Post your SegWit questions here - open discussion - big week for Bitcoin!

[MoinCoin]

First of all, you always forget one of the most important tasks miners have to follow, it is the Nash equilibrium. This is source for major security. From this comes all the rest you numbered down.

That is even better for decentralized off-chain, because the Nash-Equilibrium for a 2way payment channel is trivial.
2 parties
cheat/try to gain an advantage = loose everything

You repeatedly used this word, however you always fail to show, how a Nash-Equilibrium is even altered.

Back to topic:
IMHO the incremental increase in capacity from segwit adoption is a good thing, because we have no disruptive capacity event.

Big blocks is indeed a high risk strategy.
Segwit IMHO not.

2nd layers will have time to evolve.

[versprichnix]

That is even better for decentralized off-chain, because the Nash-Equilibrium for a 2way payment channel is trivial.
2 parties
cheat/try to gain an advantage = loose everything

Could my grandma cheat accidentally?

[hv_]

First of all, you always forget one of the most important tasks miners have to follow, it is the Nash equilibrium. This is source for major security. From this comes all the rest you numbered down.

That is even better for decentralized off-chain, because the Nash-Equilibrium for a 2way payment channel is trivial.
2 parties
cheat/try to gain an advantage = loose everything

You repeatedly used this word, however you always fail to show, how a Nash-Equilibrium is even altered.

Back to topic:
IMHO the incremental increase in capacity from segwit adoption is a good thing, because we have no disruptive capacity event.

Big blocks is indeed a high risk strategy.
Segwit IMHO not.

2nd layers will have time to evolve.

Your strong /s risk ana finally convinced me, but  you ll simply run out of time.

[JayJuanGee]

Still SW looks not like a good Scaling Work  rather like a Split Wedge  

You mean that if no one runs segwit, then it is not going to do anything?

I think that a lot of folks will just run segwit and attempt to take advantage of its various features.  I agree that we have to see how it plays out, but if we do not really have sophisticated technical knowledge then it might take a bit of time to see whether there are any concrete applications that are built upon segwit that empowers the whole bitcoin system?

Yep - I guess in the end we want the same thing - get Bitcoin around the world - to all poor and rich.

My concerns esp with SW are

- it takes really longer time to get into proper and wished scaling mode (also achow101 says this upthread) - we could lose the race with poor Asian's BCH

If bitcoin cash is better, then so fucking what?  Let it be, and then we will all migrate over to that; however, the odds seem to be quite against bitcoin cash being better because they barely have a development team and they are already quite prone with a historical practice of fucking up things - and cannot really fault them except for the fact that they are trying to rush things without enough critical peer review (that critical peer review is already built into core's open system of participation as long as you know what the fuck you are talking about you can participate in core, but bitcoin cash is likely desperate and has a very small team of developers (so far) )

- it is complex code (this is a reason for ^) - on-chain's safety (-SW)  we know for 8+ year, why give that away?

I don't know what the fuck you are talking about.  Seg wit is already agreed to and it is getting locked in and going active.  Why are you fighting a done deal?  Within segwit gotta put it to work and to see how well it works, and likely it is going to be a great asset to bitcoin that is not going to be in need to be rolled back, but if there happens to be some problematic issue with seg wit then there could be propositions to roll it back.  Your mere assertions of supposed complexity, seems to be just a talking point rather than what any non-technical person needs to do or know.  And, from my understanding, once seg wit is activated, folks can run seg wit or not run seg wit.. .. their choice.

- it is sold to open many 2nd layer applications, but if there is only one (related to bitcoin for outer world!) is crashing / scam you name it -> entire Bitcoin gets the shit in the world press you name it  - do we want to risk Bitcoins entire reputation because a stupid 2nd layer shit is failing hard? Who does professional due-diligence here ?

what the fuck we give a shit about this stuff.  In any decentralized system there are going to be all kinds of actors doing whatever the fuck they want.  Some will be working for good, some for bad, and hopefully in the end, it all works out in the wash and our coins are secure.  As far as reputation, people can chose to use bitcoin or not use it, depending on if they see utility in it.  And if they don't like bitcoin, then they can find something else that they prefer, including traditional credit cards and banking... so yeah systems evolve and alt coins develop and people chose what they want to use based on what's available to them and based on whether they think it is going to work for them, personally.

- miners don't like it (this might b a reason ^ since all miners will suffer from that)

- too much splitting of community ^^^^

Well, seem that in recent times, miners have been striving to employ their mining politically, but there still is no one "miners don't like."  Yet, even if it is true that "miners don't like" then they can set up their mining in different ways or remove their hashing power.  There are a lot of different miner set ups, so we cannot really say exactly what they are going to do and what they like and don't like because the main thing is how they chose to direct their hashing power - including in recent times, some miners had chosen to direct their hashing power towards attacking an spamming the bitcoin blockchain, and even though they seem to have let up in recent weeks, they certainly could resume this kind of spamming in the near future.. so developers are likely continuing to think about ways to keep bitcoin robust in spite of some miners choosing to direct their hash power towards spamming.   

[JayJuanGee]

- it is sold to open many 2nd layer applications, but if there is only one (related to bitcoin for outer world!) is crashing / scam you name it -> entire Bitcoin gets the shit in the world press you name it  - do we want to risk Bitcoins entire reputation because a stupid 2nd layer shit is failing hard? Who does professional due-diligence here ?

That's not how 2nd layer scaling solutions work. They are all decentralized, not some central thing that can crash or scam or whatever.

In the german subforum i explained this fact to hv_ numerous times - he has his own beliefs.
Even if it were a centralized payment channel system - hub cannot steal your bitcoins.

"He has his own beliefs" because he is not really trying to engage in any kind of meaningful discussion, but is just in the practice of spreading disinformation based on improbablistic speculation.

[MoinCoin]

Your strong /s risk ana finally convinced me, but  you ll simply run out of time.

Wow - just throwing words around does not help your position.
Be specific - show the weaknesses, but i doubt you can.

For example:
Decentralized 2nd Layer Solutions have a stable Nash-Equilibrium.
The Nash-Equilibrium of Bitcoin might get unstable with Bitcoin Cash or bigger blocks, because a miner could gain an advantage by producing big blocks with nonsense data, if the miner knows that other miners/pools will have difficulties processing the bigger blocks.

[MoinCoin]

Question:
When will we see BIP173 Base32 address format for native v0-16 witness outputs in Production-Software?

[-ck]

And miners wouldn't like increasing the block size either because that will lower the fees they gather in the short term. It would also mean that their nodes (which I'm told that many use fairly low end hardware) could be very negatively effected by various exhaustion attacks that come with larger blocks. So really miners want smaller blocks, not larger blocks.

That's not entirely true. Lots of mining entities want bigger blocks because $ignorance and $stupidity. They got it into their head that it was the best way to earn more fees long term and have been unable to believe anything else since.

[hv_]

And miners wouldn't like increasing the block size either because that will lower the fees they gather in the short term. It would also mean that their nodes (which I'm told that many use fairly low end hardware) could be very negatively effected by various exhaustion attacks that come with larger blocks. So really miners want smaller blocks, not larger blocks.

That's not entirely true. Lots of mining entities want bigger blocks because $ignorance and $stupidity. They got it into their head that it was the best way to earn more fees long term and have been unable to believe anything else since.

Isn't there just a 'optimal' blocksize that is derived in a non linear optimization process, defined by the border conditions the real world implements?

[Thirdspace]

I've been reading a lot discussion threads about the ongoing changes on bitcoin.
Many mentioned bip91, bip141, bip148 and etc...
BIP is short from Bitcoin Improvement Procedure, do I get this right?
and where can I read all the specs/details on each BIP
I've been trying to find a thread explaining them, but seems elusive to find for me

[HTracer]

I've been reading a lot discussion threads about the ongoing changes on bitcoin.
Many mentioned bip91, bip141, bip148 and etc...
BIP is short from Bitcoin Improvement Procedure, do I get this right?
and where can I read all the specs/details on each BIP
I've been trying to find a thread explaining them, but seems elusive to find for me

Bitcoin Improvement Proposals. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips

[hv_]

Your strong /s risk ana finally convinced me, but  you ll simply run out of time.

Wow - just throwing words around does not help your position.
Be specific - show the weaknesses, but i doubt you can.

For example:
Decentralized 2nd Layer Solutions have a stable Nash-Equilibrium.
The Nash-Equilibrium of Bitcoin might get unstable with Bitcoin Cash or bigger blocks, because a miner could gain an advantage by producing big blocks with nonsense data, if the miner knows that other miners/pools will have difficulties processing the bigger blocks.

How do you ensure that your off chain tx is settled on chain?

You finally need a miner to mine this specific tx. The miner's game is on chain. Could you think of miners might skip your tx despite a very high fee you provide? Just i.o.to breake your off chain 'reputation' into peaces? This is esp announced by some SW hating miners already and might hit your off chain business at least if your tx is easy to detect as a SW one.

[Blockchain Mechanic]

The greatest danger now is not what solution actually ends up being chosen, it is actually the motivations behind those who propose that solution. This is true not only for core, but all proposed solutions.

You come off as a bit pie in the sky with your fairly lengthy attempt at a justification of bitcoin based on some supposed vision of satoshi 8 years ago.

The fact of the matter is that seg wit has already been chosen and has been in the works for a couple of years and appears to be in the final stages of locking in then soon thereafter activation, so your statement "what solution actually ends up being chosen" is either out of touch with actual facts and/r is striving to paint bitcoin to be something that it is not likely - based on some narrow preference that you have and possibly some other out of touch folks from r/btc.

You come off as someone who can't be objective, take a step back, don't choose sides and look at the situation for what it is. I simply laid out the situation IMO, feel free to take from it what you will. And BTW satoshi's supposed vision is not as supposed as you would like the uninitiated to believe, it's fact backed up by his/their own words. And in reality i could give two hoots whose vision it is, what i actually care about is whether it makes sense. In short, certain people have chosen to forego the initial scaling plan and chosen to provide their own solution, if it  works, great, if not, we are all screwed, and that leaves the question still of what their motivations are.

[JayJuanGee]

The greatest danger now is not what solution actually ends up being chosen, it is actually the motivations behind those who propose that solution. This is true not only for core, but all proposed solutions.

You come off as a bit pie in the sky with your fairly lengthy attempt at a justification of bitcoin based on some supposed vision of satoshi 8 years ago.

The fact of the matter is that seg wit has already been chosen and has been in the works for a couple of years and appears to be in the final stages of locking in then soon thereafter activation, so your statement "what solution actually ends up being chosen" is either out of touch with actual facts and/r is striving to paint bitcoin to be something that it is not likely - based on some narrow preference that you have and possibly some other out of touch folks from r/btc.

You come off as someone who can't be objective, take a step back, don't choose sides and look at the situation for what it is. I simply laid out the situation IMO, feel free to take from it what you will. And BTW satoshi's supposed vision is not as supposed as you would like the uninitiated to believe, it's fact backed up by his/their own words. And in reality i could give two hoots whose vision it is, what i actually care about is whether it makes sense. In short, certain people have chosen to forego the initial scaling plan and chosen to provide their own solution, if it  works, great, if not, we are all screwed, and that leaves the question still of what their motivations are.

You keep going on about some supposed vision that is not in line with what is going on and suggest that some small minority is controlling the direction of bitcoin, which is nonsensical.  The fact of the matter is that seg wit has consensus and broad support in  spite of whiner big blockers wanting to sabotage bitcoin with some narrower and self-imposed direction by suggesting that they are appealing to some broader vision, when they are not.  They neither have consensus nor do they have factual or logical support for their position that is sufficient enough to garner anything close to consensus.  That is part of the reason that they are imposing a hardfork rather than attempting to work within bitcoin's current governance mechanism.

[Blockchain Mechanic]

The greatest danger now is not what solution actually ends up being chosen, it is actually the motivations behind those who propose that solution. This is true not only for core, but all proposed solutions.

You come off as a bit pie in the sky with your fairly lengthy attempt at a justification of bitcoin based on some supposed vision of satoshi 8 years ago.

The fact of the matter is that seg wit has already been chosen and has been in the works for a couple of years and appears to be in the final stages of locking in then soon thereafter activation, so your statement "what solution actually ends up being chosen" is either out of touch with actual facts and/r is striving to paint bitcoin to be something that it is not likely - based on some narrow preference that you have and possibly some other out of touch folks from r/btc.

You come off as someone who can't be objective, take a step back, don't choose sides and look at the situation for what it is. I simply laid out the situation IMO, feel free to take from it what you will. And BTW satoshi's supposed vision is not as supposed as you would like the uninitiated to believe, it's fact backed up by his/their own words. And in reality i could give two hoots whose vision it is, what i actually care about is whether it makes sense. In short, certain people have chosen to forego the initial scaling plan and chosen to provide their own solution, if it  works, great, if not, we are all screwed, and that leaves the question still of what their motivations are.

You keep going on about some supposed vision that is not in line with what is going on and suggest that some small minority is controlling the direction of bitcoin, which is nonsensical.  The fact of the matter is that seg wit has consensus and broad support in  spite of whiner big blockers wanting to sabotage bitcoin with some narrower and self-imposed direction by suggesting that they are appealing to some broader vision, when they are not.  They neither have consensus nor do they have factual or logical support for their position that is sufficient enough to garner anything close to consensus.  That is part of the reason that they are imposing a hardfork rather than attempting to work within bitcoin's current governance mechanism.

Just stop ok ? 1) You brought up this "vision"  2) If segwit had consensus this discussion would not exist

You are really pushing this "narrow self-imposed" thing hard, but unfortunately , that's not what is going on here. The more you go on , the more you sound like a shill. All i did was point out what i know and state my opinion, pray tell, what are you doing ?

[JayJuanGee]

The greatest danger now is not what solution actually ends up being chosen, it is actually the motivations behind those who propose that solution. This is true not only for core, but all proposed solutions.

You come off as a bit pie in the sky with your fairly lengthy attempt at a justification of bitcoin based on some supposed vision of satoshi 8 years ago.

The fact of the matter is that seg wit has already been chosen and has been in the works for a couple of years and appears to be in the final stages of locking in then soon thereafter activation, so your statement "what solution actually ends up being chosen" is either out of touch with actual facts and/r is striving to paint bitcoin to be something that it is not likely - based on some narrow preference that you have and possibly some other out of touch folks from r/btc.

You come off as someone who can't be objective, take a step back, don't choose sides and look at the situation for what it is. I simply laid out the situation IMO, feel free to take from it what you will. And BTW satoshi's supposed vision is not as supposed as you would like the uninitiated to believe, it's fact backed up by his/their own words. And in reality i could give two hoots whose vision it is, what i actually care about is whether it makes sense. In short, certain people have chosen to forego the initial scaling plan and chosen to provide their own solution, if it  works, great, if not, we are all screwed, and that leaves the question still of what their motivations are.

You keep going on about some supposed vision that is not in line with what is going on and suggest that some small minority is controlling the direction of bitcoin, which is nonsensical.  The fact of the matter is that seg wit has consensus and broad support in  spite of whiner big blockers wanting to sabotage bitcoin with some narrower and self-imposed direction by suggesting that they are appealing to some broader vision, when they are not.  They neither have consensus nor do they have factual or logical support for their position that is sufficient enough to garner anything close to consensus.  That is part of the reason that they are imposing a hardfork rather than attempting to work within bitcoin's current governance mechanism.

Just stop ok ? 1) You brought up this "vision"  2) If segwit had consensus this discussion would not exist

You are really pushing this "narrow self-imposed" thing hard, but unfortunately , that's not what is going on here. The more you go on , the more you sound like a shill. All i did was point out what i know and state my opinion, pray tell, what are you doing ?

Yeah, right.  You are giving way too much credence to a group of whiner renegades, to suggest that they had some kind of meaningful following.

[nathan_24]

Hi! I am reading about segwit and I have several questions about it.

1) I've read that a segwit transaction cannot spend non-segwit utxos. Is this correct? How can you then create your first segwit transaction, if you only have non-segwit utxos? I am sure I am missing something there.
2) Is the new segwit serialization format really backwards compatible? I have been looking at it and I am pretty sure that wallets that do not understand segwit will not be able to recognize a segwit transaction, and thus, they might think that the block is invalid for including non-standard transactions?
3) I also read that there will now be two ways of identifying transactions, the txid (which is the hash of the transaction serialized the old way) and the wtxid (the hash of the transaction serialized as segwit). When signing the transactions, do you also use the old serialization to calculate the hash you need to sign? or do you serialize it as segwit? (in which case, again, old wallets would not be able to verify the signature).
4) If the txid included in the merkle tree is not the wtxid, then, how can you tell if a transaction is segwit or not when it is presented to you using the old serialization?

Thanks a lot in advance!

[achow101]

1) I've read that a segwit transaction cannot spend non-segwit utxos. Is this correct? How can you then create your first segwit transaction, if you only have non-segwit utxos? I am sure I am missing something there.

You send your coins back to yourself. So you will spend your non-segwit utxos and create segwit utxos, all of which you control.

2) Is the new segwit serialization format really backwards compatible? I have been looking at it and I am pretty sure that wallets that do not understand segwit will not be able to recognize a segwit transaction,

Yes, it is. It is because of the way they are requested and sent. Transactions are only sent with the witness serialization if that is what was requested. They must use MSG_WITNESS_TX and MST_WITNESS_BLOCK to get transactions in segwit format. Old nodes use MSG_TX and MSG_BLOCK so they receive the non-segwit format.

and thus, they might think that the block is invalid for including non-standard transactions?

Blocks that contain non-standard transactions are not invalid. Non-standardness does not mean that the transaction is invalid

3) I also read that there will now be two ways of identifying transactions, the txid (which is the hash of the transaction serialized the old way) and the wtxid (the hash of the transaction serialized as segwit). When signing the transactions, do you also use the old serialization to calculate the hash you need to sign? or do you serialize it as segwit? (in which case, again, old wallets would not be able to verify the signature).

Serializing transactions to be signed is different from network serialization. Segwit will also change this serialization too but for segit utxos only. Old nodes cannot validate segwit transactions anyways since they won't even receive the signatures.

The txid and wtxid are unrelated to sighash serialization. Txid will still be the identifier, wtxid is only used for the witness commitment.

4) If the txid included in the merkle tree is not the wtxid, then, how can you tell if a transaction is segwit or not when it is presented to you using the old serialization?

You look at the input scriptsig and the utxo being spent. Segwit utxos have a specific format, and if the utxo has the same format pattern as segwit, then it is considered a segwit utxo and must be spent as one.

[nathan_24]

Thank you very very much achow101. You helped me a lot with your reply

[OmegaStarScream]

I had plans to buy a Trezor and I came across their blog[1] post regarding Litecoin SegWit new addresses. Do I understand from this that bitcoin is going to have addresses that start with other then "1" and "3" as well? If that's the case, is it possible to choose? or the new addresses are going to be the only ones (means the old will be invalid)

[1] https://blog.trezor.io/litecoins-new-p2sh-segwit-addresses-843633e3e707