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

[hdbuck]

Its good (chineese) Miners are greedy, we all are.

So nobody breaks the consensus.

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[johnyj]

I think it is a bit disingenuous to argue that nationalities don't matter as many western bitcoiners, including prominent ones, cite Chin as a factor in their assessment of the success of Bitcoin or lack thereof.
It is almost like to say that on the level of atoms, there is no sexuality or race, therefore the society should heed nothing but laws of physics.
I agree that code itself doesn't recognise nationality, but it is not only the code, but people who are involved with it.

That's an interesting point, so the culture also plays a role in the consensus building too. It will make the consensus more difficult to reach

I believe that the first consensus community must reach is to write some constitution level rules so that every one is agree with, so that we have some common ground to build upon. The reason that we have so many different road maps promoted by different party is because there is no such level of commonly agreed basic principles

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

I think it is a bit disingenuous to argue that nationalities don't matter as many western bitcoiners, including prominent ones, cite Chin as a factor in their assessment of the success of Bitcoin or lack thereof.
It is almost like to say that on the level of atoms, there is no sexuality or race, therefore the society should heed nothing but laws of physics.
I agree that code itself doesn't recognise nationality, but it is not only the code, but people who are involved with it.

That's an interesting point, so the culture also plays a role in the consensus building too. It will make the consensus more difficult to reach

I believe that the first consensus community must reach is to write some constitution level rules so that every one is agree with, so that we have some common ground to build upon. The reason that we have so many different road maps promoted by different party is because there is no such level of commonly agreed basic principles

I don't think a constitution will fly. Bitcoin is an incentives machine. If something changes it will be because the incentive structure has changed somehow.

Innit?

[watashi-kokoto]

That's a half-truth.

I'm sorry, care to elaborate? I forgot why you're ignored

[johnyj]

I don't think a constitution will fly. Bitcoin is an incentives machine. If something changes it will be because the incentive structure has changed somehow.

Innit?

Of course incentives is also part of the picture. Since currently there is no such kind of code, anything can be openly discussed, you can look at Classic where they are trying to make such constitution, to decide on some basic rules that should never change

It can be very specific, for example always 21 million coin supply.  But it can also be very abstract, like to keep the miner incentive intact, for example averagely 50 bitcoins per block forever (This unavoidably will limit the block size)

The constitution is about the part that almost never changes, so that if you disagree with those rules, for example 21M bitcoin, you better leave for another coin

Another part is about the decision making, e.g. how to reach consensus in a community full of different people with different political/culture/religion ideology. There is still no good way to count user's opinion, using hash power voting is not a really good method

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

I don't think a constitution will fly. Bitcoin is an incentives machine. If something changes it will be because the incentive structure has changed somehow.

Innit?

Of course incentives is also part of the picture. Since currently there is no such kind of code, anything can be openly discussed, you can look at Classic where they are trying to make such constitution, to decide on some basic rules that should never change

It can be very specific, for example always 21 million coin supply.  But it can also be very abstract, like to keep the miner incentive intact, for example averagely 50 bitcoins per block forever (This unavoidably will limit the block size)

The constitution is about the part that almost never changes, so that if you disagree with those rules, for example 21M bitcoin, you better leave for another coin

Another part is about the decision making, e.g. how to reach consensus in a community full of different people with different political/culture/religion ideology. There is still no good way to count user's opinion, using hash power voting is not a really good method

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Prohibited_changes

That's a half-truth.

I'm sorry, care to elaborate?

Fatty's not a shill.

[johnyj]

The most important is the decision making mechanism

Current mess is caused by that there is no decision making mechanism, so that all the design happens without first have a consensus based decision. When the design finished, programmers find out that there is no miners interested in their solution, this result in waste of time and human resource

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

The most important is the decision making mechanism

Current mess is caused by that there is no decision making mechanism, so that all the design happens without first have a consensus based decision. When the design finished, programmers find out that there is no miners interested in their solution, this result in waste of time and human resource

But that's what BIP's are for.

[johnyj]

The most important is the decision making mechanism

Current mess is caused by that there is no decision making mechanism, so that all the design happens without first have a consensus based decision. When the design finished, programmers find out that there is no miners interested in their solution, this result in waste of time and human resource

But that's what BIP's are for.

BIP's  are design proposals, but how are they get approved? That's decision making mechanism

Currently they are approved by the 5 core devs that have Git commit right, but their approval does not mean the approval of miners and other interested community members. And this is especially problematic when those 5 core devs have a conflict of interest themselves

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

The most important is the decision making mechanism

Current mess is caused by that there is no decision making mechanism, so that all the design happens without first have a consensus based decision. When the design finished, programmers find out that there is no miners interested in their solution, this result in waste of time and human resource

But that's what BIP's are for.

BIP's  are design proposals, but how are they get approved? That's decision making mechanism

Currently they are approved by the 5 core devs that have Git commit right, but their approval does not mean the approval of miners and other interested community members. And this is especially problematic when those 5 core devs have a conflict of interest

Conflict of interest is a problem in principle. I agree. But there's no such thing as an unbiased position.

Can you elaborate on the specific conflicts?

[Luke-Jr]

The most important is the decision making mechanism

Current mess is caused by that there is no decision making mechanism, so that all the design happens without first have a consensus based decision. When the design finished, programmers find out that there is no miners interested in their solution, this result in waste of time and human resource

But that's what BIP's are for.

BIP's  are design proposals, but how are they get approved? That's decision making mechanism

Currently they are approved by the 5 core devs that have Git commit right, but their approval does not mean the approval of miners and other interested community members. And this is especially problematic when those 5 core devs have a conflict of interest themselves

Not quite. First of all, git commit access is not a privilege at all - it is only a job of merging things which has passed peer review.
Secondly, BIPs do not require approval from any Core devs.

Most BIPs simply need approval from multiple software projects (Core or otherwise) which implement them. For example, lots of wallets implement BIP 13 (p2sh address format), and a number of mining programs implement BIP 22 (getblocktemplate).

Softfork BIPs need approval from a supermajority of miners. For example, BIP 65 not long ago was adopted by 95% of the network hashrate.

Hardfork BIPs need approval from everyone using Bitcoin. The only hardfork ever in the history of Bitcoin was in the aftermath of the 2013 crisis, with no argument against it whatsoever. We do not yet have a single example of a hardfork deployed in non-crisis situations or by planned agreement in advance, much less a contentious hardfork that has successfully been forced on a subset of the community.

[johnyj]

Conflict of interest is a problem in principle. I agree. But there's no such thing as an unbiased position.

Can you elaborate on the specific conflicts?

Just because conflict of interest will always happen in a community full of libertarian type of people, you can not use traditional top-down model decision making mechanism

Consensus decision making model has been promoted before the HongKong conference, but judging from that conference, everyone is working on their own agenda blindly

[johnyj]

The most important is the decision making mechanism

Current mess is caused by that there is no decision making mechanism, so that all the design happens without first have a consensus based decision. When the design finished, programmers find out that there is no miners interested in their solution, this result in waste of time and human resource

But that's what BIP's are for.

BIP's  are design proposals, but how are they get approved? That's decision making mechanism

Currently they are approved by the 5 core devs that have Git commit right, but their approval does not mean the approval of miners and other interested community members. And this is especially problematic when those 5 core devs have a conflict of interest themselves

Not quite. First of all, git commit access is not a privilege at all - it is only a job of merging things which has passed peer review.
Secondly, BIPs do not require approval from any Core devs.

Most BIPs simply need approval from multiple software projects (Core or otherwise) which implement them. For example, lots of wallets implement BIP 13 (p2sh address format), and a number of mining programs implement BIP 22 (getblocktemplate).

Softfork BIPs need approval from a supermajority of miners. For example, BIP 65 not long ago was adopted by 95% of the network hashrate.

Hardfork BIPs need approval from everyone using Bitcoin. The only hardfork ever in the history of Bitcoin was in the aftermath of the 2013 crisis, with no argument against it whatsoever. We do not yet have a single example of a hardfork deployed in non-crisis situations or by planned agreement in advance, much less a contentious hardfork that has successfully been forced on a subset of the community.

Of course it is not a strict benevolent dictator type of management, but still those changes are seldom communicated well with miners before they are implemented

Soft fork can cause unprepared hard fork, the July 04 fork is an example. It indicated that miners don't fully understand the consequence of BIP66, that is because they did not took part in the decision making process of BIP 66, thus they blindly follow the recommendation from core devs, and as a result, lost lots of coins

[achow101]

Of course it is not a strict benevolent dictator type of management, but still those changes are seldom communicated well with miners before they are implemented

Soft fork can cause unprepared hard fork, the July 04 fork is an example. It indicated that miners don't fully understand the consequence of BIP66, that is because they did not took part in the decision making process of BIP 66, thus they blindly follow the recommendation from core devs, and as a result, lost lots of coins

What do you mean they did not take part in the decision making? Of course they did, that was how the fork happened, when most of the miners supported BIP66 by producing the properly versioned blocks. It is just that they were SPV mining so they didn't check the validity of the invalid block they mined on which is what caused the fork. What does that have to do with then not participating the decision making?

Besides, Wang Chun, the operator of F2pool, actively participates in development. He posts on the mailing list, sometimes on IRC, and sometimes on Github. He is definitely a part of the decision making process. I'm sure that several other large pool operators do the same, I just don't know their names.

[johnyj]

Of course it is not a strict benevolent dictator type of management, but still those changes are seldom communicated well with miners before they are implemented

Soft fork can cause unprepared hard fork, the July 04 fork is an example. It indicated that miners don't fully understand the consequence of BIP66, that is because they did not took part in the decision making process of BIP 66, thus they blindly follow the recommendation from core devs, and as a result, lost lots of coins

What do you mean they did not take part in the decision making? Of course they did, that was how the fork happened, when most of the miners supported BIP66 by producing the properly versioned blocks. It is just that they were SPV mining so they didn't check the validity of the invalid block they mined on which is what caused the fork. What does that have to do with then not participating the decision making?

Besides, Wang Chun, the operator of F2pool, actively participates in development. He posts on the mailing list, sometimes on IRC, and sometimes on Github. He is definitely a part of the decision making process. I'm sure that several other large pool operators do the same, I just don't know their names.

If they really actively participated in the decision making process of BIP66, they would have known that BIP66 might create a hard fork, thus they will reject BIP66 from the beginning. Or do much more preparation to prevent such a hard fork from happening. Just like we are now discussing the hard fork that Segwit soft fork could generate

The problem is technical and language barrier, so that miners might never reach same level of understanding like core devs, thus there must be enough good communication to be sure they are totally clear of all the consequences of a change. In fact even core devs themselves can not see all the possible attack vector if the solution is too complex

But this is too technical, basically the communication between core devs and rest of the community is broken because of the technical and complexity barrier, but as long as this barrier is there, there is no way to reach consensus, thus the way to reach consensus becomes politics/culture/religion. I guess that if some day Arabic countries control majority of hash power, only Muslim devs code will get their support  

Technical barrier is usually used in centralized organizations to enforce their decision. But in bitcoin community, it has exactly opposite effect, e.g. it makes sure that no consensus thus no decision can be made

[Luke-Jr]

If they really actively participated in the decision making process of BIP66, they would have known that BIP66 might create a hard fork, thus they will reject BIP66 from the beginning.

BIP66 could not and did not create a hard fork.

[hdbuck]

If they really actively participated in the decision making process of BIP66, they would have known that BIP66 might create a hard fork, thus they will reject BIP66 from the beginning.

BIP66 could not and did not create a hard fork.

pretty sloppy tho:

http://www.contravex.com/2015/07/04/bitcoins-4th-of-july-independence-from-america-day/

no more americans  

[BitUsher]

Some Chinese translations of current sentiments on Classic-

https://bitcoinzh.com/chinese-response-to-bitcoin-classic-hard-fork/

BitcoinZH Introduction: Disappointment with Gavin's failure to support the Chinese 90%/2MB proposal, and offense caused by his concerns around miner centralization mark a lukewarm response to Bitcoin Classic on 8btc.com

https://bitcoinzh.com/has-anyone-upgraded-to-bitcoin-classic/

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Some Chinese translations of current sentiments on Classic-

https://bitcoinzh.com/chinese-response-to-bitcoin-classic-hard-fork/

BitcoinZH Introduction: Disappointment with Gavin's failure to support the Chinese 90%/2MB proposal, and offense caused by his concerns around miner centralization mark a lukewarm response to Bitcoin Classic on 8btc.com

https://bitcoinzh.com/has-anyone-upgraded-to-bitcoin-classic/

I'm a notorious big blocks shill (it seems) and even I think 75% is too low.

[Fatman3001]

Some Chinese translations of current sentiments on Classic-

https://bitcoinzh.com/chinese-response-to-bitcoin-classic-hard-fork/

BitcoinZH Introduction: Disappointment with Gavin's failure to support the Chinese 90%/2MB proposal, and offense caused by his concerns around miner centralization mark a lukewarm response to Bitcoin Classic on 8btc.com

https://bitcoinzh.com/has-anyone-upgraded-to-bitcoin-classic/

I'm a notorious big blocks shill (it seems) and even I think 75% is too low.

There'll be a lot of cat herding for 90%. And I cannot think of anyone in the Bitcoin community who doesn't cause offense consistently.