SegWit losing Bitcoin Unlimited winning -> Moon soon

[Killerpotleaf]

the war debate continues to escalate, since on one is an a position of absolute power. the power struggle is complex and very real due to bitcoin's decentralized nature.

meanwhile...
"Satoshi's design is fundamentally centralized"

lol.

My thought is the power struggle wouldn't exist if Bitcoin was decentralized.

I presume BU supporters think that their protocol will make the block size issue decentralized, but I think they are deceiving themselves. But I am not going to argue that point further to the extent of needing to write about Andrew's white paper and detailed discussions and tangents that would ensue.

And it doesn't matter any way whether I convince anyone.

Thanks for the encouragement. I don't want an undeserved appreciation. I haven't done anything worthy yet. My remarks were not intended to foster animosity.

I think i'm beginning to understand you.
I think that bitcoin is far from perfect.
but i also think that doesn't matter,
its good enough to rally behind.

we have convinced poeple to use bitcoin, we can not ask everyone to pile into some new crypto just because its "more decentralized"

I myself have toyed with SSL, i made an app that would send "coins" to 1 other app on the same localnetwork. my idea would be to do away with the miners completely. after that 1 weekend of coding, i got busy with trolling this form again  

lets hope your better at finishing what you start then I

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[iamnotback]

Just sharing a comment from else where that I happenstanced on (bear in mind I am sleep deprived at the moment):

Fact is the Miners will not agree with segwit because it is designed to bankrupt them by moving almost all transactions offline.
This will bankrupt the miners and put them out of business.

This new PoW proposal, at least is admitting their goal is to put the ASICS guys out of work.
You can bet any hard fork with a new PoW is going to have Segwit already activated so LN can be used immediately.
(Funny Core is not afraid of this Hard Fork.)  

Blockstream/segwit/LN supporters are dirty as can be, but at least they are consistently dirty.  

Funny thing is , you also are putting the less than 30% mining pools that supported segwit out of business.
They have no choice now but to join BTU, or be discarded with the other asics miners by your new PoW Algo.

I figured that is why they won't prioritize malleability fix and why they need unlimited block sizes. But unlimited block sizes is a power vacuum that awards a mining cartel.

Also changing the PoW algorithm means someone might secretly have an ASIC advantage already, or someone might get one before everyone else and use it to attack the network.

I don't think the token holders will agree to a PoW algorithm change. Core will be defeating themselves.

Thus we have a standoff. Neither side can compromise because there is no compromise that works for both sides. Core wants massive scaling but with centralized LN hubs for their bankster friends. BTU wants limited scaling at what ever their mining cartel can handle on chain. Neither are decentralized.

It is a clusterfuck. I bought ETH. LTC and XMR are other options.

Edit: some proof:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1835320.msg18267014#msg18267014

[iamnotback]

@Peter R apparently doesn't agree the token holders should have any choice in the matter and is apparently willing to attack us to force us to choose BTU:

"The decision will be made by the miners"


That's right Burt, but not nuanced enough

Incorrect.

If we refuse to buy BTU tokens which appear in their blocks, then their mining power is useless if they can't sell their mined tokens. We the token holders can choose to honor 1MB limit protocol.

However, given many users can't get their transactions into 1MB, I would say BTU might win. But I have no confidence in BTU's technical competence, thus I may not want their tokens.

The miners can split between those who honor only 1MB blocks and those who honor larger blocks. Thus the coinbase minted in the BTU protocol are not spendable (do not exist) on the BTC protocol blockchain.

But there is an issue of difficulty attacks:

What I suspect will happen is that we'll eventually get a block larger than 1 MB in the blockchain and Core will adapt their codebase to permit its users track the most-work chain.  In other words, there will likely be no split--just an anticlimactic network upgrade to larger blocks.  In such a case, who wins the bet?  Or is the bet only valid in the case where there is a persistent split?

It's absurd to think that there is not a single miner who will continue operating under the old network rules -- and that's all that it takes to create a persistent split.

It's seemingly this very lack of critical thought that leads to BU not being able to make even minor changes to the client without introducing bugs and vulnerabilities.

Alright: how about a small side bet for us little fish?  I bet you 1 BTC that--should the most-work blockchain include a single block larger than 1 MB--that no minority chain will make it beyond 2100 blocks (~2 weeks and the length of a difficulty adjustment) without either a difficulty reset or a change in the proof-of-work algorithm.

BTU appears to be ready to actually attack we the token holders. Fucking amazing. Very careless. Happy I hedged by selling some BTC.

[Paashaas]

BU is bugged again it's dropping like a rock 

[kelsey]

It is a clusterfuck. I bought ETH. LTC and XMR are other options.

ETH forking history is kinda worse though 

[iamnotback]

It is a clusterfuck. I bought ETH. LTC and XMR are other options.

ETH forking history is kinda worse though  

At least the attacker fork failed. And I am not investing in an heirloom to hold for posterity. The Bitcoin fork issue is here and now. I presume ETH is no danger this week nor next nor next month.

[kelsey]

It is a clusterfuck. I bought ETH. LTC and XMR are other options.

ETH forking history is kinda worse though 

At least the attacker fork failed.

hard to know which one was the attacker fork 

[Killerpotleaf]

It is a clusterfuck. I bought ETH. LTC and XMR are other options.

ETH forking history is kinda worse though 

At least the attacker fork failed.

hard to know which one was the attacker fork 

right i was just ganna say "ehhhh ya attackers won out in the end" lol

[Searing]

Is BU still planning on forking if they don't get their way on a hard blocksize fix? Or are they working towards cooperation now?

(likely I should google this .in that the above remark likely blew blood vessels of members watching this thread as they laughed at the concept of 'comprimise')

but anyway ...a hint? maybe ....someplace? of some sanity on getting this whole issue of block size fixed?

[Killerpotleaf]

Is BU still planning on forking if they don't get their way on a hard blocksize fix? Or are they working towards cooperation now?

(likely I should google this .in that the above remark likely blew blood vessels of members watching this thread as they laughed at the concept of 'comprimise')

but anyway ...a hint? maybe ....someplace? of some sanity on getting this whole issue of block size fixed?

cooperation.
comprimise!
sanity!?
Bahahahahahaha!

no.

i think 90% of users and just everyone in general would want some kind of cooperation, comprimise, and sanity.
but i could be wrong.
in anycase, it doesn't seem likely

[Searing]

Is BU still planning on forking if they don't get their way on a hard blocksize fix? Or are they working towards cooperation now?

(likely I should google this .in that the above remark likely blew blood vessels of members watching this thread as they laughed at the concept of 'comprimise')

but anyway ...a hint? maybe ....someplace? of some sanity on getting this whole issue of block size fixed?

cooperation.
comprimise!
sanity!?
Bahahahahahaha!

no.

i think 90% of users and just everyone in general would want some kind of cooperation, comprimise, and sanity.
but i could be wrong.
in anycase, it doesn't seem likely

So will BU fork or will we simply be in 'limbo' with neither side gaining any traction? IMHO bitcoin core is just fine with 1mb blocks for a long time yet.
Just discouraged....it seems no longer about the best code but power.

[iamnotback]

Further discussion of @Peter R's (BU's) thesis about equilibrium with unbounded block size protocol:

@dinofelis, you are super smart but not a blockchain developer expert (yet)  

Yes, this is with block rewards constant.  Tail emission.  But in the case of rewards proportional to block length (fees), you have to multiply A's revenues with the fact that his blocks bring in more money.  He has a lower percentage of blocks on the chain, but these blocks bring him more rewards as they are bigger.

So if his big blocks bring him 20% more income per block, this is neutral.

You are correct that I had an error in my (discombobulated/delirium due to meds) thinking w.r.t. to the losses due to his relative orphan rate increasing proportionally as I showed in my original Poison process math post, because for example an increase in revenue by 20% is not offset by  a commensurate proportional increase of relative orphan rate e.g. from 0.1% to 0.12%.

Which is even more damning against @Peter R's thesis as you point out.

However, the thing to keep in mind is to get an orphan rate of 0.2 by network propagation, it means that on average your blocks take 0.2 of the block period to get to the others.  0.2 of 10 minutes is 2 minutes.  If you have good links, in order for them to take 2 minutes, they must be mindbogglingly HUGE.
If it takes 2 minutes to pump a block to another miner with whom you are connected with a 10 Gb/s link, we are talking about 100 GB blocks or something.

Per the research I already cited upthread, the current network diameter is around 6 seconds. But it does takes minutes to reach 95% of the network. You are not factoring in that not all nodes have links directly to all nodes, i.e. the peer network is not a fully connected mesh topology. And a node will not forward a block until it has completely verified it (so that it can't be leveraged for a spam amplification attack).

As I said earlier, this kind of argument only starts to play a role when the network is already dead.  Because if a significant fraction of the block time (10 minutes in bitcoin) is what it takes for miners amongst themselves to propagate blocks and get them orphaned, no "normal node user" can ever obtain the block chain up to date, because normal users have a worse network connection to the miners (source of block chain) than miners amongst themselves.  Especially if network quality is impacting seriously on their revenues, miners will have the best possible links between them: mutually advantageous (and much less costly than the mining itself: a 10 Gb/s link to Joe MiningPool is less expensive than your mining gear).

You are correct that as the network becomes centralized into a few pools, then a hub-and-spoke topology is sufficient, but then we don't have decentralization any more.

But the larger point you are not mentioning is that larger blocks are a weapon against decentralization. For the reason stated above, and because those with direct fast links (and collectively more than 33% of systemic hashrate) get disproportionately more reward than their hashrate portion. That is the famous selfish mining paper and more recently the optimal mining strategies paper which adds more strategies.

If you really want a solution to this problem, then "block length" is not the right parameter, but block income is:

one should cap the "block reward + fee", to, say, 20 btc.  As such, miners can make all the blocks they want, long, short, but their TOTAL INCOME (reward + fees) is capped to 20 btc FOREVER (part of the protocol).   A block with a total reward larger than 20 btc is simply invalid.  

Miners will simply take their fees as pseudo-anonymous transactions with 0 or low fee.  

None of all this is going to happen.  Miners want small blocks and a fighting fee market.  The cartel you are talking about with large blocks only sets in with such incredibly large blocks, that they are out of the question in the next few years ; if you want a mining cartel, the telephone between mining pool bosses is a much more useful device than multi-GB blocks that saturate small miner's network links and most of the user nodes.

You had a mistake in your concept of propagation through the network. You are thinking a decentralized network is a fully connected mesh topology.

You don't need that much larger blocks to cause an amplification of propagation delay to the smallest miners in order to destroy decentralization and take 51% control. Also it only requires a very small advantage in relative orphan rate in order to slowly accumulate more hashrate than the opposition, so don't require the 100GB blocks you are computing.

Bitcoin is already centralized

Yes in that case they don't need huge blocks to destroy decentralization because it is already destroyed. In that case, they need to be able increase blocks to whatever they think is the level of transaction fees that maximizes their revenue (volume x transaction fees).

In either case, I am showing that big blocks are a cartelization paradigm. I am being thorough. Please don't fault me for being thorough, just because the network is already centralized.

It is a clusterfuck. I bought ETH. LTC and XMR are other options.

ETH forking history is kinda worse though  

At least the attacker fork failed.

hard to know which one was the attacker fork  

right i was just ganna say "ehhhh ya attackers won out in the end" lol

For a moment I got confused and I thought you were referring to which of BTU or BTC is the attacker fork.  

I was on the side of Bruce Wanker and immutable protocols too back then.  

Roger Ver shorted BTC by getting into bed with Dash right before BU attack began. Then we have the Chinese mining cartel ostensibly leveraging electricity paid for by Communism attacking to maintain their hegemony of mining $1000 tokens for $50 in costs. And on the other side, we have the banksters who want to be able to get the bulk of transactions delegated to centralized hubs on Lightning Networks and Bitcoin onchain will become exclusive for them to use (only for very high valued transactions).

cooperation.
comprimise!
sanity!?
Bahahahahahaha!

no.

i think 90% of users and just everyone in general would want some kind of cooperation, comprimise, and sanity.
but i could be wrong.
in anycase, it doesn't seem likely

It is really easy to see that we the token hodlers are caught in the middle of a fight between Godzilla and King Kong. Because PoW is not decentralization!

Core tries to make it seem like they are the more rational ones with the softfork, bug fixes, enabling LN, etc.. but their agenda is clear if you really step back and compare who is fighting and the reason they can't compromise.

[krile]

It is really easy to see that we the token hodlers are caught in the middle of a fight between Godzilla and King Kong. Because PoW is not decentralization!

You keep repeating that, but it is important what is the comparison. Nothing is something without a comparison to how that something is not nothing.

Bitcoin is not competing with perfect. It is competing with the legacy banking/financial infrastructure.

I would say that PoW is not perfect unicorn land decentralization. But that PoW is more decentralized than the existing system.

If it were all that simple and if that statement was true (that PoW is not decentralization) a scaling solution would be forced much faster.

[iamnotback]

@krile, upthread I was arguing for continuity by sticking with Core (at least then we know Bitcoin won't likely fail due to a bug). I agree with you. I want Bitcoin to remain viable, because it is enabling other things...

But...

I don't think the market will hold BU beyond an initial speculative pump before the big permadump just like ETC.

Then we are fucked with a 1MB blocksize forever, because afaik the mining cartel will never softfork adopt SegWit?

Either way, Bitcoin is looking more and more clusterfucked.

[franky1]

I was arguing for continuity by sticking with Core (at least then we know Bitcoin won't likely fail due to a bug).

1. core have no bugs?  oh so segwit is not needed. because there is nothing buggy to fix? cant have one thing without debunking the other
2. native keys still work after segwit, malicious tx's will still be a thing. only segwit keypair users(just voluntary key users) are disarmed not bitcoin network
3. by being diverse with different code bases. if a few nodes get exploited. network continues(no big deal). if everyone uses one codebase. boom(2013 all over again)

[Miz4r]

I was arguing for continuity by sticking with Core (at least then we know Bitcoin won't likely fail due to a bug).

1. core have no bugs?  oh so segwit is not needed. because there is nothing buggy to fix? cant have one thing without debunking the other
2. native keys still work after segwit, malicious tx's will still be a thing. only segwit keypair users(just voluntary key users) are disarmed not bitcoin network
3. by being diverse with different code bases. if a few nodes get exploited. network continues(no big deal). if everyone uses one codebase. boom(2013 all over again)

BU apparently thinks there is no bug since they reject segwit... I'm sorry after all this time I really can't take BU seriously anymore. I am not going to waste more time arguing against them as they've already clearly shown their incompetency several times. If you still don't see it for what it is, you're beyond hope or just a troll. Looking forward to see BU fail at their fork and take down Bitmain with them. I am for segwit and bigger blocks but very much against this amateurish attempt at taking over Bitcoin.

[iamnotback]

Copying this from another thread, since it continues some discussion that started over here:

If you wanted to upend Core, then you should have more competent people who would have advised you that unbounded block size doesn't have an equilibrium.

If you have successfully demonstrated  that unbounded block size cannot reach an equilibrium outside a majority-collusion environment, I have missed it.

Yes you missed it. ...
Once we do model differing orphan rates for different miners, then the optimal strategies for mining come into play. And if you work out the game theory of that, you realize that collusion and centralization are the only possible outcome.

So you seem to be acknowledging that I am correct above...

There is no outcome that is outside a majority-collusion environment. I explained that unbounded block size cannot reach an equilibrium outside a majority-collusion environment. You said you must have missed it and I explained you did miss it.

You are conflating that the fact that the equilibrium is reached inside majority-collusion with your thought that I haven't stated what occurs outside of majority-collusion. But I have stated what happens, which it is always devolves to majority-collusion.

You are making a similar error as those two others did upthread. A 51% (or even 33% selfish mining) attack is not a change in protocol. In other words, in BTC the miners can't make huge blocks, because it violates the protocol limit of 1MB.

Collusion is collusion, irrespective of the protocol. Nakamoto consensus is only possible when a majority of participants are 'honest' as per the whitepaper terminology. Unbounded blocks does nothing to change this.

Conflation is conflation. (Meaning you apparently entirely missed the relevance of the point)

I'm trying to be respectful, but please don't waste my time. You see I have too many messages to reply to.

And as a practical matter, Bitcoin operated just fine for multiple halvings with no practical bound on blocksize.

There was minimum advised fee and there were pools doing anti-spam such as I think I've read that Luke Jr's pool rejected dust transactions.

Yes, minimum advised fee. 'Advised', as not encoded within the protocol. The fact that this worked up to the point that the production quota was finally persistently hit forms an existence proof that the system can work. The fact that it did work may or may not have something to do with all players having beneficial intent, but there it is. Indeed a populist sentiment includes the notion that it is against the best interests of all participants to do anything that kills the system. Which probably explains why our past known-majority miner (Discus Fish?) turned back from their position of mining majority without ever forming an attack from their assuredly-successful posture.

Everyone was incentivized by the fact that once the 1MB limit was reached, then the destruction of Bitcoin would ensue as is currently happening with the battle between the miner and codester cartels.

It was the 1MB protocol limit that provided the barrier that everyone had to try to swim far from. Also miners had an incentive to get minimum level of fees and they didn't yet have enough centralization to extract higher fees. And the decentralized miners at that time before ASICs also had an incentive to keep spam low since as I explained to @dinofelis today that it wasn't a fully connected mesh so propagation time was a bigger deal than he realized. Also the decentralization at that time when people were still mining on GPUs, meant there was more of an altruistically driven Nash equilibrium than now.

That not at all like the cut throat, big money economics situation now. As @dinofelis pointed out, the only altruism (and internal discord) from miners now is probably all faked to make us think there isn't a cartel.

[iamnotback]

I was arguing for continuity by sticking with Core (at least then we know Bitcoin won't likely fail due to a bug).

1. core have no bugs?  oh so segwit is not needed. because there is nothing buggy to fix? cant have one thing without debunking the other
2. native keys still work after segwit, malicious tx's will still be a thing. only segwit keypair users(just voluntary key users) are disarmed not bitcoin network
3. by being diverse with different code bases. if a few nodes get exploited. network continues(no big deal). if everyone uses one codebase. boom(2013 all over again)

Honestly I haven't refreshed my memory about all the things in SegWit. I did some research on it for my whitepaper but since forgot most of it (effect of the meds I've been on).

So I've been taking the stance that probably we don't even need most of SegWit, just the malleability fix perhaps.

We could wrangle on and on, but let me refer you to this other thread of discussion for my ongoing pondering about our options:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1837136.0

See you over there.

[jbreher]

Copying this from another thread, since it continues some discussion that started over here:

I don't know why you are compelled to replicate discussions all over the board. Fine. I'll play along by copying my reply:

You are conflating that the fact that the equilibrium is reached inside majority-collusion with your thought that I haven't stated what occurs outside of majority-collusion. But I have stated what happens, which it is always devolves to majority-collusion.

You have stated that, yes. That was my assertion. My point is that this is outcome is not affected by the cap on maxblocksize.

Everyone was incentivized by the fact that once the 1MB limit was reached ... It was the 1MB protocol limit that provided the barrier that everyone had to try to swim far from

Justification of this assertion would require explaining away the almost linear annual doubling of the average block size, up until the saturation point.

[iamnotback]

But I have stated what happens, which it is always devolves to majority-collusion.

My point is that this is outcome is not affected by the cap on maxblocksize.

Might be true. I've been pondering that today. If BU can successfully attack the token holders, then that should be proof that even small 1MB blocks don't stop mining cartelization/centralization.

In which case, larger blocks along with LN would provide more choice to users. As I wrote upthread, Core has masterfully fooled some people into believing they are rational with no ulterior motive.

But then I don't understand how Core could have ever expected to succeed, since the miners would naturally fork the protocol and increase the block size so they can get more revenue. Core's apparent goal of forcing users to use LN appears to be impossible to enforce (mining will always be a cartel and the cartel will not agree to be stripped of revenue).

But on the flip side, the mining cartel ostensibly doesn't want to allow off chain LN scaling (which is why they won't fix malleability) because that would compete with the miners for on chain fees.

Some have argued that enabling LN would increase overall usership and thus increase onchain transaction fee revenue.

So if BU was sincere, they could demonstrate it by including the necessary fixes to enable LN in their planned HF. Because otherwise we can look forward possibly to a monopoly on block size and thus miners squeezing the market for maximum fees inhibiting the scaling of Bitcoin.

(I'm duplicating this to two other places, because readers can't go clicking links off to so many other places to find the key points, but I am linking it here, so you can decide to reply just here if you want. Your decision obviously. I'd like to finish this discussion asap if possible.)