Nope, we're not using a decentralized protocol yet, just a piece of software

[WiW]

The events of the latest software bug which catalyzed a massive 23% flashcrash, show us that bitcoin is not a protocol yet - it's still totally bootstrapped to the open source Satoshi client. One bug affects the entire network. It's not a protocol, it's whatever that piece of software determines it is.

This doesn't happen in any other p2p network that I know of. If there's a bug in some filesharing software, the whole network doesn't go into a panic. Only the users of *that* software have to deal with *their* problem.

Of course, I believe there shouldn't have been an orchestrated revert to the "old" chain (a.k.a. an orchestrated 51% attack). I believe the market should have solved this on their own. Yes, it would have been a massive blow to the miners who didn't upgrade, but it's their fault for using a client that follows a different protocol. That would have reaffirmed that the software you use is your vote for which protocol to use.

You see, even the protocol isn't set in stone. If the majority of hashing power (or whatever non-full nodes) vote for a new protocol and use software that implements it, then that's the new bitcoin. That's what makes bitcoin _decentralized_.

Instead, we have one client, one source, one community. This is not decentralization.

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[WiW]

This is what ultimately makes bitcoin vulnerable to human imperfections. The press is going crazy with "bitcoin is not stable thanks to a software bug". How can we possibly expect people to trust the entire monetary system on one piece of software written by human beings?

I will point out that we're still in a very immature stage, and I believe these stuff will sort themselves out. But I just wanted to clarify how early a stage we're still in.

[boonies4u]

This is what ultimately makes bitcoin vulnerable to human imperfections. The press is going crazy with "bitcoin is not stable thanks to a software bug". How can we possibly expect people to trust the entire monetary system on one piece of software written by human beings?

I will point out that we're still in a very immature stage, and I believe these stuff will sort themselves out. But I just wanted to clarify how early a stage we're still in.

I'm mostly seeing commentary on how quickly bitcoin recovered.

[Gabi]

If the majority of hashing power

The majority of hashing power voted, and the vote was: rollback and revert to 0.7

[WiW]

I'm mostly seeing commentary on how quickly bitcoin recovered.

Like I said, the crash itself doesn't worry me. It's the immaturity of the protocol which currently has virtually only one client. This immaturity means two things: bitcoin does not yet fulfill it's promise as a decentralized currency and it's not ready for prime-time where software bugs can have such huge repercussions in the market.

If the majority of hashing power

The majority of hashing power voted, and the vote was: rollback and revert to 0.7

Fair point. But notice how easy it was to pull off this 51% attack. Without Gavin's decision making, the new chain would have taken and a totally different course of events would have taken place.

[markm]

By flash crash, do you mean a crash that is over in a flash? As exchange rates have been looking pretty normal to me, other than a bit of a dip that was over in a flash.

Oh we didn't get back to $49.xx yet? That is normal too, touch a nice high, someone gets cold feet, step down a little to prepare for a more leisurely assault of the heights, I don't see a problem.

-MarkM-

[Melbustus]

Of course, I believe there shouldn't have been an orchestrated revert to the "old" chain (a.k.a. an orchestrated 51% attack). I believe the market should have solved this on their own. Yes, it would have been a massive blow to the miners who didn't upgrade, but it's their fault for using a client that follows a different protocol. That would have reaffirmed that the software you use is your vote for which protocol to use.

Wow, do you even understand what happened?

The market *DID* solve this on its own. Calling what happened an "orchestrated 51% attack" is an awfully dramatic manipulative misinterpretation of events fit mainly for irrational "sky-is-falling" tinfoil-hatters.

Eleuthria switching BTC Guild back to v0.7 was the hash-power that broke the camels back, as it were. The chains were both at 40+%, and Eleuthria had enough hashing power to get v0.7 back over 50% if he switched from v0.8 to v0.7. That is NOT a 51% attack. Stop calling it that; it's just wrong.

[Melbustus]

I'm mostly seeing commentary on how quickly bitcoin recovered.

Without Gavin's decision making, the new chain would have taken and a totally different course of events would have taken place.

OMG! Read the f*cking IRC logs. Gavin's instinct was to NOT switch back to v0.7, but other people thought going with v0.7 was better, Gavin eventually agreed (as one of many relevant voices, and certainly not dominant), and the folks with the best input on the subject all gave the "ACK" for Eleuthria to go ahead and revert BTC Guild, which as I pointed out above, merely provided the marginal hashing power to get v0.7 over 50%.

[markm]

<tinfoil hat>

OMG it was a 10%-or-thereabouts attack! We always knew pools were a bad idea!

Just one pool can launch a 10%-or-so fork-merging attack! Somebody do something!

</tinfoil hat>

[Gavin Andresen]

Please stop the "Gavin's decision" meme, too:  I went with the in-the-moment consensus when it became clear that it was POSSIBLE to switch to the 0.7 fork.

And as Melbustus said:  that was only possible because the split was close to 50/50.  If more miners had already upgraded to 0.8, an alert would have been sent to non-0.8 peers telling them to either upgrade or shutdown until we could find a workaround for the problem.

[Littleshop]

I'm mostly seeing commentary on how quickly bitcoin recovered.

Without Gavin's decision making, the new chain would have taken and a totally different course of events would have taken place.

OMG! Read the f*cking IRC logs. Gavin's instinct was to NOT switch back to v0.7, but other people thought going with v0.7 was better, Gavin eventually agreed (as one of many relevant voices, and certainly not dominant), and the folks with the best input on the subject all gave the "ACK" for Eleuthria to go ahead and revert BTC Guild, which as I pointed out above, merely provided the marginal hashing power to get v0.7 over 50%.

It is called having an open mind as well.  Listening, analyzing and responding as new information is available instead of digging in ones heels.

I was very proud of how well all of the developers handled the situation and how even people with different opinions on some issues were able to put them aside for the best interest of the community. 

This event actually INCREASED my confidence in both Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community. 

[btcgriffin]

I agree that it is a big problem with bitcoin when one client dominate the market. If new client is not pooping up soon we will see start to end of bitcoin. If we hade 100 different clients than it wasn't easy to make a decision in a IRC channel with small team involved and with few people more active than other (It is not market , It is Centralized system or core team model).

[Melbustus]

I'm mostly seeing commentary on how quickly bitcoin recovered.

Without Gavin's decision making, the new chain would have taken and a totally different course of events would have taken place.

OMG! Read the f*cking IRC logs. Gavin's instinct was to NOT switch back to v0.7, but other people thought going with v0.7 was better, Gavin eventually agreed (as one of many relevant voices, and certainly not dominant), and the folks with the best input on the subject all gave the "ACK" for Eleuthria to go ahead and revert BTC Guild, which as I pointed out above, merely provided the marginal hashing power to get v0.7 over 50%.

It is called having an open mind as well.  Listening, analyzing and responding as new information is available instead of digging in ones heels.

I was very proud of how well all of the developers handled the situation and how even people with different opinions on some issues were able to put them aside for the best interest of the community. 

This event actually INCREASED my confidence in both Bitcoin and the Bitcoin community. 

+1. Well said.

[bg002h]

OP: you're right. But I think you miss the point of the Bitcoin project: to create a decentralized payment processing network. Your observation would be better put: "we're not done yet!"

[WiW]

I just want to emphasize, I have no criticism against anyone in the bitcoin community. I most certainly did not mean to make the particular point that I would call what happened as technically a 51% attack (and it wasn't a bad thing, it was simply the decision that was made at the time and bitcoin is still alive and kicking). Also, I did not mean to make Gavin look like a terrible dictator, only that I see it as there being a focal point where network-wide decisions are made (and this is not a bad thing, it's simply the way it is and bitcoin is still alive and kicking). Like I said, everything is fine and I believe bitcoin was designed in such a way that things will eventually all work out (until a competing currency takes it's place).

My point with this thread was to simply emphasize that the network is still young, as evident by the fact that this decentralized network still relies on a very strong (and excellently performing) developer community. I think they're doing a great job, but please note that as long as we need to rely on the developers of the single most dominant client, the network is still very immature.

The protocol is not yet a protocol if there's only one de-facto client using it. In this case, it's simply the client's implementation, not a protocol.

OP: you're right. But I think you miss the point of the Bitcoin project: to create a decentralized payment processing network. Your observation would be better put: "we're not done yet!"

Notice the title has a "yet" in it  

[Bitcoinpro]

The events of the latest software bug which catalyzed a massive 23% flashcrash, show us that bitcoin is not a protocol yet - it's still totally bootstrapped to the open source Satoshi client. One bug affects the entire network. It's not a protocol, it's whatever that piece of software determines it is.

This doesn't happen in any other p2p network that I know of. If there's a bug in some filesharing software, the whole network doesn't go into a panic. Only the users of *that* software have to deal with *their* problem.

Of course, I believe there shouldn't have been an orchestrated revert to the "old" chain (a.k.a. an orchestrated 51% attack). I believe the market should have solved this on their own. Yes, it would have been a massive blow to the miners who didn't upgrade, but it's their fault for using a client that follows a different protocol. That would have reaffirmed that the software you use is your vote for which protocol to use.

You see, even the protocol isn't set in stone. If the majority of hashing power (or whatever non-full nodes) vote for a new protocol and use software that implements it, then that's the new bitcoin. That's what makes bitcoin _decentralized_.

Instead, we have one client, one source, one community. This is not decentralization.

Wall Street Flash Crash

Thursday May 6, 2010 in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged about 1000 points (about 9%) only to recover those losses before the end of the trading day. It was the second largest point swing, 1,010.14 points, and the biggest one-day point decline, 998.5 points, on an intraday basis in Dow Jones Industrial Average history.

[hazek]

I believe the market should have solved this on their own.

Einstein, what do you think happened?  

Or did you see anyone holding a gun to the heads of miners forcing them to follow their orders?

You see, even the protocol isn't set in stone. If the majority of hashing power (or whatever non-full nodes) vote for a new protocol and use software that implements it, then that's the new bitcoin. That's what makes bitcoin _decentralized_.

You are misinformed.

Had many miners not switched back to 0.7 no one would have been forced to do anything, we would have just had two hard forks of the blockchain and those who favored the 0.7 fork could use that and those who favored the 0.8 fork could use that. Of course who knows what that would do to BitcoinA and BitcoinB and their usefulness but my point is that the quoted above is factually incorrect.

[whitenight639]

There is another threat suggesting the documentation and "formalisation" of the protocol, some of the devs are reluctant as it means lots of work lots and lots of documentation for something that will probably change dramatically over time and the fact that whoever writes the protocol is doing so as a small elite so to speak.

I think if it was atleast documented and not quite standardised but suggested then we could have an actual protocol instead of this situation where the original client code is the protocol.

If there was this documentation available it would attract more devs and would stop threads like this springing up, Clients would be able to be developed independently that are compatable with each other and bitcoin would prosper, if its documented people can review and comment on it even if they don't understand C++.

[johnyj]

I believe the market should have solved this on their own.

Einstein, what do you think happened?  

Or did you see anyone holding a gun to the heads of miners forcing them to follow their orders?

You see, even the protocol isn't set in stone. If the majority of hashing power (or whatever non-full nodes) vote for a new protocol and use software that implements it, then that's the new bitcoin. That's what makes bitcoin _decentralized_.

You are misinformed.

Had many miners not switched back to 0.7 no one would have been forced to do anything, we would have just had two hard forks of the blockchain and those who favored the 0.7 fork could use that and those who favored the 0.8 fork could use that. Of course who knows what that would do to BitcoinA and BitcoinB and their usefulness but my point is that the quoted above is factually incorrect.

So, like any government in the world, now we have the left wing and right wing, bitcoin users finally have a choice  

I'm still not very clear how this fork will affect the merchant, will their business transaction get random error or they can select which chain to use by simply switching to a different client version?

[benjamindees]

If there's a bug in some filesharing software, the whole network doesn't go into a panic. Only the users of *that* software have to deal with *their* problem.

That's what happened.