Moving towards user activated soft fork activation

[iCEBREAKER]

SHA256 Mining trustless distributed critical consensus is the most important (and the most resilient) point of resistance of Bitcoin, against the governments and the financial oligarchy.

Fixed it for you.  Bitcoin mining is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I wish you could understand the difference between

A. signaling readiness for a new feature, and
B. voting for a new features

I know it's all very subtle and you don't do nuance, but please stop spreading the lie that miners are in charge of Bitcoin.

They are not and never will be.  That's not how any of this works.

Just because there are armed guards in front of the bank it doesn't mean those armed guards make executive decisions for the bank.

They are just hired muscle and may be fired if they forget their place and get uppity.

Problem is, we don't have a police force that can lock these muscle men up if they were to turn on the bank and become bank robbers themselves. I guess we're stuck with paying them off unless we hire someone bigger and stronger.

We do have such a police force.  It's called 'the economic majority.'

A little learning is a dangerous thing, or so they say.

So tell me iCE, whats the difference between

A. Acquiescence

and

B. Engagement

LOL what's the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground?   

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[tonymidlee]

Seems the only logical choice now since BU  attack is so close.  Oh yes, lets code the UASF and  PoW  change HF at the same time and get rid of those MFkers all at once.

You are fired!

[pamparam]

The biggest problems for BTC and all crypto currency:

1. Its centralized. It will never be a decentralized system until all mining process will be as easy as downloading your bitcoin core wallet. Actually, it should be done like this: you can activate mining by clicking one button in your wallet. Now still the whole bitcoin thing is understandable only to small percentage of people in the world, and mining is only possible to those who are advanced level in tech and programming. If BTC has a vision to be better and more popular than fiat, it should be made much more easier to use and to mine. (Soon the whole mining power will be in few hands and it will no longer be different from fiat).

2. Voting power should be not only in miners hands, but in ordinary bitcoins users too. Now BTC is facing the problem that it is slowly transforming to the ordinary money system, where the whole power have federal reserve bank, and here the control is slowly taken by big mining pools and wealthy BTC holders. They want to make decisions to the rest of the users, because they think they can make better decisions.

The whole situation sucks, and the current path of BTC is wrong. Ordinary user with his wallet, should be a miner too, mining rewards should be split among everyone fairly, all have the voting power.

[tomkat]

The biggest problems for BTC and all crypto currency:

1. Its centralized. It will never be a decentralized system until all mining process will be as easy as downloading your bitcoin core wallet. Actually, it should be done like this: you can activate mining by clicking one button in your wallet. Now still the whole bitcoin thing is understandable only to small percentage of people in the world, and mining is only possible to those who are advanced level in tech and programming. If BTC has a vision to be better and more popular than fiat, it should be made much more easier to use and to mine. (Soon the whole mining power will be in few hands and it will no longer be different from fiat).

2. Voting power should be not only in miners hands, but in ordinary bitcoins users too. Now BTC is facing the problem that it is slowly transforming to the ordinary money system, where the whole power have federal reserve bank, and here the control is slowly taken by big mining pools and wealthy BTC holders. They want to make decisions to the rest of the users, because they think they can make better decisions.

The whole situation sucks, and the current path of BTC is wrong. Ordinary user with his wallet, should be a miner too, mining rewards should be split among everyone fairly, all have the voting power.

Well, I can understand your pain, and how nice would it be to go back in time and have yet another chance to mine easy BTC when the price was $1 or even less, but unfortunately it's old good 2017 :-) However, if you had that chance again, and knew nothing of what you know today, would you really be interested in Satohi's idea?

[pamparam]

The biggest problems for BTC and all crypto currency:

1. Its centralized. It will never be a decentralized system until all mining process will be as easy as downloading your bitcoin core wallet. Actually, it should be done like this: you can activate mining by clicking one button in your wallet. Now still the whole bitcoin thing is understandable only to small percentage of people in the world, and mining is only possible to those who are advanced level in tech and programming. If BTC has a vision to be better and more popular than fiat, it should be made much more easier to use and to mine. (Soon the whole mining power will be in few hands and it will no longer be different from fiat).

2. Voting power should be not only in miners hands, but in ordinary bitcoins users too. Now BTC is facing the problem that it is slowly transforming to the ordinary money system, where the whole power have federal reserve bank, and here the control is slowly taken by big mining pools and wealthy BTC holders. They want to make decisions to the rest of the users, because they think they can make better decisions.

The whole situation sucks, and the current path of BTC is wrong. Ordinary user with his wallet, should be a miner too, mining rewards should be split among everyone fairly, all have the voting power.

Well, I can understand your pain, and how nice would it be to go back in time and have yet another chance to mine easy BTC when the price was $1 or even less, but unfortunately it's old good 2017 :-) However, if you had that chance again, and knew nothing of what you know today, would you really be interested in Satohi's idea?

You missed my point. If the mining process from the begining would have been easier, like downloading the wallet and pressing button to start it, now we would have really decentralized coin. But from the begining all things related to BTC is too difficult for ordinary people to adopt it.

[tomkat]

The biggest problems for BTC and all crypto currency:

1. Its centralized. It will never be a decentralized system until all mining process will be as easy as downloading your bitcoin core wallet. Actually, it should be done like this: you can activate mining by clicking one button in your wallet. Now still the whole bitcoin thing is understandable only to small percentage of people in the world, and mining is only possible to those who are advanced level in tech and programming. If BTC has a vision to be better and more popular than fiat, it should be made much more easier to use and to mine. (Soon the whole mining power will be in few hands and it will no longer be different from fiat).

2. Voting power should be not only in miners hands, but in ordinary bitcoins users too. Now BTC is facing the problem that it is slowly transforming to the ordinary money system, where the whole power have federal reserve bank, and here the control is slowly taken by big mining pools and wealthy BTC holders. They want to make decisions to the rest of the users, because they think they can make better decisions.

The whole situation sucks, and the current path of BTC is wrong. Ordinary user with his wallet, should be a miner too, mining rewards should be split among everyone fairly, all have the voting power.

Well, I can understand your pain, and how nice would it be to go back in time and have yet another chance to mine easy BTC when the price was $1 or even less, but unfortunately it's old good 2017 :-) However, if you had that chance again, and knew nothing of what you know today, would you really be interested in Satohi's idea?

You missed my point. If the mining process from the begining would have been easier, like downloading the wallet and pressing button to start it, now we would have really decentralized coin. But from the begining all things related to BTC is too difficult for ordinary people to adopt it.

The beginnings of any technology is difficult for ordinary people. Look at Windows 3.11, or Windows 95 and so on. Do you remember how difficult it was to install device drivers back in late 90's? And now you don't even bother about it in modern Windows or Linux distros.

[piotr_n]

You missed my point. If the mining process from the begining would have been easier, like downloading the wallet and pressing button to start it, now we would have really decentralized coin. But from the begining all things related to BTC is too difficult for ordinary people to adopt it.

Ech, you kids...

Believe me or not, but the mining process was that easy at the beginning.
You had to check the option "generate coins" in the pop-up menu and they'd sometimes just appear in your wallet.

But that times are long gone. Now you need a bloody power plant to compete on this market.
Nobody could have stopped it and I seriously doubt anyone will be able to...
It's a mining arm race and nobody is really in control.

Which brings us back to the topic: if anyone actually tries to change the bitcoin protocol while not having the mining majority, because he thinks that "users majority" or "economic majority" is just enough, this will be his funeral.
Or in other words, one more time: UASF without mining majority can never succeed, because it's against the nature of bitcoin.
Anyone who doesn't understand this simple fact is not really a very smart bitcoin developer.

[tomkat]

You missed my point. If the mining process from the begining would have been easier, like downloading the wallet and pressing button to start it, now we would have really decentralized coin. But from the begining all things related to BTC is too difficult for ordinary people to adopt it.

Ech, you kids...

Believe me or not, but the mining process was that easy at the beginning.
You had to check the option "generate coins" in the pop-up menu and they'd sometimes just appear in your wallet.

But that times are long gone. Now you need a bloody power plant to compete on this market.
Nobody could have stopped it and I seriously doubt anyone will be able to...
It's a mining arm race and nobody is really in control.

Which brings us back to the topic: if anyone actually tries to change the bitcoin protocol while not having the mining majority, because he thinks that "users majority" or "economic majority" is just enough, this will be his funeral.
Or in other words, one more time: UASF without mining majority can never succeed, because it's against the nature of bitcoin.
Anyone who doesn't understand this simple fact is not really a very smart bitcoin developer.

Core's behavior is really strange to me. Those guys are smarter than most of the rest of the world, so it's obvious they know how it all works, and what will be the result of going to war with miners, but somehow they're limited to their current stance. Normally, you could expect reasonable discussion with arguments on both sides, and finally a compromise, but surprisingly it's not happening for some reason. Usually, if you have no idea what something is all about, or why something obvious isn't happening, then it's probably about money and/or power.

[piotr_n]

I think they are just bluffing - both sides.
 One side  claiming that it has enough hash power and interest to enforce controversial protocol changes.
 The other side claiming that bitcoin can either go without the mining or continue to exist with a different POW function.
Both sides are talking bullshit and on both sides you have important people who know it very well, but won't admit that it's only bluffing.
Instead they keep letting their minions to spread FUD and escalate havoc even further.

It's actually very sad to watch how both the parties are playing some pathetic politics which aren't going to change anything about bitcoin, except its perception among people who don't understand it.

[classicsucks]

I think they are just bluffing - both sides.

Instead they keep letting their minions to spread FUD and escalate havoc even further.

It's actually very sad to watch how both the parties are playing some pathetic politics which aren't going to change anything about bitcoin, except its perception among people who don't understand it.

FUD is how you motivate people in the tech centers of the world. Think of how much fear they feel from the propaganda they watch every day, showing terror attacks. Fear works.

UASF was pathetic, a non-starter. Hacking Unlimited was a cheap shot, but it worked. Unlimited's 40% mining support is starting to be a major factor. Core is dead silent and dead set on pumping Segwit, which is on life support.

Luckily this ugly blocksize struggle is not playing out too much in the mainstream. It's just too complicated for them.

[piotr_n]

Yes, fear - I get it.
But FUD can't change bitcoin protocol.
Only majority of miners can do that.

The 40% is not so much disturbing if you know that each single one of them is voting to keep the block size limited to 1MB - nobody's pointing that out.
If it is a political statement, you should read it: we don't like the core, but we want to keep the protocol as is (no fork)

However the disturbing part is that all this fear / FUD about moving the miners out of the business, connected with the price drop must surely have a negative effect on new investments into mining infrastructure. Which means it gets easier to actually build up a single enterprise that controls 50% of the hashrate.

[conspirosphere.tk]

Or in other words, one more time: UASF without mining majority can never succeed, because it's against the nature of bitcoin.
Anyone who doesn't understand this simple fact is not really a very smart bitcoin developer.

Hey Piotr, welcome back. I still miss your Goxbot. Why don't you make a new one for some major exchange?

Imho what is wrong with Bitcoin is that there are no incentives for full nodes. If a part (or all, why not) of the Tx fees where distributed to full nodes (maybe according the tx relayed by each one) we would have a much stronger network of some order of magnitudes more full nodes. Moreover the game would be much more fair since anyone with a consumer grade puter could gain like in the good old times.

I already made this same proposal here years ago but nobody cared. Maybe now someone will?

[hv_]

Or in other words, one more time: UASF without mining majority can never succeed, because it's against the nature of bitcoin.
Anyone who doesn't understand this simple fact is not really a very smart bitcoin developer.

Hey Piotr, welcome back. I still miss your Goxbot. Why don't you make a new one for some major exchange?

Imho what is wrong with Bitcoin is that there are no incentives for full nodes. If a part (or all, why not) of the Tx fees where distributed to full nodes (maybe according the tx relayed by each one) we would have a much stronger network of some order of magnitudes more full nodes. Moreover the game would be much more fair since anyone with a consumer grade puter could gain like in the good old times.

I already made this same proposal here years ago but nobody cared. Maybe now someone will?

In the very beginning, miners where full nodes.  They ve just overoptimized things and now small user nodes think they control bitcoin. I m very sure miners have to rerun more nodes and bitcoin is back.

[da2ce7]

UASF is a wonderful tool in today's bitcoin political environment, I have no reason to believe it is unsafe and will not work as specified.

[tomkat]

I think they are just bluffing - both sides.

Maybe, but if they are, it cannot last forever. The discussion is too long, and it's time for solution(s).
Bitcoin is losing market share quickly, and even the tx backlog is not that big recently.
Apparently many users already started using other coins for their operations.

[piotr_n]

I think they are just bluffing - both sides.

Maybe, but if they are, it cannot last forever. The discussion is too long, and it's time for solution(s).
Bitcoin is losing market share quickly, and even the tx backlog is not that big recently.
Apparently many users already started using other coins for their operations.

I don't think there will be any solutions.
The miners votes has been too polarized.
They've seen how some people were trying to fuck them.
It won't be easy now to regain the lost trust - they will be far more skeptical in the future.

IMHO the blockchain protocol will be fixed for years to come.  
You can forget about the core's fancy road map - it's not gonna happen, unless for an altcoin.
Which may actually not be such a bad thing.
It can surely use some stability now, after all these shit and havoc of a two competing forks just about to come... Each one of them 'to fix bitcoin' 

Bitcoin doesn't need fixing, but some people should definitely learn more respect towards it.

[Carlton Banks]

UASF is a wonderful tool in today's bitcoin political environment, I have no reason to believe it is unsafe and will not work as specified.

I prefer the Flag Day approach, precisely because of the toxic political environment you're referring to (or at least I'm calling it toxic). But it's arguably UASF in a different guise, although "user activated" is a little of a misnomer for Flag Day activation.

[da2ce7]

UASF is a wonderful tool in today's bitcoin political environment, I have no reason to believe it is unsafe and will not work as specified.

I prefer the Flag Day approach, precisely because of the toxic political environment you're referring to (or at least I'm calling it toxic). But it's arguably UASF in a different guise, although "user activated" is a little of a misnomer for Flag Day activation.

Any sane UASF will use a flag-day for the activation.

[classicsucks]

Yes, fear - I get it.
But FUD can't change bitcoin protocol.
Only majority of miners can do that.

The 40% is not so much disturbing if you know that each single one of them is voting to keep the block size limited to 1MB - nobody's pointing that out.
If it is a political statement, you should read it: we don't like the core, but we want to keep the protocol as is (no fork)

However the disturbing part is that all this fear / FUD about moving the miners out of the business, connected with the price drop must surely have a negative effect on new investments into mining infrastructure. Which means it gets easier to actually build up a single enterprise that controls 50% of the hashrate.

I agree that BU signalling is a statement of opposition to Core. Core doesn't get it, and continues to alienate people who are undecided, and continues to hype the dead Segwit. The FUD is a desperate attempt to scare people into line with Core. It's not working.

The net result is flight into alts. Good job Core. You could've upped the blocksize 4 years ago. Now you're committing suicide in a spectacular show of drama.

[piotr_n]

I agree that BU signalling is a statement of opposition to Core. Core doesn't get it, and continues to alienate people who are undecided, and continues to hype the dead Segwit. The FUD is a desperate attempt to scare people into line with Core. It's not working.

That's probably a pretty accurate description of what's going on.