Wondering out loud: Which should Chinese miners support - Core, Classic or another?

[Eric Mu]

I ask because this is the question that we have been asking ourselves a lot recently.
We are a Chinese BTC company that has invested a lot in mining and also runs an off-chain wallet service. So we have a vested interest in Bitcoin not failing. Like many Chinese miners, we believe that a simple and conservative solution to the block size question would be the best, but it seems that neither Core or Classic is willing to offer. I would very much like to hear your views.

[1713565889]

1713565889

[Cconvert2G36]

My impression is that disputes of this nature are to be decided using the protocol mechanism outlined in satoshi's whitepaper.



Miners need to gauge the economy's sentiment as a whole, after all, their product is a commodity that needs to be bought and used by the economic majority of the Bitcoin economy. This incentive feedback mechanism largely guarantees that the interests of the miners and the users, investors, and businesses align, even without the non-miners directly voting. They vote with their usage and their investment.

For reasons of cohesiveness and unity, I had hoped that some kind of small hard fork consensus would emerge after the scaling conference in HK... despite wide agreement by the miners, that desire appears to have been ignored by the social and political power structure of the Core repo.

Instead, Core has taken an email from Gregory Maxwell, and declared that this is the consensus roadmap for Bitcoin.

I have quoted a post from gmaxwell today, because I feel it is illustrative of the mentality behind the "other side":

I'm sorry you disagree with the primary process by which the Bitcoin system evolves which has been used since the very beginning.

Perhaps you should take this to the altcoin subforum. No one is going to buy into the suicide pact Hearn and you seem to wish for-- and even if they did, they can't enforce it: soft forks can't be prevented.

Emphasis mine.

One of the most salient points I took away from the Bitfury roundtable recording, a point I had already realized but not fully internalized, is that soft forks can be quite insidious. They are an avenue by which a small number of developers and mining pool operators could actually break old nodes in terms of what they were originally programmed to do, without the old nodes having a say... or indeed, (without outside research) even knowing such a change had happened. In a sense, a hardfork is the only moral way to break an old node, as there is no ambiguity that they need to upgrade.

I had high hopes that the two sides, those for a miner set max_block_size and those for a conservative protocol level limit... would come together in the form of a very modest hardfork to 2MB, allowing time to fully test segwit and allow all services to prepare for it, maybe even doing it without the opcode hack as a hardfork next year... but that appears not to be possible from Core today. In fact, they have pushed forward options like RBF to allow users to "deal" with permanent backlogs and escalating bidding wars for fees while we wait. All while block reward sits at 25 BTC per.

As nearly all levels of diplomatic options have been attempted, I believe it is time for Bitcoin to work as it was designed... to route around the attempt to harness and control it. We have one form of valid voting in this system, and it is measured in hashrate, thankfully those with the hashrate want a decentralized, useful, and valuable system just like the rest of us. Adding some capacity safely and cleanly can and should be done before the volume of pre/post halving speculation hits... and it is possible.

It doesn't particularly matter what people or what repo you support. The important part is that the code does what miners, and by extension... the economy as a whole, want it to do.

[Luke-Jr]

I ask because this is the question that we have been asking ourselves a lot recently.
We are a Chinese BTC company that has invested a lot in mining and also runs an off-chain wallet service. So we have a vested interest in Bitcoin not failing. Like many Chinese miners, we believe that a simple and conservative solution to the block size question would be the best, but it seems that neither Core or Classic is willing to offer. I would very much like to hear your views.

Segregated witness is the simplest conservative solution possible, and not very complicated at all once you understand it.

While a hardfork block size increase would be "simpler" in terms of lines-of-code, it is hugely more complicated socially because Bitcoin was specifically designed to make such changes impossible without agreement from every single user (not merely miners).

Cconvert2G36, shame on you for quoting Satoshi and Greg out of context. Miners do not represent the economy, but must follow the economy's lead, especially when it comes to hardforks.

[jl2012]

I ask because this is the question that we have been asking ourselves a lot recently.
We are a Chinese BTC company that has invested a lot in mining and also runs an off-chain wallet service. So we have a vested interest in Bitcoin not failing. Like many Chinese miners, we believe that a simple and conservative solution to the block size question would be the best, but it seems that neither Core or Classic is willing to offer. I would very much like to hear your views.

In this Chinese article, I explained how a contentious hardfork could harm the price and wallet services.

https://bikeji.com/t/3168

Basically, with all the uncertainty, people will tend to withdraw bitcoin from services and store locally. Therefore, they will have both the old and new bitcoin after the contentious hardfork (as they don't know which one will be valuable). Services without enough liquidity will bankrupt. Services with enough liquidity will also lose a lot of customers in this process.

I think none of us would like to see bitcoin to fail. However, comparing with doing nothing with having a contentious hardfork, the risk of latter is much much higher.

--------------
For the question of supporting which implementation, please look at the number of commits contributed by different people in the past year, and consider what are the implications if these people are no longer interested in Bitcoin. (To avoid bias, I'm not providing a link to such data. You can find it out on github)

[Cconvert2G36]

-snip-
Cconvert2G36, shame on you for quoting Satoshi and Greg out of context. Miners do not represent the economy, but must follow the economy's lead, especially when it comes to hardforks.

To the contrary, both of those quotes were highly relevant and directly related to the issue at hand.

As are all of these...









I jest, the last two might be merely analogous.

Segregated witness is the simplest conservative solution possible.
-snip-

 

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7404

[gmaxwell]

Hi Eric,

You might want to meditate some on this post: https://bitcointalk.org/dec/p1.html

Bitcoin was created to be a system of money that depended on cryptography and mathematical proof instead of strong trust; removing systemic political risk and providing monetary sovereignty to it users. Bitcoin is simple in implementation, but complex in implications-- it carefully balances economic incentives and clever algorithms. As typical for cryptosystems, the details matter greatly: Many people have failed to understand the careful balances in the system, and many an altcoin that twiddled with the parameters in seemingly innocuous ways found their system unworkable or insecure in practice.

Capacity is an important criteria for the Bitcoin system; but is one that is sometimes in competition with security, censorship resistance, and the other properties which are critical to Bitcoin having value compared to traditional financial instruments.  I believe that with care we can navigate these compromises and with intelligent technology we can reduce the conflict-- just as Bitcoin does. We must be humble about the emergent properties of a system which no person understands completely, and be careful to do no harm. There are many ways to achieve capacity, and the fine details of them matter greatly from an engineering perspective; but if implemented well-- are irrelevant to the end user.

Some people, like Mike Hearn and Gavin have pitched a future where Bitcoin runs exclusively out of large datacenters and its users are left depending on the trustworthiness of a small number of organizations scattered around the world. They've suggested a world where security is provided by unspecified mechanism or donations instead of fair market forces, or where proof of work only acted as a bootstrap.  I don't share that view, nor does Bitcoin Core in general: We don't believe the world sees or will see value in recreating a centralized payment processing network like Paypal, except with less efficient technology... I don't think Bitcoin's value as a trust-reduced personally autonomous global currency are just a sales pitch, I believe we can deliver on them now and into the future... and that if we give up on these values, even if we enjoy short term benefits like unlimited capacity, that kind of Bitcoin would fade away because it wasn't providing something the world needed that it didn't already have.

The seeds of achieving truly great capacity without compromising the differentiating values of Bitcoin, our removing our arguments for security without collusion in the long term were sewn in the very first versions of the software-- support for payment channels are just one example. Though this work is still maturing.

Bitcoin Core has adopted a capacity roadmap that increases the direct capacity some, while also applying risk mitigation in the forms of allowing new more secure lite client modes, improved relay performance, and other optimizations-- and does so in a way that is compatible and which doesn't require immediate cooperation from all the participants.  "Classic" (in quotes, because I believe the name is deceptive and insults all of our intelligence) proposes similar capacity but without the safe-guards, by a hard rewrite of the system's rules.

I think incredible care must be made when rewriting the rules like that: The rules _are_ Bitcoin. The stability of Bitcoin's rules _is_ the soundness of the currency. If the rules can be easily rewritten against the will of some users by others according to political whim then what can be trusted? Is the supply fixed? Will coins be confiscated and awarded to others? If that gate is crossed then there is almost always some excuses which is "good enough"-- as was lamented in some of Bitcoin's earliest announcements.  And these changes are controversial -- see, for example, the millions of dollars of Bitcoins backing opposition to things like BIP101 and supporting core over classic. I don't believe that Core has the power to make changes prohibited by the rules of the system while they are opposed by an economically significant portion of Bitcoin's users. If it does, by way of inertia or lazyness, have that power I don't believe it has the moral authority: to rewrite the system out from under people risks walking the thin line of theft.  And if the system could really be so easily rewritten against controversy: it may bring into question Bitcoin's ability to uphold any of its properties. This is a dangerous road that should be avoided whenever possible.

I certainly hope it doesn't come to that, and I believe it won't: With the planned improvements we can gain capacity without the controversy; and preserve harmony as the essay I initially linked to discusses. We should be able to satisfy all users and uses of the Bitcoin currency; and we must if we are to achieve the full potential of the system.

As far as classic itself goes. I must admit having a difficult time taking the question seriously.  The active technical minds in this space, dozens of people, almost unanimously agree with Core's approach.  Similar to XT, perhaps arguably worse off--, classic is not currently supported by a vibrant team of experienced and able parties. In spite of much posturing and language, they've failed to even deliver on the most basic software development work, and once they do I am doubtful that they'll be able to continue maintaining it. If this development is happening now, it doesn't appear to be in the open and subject to extensive peer review. This is no coincidence: most people who understand the technology deeply overwhelmingly agree with Core's approach. Perhaps it will get its act together in a way that XT didn't, but that hasn't happened yet. It's a little alarming to me to hear some reputable parties backing something with so little delivered substance, and I'm somewhat concerned that it's setting up the industry for further embarrassment (beyond the small amounts classic related embarrassment suffered so far), perhaps even worse than caused by XT and Mike Hearn.

I feel I shouldn't need to go into this-- But I know it's being said I feel I should confront it head on: Some of the advocates of Classic claim that Bitcoin Core is somehow controlled by my company, and that we somehow hope to profit from stifling Bitcoin. I believe they do this because it's a cheap attack, easily believed because most do not have the time or energy to follow the details of the activity in core-- similarly they draw an equivalence between the technical people who've signed on and those involved in the core project. To an insider these comparisons are laughable, but I am aware these claims have cause concern. Everyone at Blockstream has a significant financial interest in preserving Bitcoin's value (time locked bitcoins are part of our compensation, and most of us owned personally significant amounts of Bitcoins prior to blockstream). The fact is that my company was created by some of the most active developers of the Bitcoin system as a way to provide sustainable funding for that development-- something few to no companies in the industry were doing so; but even so it's just a rough half dozen voices out of dozens-- and you can happily talk to non-blockstream Bitcoin developers like Cory Fields, Wladimir, Alex Morcos, or Eric Lombrozo-- or outside-of-bitcoin technology experts like Bram Cohen (inventor of Bittorrent) or Nick Szabo-- and get much of the same message you're getting from me. The understanding that there is a fundamental capacity/security trade-off is not a new one though we're constantly learning new implications of all aspects of the system, scaling included. I think that the work we've done inside and outside Bitcoin speaks for itself, but if that's not enough-- talk to the other contributors and compare notes.  I don't know of a better way to answer the conspiracy theories than that.

I hope this has provided some useful food for thought-- but really, what I think is missing is your thoughts. What requirements do you feel aren't being met by Core that would leave you asking such a question? (I could guess, but communication is much better than guessing.)

[Cconvert2G36]

I feel I shouldn't need to go into this-- But I know it's being said I feel I should confront it head on: Some of the advocates of Classic claim that Bitcoin Core is somehow controlled by my company, and that we somehow hope to profit from stifling Bitcoin.
-snip-

As I've already revealed my bias, perhaps I'll ask the question others won't.

How does Blockstream plan on ensuring an ROI for its investors? I understand there is some time-locked bitcoin involved... but this is a business, right?

[watashi-kokoto]

This is just my personal opinion:

According to my understanding, the issue originates with the publication of the "Who Controls Bitcoin?" article by "Daniel Krawisz".

To me, this is the oldest mention of "Bitcoin Classic"

I believe that some US-based high profile individuals have read the article and are pretty much trying to "take over Bitcoin".

I observed of so called "forum Shills" on U.S bitcoin forums, a posters who's only purpose is to parrot and trying to convince as many people as possible. I don't know when the so called shills appeared, but they are here definitely for many weeks now.

Dear Chinese miners I feel that the best approach would be to ignore the "USA consensus", because many extremely stupid USA users are entering the Bitcoin now. These people believe that Bitcoin is like VISA. I wish that you followed only the Chinese consensus of China users who seem smarter and understand Bitcoin better.

When you change block size, this means that Satoshi Nakamoto Rules can be changed. Soon stupid users will want to make very dangerous changes that could harm Bitcoin.

[gmaxwell]

How does Blockstream plan on ensuring an ROI for its investors? I understand there is some time-locked bitcoin involved... but this is a business, right?

Sure, discussed at some length in posts here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhn1hl

If you look out there, there are major technical problems in using Bitcoin and applying Bitcoin-like technology to broader industry-- for an example that couldn't be included in the above write-up, though it's surprising to many the #1 cited complain is the lack of commercial privacy in Bitcoin: No one wants their competitors tracking their books, or their customers criticizing their margins. So, Adam Back and I went out and created confidential transactions; which specifically solved that (currently for private sidechains, but hopefully someday its successors will be available in Bitcoin proper).  Who else is going to do that kind of original powerful work?  If you don't see the business case for solving the hardest problems in this space, and or enabling the reach of Bitcoin more broadly, then you may be underestimating how powerful and world changing cryptocurrency can be. Fortunately, our investors aren't. And _ensuring_? There are no guarantees in investment.

But even ignoring all that... lets just assume for a moment that Blockstream is really malevolent, and that the protections we built into it (described on that Reddit thread) all failed. What then? We're just a part of Bitcoin Core; and the message I'm giving you is also held by the vast majority of the non-blockstream contributors. I applaud paranoia, but it wouldn't make sense to dismiss the work of the hardest working independent people in the space because of an unsubstantiated maybe about a generous contributor they have collaborated with. If you're going to go down that route, you'll find yourself jumping at every shadow. After all, blockstream could have been kept completely secret-- why would you assume someone really out to serve a private interest wouldn't do so.  It is, sadly, not unheard of for people working on Bitcoin to fail to disclose their affiliations. Ironic that some would attack those who disclose them without asking any questions of the rest.

[YarkoL]

I think incredible care must be made when rewriting the rules like that: The rules _are_ Bitcoin. The stability of Bitcoin's rules _is_ the soundness of the currency. If the rules can be easily rewritten against the will of some users by others according to political whim then what can be trusted? Is the supply fixed? Will coins be confiscated and awarded to others? If that gate is crossed then there is almost always some excuses which is "good enough"-- as was lamented in some of Bitcoin's earliest announcements.  And these changes are controversial -- see, for example, the millions of dollars of Bitcoins backing opposition to things like BIP101 and supporting core over classic. I don't believe that Core has the power to make changes prohibited by the rules of the system while proposed by an economically significant portion of Bitcoin's users. If it does, by way of inertia or lazyness, have that power I don't believe it has the moral authority: to rewrite the system out from under people risks riding the thin line of theft.  And if the system could really be so easily rewritten against controversy: it may bring into question it's ability to uphold any of its properties. This is a dangerous rode that should be avoided whenever possible.

But the only rule that has been challenged is the max block size, and I don't
think there is a strong basis for the claim that it is set in stone as integral part
of the core design.

If changing that relatively late addition places our feet to a slippery slope
where anything can be altered on a whim, that is equivalent to saying that
the user community is just plain stupid, and perhaps deserves to be parted from
its money. I find it hard to believe that a proposal to change something that had
been the part of parcel of Bitcoin right form the genesis (like supply curve or
PoW algo) would be successful in the long run, and I think the "economic majority"
knows that too.

[Cconvert2G36]

How does Blockstream plan on ensuring an ROI for its investors? I understand there is some time-locked bitcoin involved... but this is a business, right?

Sure, discussed at some length in posts here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhn1hl

If you look out there, there are major technical problems in using Bitcoin and applying Bitcoin-like technology to broader industry-- for an example that couldn't be included in the above write-up, though it's surprising to many the #1 cited complain is the lack of commercial privacy in Bitcoin: No one wants their competitors tracking their books, or their customers criticizing their margins. So, Adam Back and I went out and created confidential transactions; which specifically solved that (currently for private sidechains, but hopefully someday its successors will be available in Bitcoin proper).  Who else is going to do that kind of original powerful work?  If you don't see the business case for solving the hardest problems in this space, and or enabling the reach of Bitcoin more broadly, then you may be underestimating how powerful and world changing cryptocurrency can be. Fortunately, our investors aren't. And _ensuring_? There are no guarantees in investment.

But even ignoring all that... lets just assume for a moment that Blockstream is really malevolent, and that the protections we built into it (described on that Reddit thread) all failed. What then? We're just a part of Bitcoin Core; and the message I'm giving you is also held by the vast majority of the non-blockstream contributors. I applaud paranoia, but it wouldn't make sense to dismiss the work of the hardest working independent people in the space because of an unsubstantiated maybe about a generous contributor they have collaborated with. If you're going to go down that route, you'll find yourself jumping at every shadow. After all, blockstream could have been kept completely secret-- why would you assume someone really out to serve a private interest wouldn't do so.  It is, sadly, not unheard of for people working on Bitcoin to fail to disclose their affiliations. Ironic that some would attack those who disclose them without asking any questions of the rest.

In terms of revenue, you've mentioned private side chains, I assume either by subscription or fee? Some would infer that a somewhat expensive and crowded main chain environment might incubate such services, for transactions generally, not just those seeking confidentiality. Why are they wrong?

Gregory, I'm not trying to diminish the work you've done, which is much more than I will ever do. Some people just have some questions, and I sincerely appreciate your responses.

[gmaxwell]

that is equivalent to saying that the user community is just plain stupid

I think that's a naive perspective. Consider, Peter_R was making news some time back circulating an academic style paper arguing that a fee market exists absent any blocksize limit. But his analysis depends deeply on there being continued inflation, and does not work without it.  If we drive the system into a state where the choice is to take a _bit_ of inflation or else suffer a debilitating loss of security the answer will be obvious, and it doesn't require anyone being stupid. Avoiding that kind of trap requires constant vigilance and foresight to avoid creating that trap in the first place.

This is doubly true given that many of the arguments are fully general: People argue that somehow without mechenisms in the system miners will collectively self-regulate and behave in a way that achieves a globally good outcome, absent security assumption breaking collusion or coercive force, even when it's in their individual best interest to defect; because they want Bitcoin to be valuable. This could just as well be applied to them controlling inflation; and people keep making it even though that kind of strongly trusting long term benevolence against short term interests already been disproved by finney attacks, withholding and dos attacks on pools by each other, voluntarily centralization in response to orphaning, and many other effects which the system survives precisely because it doesn't trust miners and is instead built out of rules that limit the amount of harm that mistakes or greed can cause, without requiring an external collusion which could easily be abused (including via violent threat) to censor transactions or perform other harmful acts.

I don't think users are stupid. I think governance is incredibly hard and that the development history of fiat currencies shows that mankind is ill-equip to create a strong and sound system via human governance-- not through lack of trying, but because mankind is fundamentally not cut out for it: there is always some excuse that makes people feel justified in compromising the property rights of some for the benefit of (potentially many) others. Bitcoin was specifically created and promoted to replace that kind of subjectivity with machines, but it can't do it if we go around undermining it.  ... Does that mean I think Bitcoin can never be hardforked? Absolutely not! Some kinds of hardforks would be completely uncontroversial; it's the ones that have earnest opposition from real owners of Bitcoin that such great care needs to be taken with.

[Also-- witness Bitcoin Classic arguing that it's proper to put the 21m cap up to a popular vote. I think that is reprehensible. A simple majority shouldn't just be able to vote to undermine the property rights of a minority, even if there a strongly fair global voting mechanism were possible.

]

Even if you don't buy my argument that the risk is real; the argument that Bitcoin could easily have its rules changed is FUD that our competition would ruthlessly exploit. After all, this is an earnest concern held by many of the longest term and most experienced among us... it would be an easy sell to someone looking for "the catch".

[gmaxwell]

In terms of revenue, you've mentioned private side chains, I assume either by subscription or fee? Some would infer that a somewhat expensive and crowded main chain environment might incubate such services, for transactions generally, not just those seeking confidentiality. Why are they wrong?

Gregory, I'm not trying to diminish the work you've done, which is much more than I will ever do. Some people just have some questions, and I sincerely appreciate your responses.

And by support and development contract.  Private sidechains can offer functionality that a global decentralized system cannot directly for fundamental reasons-- e.g. instantaneous transactions, not just thing they don't offer yet (like CT or smarter smart contracts); they're just a different trade-off.  

Regardless of what you think of crowding-- an increase in the blocksize does not guarantee its avoidance, as miners are free to impose further restrictions; and a single person with a while loop could produce unbounded amounts of 'load'. Even if I don't expect them to do so, or at least not often, they can and that's always a risk at any (plausible) size.

The kinds of block size increase that even people aggressively in factor of block size increases believe might be viable in the Bitcoin network are fairly modest, e.g. classic and "2 MB", which, as mentioned is pretty close to the proposed segwit capacity.  By contrast, a private system used between businesses, could run arbitrarily large assuming all its participants were willing and able to invest in the cluster computers and expensive bandwidth required at _every_ node. Oh the benefits of not being a permission-less decentralized system.  The space of possible systems which don't require the other benefits of a private system, don't require the benefits of a decentralized public system, and would not work in bitcoin now but would with the kind of realistically small blocksize increase, and would choose to do so.. is pretty narrow-- and isn't something that we've ever considered in business discussions.  More philosophically, the bitcoin blockchain is a precious global shared public resource with huge externalized costs that fall to all future users; it's good stewardship to not cram things that don't need to be in it, into it regardless of what the limits are.

For added color: I've never heard a prospective customer say something like "X TPS won't work but 8*x TPS will work"; they do say things like "X TPS works now, but we might need 100000*X TPS on short notice, can we have that with absolute confidence if we're willing to pour money at it?"  And that latter question can never be true when your only mechanism is dumping all your data into a in a worldwide _shared_ decentralized flooding system run by third parties whos costs you don't pay. So if then also we also avoid huge businesses setting themselves up for failure with the expectation of the 100000 fold increase peak loads that the system couldn't possibly take without a decentralization killing blocksize-bailout, I think that is good too.

But also, hold up a minute. I think we're both playing along with Mike Hearn's claim that it's all _me_ saying, or the techies (or blockstream) alone, saying that HF's are dangerous in principle  and/or that block-size matters. It's not (go check out those bitcoinocracy links-- or Jon Matonis, for an example)... and it's also not our choice (except as people who own Bitcoin, and in our individual capacity to decide what efforts we'll volunteer time on). I get targeted because I've stepped up and drawn fire so that other people can get some work done.

I'm sorry for taking things so off-topic here. This is a tangent, and I wouldn't have gone down it. But people from Bitcoin Core who were on a phone call with some Chinese miners last week told me that some of these claims about Blockstream came up multiple times.  Even if it took a "happily biased" poster here to call them out, I think some people were thinking about them and I think it's better to have addressed them head on. I hope we can talk some about actual business needs in later posts.

[YarkoL]

that is equivalent to saying that the user community is just plain stupid

I think that's a naive perspective. Consider, Peter_R was making news some time back circulating an academic style paper arguing that a fee market exists absent any blocksize limit. But his analysis depends deeply on there being continued inflation, and does not work without it.  If we drive the system into a state where the choice is to take a _bit_ of inflation or else suffer a debilitating loss of security the answer will be obvious, and it doesn't require anyone being stupid. Avoiding that kind of trap requires constant vigilance and foresight to avoid creating that trap in the first place.

Peter_R did however make explicit that premise (of disregarding the actual inflation curve)
in his paper and said that it is a problem to be solved.. but you have a point, extending the subsidies
might be tempting in certain scenarios that we wouldn't want to be locked in.

The "rules" as incorporated to the client software by developers are not the whole picture though, as I see
it there is a balance (or conflict) of power between those who implement the rules (devs), those who play by the
rules (miners) and those that decide whether the rules are worth of anything (investors). They are interdependent,
each having its unique share of powers and ideally we would have to rely on each one checking
each other. So if one group goes nuts, the other two could rectify that situation as it is in their best interest.
I guess that's what I meant by saying that the community isn't stupid...

[gmaxwell]

there is a balance (or conflict) of power

Yes, but it does not play out equally in all respects: When it comes to mempool policy, miners have almost absolute power; no one else has almost any influence except via highly inefficient mechanisms like selling our coins and adopting a new cryptocurrency or hardforking the POW to fire the set of miners. The remedies are so costly that non-miners are basically deprived a voice, at least in any strong sense, on things related to mempool policy.  Even a single moderate size miner has huge influence on mempool policy behavior, the action of a majority of miners isn't required.

When it comes to hardforking system rules, this balance is reversed. For those, a miner's opinion has almost no weight. A miner can only impose opinion there by stopping mining (if a miner produces a rule violating block, it's ignored as if it never happened). For that the users matter; and hopefully the users are prudent enough to understand that if they collectively act to harm a minority of users, they undermine the value argument for the system (... after all, why not you next?). (And perhaps developers matter a little there, since you need at least some people who are willing and able to develop to write the rules and maintain the system).

And this is all part of the intentional balance of power in the system. In an ideal world, Bitcoin would have no miners-- no even slight point of trust at all, just a purely flat p2p system. This isn't possible in the real world, so Bitcoin uses miners to determine the ordering of transactions but carefully confines them to control only the ordering; which is already very powerful-- it's what creates that near absolute control over mempool policy. That this point of trust is tightly confined.

Of course, many people wear multiple hats:  I am own Bitcoins, I develop the Bitcoin protocol and applications, I mine Bitcoin, I help run a Bitcoin related business, I advocate Bitcoin to others, and I also use Bitcoin casually.-- and some authority someone lacks under one hat they may have under another.

[watashi-kokoto]

Just ideas:

You can say you support Core team because it's the best qualified team.

When coup team is created, stop support teams but individual developers.

When most developers are bribed, you can put your own Chinese developers, or expose the bribes.

[YarkoL]

there is a balance (or conflict) of power

Yes, but it does not play out equally in all respects: When it comes to mempool policy, miners have almost absolute power; no one else has almost any influence except via highly inefficient mechanisms like selling our coins and adopting a new cryptocurrency or hardforking the POW to fire the set of miners. The remedies are so costly that non-miners are basically deprived a voice, at least in any strong sense, on things related to mempool policy.  Even a single moderate size miner has huge influence on mempool policy behavior, the action of a majority of miners isn't required.

That is why miners should be depending on full nodes for their relaying
needs, so it will be the nodes whose mempools matter. Which leads to a question,
why isn't Corallo's fast relay protocol in Bitcoin Core?

[watashi-kokoto]

If team corruption is a problem, all developers can become anonymous under the names Satoshi Nakamoto, Satoshi Nakamoto, ....

This way developers give up their influence and stop being a trusted leaders, in favor of the actual ideas they're developing.

EDIT: just one name: Satoshi Nakamoto

[gmaxwell]

That is why miners should be depending on full nodes for their relaying
needs, so it will be the nodes whose mempools matter.

That isn't how the system works, and it's not possible to make it work that way.

You can implement whatever rules you want; but miners don't care, they'll receive transactions around you. Even if every other node implemented some mempool policy; miners can just set up their own and people would send transactions directly to it.

Which leads to a question, why isn't Corallo's fast relay protocol in Bitcoin Core?

Because it has been under constant, rapid development. It's also only of limited interest to non-miners. I recommend adding it to contrib a while back, but the pace of development precluded it. Perhaps now that it's pretty mature he'll change his mind.

[newb4now]

How does Blockstream plan on ensuring an ROI for its investors? I understand there is some time-locked bitcoin involved... but this is a business, right?

Sure, discussed at some length in posts here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhn1hl

If you look out there, there are major technical problems in using Bitcoin and applying Bitcoin-like technology to broader industry-- for an example that couldn't be included in the above write-up, though it's surprising to many the #1 cited complain is the lack of commercial privacy in Bitcoin: No one wants their competitors tracking their books, or their customers criticizing their margins. So, Adam Back and I went out and created confidential transactions; which specifically solved that (currently for private sidechains, but hopefully someday its successors will be available in Bitcoin proper).  Who else is going to do that kind of original powerful work?  If you don't see the business case for solving the hardest problems in this space, and or enabling the reach of Bitcoin more broadly, then you may be underestimating how powerful and world changing cryptocurrency can be. Fortunately, our investors aren't. And _ensuring_? There are no guarantees in investment.

But even ignoring all that... lets just assume for a moment that Blockstream is really malevolent, and that the protections we built into it (described on that Reddit thread) all failed. What then? We're just a part of Bitcoin Core; and the message I'm giving you is also held by the vast majority of the non-blockstream contributors. I applaud paranoia, but it wouldn't make sense to dismiss the work of the hardest working independent people in the space because of an unsubstantiated maybe about a generous contributor they have collaborated with. If you're going to go down that route, you'll find yourself jumping at every shadow. After all, blockstream could have been kept completely secret-- why would you assume someone really out to serve a private interest wouldn't do so.  It is, sadly, not unheard of for people working on Bitcoin to fail to disclose their affiliations. Ironic that some would attack those who disclose them without asking any questions of the rest.

In terms of revenue, you've mentioned private side chains, I assume either by subscription or fee? Some would infer that a somewhat expensive and crowded main chain environment might incubate such services, for transactions generally, not just those seeking confidentiality. Why are they wrong?

Gregory, I'm not trying to diminish the work you've done, which is much more than I will ever do. Some people just have some questions, and I sincerely appreciate your responses.

To me the important Confidential Transactions work of Greg Maxwell is a separate issue than scaling. If you are somehow suggesting that Blockstream wants to drive demand for such innovation by encouraging an "expensive and crowded main chain environment" I think you are misguided.

Confidential Transactions will find important uses whether or not they are ever implemented in side chains. CT testing is happening already: https://github.com/ShenNoether/RingCT

Bitcoin Core will be ready to increase block size when necessary. Segregated Witness is "a solution that could provide a fourfold increase in capacity to the network in a "short time frame" http://www.coindesk.com/segregated-witness-bitcoin-block-size-debate/

To me Bitcoin Classic and BitcoinXT are noting but scare tactics meant to sneak in other controversial changes not solely related to legitimate block size concerns.