't a decentralised exchange become a collective participant on behalf of it's users? I don't think a fully decentralised exchange is online yet, but I hope the protocol behind Liquid could allow something like that. That kind of capability would be another important part of proving that Liquid isn't implicitly an invite-only chain (either you're a licensed exchange or you're not, so that would be essentially a proxy privilege system)

The issue with merged-mining is you need a super-majority of the hashing power to securely deploy the chain.

If you don't have that it would be trivially suspect to attacks for large non-cooperating miners. It's a hard sell and I suspect unless a sidechain directly benefits a very large majority of Bitcoin users it will be hard to gather such support.

Moreover there certainly is a couple of legal issues with exchanges funds being, in some way, vulnerable to unidentified entities (miners).

[AGD]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

[knight22]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

[brg444]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

I don't believe that is the goal here ie. Liquid transactions are not settled on the blockchain unless the coins need to be moved off-exchange to a user wallet.

[brg444]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

[knight22]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

[brg444]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

Je sais pas si c'est ton retard mental qui s'incruste dans ta grammaire, mais ta phrase fait aucun sens.

[knight22]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

Je sais pas si c'est ton retard mental qui s'incruste dans ta grammaire, mais ta phrase fait aucun sens.

It makes absolute sense if you go reread my original question which you didn't answered at all.

[spartacusrex]

Evening Ladies. Nice night for a fight. (..you 2 do make me laugh though I'll admit..)
..

I guess saying "We can't make the blocks bigger because it will cause centralisation!" and then in the same breath saying "The solution is to use centralised side chains!" just makes some of us feel funny..

[brg444]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

Je sais pas si c'est ton retard mental qui s'incruste dans ta grammaire, mais ta phrase fait aucun sens.

It makes absolute sense if you go reread my original question which you didn't answered at all.

Liquid is not meant to be used as a P2P transaction system, neither are permisionned blockchain.

The point is that using Liquid is entirely voluntary and if you choose to opt-out and use a purely peer-to-peer network (Bitcoin) you can.

[brg444]

"The solution is to use centralised side chains!" just makes some of us feel funny..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

[knight22]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

Je sais pas si c'est ton retard mental qui s'incruste dans ta grammaire, mais ta phrase fait aucun sens.

It makes absolute sense if you go reread my original question which you didn't answered at all.

Liquid is not meant to be used as a P2P transaction system, neither are permisionned blockchain.

The point is that using Liquid is entirely voluntary and if you choose to opt-out and use a purely peer-to-peer network (Bitcoin) you can.

For that you still need the bitcoin blockchain to scale properly.

[pereira4]

It already happened!

http://www.coindesk.com/blockstream-commercial-sidechain-bitcoin-exchanges/

Blockstream really needed to prevent BigBlocks - and successfully did.  Now, there is greater need for their offering: side chains.  Side chains which they control, and they charge fees to use. 

This is just the start.  There will be many, many more features of 'advanced systems' pushed out of the core, pushed away from 'free', and controlled by profiteers. 

Why did everyone listen to Blockstream when they so vigorously fought 8MB?  now everyone gets to pay them fees!!!  With 8MB blocks, no extra fees!

Bitcoin is fucked now.

With 8mb blocks = less and less people can deal with nodes and aren't able to run their own nodes = Bitcoin is fucked.

Sorry to burst your bubble but resources are limited, and a fee market seems like the only way to go about this unless you want to raise the block size until becomes centralized and only private organizations are able to afford nodes just like now only private organizations are doing mining.
We can't afford centralizing mining and nodes, and Lightning Networks seems like the best approach thus far.

[brg444]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

Je sais pas si c'est ton retard mental qui s'incruste dans ta grammaire, mais ta phrase fait aucun sens.

It makes absolute sense if you go reread my original question which you didn't answered at all.

Liquid is not meant to be used as a P2P transaction system, neither are permisionned blockchain.

The point is that using Liquid is entirely voluntary and if you choose to opt-out and use a purely peer-to-peer network (Bitcoin) you can.

For that you still need the bitcoin blockchain to scale properly.

Indeed.

Fortunately smarter minds have realized this is not done by simply raising the block size

[knight22]

Sidechains will only accumulate a lot of internal transactions to a small number of transactions to the core blockchain. I don't see any negative effect with this, but for the users of the sidechain, who cannot track their transactions on the blockchain.
All the rest of the FUD is bs, just like this topic.

One could ask why using bitcoin at all when banks are already working on their own permissioned blockchain.

Because I can use Bitcoin peer-to-peer. At least now with Liquid if I choose to use an exchange to trade or whatever then I expose myself to a more distributed risk model wherein if one exchange fails or gets compromised my funds are not at risk of vanishing.

How Liquid is this more P2P than banks permissioned blockchain again?

Je sais pas si c'est ton retard mental qui s'incruste dans ta grammaire, mais ta phrase fait aucun sens.

It makes absolute sense if you go reread my original question which you didn't answered at all.

Liquid is not meant to be used as a P2P transaction system, neither are permisionned blockchain.

The point is that using Liquid is entirely voluntary and if you choose to opt-out and use a purely peer-to-peer network (Bitcoin) you can.

For that you still need the bitcoin blockchain to scale properly.

Indeed.

Fortunately smarter minds have realized this is not done by simply raising the block size

So how then? AFAIK this is the only viable solution available right now.