Dangerous precedents set on March 12 2013

[rebroad]

I think BTCGuild's decision to revert to 0.7 for mining was the wrong decision. Let's explore why I've come to this conclusion.

Firstly, let's ask - who do we want to be in control of bitcoin? By in control I mean, to define and maintain the integrity of bitcoin.

I personally feel that bitcoin should be defined as closely as possible to the white paper that Satoshi wrote.

I also feel that the people better skilled to make these decisions are the miners and mining pools rather than the average user of bitcoin (who probably just downloaded the first bitcoin client they found after a Google search).

The decision (to switch mining back to 0.7 version) was heavily influenced by the userbase. Most of the userbase are probably unaware currently that they are effectively voting on the definition by their choice of bitcoin client.

I do not feel they should be voting at all. Bitcoin's integrity is the responsibility of the miners, not the users. The miners should not be influenced to the extent they were by the users nor the developers of any client, in my opinion. Granted the miners depend heavily on the skill (and they are skilled) of the developers and need to work in close co-operation, and to ensure that the the mining is done using as similar code as they can manage and that it performs as closely to the white paper. The miner's have a responsibility to check that the code they are using keeps to the integrity of the white paper also.

The 0.8 version of the mining software adhered more closely to Satoshi's white paper than 0.7 did. They should have stuck with 0.8 for this reason alone.

Secondly, the miners have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of bitcoin. This means doing whatever possible to ensure that transactions are not reversible. Their decision to revert to 0.7 broke this fundamental rule. They should never do this again if bitcoin is to retain any credibility.

It is understandable that they have been so far following relatively blindly the advice of the core development team, but I think it is time for this to stop, given the recent situation. They need to think far more critically and recognize their responsibilities. There are going to be politics involved in the evolution of bitcoin. There is going to be influence and pressure from governments on all parties involved - the developers and the miners in particular. Anyone developing or mining bitcoin who is not anonymous is touchable.  (Read http://www.dgcmagazine.com/the-old-radical-how-bitcoin-is-being-destroyed/ to better understand why I mention this).

Staying mining on 0.8 would have been the safer option because 0.7 clients already were alerting the users to their being a longer chain. Users of 0,8 weren't being alerted until at least 11 (21 by some reports) confirmations had passed on their fork so during those confirmations all transactions were not trustworthy. Trust in transactions is the primary importance in bitcoin. Although some failure for alerting the users to this is the fact that most client don't alert the user to the event that another chain is catching up - they only alert when another chain is longer, and even then, only when by at least 6 blocks.

There will probably be events in the future where the miners and the developers disagree, and the miners disagree with other miners about the future of bitcoin, but I would like to think that the decisions will be based on what bitcoin was meant to be. This will often be subjective, but for me personally, the true bitcoin will always be the one mentioned in the Satoshi White Paper, and that paper defines the maximum block size as 1Mb. The currently running bitcoin is therefore not really bitcoin, and won't be until a hardfork is done to set this to the correct number. 0.8 did that - the miners were running with it and had a majority, until March 12.

I'll admit I don't know all the details behind the decision to switch back to 0.7 and to something less-bitcoin like. I'm aware that mtgox and blockchain.info were still on the 0.7 fork but they could have fixed this and arguably this was their fault for not keeping up to date. Although on the other hand, the miners may have switched to 0.8 without sufficient testing and notice. Mtgox's software would surely have noticed the longer chain and automatically switched to a safe mode where no transactions were accepted until resolved, so they'd not have lost any money, but it would have been a headache for the site maintainer to install the patch needed to switch to the 0.8 fork, admittedly. Still, I think this is what should have been done instead.

So, I've yet to hear a strong argument still for the decision. I'll keep looking though, and thanks in advance to anyone who can enlighten me.

[jgarzik]

If the users are not voting (validating), then it is trivial for miners to rewrite the rules.

If the users are fully validating, then a miner decision to have each block produce 50 BTC again would be instantly rejected.

[Rincewind]

The miners did vote. The pools switched and the miners didn't bail. I even pool hopped into BTCGuild the moment I read they finished their rollback to 0.7.

[BTC Books]

Either way it's a decision: 0.7 or 0.8.  And a decision made by the same people.

As it worked out it was tolerably graceful.

I've got no problems at all with how it went.

[fornit]

go found yourself a religion. "true bitcoin".....what the fuck?!

[Steve]

There is a market for securing transactions.  Markets consist of both consumers (bitcoin users) and suppliers (miners).  Miners could have decided to go to 0.8, but it's not clear to me that 0.7 still wouldn't have won out in the long run.  The consumers could have decided to stay on 0.7 and any miners still mining on 0.7 would have still been providing a transaction security service to those users.  If that service was adequate (blocks continued to be found at a reasonable pace), it's quite easy to imagine that as the 0.7 chain continued on, miners that had previously switched to 0.8 would realize that they weren't servicing a large population of users...they could have then made the rational decision to switch back to 0.7.  The 0.7 chain would slowly regain momentum, overtaking 0.8 and ultimately providing transaction security to the entire community of 0.7 and 0.8 users.  Those miners that had continued on the 0.8 fork would lose all their mining revenues.

Conversely, consumers, seeking the most secure service and seeing the mining community transitioning to 0.8 might have made the rational decision to incur the work of upgrading to 0.8.

The decision that miners made was to serve the largest pool of consumers of their services.  Targeting the largest market of users with your mining capacity is probably the best policy (and would likely ensure that you, as a miner, are on the block chain most likely to survive).

[edmundedgar]

I would like to think that the decisions will be based on what bitcoin was meant to be. This will often be subjective, but for me personally, the true bitcoin will always be the one mentioned in the Satoshi White Paper, and that paper defines the maximum block size as 1Mb.

One of the many amazing things about Bitcoin is watching a religion that would once have taken centuries to get established form itself in a couple of years.

First the adherents decide they want to abide by all the restrictions in their Holy Book, even when they're obviously no longer relevant, like applying dietary restrictions designed to deal with parasites in the absence of refrigeration technology.

Then as if that's not enough, they take little implementation quirks, traditions and short-term quick-fix bodges that build up over time and start imagining that they're in their Holy Book.

I don't suppose saying this will help as once a bit of dogma gets into a religious person's head it's a hell of a job getting it out, but there's nothing in the Holy Prophet's white paper about limiting block sizes. He specifically discussed the network scaling as big as Visa. (Letters to the Cryptographians, Chapter 2, Verse 2). Obviously nobody intended to grow a network just to the point where it was about to become really useful for actual, non-speculative commerce, then cripple it to stop it doing more than 10 transactions per second.

[Severian]

(Letters to the Cryptographians, Chapter 2, Verse 2).

As with any religion, believers will believe what they're gonna believe no matter what their leader said:

satoshi
Founder
Hero Member
Re: [PATCH] increase block size limit
October 04, 2010, 03:48:40 PM

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.

When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

[Bitobsessed]

TLDR;
As the price goes up, there is a concentrated vested interest in the Bitcoin community to do the best for what they have their money invested in.  As I read in another thread about somebody offering $500 to attack the LTC network, someone else pointed out that all that hardware would make them thousands per day vs. the $500.  Long story short, these "coins" are just simply worth way too much money, and unless there are enough people out there that do not like money, it will survive.  Sure we will have a few speed bumps along the way, but you have to remember when this "currency" or whatever you want to call it was created.  It has done amazingly great for the length of time we are talking about and will only get better.

[Offthechain]

I think the right decision was made... wouldn't the alternate mean the majority having to update to the 0.8 client before being able to use Bitcoin again? I think this would have caused even more panic. I live in the UK, I woke up and the situation had been resolved. It would have looked much more serious if 50% (or whatever) of users couldn't use Bitcoin. For many upgrading is simple... but for my Linux install, the repository wasn't even ready for a at least a week after 0.8 was released!
The devs need to sort out a 0.81 release and test it hard, then test it again. When the concerns about transaction limits are removed confidence in the protocol will be solid.
OP referring to the white paper does sound a bit religious! 

[Mike Hearn]

Satoshis paper makes no mention of a one megabyte block size limit.

[bg002h]

Idealistic thinking meets practicality...I think an unintended network split would have been foolish to just let happen...making two weaker Bitcoin networks is in no ones best interest. This wasn't a fork per se, all transactions were broadcast to both halves of the split network. Not many transactions would've been "reversed". Most transactions were on both chains anyway. As I understand it, the balance of hash rate on each network was about equal...thus the split network could have persisted for a very long time....increasing the possibility of more transactions becoming reversible. It's probably a still possible attack method on the network.

[grantbdev]

I don't understand why this is so controversial. There was a major issue with compatibility and it would have been a permanent fork if the 0.8 chain survived. I don't think it would have anyway, because it was in nobody's best interest to have a permanent fork.

The developers quickly identified the problem and announced the solution. No one was forced. No one was told to do something against that was against their best interest. I think a wonderful precedent was set on March 12, 2013. That was one of transparency and voluntary co-operation. The devs could have done nothing and the same result would have probably happened eventually (much later), but there would have been more panic.

[hazek]

I do not feel they should be voting at all. Bitcoin's integrity is the responsibility of the miners, not the users. The miners should not be influenced to the extent they were by the users nor the developers of any client, in my opinion.

What you speak of is not the Bitcoin I consented to use. K THX BYE

[Peter Todd]

Satoshis paper makes no mention of a one megabyte block size limit.

Or a non-inflationary money supply.

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

It still seems odd to me why satoshi wouldn't still have a hand in steering Bitcoin through these issues.

[markm]

It still seems odd to me why satoshi wouldn't still have a hand in steering Bitcoin through these issues.

The Pope has to rule on whether each incident in which he seemingly did actually counts before we can Canonise the guy, so in the meantime its a bit hush hush.

-MarkM-

[Richy_T]

When a staged rollout goes pear-shaped, you roll back. This should have been the plan from the beginning.

[axus]

People running the software had to make a choice, which transactions to revert.  It was going to be 0.7 or 0.8.

[Stephen Gornick]

I think the alert system should be moved into a plugin so people can subscribe to the Bitcoin Foundation alerts if they want.  That way if some other entity wanted to send alerts they could develop their own plugin and users can decide which plugins to download.

That's a pretty decent suggestion.

[Edit: Not that alerts from mutliple parties are sent out necessarily but that the client can subscribe to alerts from outside sources and that it would have the ability to go into safe mode or require manual approval for payments as a reaction to certain alerts.]