Moving towards user activated soft fork activation

[piotr_n]

Is everybody fine here with the reduced hashpower == security?

If major miners dont follow this what happens to the block time at beginning?

How safe are the first blocks after the activation?

No, we are not fine with these things.
We just try to not waste any more energy on repeating things that are obvious.

UASF is not going to work.
When the kids "activate" it by tweaking their nodes' software, the bitcoin network isn't even going to shrug on it - it's going to be that meaningless.

[Carlton Banks]

Hmmmm, not what I thought it was (BIP148). If that's the case, it won't work as a soft-fork, it's a Segwit hard-fork, UAHF not UASF.

At first sight it seemed to me indistinguishable from a hardfork. But it isn't a hardfork. Unupgraded nodes remain compatible, they don't need to upgrade. As soon as economic majority forces miners to upgrade, unupgraded regular users have nothing to worry about.

Well, maybe a better description would be as a hybrid soft & hard fork. Miners are essentially hardforked, and regular non-mining nodes are soft-forked.

I'm pretty sure shaolinfry added the legacy-block version orphaning since the initial draft, I read it carefully when I did.


If this got the users' support, then it's no less radical than my previous thoughts on getting Segwit activated by direct user action, I'm willing to promote the idea of orphaning blocks indicating BU strings (although that's perhaps becoming less necessary now that users have come out against it, I still consider it a risk that BU could hardfork as an attack without user support)

So maybe this is not so bad. With BU pools and miners falling, perhaps BIP148 could work to galvanise support for Segwit activation by the miners before users start using a BIP148 client to force the miners' hands. I'd probably use a BIP148 client if shaolinfry released it, but any released binary needs gitian signatures, and that involves such an endorsement from known developers. achow101 stated that Core devs are majority opposed to BIP148, and I guess I can see why in a way. We'll have to wait as everyone thinks it over some more, it would be constructive if actual comments from the devs were forthcoming on this (as it seems they are short on ideas as to what to do, other than "nothing")

[hv_]

Is everybody fine here with the reduced hashpower == security?

If major miners dont follow this what happens to the block time at beginning?

How safe are the first blocks after the activation?

No, we are not fine with these things.
We just try to not waste any more energy on repeating things that are obvious.

UASF is not going to work.
When the kids "activate" it by tweaking their nodes' software, the bitcoin network isn't even going to shrug on it - it's going to be that meaningless.

Mehh, you again. Should not answer all stuff that clear.

I wanna see some UASF coins falling...

 

[piotr_n]

Sorry.

When I used to work the managers always hated me for killing their 'great' ideas. And they could also never realize that I was actually doing them a favor, trying to advance  the  project by the months they'd have lost.  

I also want to see UASF failing, but considering that no bitcoin celebrity is willing to put his reputation behind this idea, it has no chance to turn into any kind of exciting failure. So all we can do now is take a piss out of some kids.

[stdset]

Is everybody fine here with the reduced hashpower == security?

No pain no gain.

If major miners dont follow this what happens to the block time at beginning?

It will increase.

How safe are the first blocks after the activation?

If economic majority supports UASF, even first UASF blocks are reasonably safe. Non-UASF blocks aren't safe at all, even if mining majority doesn't support UASF in the beginning.

[hv_]

Is everybody fine here with the reduced hashpower == security?

No pain no gain.

If major miners dont follow this what happens to the block time at beginning?

It will increase.

How safe are the first blocks after the activation?

If economic majority supports UASF, even first UASF blocks are reasonably safe. Non-UASF blocks aren't safe at all, even if mining majority doesn't support UASF in the beginning.

You start using exact same arguments as people that want HF and are willing to risk even more.

I wish you good luck but running into that big risk open eyed looks very desparate little boy.

[stdset]

You start using exact same arguments as people that want HF and are willing to risk even more.

I wish you good luck but running into that big risk open eyed looks very desparate little boy.

There seems to be no better choice.

[DooMAD]

So if both "sides" now have a nuclear button they can push, do we escalate from the proverbial civil war up to cold war status?  Clearly all attempts at diplomacy have failed, so it's pretty much a case of seeing who blinks first.  Or, more likely, no one actually does anything and we carry on in stagnant mediocrity while the service deteriorates and the war of words carries on.

[AgentofCoin]

So if both "sides" now have a nuclear button they can push, do we escalate from the proverbial civil war up to cold war status?  Clearly all attempts at diplomacy have failed, so it's pretty much a case of seeing who blinks first.  Or, more likely, no one actually does anything and we carry on in stagnant mediocrity while the service deteriorates and the war of words carries on.

I think what I bolded from your words, is what will occur now.

The only thing that gives me some comfort is that during the historical cold war,
it was a standoff between the communist and capitalist, and ultimately due to the
capitalistic system and all of its secondary effects on it's subsystems, the
communists were unable to compete both technologically and financially.

To determine who could win this "Bitcoin coldwar", it should follow somewhat
along those lines. In this case, the technological aspect would be developers and
the financial aspect would be the economic supporting structures like exchanges,
businesses, validators, and etc. If those parts are strong, you can outlast your
enemy over long time periods. Historically, the communist lost the coldwar
because their only assets were their large numbers of troops and massive
amounts of, yet cheaply made weaponry.

From a historical coldwar perspective, either side will not ever "blink first",
but one will eventually collapse and fall apart due to being unable to compete
against every other aspect of the enemy, and other aspects they lack. Sheer
force and numbers are worthless within a standoff.

So, I think there are some interesting real world parallels that could be used to
almost always determine the outcome in any "Bitcoin coldwar". According to our
current "coldwar status" and the "assets on both sides" it is not likely that BU would
be able to overtake Core in a safe and consensus compliant manner. So, the only
results will either be BU collapsing over time or BU causing an intentional
non-consensus hardfork (preemptive nuclear strike with hopes of non-retaliation).

So, we shouldn't fear a coldwar, since that is safely determined over time, but we
should fear whether BU is willing to nuke at low consensus levels. If they are not
afraid and think they can beat the radiation fallout and other devastation to the
ecosystem, we should make our positions plain and clear, we will be forced to enact
MAD like measures to preserve the balance and future liberty to any survivors.

[classicsucks]

So if both "sides" now have a nuclear button they can push, do we escalate from the proverbial civil war up to cold war status?  Clearly all attempts at diplomacy have failed, so it's pretty much a case of seeing who blinks first.  Or, more likely, no one actually does anything and we carry on in stagnant mediocrity while the service deteriorates and the war of words carries on.

You're advancing a false dichotomy. There is at least a "third side", which says "do nothing". The third side has no nuclear button, but is the most likely to "win". Furthermore, there could very well be a sane fork of the current code that uses none of the BU changes and also no Segwit. In both of these cases, the Core dev team becomes irrelevant, unless they decide their egos can handle rolling back Segfault.

The UASF nuclear button is wired to a dead circuit - UASF is a complete non-starter, as many technical experts have stated in this thread. Changing the POW or hashing algo is even worse - an absolute insult to anyone who believes in the implementation of Satoshi's concept. The BU nuclear button seems to be somewhat dangerous, but I do not predict they will try to force the fork without sufficient support. If BU does have sufficient support, the chain will fork in their favor, and BU will become what we all call bitcoin.

[dwieyani]

I think this is better and more used as much as possible.

there are some groups that will activate it

[bincap]

FYI, Bitcoin doesn't care about what most of the 'community' wants.
It's only what most of the miners want that matters.

What should then happen is Miners would cartel enough to for example start paying themselves 50 BTC reward again and forever, create inflation, and such?

[piotr_n]

FYI, Bitcoin doesn't care about what most of the 'community' wants.
It's only what most of the miners want that matters.

What should then happen is Miners would cartel enough to for example start paying themselves 50 BTC reward again and forever, create inflation, and such?

No sir.

This would crash BTC price as nobody would be willing to invest in such an asset anymore.

Miners would be the biggest losers of such a change, left with millions of dollars worth of mining equipment that isn't profitable enough to even plug it in.

[stdset]

FYI, Bitcoin doesn't care about what most of the 'community' wants.
It's only what most of the miners want that matters.

What should then happen is Miners would cartel enough to for example start paying themselves 50 BTC reward again and forever, create inflation, and such?

No sir.

This would crash BTC price as nobody would be willing to invest in such an asset anymore.

Miners would be the biggest losers of such a change, left with millions of dollars worth of mining equipment that isn't profitable enough to even plug it in.

Good question. More extended answer:
It's impossible to implement such a change without a hardfork. Miners can fork, but if users don't follow, they will be mining a useless token, and will be forced to switch back to original chain. Miners don't set the rules. If it wasn't obvious for somebody, it should be obvious now, after ETC/ETH split.

When it is said that miners provide a secure, tamper-resistant consensus, consensus on the state of ledger, on transactions history is meant, not consensus on the rules of the network. Rules are chosen by whole community (of which miners constitute an important part) by choosing which crypto/fork to use, accept and thus give it value.

[piotr_n]

Well, I will be looking forward to see this UASF of yours at work.

Or to you making fools of yourselves - which ever comes at the end.

[bincap]

Well, I will be looking forward to see this UASF of yours at work.

Or to you making fools of yourselves - which ever comes at the end.

Allright, that's a free market too.

We have 2 groups of users (general users: including miners, investors, nodes, exchanges, pools)

1) The "BU camp": have BU, reject SegWit, retain ASICBOOST.

Pros:

+ for the miners: miners will have 30% lower energy cost (e.g. over 200% more PROFIT, if energy cost eats 80% of their income now)

+ they can have e.g. 10 times more transactions very soon

+ or they can have millions of transactions if they would do something like SegWit but that retains they **patent-based advantage**

2) SegWit camp: have SegWit (with effective block increase > x1.6), it blocks ASICBOOST

+ miners all over the world have no **patent-enforced** "advantage", so this is a level play field for them

+ therefore miners can be much more decentralized again (to level of natural differences between countries, e.g. lower energy costs and better manufacturing)

+ 1.6 transactions increase right now

+ millions of transactions when LN is built


So it boils down to either:
a) coin that is good for certain miners to use PATENTS and STATE ENFORCEMENT to artificially create monopoly, and easily centralize it even more. And is focused on doing x10 - x100 more transactions

b) coin that decentralizes, now gives some increase in transactions, and is focused on LN allowing ~ x1000000 more transactions soon. Also allows people to again run more full (and not pruned) nodes.

Which one do you want?


Does anyone really want STATE-ENFORCED centralized coin? Wtf.


Even when ASICBOOST is killed and out of the picture, then do you want to focus on modest increase (at cost of killing nodes decentralization once you go to x10, x100 and more),  or to focus on giving us millions txes while still on decentralized nodes (plus many, but decentralized, LN nodes)?


Back to Free Market, some BU proponents claim that miners vote is better then democracy - that is right. But UASF is not a democracy, it is in practice economic consensus, close to how two altcoins are competing for being more popular: number of users counts for something, but in the end if one has x100 bigger economy then for all purposes that coin wins.

Number of miners is correlated with economical purpose, but as we shown with example of totally rogue miners (mining e.g. 100 BTC reward blocks just because they can) - they do not win.
Well, TECHNICALLY they will win, and they will be left alone on their precious chain, but users will leave.
And we both knows this will kill them,  after short-term profit.

The same here.

Even if miners will be ROGUE and oppose and obvious improvement and FIX to bitcoin (only doing so to keep their STATE ENFORCED patent based advantage) - then well... ok, but hopefully and likely, most of ECONOMY will say "ok fuck this" and will leave.

[hv_]

Sorry mate. Your b) is a wet dream of 'more dcentralization'. Proof?

And whilst your are proving just prove why LN is more decentral?

 

-> Hint: do not try the impossible.

[bincap]

Sorry mate. Your b) is a wet dream of 'more dcentralization'. Proof?

And whilst your are proving just prove why LN is more decentral?

 

-> Hint: do not try the impossible.

Uh.. not using a patented technology is more decentralized... you need that explained more? 

SegWit removes ASICBOOST (patented in China technology).

As for LN, why it is decentralised - well you and your business partner can conduct thousands transactions without need for anyone else, any pair of nodes can. And then collapse it into 1 on-chain transaction.

You can optionally use some federated mode too, that is an option, and setting up LN node is easy (not needing gigabytes of own data),
plus you can always do good old on-chain transactions, while rest of world pays for their coffee or toothpicks individually with one-by-one, or federated, LN.

[hv_]

Sorry mate. Your b) is a wet dream of 'more dcentralization'. Proof?

And whilst your are proving just prove why LN is more decentral?

 

-> Hint: do not try the impossible.

Uh.. not using a patented technology is more decentralized... you need that explained more? 

SegWit removes ASICBOOST (patented in China technology).

As for LN, why it is decentralised - well you and your business partner can conduct thousands transactions without need for anyone else, any pair of nodes can. And then collapse it into 1 on-chain transaction.

You can optionally use some federated mode too, that is an option, and setting up LN node is easy (not needing gigabytes of own data),
plus you can always do good old on-chain transactions, while rest of world pays for their coffee or toothpicks individually with one-by-one, or federated, LN.

Cool. I feel fully convinced now. Lots of stringent proofs every line...
Thx for such a deep dive into UASF suporter minds.

Why are you guys restrict yourself that much ?

Are you paid or just blind?

I guess you just like overengeneering because you are addicted to gameboy flashs and thats the tragedgy of the common.

[bincap]

Cool. I feel fully convinced now. Lots of stringent proofs every line...
Thx for such a deep dive into UASF suporter minds.

Ok so you DO need explanation why patenting mining technology is pro-centralization, no problem:

When granted a patent in China, the patent-holder has monopoly on using his advantage.
In this case that advantage  is 30% lower power consumption while mining.

Since miners already operate on tiny profit margin, and power is major part of mining operation (the reason why we use ASICs, not just FPGA or GPU or CPU) - therefore everyone who is denied this technology has little chance of being a miner.

As a result, one entity - the patent holder - can pick companies he will allow to operate that way - making him the central point of power in the network.

Clearer now?