Community Blacklisting -- Establishing the Infection to Govern Bitcoin

[Kluge]

A large group of people believe SDice transactions are bad. They recognize there will probably be similar organizations. In their infinite benevolence, they volunteer to launch a service providing pools and individuals with blacklists to prevent bad things being entered into the blockchain. We'll call this service "Community Blacklist."

Community Blacklist is accepted appreciatively by many TH/s within the community, and within a short span of time, comprises of ~1/2 the entire network. At this point, the Satoshi Shogunate (he was annoyed >80% of "his" blocks were being taken up by gambling) controlling Community Blacklist realize they can do more than just stop bad things from happening.

A VC works with the Satoshi Shogunate ("Satosh") and provides them with $250k in funding. Only Satosh and the VC knew, at that point, what the money was for. Satosh begins providing $1,000/%TotalNetworkHashrate/month to pools which use Community Blacklist software. Community Blacklist (henceforth known also as "Satosh") has now infected 95% of the network, given pools can now comfortably offer significantly more money than solo-mining.

Satosh goes to a meeting with SDice execs and suggests they pay 30% of profits. In exchange, Satosh is willing to allow SDice back onto the blockchain. SDice, having endured a month of unsuccessfully attempting to convert to an "internal" model where people must send BTC to personal addresses tied to their username on SD servers, wait for confirmation, then manually withdraw if they haven't lost everything, agrees, and Satosh has its first revenue stream, granted by the mighty authority provisioned by control of the monetary system. Satosh is publicly praised by the media for establishing the Global Bitcoin Users Agreement, creating punitive fines for all socially unacceptable behavior the blockchain is used for.

Satosh, showing its lethality, quickly evolves. Due to the blockchain being so horribly bloated, Satosh has decided a new scheduling system must be put in place for the good of the network. For the majority of the day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, only "VIP transactions" will be processed, and all pools infected with Satosh must switch to using whitelists instead of blacklists. For 10% of monthly profits (certainly, the Satosh IRS will verify), businesses are entitled to enjoy uninterrupted transfer service on the blockchain.

Naturally, the Bitcoin community whines, but certainly no free marketeer would denounce greed, and so Satosh ups their offering to pools... $5,000/%TotalNetworkHashrate/month.

Things run fine for months, but eventually, the time comes for Satosh to secure a stranglehold. Monday-Friday are declared Days of Business, and only those willing to pay a flat 15% tx fee will be permitted. The "VIP transaction" schedule now includes every day of the week, and for all but 4 hours of the day, only those paying 25% of profits to Satosh will be allowed to have transactions processed on the blockchain. To ensure miners stay on board, Satosh now offers $20,000/%TotalNetworkHashrate/month, doling out a shocking $2m/month to pools, too much for anyone with large sums invested to protest. Bitcoin has finally succeeded on a massive scale.


On the first anniversary of Satosh, a 70gb file is pushed to pools. Henceforth, only whitelisted addresses may utilize Bitcoin. All addresses must be tied to registered entities, and all transactions must be explained in detail to Satosh. Users, of course, must agree to the inhuman (if only in length) agreement to be registered as a Certified Bitcoin User. If someone commits a crime, they're bankrupted until they make amends. Poof -- it's the voluntary world government we all crave, with more resources at their disposal than the USSR, China, and US combined! What a magical victory for individualism on Earth! ... Except then God sends a poisonous meteor to Earth, you have those plagues, and the wars and whatever.


ETA: Oops. I forgot we refer to the USSR as the old Empire of Russia again, because nothing says "reformed" like going back and forth between the titles of harsh occupational empires. Oh, well... Probably no Rurikovich jumped off his horse (riding bareback) to strangle bears to death for sport, and in the past century, they've become an anti-imperialist empire after losing almost all traditional feudal territory, which is possibly even more progressive than US Senators renouncing constitutionalism.

[misterbigg]

Reserving my spot in an epic thread.

[Kluge]

I guess the question I really wanted an answer to here... Is Satoshi the antichrist? - Because it could still be Gavin or Ver or someone like that. Can there be multiple antichrists given there's not much reason there couldn't be multiple anti-popes similar to Orthodox kingdoms each having their own Patriarch? Okay, so these must represent the directors of the Satosh Administrative Districts. Each one represents the anti-government (government being infallible; God). So the SADs (SADists?!!!) are pretty much Satan's Army.

Basically, I think we need to burn everyone important alive to prevent the Muslims from re-taking Jerusalem. Or the Jews need to hold Jerusalem.... something about the water levels decreasing and two guys spitting fire out of their mouths at heathens, which I think is a metaphor for the cool new drones the USG has purchased. Not very familiar with Zionism & Christian end-times, tbh... but there are flamethrower drones in the Bible, right?

ppfffffchhzzsczzhrrr! That's the sound I imagine they make. (I guess they were made by a Polish or Hungarian company)


Ahhh! Ahhh! Help me, the administrative bureaucracy of the formerly-decentralized monetary system is burning me alive! (that person was made in America!)

Dammit... I wish I could draw.

[Mike Christ]

So when can we expect The Chronicles of Satosh?

[Bit_Happy]

Reserving my Happy spot in an epic thread.   

[str4wm4n]

yup

[crazy_rabbit]

The Church of Satoshi and Latter Day Coins does not approve.

[Kluge]

I have meditated on it, and I'm pretty sure Roger Ver is not the anti-christ.

I have arrived at this conclusion, because when I say "Emperor Ver" aloud - and I don't know if you're familiar with a MidWest US accent - but I sound like I'm fucking wasted. Empur'r'vrrrr....

So, it's probably one of those other try-anything-once fellows with ambition. Maybe ambition is the anti-christ? Perhaps Our Lord and Savior (I'm not sure why we use both titles, because it seems ambiguous to me -- we could be referring to multiple people - a sin We killed many, many people over at some time, I'm sure) interprets ambition as brat-like rebellion. Brats (unlike wieners) who don't know their place are smited by God. Oddly enough, it's almost always our elders who tell us this, often followed by "That nigger in office wants to take 'r guns away!!" -- Then, a pause... "What do you think about that?" the Inquisition inquires. Anyway, I need a previous quip stricken... God does indeed smite wieners in the wrong place (even if you only THINK it's in the wrong place, because God does indeed punish intent). ♪Smite that, smite that garden hose. Put it in the correc' hole.♪ -Unnamed Negro spiritual.

No, I don't think Ambition is the anti-Christ, because then "We" are the anti-christ, and Time Magazine already tried that.

Okay... I think Kafka & Kurt are out of my system, now. Need books for the next couple weeks.

[hazek]

The scenario in the story is highly unlikely to happen because it's trivial for a new miner to come online and undercut the Satosh out of business.

[Herodes]

A large group of people believe SDice transactions are bad.

I would think some are jealous of their earnings as well - but fact is that the network has to support a lot of transactions in the future, so why not let SatoshiDice be a test of this ? If they're somehow blocked, there's nothing preventing them from changing their betting adresses, and we're back to square one.

In a real life analogy, should cities close their roads for biker gangs ? I'm sure many don't like them, but they still have the right to travel on the road. (That was an odd comparison - but you get the point).


Like tainted coins, I think barring someone from the network is not the best thing to do.

[Kluge]

The scenario in the story is highly unlikely to happen because it's trivial for a new miner to come online and undercut the Satosh out of business.

I doubt it, and Satosh increases demand for hashpower - but only within pools agreeing to host the Satosh virus. If 50% of pools offer "130% PPS," there should be a 30% increase in hashpower, assuming no dip in price, and those pools offering the Satosh-subsidized "bonus" will also very likely swell in proportional size.

A new miner would have LESS incentive to join outside the Satosh pools, because he's not only spending more per hash due to increase in overall hashpower, but not earning as much as he could be in a Satosh-infected pool. That's not what you're really going at, but it is essential in understanding just how rapidly Satosh becomes established... The idea that swooping in and overtaking an established authority is trivial, I don't think would pan out. It'd be like one of those AltCoins. Relative to Bitcoin, they're miniscule, and unless they're massive (in the Satosh scenario), they have no authority. As Satosh grows, dethroning them goes from difficult, to extremely difficult, to virtually impossible.

Similar to the USG, it'd be virtually impossible for someone to just come in and say - Hey, my government I just made up ought to rule over you, instead, and I'll give all policemen and soldiers a 10% raise over what they currently make should you defect! Starting an army (hashing farm) able to rival Satosh would become exponentially more difficult with time, and the time-span we're looking at is very short. Once Satosh reveals how deadly are, things will happen fast. You should just be happy if Satosh permits elections of pre-determined freely-nominated candidates.

(Incidentally, this might be the one time an entity really has feasible ability to start something able to effectively replace the USG, among other governments, assuming Bitcoin becomes a "success" in the most idealistic of visions.)

[Kluge]

A large group of people believe SDice transactions are bad.

I would think some are jealous of their earnings as well - but fact is that the network has to support a lot of transactions in the future, so why not let SatoshiDice be a test of this ? If they're somehow blocked, there's nothing preventing them from changing their betting adresses, and we're back to square one.

In a real life analogy, should cities close their roads for biker gangs ? I'm sure many don't like them, but they still have the right to travel on the road. (That was an odd comparison - but you get the point).


Like tainted coins, I think barring someone from the network is not the best thing to do.

I'd think the analogy (with SD tx ban patches in mind) would be more like "should private road owners prevent 80k individuals insisting on walking in the middle of owners' individual roads from creating a traffic-jam for the 20k cars also using the network of roads?" Even that analogy sucks, though.

Now - if you read past the first sentence of OP... this entire thread is about a potential volunteer organization to get past the problem of having SDice just change their betting addresses. 

[BitcoinAshley]

Yes, the scenario is a perfect, logical, COMPLETELY UNREFUTABLE example of why the free market will never work and will always result in us destroying ourselves, therefore we will always need Father State to watch over us.

</scarcasm>

[Kluge]

Yes, the scenario is a perfect, logical, COMPLETELY UNREFUTABLE example of why the free market will never work and will always result in us destroying ourselves, therefore we will always need Father State to watch over us.

</scarcasm>

Bitcoin is neither necessarily a force of good nor a force of evil. Individuals choose what to do with it. It's a tool. It'd probably be almost impossible to pull of a Satosh type thing (Satosh could effectively become Father State in a "perfect" execution), but I pulled the idea out of my ass while writing up a more serious (and much more boring) response... I'm sure there are plenty of scheming individuals with free time coming up with better ideas. And with that said, I can't think of any reason why "Satosh" necessarily could not work. It seems ridiculously unfeasible, but while Bitcoin's young, it's vulnerable and open to much more threatening exploits than just the unforeseen technical kind. Bitcoin is also particularly vulnerable with the specialization of hardware we're seeing, where the number of individuals mining will plummet as barrier to entry is high enough to not just be a hobby - and that's not to say it even matters given how popular a handful of pools are. In a "Satosh attack," Satosh never needs to actually "own" any of the hashing power, just get miners (or their effective representatives, the pools) to accept a set of rules on which transactions are allowed to be included in the blockchain.

Miners and merchants do, and will continue to control the future of Bitcoin. They don't need to be malicious hackers to cause massive damage... any sociopath would do.

[/dev/null]

Big BUMP, We need this.

[jaywaka2713]

So now the community polices each other? Politics can seriously screw this up. Right before the troll breakout, just think of this. I could petition to have every Bitcoin address known to be used by Theymos, but not tell people that was who we were blacklisting. Have support of 100000 people through funding or benefit and get him blacklisted from using his coins, which also means that those coins are now destroyed. No, no, no.

[melon]

there could be more than one community blacklist so that the ...'there can be only one' HIGHLANDER" theme does not take hold... think moodys .s&p ,fitch and how little trouble they brought to the global scene -sarcasm intended- competition is good ) but not always, maybe these are the sadists you refer to... not sure where I stand on this issue 

[Kluge]

Feather-forking - Satosh much cheaper to inject than previously thought. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=312668

Big Money James could inject the Satosh today. 

[mccoyspace]

The Foundation's board, 4 or 5 core developers, 3 or 4 key exchanges, 6 to 8 big mining pools. 20 people, give or take, have massive influence over this 1.6 Billion $ ship.

Look how quickly consensus was reached on the hard fork. It was over in a few hours. Of course that was a good thing. My point is that there are points of control and it is possible for the network to change drastically and quickly. Even before techniques like feather forking.

My God will someday we be having to advocate for 'network neutrality' on the blockchain?
"Well, yes." will say our political adversaries, "All transactions are equal. But some are more equal than others. It's really all about efficiencies and scale. The white lists are there to help us."

[Kluge]

The Foundation's board, 4 or 5 core developers, 3 or 4 key exchanges, 6 to 8 big mining pools. 20 people, give or take, have massive influence over this 1.6 Billion $ ship.

Look how quickly consensus was reached on the hard fork. It was over in a few hours. Of course that was a good thing. My point is that there are points of control and it is possible for the network to change drastically and quickly. Even before techniques like feather forking.

My God will someday we be having to advocate for 'network neutrality' on the blockchain?
"Well, yes." will say our political adversaries, "All transactions are equal. But some are more equal than others. It's really all about efficiencies and scale. The white lists are there to help us."

The fork relied on miners (really, pool ops). It's kind of a cool thought experiment, I think. Take mining subsidies, or ignore them? Will the ASIC mining corporations really ignore the money being waved in their faces if it's sold as protecting the network from "harmful" elements?

The Foundation, I don't think has much more influence than those individuals would have in the IRC rooms where the fork was negotiated. There's only a handful of people controlling the majority of hashpower, whether they're corporate miners or pool ops. p2pool helps fight this, but not if those miners decide to switch to mining pools which pay out "115% PPS" like we had back in the Pirate days. I mean - if you didn't mine on GPUMax back then, it was assumed you were either too poor to have the required hashpower for acceptance, too un-connected to get a pass-through account, or just stupid.