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

[hdbuck]

So essentially you are selling fee-based private sidechains with customer support ?

And limiting main Bitcoin chain in order to force customers onto your sidechains ?

Wasn't Blockstream supposed to have no conflict of interest with Bitcoin ?

Man, you BS guys all are so full of shit. This will not go unnoticed.
   

Go back whining on reddit, or vote on consider.it.

Bitcoin's sound money and security attributes comes first.

Gmax explanation is thoughtful, Core devs does not have the power, nor the will, to force contentious hardfork and break bitcoin's consensus rule.

That is all, there is nothing you or anyone can do about it.

Sorry your head got brainwashed by the full of shit socialist mainstreameries.

Bitcoin's Nakamoto Consensus interprets contention as damage and routes around it.   

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[bananas]

@eric@haobtc

Try to get informed and ask questions at reddit's subs /r/btc and /r/bitcoinxt ( this message board and /r/bitcoin are censored ).

[bitedge]

What do you think of Bitcoin unlimited OP?

[sickpig]

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, are you trying to win "the-best-out-of-context-quote-of-the-year" competition ?

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Go back whining on reddit, or vote on consider.it.

Bitcoin's sound money and security attributes comes first.

Gmax explanation is thoughtful, Core devs does not have the power, nor the will, to force contentious hardfork and break bitcoin's consensus rule.

That is all, there is nothing you or anyone can do about it.

Sorry your head got brainwashed by the full of shit socialist mainstreameries.

I will not even waste my time discussing here with you.

People like you will be made obsolete when the hard fork comes. And it will come as soon as the networks starts really congesting.

This platform completely sucks for discussion anyway, this is why I don't even come here anymore. Also, this forum is censored - the same as /r/bitcoin - by the small block supporters of which gmaxwell himself is.
Oh, and by the way, he also condones the censorship.

[Eric Mu]

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.)

Hi Greg,

Thanks for the prompt and thoughtful response.

Here I am going to share with you what I saw and heard rather than my personal thoughts: I went to a Bitcoin event in Beijing last week. Some prominent Chinese Bitcoiners were also there. The sentiment was overwhelming that the ideal solution to the scaling question is implementing 2MB block size through a Core update as soon as possible. Some felt frustrated that core devs had been ignoring their demand, and this sense of frustration contributed to the conspiracy theory, which was explicitly expressed there: The Bitcoin Core team doesn't want to make a precedent because the team is controlled by Blockstream, who bet heavily on the success of Sidechains and Lightning Networks.
Some expressed the view that while SigWit has its potential, it is something never been tried before, therefore should be given more time for thorougher test; worse, some felt that it represents a development that has deviated from Satoshi's vision and eventually, led to increased complexity of the protocol to such degree that it would be forbidding to most startups.
Overall, there seems to be a sense of helplessness. Some reflected on why the Chinese had so little say in the matter and some urge that the Chinese should form their own core development team and create their own fork.
Let me know what you think as always.

BR,

Eric

[Carlton Banks]

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.)

Here I am going to share with you what I saw and heard rather than my personal thoughts: I went to a Bitcoin event in Beijing last week. Some prominent Chinese Bitcoiners were also there. The sentiment was overwhelming that the ideal solution to the scaling question is implementing 2MB block size through a Core update as soon as possible. Some felt frustrated that core devs had been ignoring their demand, and this sense of frustration contributed to the conspiracy theory, which was explicitly expressed there: The Bitcoin Core team doesn't want to make a precedent because the team is controlled by Blockstream, who bet heavily on the success of Sidechains and Lightning Networks.

It's an engineering decision. All that Core or Blockstream have to gain in either short or long term is the improved success of Bitcoin itself. I can understand the view that an increase to 2MB would alleviate pressure on the network, I consider this is a naive view.

The pressure of near-full blocks is actually a necessary stage in the maturity of the network (and it's users). There's a clear misunderstanding from users and industry alike; the expectation is that fees will always be close to zero, and that the carrying capacity of the network can always grow. It's easy to get that misperception before the maximum is hit, but now that it has, and it's consequences are finally evident, a way to handle the perception is needed.

Getting industry insiders, such as yourself, educated about this issue, could help allow that ethos/culture to permeate throughout Bitcoin. Will you help?

Some expressed the view that while SigWit has its potential, it is something never been tried before, therefore should be given more time for thorougher test; worse, some felt that it represents a development that has deviated from Satoshi's vision and eventually, led to increased complexity of the protocol to such degree that it would be forbidding to most startups.

Well, the test-net for SegWit is pretty thorough as it is. It's not logical to object to it on the basis of never having been tried before; every change big and small to Bitcoin has arguably never been tried, including the supposedly simple blocksize increase approach.


With blocksize increases, wallet users and miners bear the costs of the upgrade equally. With node numbers already dwindling, and mining centralising further, the incentive for the new blocksize to saturate quickly is too high under this attempt to scale up. Increased resources to run Core will push more wallet users away from running a full-node. A negative feedback loop.


With Segwit, the resource pressure is largely taken off wallet users, with the miners bearing most of the costs of the increases (and relay nodes doing so as they choose). Wallet holders using Bitcoin Core can enjoy similar levels of resource usage to before, encouraging adoption in that segment. Adoption that will be useful to the miners, who will have up to x4 the space for new transactions from these new users. A positive feedback loop.

And remember, x4 the space is multiplied by whatever the base blocksize is. The 4MB is based on 1MB as a base blocksize, but 2MB base would yield 8MB. So, you could argue that big blocks is additive, whereas SegWit is multiplicative  

Overall, there seems to be a sense of helplessness. Some reflected on why the Chinese had so little say in the matter and some urge that the Chinese should form their own core development team and create their own fork.

As usual, everyone is free to either submit patches to Core for assessment. They're also free to attempt their own fork, if a rival came up with a superior solution to that of the Core team, I would support it.

[iCEBREAKER]

Here I am going to share with you what I saw and heard rather than my personal thoughts: I went to a Bitcoin event in Beijing last week. Some prominent Chinese Bitcoiners were also there. The sentiment was overwhelming that the ideal solution to the scaling question is implementing 2MB block size through a Core update as soon as possible. Some felt frustrated that core devs had been ignoring their demand, and this sense of frustration contributed to the conspiracy theory, which was explicitly expressed there: The Bitcoin Core team doesn't want to make a precedent because the team is controlled by Blockstream, who bet heavily on the success of Sidechains and Lightning Networks.
Some expressed the view that while SigWit has its potential, it is something never been tried before, therefore should be given more time for thorougher test; worse, some felt that it represents a development that has deviated from Satoshi's vision and eventually, led to increased complexity of the protocol to such degree that it would be forbidding to most startups.
Overall, there seems to be a sense of helplessness. Some reflected on why the Chinese had so little say in the matter and some urge that the Chinese should form their own core development team and create their own fork.
Let me know what you think as always.

The 2nd half of the Scaling Bitcoin conference was China, where many photos were taken of the world's biggest miners sharing a stage.  So I don't see how Chinese Bitcoiners have "little say in the matter" of scaling.

"Chinese Bitcoin" was originally one of Mike Hearn's bad ideas, because Chinese miners didn't want the 20MB blocks Gavin proposed.  Consequently, Chinese Bitcoiners once again had plenty of say in the matter of rejecting XT (see https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/major-mining-pools-make-stand-bitcoin-xt-fork-support-bip-100-grows-1440537258 for details).

"Chinese Bitcoin" would be as unsuccessful as any other Hearn-spawned XT-style contentious hard fork, while the resulting drama almost certainly crashes the price (again).


Miners (whether Chinese or not) are not the boss of the Bitcoin system.  They are highly-paid, highly-specialized security guards, not Bitcoin's executives.

This concept is explained here:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/19/bitcoin-and-voting-power/

This is a tremendously empowering situation. A 51% miner does not have 51% of the vote; in fact, GHash has just as much say over the contents of the blockchain as do I, or you, or anyone else. Miners derive their income from the buyers and sellers who recognize the blocks they create. This is why the behavior of a misbehaving miner is proscribed -- they could not, for instance, create 10 million Bitcoins out of the thin air, because no one would recognize those new rules. The blockchain is what we all say it is.

This is why regular users wield ultimate power in Bitcoin. It is the chain power that determines the shape of the blockchain, not mining power. Miners are followers, not leaders, in this game.

Thus, miners should not make rude "demands" of Honey Badger, because if they push them too far the socioeconomic majority can change the PoW or otherwise veto them.

Segwit, now being carefully tested, is needed to fix several outstanding issues and prepare Bitcoin to truly scale (~orthogonally to max_block_size).

Segwit will probably be done as a soft fork, so there is no way to stop other people from using it.


Please explain the perceived benefit of 2MB over 1MB blocks at this time.  Why are they, right now, superior in a cost vs. benefit analysis?

The only benefit AFAIK is that Bitcoin's tiny ~5tps is increased by an equally tiny ~5tps.  And that's assuming we don't get more empty blocks because of longer propagation/validation latency.

It's important to get Segwit right, and study its effects on the experiment, before we go about changing an important control variable like max block size.


Please consider the possibility any "frustration" being felt is due to individuals' lack of patience rather than Core/Blockstream lethargy, intransigence, or conspiracies.

We are all eager to see Bitcoin grow up ASAP, but must delay our urge for gratification with perspicacious self-discipline as we wait for the properly auspicious time for an eventual modification of the 1MB block size limit.

[iCEBREAKER]

the test-net for SegWit is pretty thorough as it is. It's not logical to object to it on the basis of never having been tried before; every change big and small to Bitcoin has arguably never been tried, including the supposedly simple blocksize increase approach.


With blocksize increases, wallet users and miners bear the costs of the upgrade equally. With node numbers already dwindling, and mining centralising further, the incentive for the new blocksize to saturate quickly is too high under this attempt to scale up. Increased resources to run Core will push more wallet users away from running a full-node. A negative feedback loop.


With Segwit, the resource pressure is largely taken off wallet users, with the miners bearing most of the costs of the increases (and relay nodes doing so as they choose). Wallet holders using Bitcoin Core can enjoy similar levels of resource usage to before, encouraging adoption in that segment. Adoption that will be useful to the miners, who will have up to x4 the space for new transactions from these new users. A positive feedback loop.

And remember, x4 the space is multiplied by whatever the base blocksize is. The 4MB is based on 1MB as a base blocksize, but 2MB base would yield 8MB. So, you could argue that big blocks is additive, whereas SegWit is multiplicative  

Yes, the timid "never been tried before" objection is pure hand-waving FUD, especially in light of the ongoing testing.

But perhaps segwit should be used in production (not testnet) by altcoin before getting merged into Bitcoin.

Viacoin successfully served as the testbed for CLTV, so why not do a wet run over there?

Blockstream has plenty of money for paying Peter Todd to do it, and he's familiar with VIA....

[Eric Mu]

The 2nd half of the Scaling Bitcoin conference was China, where many photos were taken of the world's biggest miners sharing a stage.  So I don't see how Chinese Bitcoiners have "little say in the matter" of scaling.

But as one of the Chinese panelists said at the event, they felt like merely an audience who are asked to sit there to choose between options given to them.

Please explain the perceived benefit of 2MB over 1MB blocks at this time.  Why are they, right now, superior in a cost vs. benefit analysis?

The perceive benefit varies. For some, it is that Bitcoin will continue to function as a payment network for individual users rather than a settlement network where only large transactions can be processed cost-efficiently. It is a modest change. It introduces less complexity. It gives SigWit more time.
Also, some believe that it is a test of Core team's willingness to listen to them. If they don't make what appears to be a small compromise, the Chinese fear that they will unlikely to do so in the future.

[tAP]

I think it is pretty obvious that the Core Team and Blockstream view Chinese miners as 'centralization' of Bitcoin, and would rather have mining operations better spread out.  The funny part of this, though, is what does that mean?  They mean spread out... in different countries?  Why does race and ethnicity matter as long as it's not ONE corporation controlling all mining?  Unbelievable to me.

Personally, I don't know why we can't view the Chinese miners - you know, the ones keeping our network going - as an ally.  

Actually, I do.  Having Chinese miners with the ability to control the direction this argument will go (block size) runs against what Blockstream (i.e. Core devs) wants.  Chinese miners control enough of the ecosystem that YOUR VOTE really matters in this upcoming block size debate.  If you guys weren't here, Blockstream would be able to just impose their will on all of us.

Please, please, please, support 2MB increase hard fork.  I don't care if it comes through Classic, XT, or a client of your own making.  It's becoming increasingly obvious that fee-based sidechains are THE REASON that Core devs are pushing to keep the 1mb limit as of right now - otherwise their entire product is useless.  If you google you will see that they just partnered up with another firm to provide these services as well ( https://blockstream.com/2016/01/28/pwc-and-blockstream-announce-strategic-partnership/ ).

Blockstream/core has a MAJOR conflict of interest - the more they keep the block size capped, the more they can push transactions to side chains which they charge for, the more money they make, and the more users suffer.  When users suffer, we will go elsewhere (hence price changes recently and a huge dump into altcoins).

Please, inform all chinese miners and make an educated decision here.

After all, Gavin even supports the 2MB block.  If it was so dangerous, why would Satoshi's most trusted original ally be pushing for it?

Gmaxwell and other devs.. why can you not admit there is an inherent conflict of interest  here?

Edit :  here is a link where core devs finally admit that the MAJORITY of users want block size increase asap. 
https://mobile.twitter.com/adam3us/status/692756252418576384

[Norway]

Overall, there seems to be a sense of helplessness. Some reflected on why the Chinese had so little say in the matter and some urge that the Chinese should form their own core development team and create their own fork.

Hi Eric,

What do you think about the Classic implementation? What does chinese miners think about it?

[CIYAM]

For some, it is that Bitcoin will continue to function as a payment network for individual users rather than a settlement network where only large transactions can be processed cost-efficiently.

I would like to know why that is perceived to be an issue (especially in China when you have payment networks that work instantly with almost no fees already)?

(such as Alipay, QQ, etc.)

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

The perceive benefit varies. For some, it is that Bitcoin will continue to function as a payment network for individual users rather than a settlement network where only large transactions can be processed cost-efficiently. It is a modest change. It introduces less complexity. It gives SigWit more time.
Also, some believe that it is a test of Core team's willingness to listen to them. If they don't make what appears to be a small compromise, the Chinese fear that they will unlikely to do so in the future.

Core will not compromise. They think they are goddamn geniuses who know what's better for everyone.

They are very much like the totalitarian government you have in you country. Including censorship.

I cannot prove that it is Blockstream that organized the censorship thing, but it is highly likely (99% probability for me).

Just think for a minute about what future you will have with Core team. They don't even care about your view. They don't give a fuck about your profits. They only care about their business model.

[CIYAM]

Well - it seems we have another group of people that do not understand how things work in China.

You can move money instantly for basically zero fees here (and have been able to do that for years).

So Bitcoin simply cannot compete with that - why do you think it can?

(do you not bother to check on these things or you just think China is the same as the US?)

The only thing that Bitcoin offers Chinese (apart from perhaps a store of value if they care to gamble on it) is the ability to move funds overseas which their government would very much like to stop.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Well - it seems we have another group of people that do not understand how things work in China.

You can move money instantly for basically zero fees here (and have been able to do that for years).

So Bitcoin simply cannot compete with that - why do you think it can?

(do you not bother to check on these things or you just think China is the same as the US?)

The only thing that Bitcoin offers Chinese (apart from perhaps a store of value if they care to gamble on it) is the ability to move funds overseas which their government would very much like to stop.

You even talking to me ?

I am not sure, because you are completely not on topic.

[CIYAM]

You even talking to me ?

I am not sure, because you are completely not on topic.
[/quote]

Is that some sort of "smartass reply"?

If so then I'll just ignore it.

(I thought we were trying to discuss some serious issues here)

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

@eric@haobtc

The most important and wise thing for you and all the chinese miners to do is to completely leave Bitcoin Core.

Even if Bitcoin Core agrees to 2MB, still:
- They are broken & corrupt with power,
- They think they always know everything better,
- They don't give a fuck (no, really) about what the users want
- They (most probably) use censorship to force their view on users

Whether Core can compromise or not, they just need to go. Such corrupt, insane & power-hungry people cannot steer Bitcoin into success.

Want proof ? Just check Adam Back's (Blockstream's President) twitter profile. The guy thinks he actually invented Bitcoin ! If that is not insanity, I don't know what is.

EDIT:
Here, archived for posterity:

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Is that some sort of "smartass reply"?

If so then I'll just ignore it.

(I thought we were trying to discuss some serious issues here)

I am discussing very serious issues indeed. Namely, the corruption and obvious conflict of interest of BitcoinCore and Blockstream.

However I have no idea what are you discussing.

[CIYAM]

I am discussing very serious issues indeed. Namely, the corruption and obvious conflict of Interest of BitcoinCore and Blockstream.

In that case you should of course have worked out that the Core Devs do not all work for Blockstream (not even half of them do).

So what about the other half of them?

Also corrupted because "you think so"?

(personally I am beginning to think whatever you think is just rubbish)

So - why don't you stop with the rubbish posts thinking that you have some sort of authority here to say who is corrupt or not?