Why is BU consensus at 75% and isn't it bad

[BrewMaster]

{@MOD i am not sure if i should post it in technical discussion but feel free to move it there}

i have checked Segwit and the activation for it is at 95% and reading about it, everything makes sense to me about why that number was chosen and it seems like a perfect number from what i have read and my own conclusion.

but when i read about bitcoin unlimited, it is at 75% and it doesn't make sense to me why this number is this low.

so can anyone explain to me why this number which is much lower than the 95% majority, has been chosen.

also isn't it bad. meaning wouldn't the risk of splitting be much higher with 75% than it is with lets say 80%-90%-95%,...

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[Senor.Bla]

As far as i know this number is not definite. As i understand BU it's part of the process to let the nodes and pools "agree" on the number. The higher the % the better, but to anser your question properly we would need to know what risks you are talking about.

[BigBoom3599]

I think the philosophy behind is that if 75% of the miners agree and fork, the other 25% will follow rapidly and start mining on the majority chain because they'd be losing money by mining on the minority chain. IMO it's a little too low :/

[franky1]

though any majority will lead to gaining the blockheight. the FIGHT(orphan risk) for blockheight is much more if the majority was say 51% rather than say 91%

the higher the % the less orphan risk and the better chance of a stable chain thats not orphaning all the time.

some deem 95% too high because its tough to get random people to near unanimously agree on anything
some deem 51% too low because its just increasing the orphan arguments (much like the scottish and EU referendums of slight majority, still arguing and wanting another referendum)

hence a middle ground of say 75% reduces orphan risks and arguments but more of an attainable agreement by a safer majority than say 51%

[BrewMaster]

we would need to know what risks you are talking about.

i said in the last line of my post, the risk that i am talking about is the risk of splitting the network into two separate chains.

I think the philosophy behind is that if 75% of the miners agree and fork, the other 25% will follow rapidly and start mining on the majority chain because they'd be losing money by mining on the minority chain. IMO it's a little too low :/

is it your own understanding/guess or do you have a reference for that
i'll admit i haven't had time to go through it myself and do a proper research yet.

[Carlton Banks]

the 75% figure is basically a gentleman's agreement, the truth is that BU gives miners the power to fork at 51% hashrate, if they're that suicidal

[DannyHamilton]

Bitcoin Unlimited does not have an "activation".  It is already active.  Anyone can run Bitcoin Unlimited right now and declare whatever blocksize they want to support.

Miners can already create larger blocks if they want to.  Those blocks will be orphaned if there are not enough other miners that are willing to support that block height yet (which would make it foolish for a miner to waste money mining a block that won't ever pay them).  If there are enough miners supporting the larger block then the block size will increase.

[ebliever]

My sense is that the BU folks are highly motivated to act sooner than later, which makes me uncomfortable by itself. But at the same time, the BU altcoin (as it must necessarily be called as per Charles Lee's comments) is extremely fragile and can be destroyed through several strategies if their hashrate falls too low in competition with Bitcoin. So BU advocates want to set as low a threshold as they can to get it active, but setting it too low makes it very likely it will be destroyed by hostile miners.

I've been trying to avoid leaning too hard one way or the other in this conflict, but everything I've been seeing here, in bitcoin media and on both the subreddits the last few days has been giving me a worse and worse opinion of Bitcoin Unlimited. I don't believe their dev team is sufficiently competent, haven't seen a roadmap besides bloating the blockchain and trying to block offchain TX, the marketplace appears unlikely to be receptive to BU's fork, and BU advocates increasingly push hostile actions to force BU on people against their will. If they activate I fully expect at this point to be dumping my BU coins, probably for Dash, Zcash and a few other alternatives.

[BrewMaster]

though any majority will lead to gaining the blockheight. the FIGHT(orphan risk) for blockheight is much more if the majority was say 51% rather than say 91%

the higher the % the less orphan risk and the better chance of a stable chain thats not orphaning all the time.

some deem 95% too high because its tough to get random people to near unanimously agree on anything
some deem 51% too low because its just increasing the orphan arguments (much like the scottish and EU referendums of slight majority, still arguing and wanting another referendum)

hence a middle ground of say 75% reduces orphan risks and arguments but more of an attainable agreement by a safer majority than say 51%

thanks for the explanation franky, i can understand the orphan risk and the relationship with the percentages when put it like that.

but what about risk of splitting the network into two chains.
this is what my question basically is, i don't know how right or off the mark i am though.
i say with 95% the remaining 5% can not really stay around for long and they either die or switch.
but with 75% the remaining 25% seems too big and can stick around and continue producing blocks

[Senor.Bla]

we would need to know what risks you are talking about.

i said in the last line of my post, the risk that i am talking about is the risk of splitting the network into two separate chains.

Unless the number is 100% then there is always a split involved. The question you want to ask is if the risk ending up with 2 chains permanently is lower if the numbers are higher. Seems obvious, but on the other hand if you pick a to high number you risk to not get activated at all (like many fear what will happen with SegWit) and who knows if it wouldn't be better to get activated at a lower number and take the risk of a permanent split than never activating and stay with a chain that might die out altogether.

[LittleBitFunny]

It might be a little bit too low but 95% is crazy in my opinion.  Most people will jump onto something if it's clear that a large enough majority of Bitcoiners has chosen something that it's unlikely anyone will be able to change it, but there will always be a group of stubborn people who believe the worst of that system and refuse to adopt it.  This group will nearly definitely be over 5% but under 25%.

It might even be SegWit's unrealistic goal that has resulted in BU overtaking SegWit's adoption among miners (along with the support from Jihan Wu).

Ideally though it would somewhere in between the two, maybe about 90%.

[Carlton Banks]

Bitcoin Unlimited does not have an "activation".  It is already active.  Anyone can run Bitcoin Unlimited right now and declare whatever blocksize they want to support.

No one  in this thread said it did.


Are you capable of making a technical argument Danny Hamilton, instead of just using semantic tricks?

Miners can already create larger blocks if they want to.  Those blocks will be orphaned if there are not enough other miners that are willing to support that block height yet (which would make it foolish for a miner to waste money mining a block that won't ever pay them).  If there are enough miners supporting the larger block then the block size will increase.

And when "enough" (i.e. 51%) miners agree, the other 49% get turned into yet another altcoin (BUcoin2) when it happens, don't they? Call it "activation", call it a "fork", but the truth is you just don't want to point it out, because it's inconvenient to your highly selective presentation, huh Danny Hamilton


Are you capable of making a technical argument Danny Hamilton, instead of just using semantic tricks? Or lying by omission?

[franky1]

though any majority will lead to gaining the blockheight. the FIGHT(orphan risk) for blockheight is much more if the majority was say 51% rather than say 91%

the higher the % the less orphan risk and the better chance of a stable chain thats not orphaning all the time.

some deem 95% too high because its tough to get random people to near unanimously agree on anything
some deem 51% too low because its just increasing the orphan arguments (much like the scottish and EU referendums of slight majority, still arguing and wanting another referendum)

hence a middle ground of say 75% reduces orphan risks and arguments but more of an attainable agreement by a safer majority than say 51%

thanks for the explanation franky, i can understand the orphan risk and the relationship with the percentages when put it like that.

but what about risk of splitting the network into two chains.
this is what my question basically is, i don't know how right or off the mark i am though.
i say with 95% the remaining 5% can not really stay around for long and they either die or switch.
but with 75% the remaining 25% seems too big and can stick around and continue producing blocks

no
the 5% minority see the blockheight (bu being higher) request the blockheight. see its a rule breaker to the 5%. reject it
and again
the 5% minority see the blockheight (bu being higher) request the blockheight. see its a rule breaker to the 5%. reject it
and again
(which as you say is 5% not syncing and either die(stuck) or change to the majority to rejoin)

the 25% minority see the blockheight (bu being higher) request the blockheight. see its a rule breaker to the 25%. reject it
and again
the 25% minority see the blockheight (bu being higher) request the blockheight. see its a rule breaker to the 25%. reject it
and again
(which as you say is 25% not syncing and either die(stuck) or change to the majority to rejoin)
meaning in short MORE nodes having the headache. but in both cases no second chain(just 1 chain and some dead nodes(the less the % the less dead nodes)

for the 5% or 25% to build on a LOWER height. they have to ignore (ban) dis-commnicate / split from the majority. to then only see the minority as the highest height. to then sync to that without the orphan game of unsyncing them.

this is called a bilateral split (intentional ban).
consensus mechanism (orphaning) exist for a good reason. to keep one chain that the majority can agree on.
to make a second chain exist and survive without orphans requires avoiding the majority by banning from it, to not see the majority blockheight, to then not fight it

even ethereum done this by their '--oppose-dao-fork' to know which nores to white list and which nodes to blacklist to avoid orphan drama and only see the blockheigh of the chain they prefer

[franky1]

carlton doesnt understand consensus and orphans (the main security mechanism built into bitcoin and what BU USES)
strangely he doesnt realise its his kings wishes to avoid consensus and where blockstream have added code to ban opposition.
where as BU has not.

end result.
if BU triggers. one network with orphan risk for the minority, leaving minority unsynced(BU will not do any banning to cause a split)
if segwit triggers. 2 chains, because segwit will ban pool(nodes) and their blocks that try to build old blocks ontop of segwit, (to avoid segwit getting orphaned)

but yes if BU triggers.. the minority 'could' LATER split. by the minority CAUSING a split because the minority want to keep away from BU rather than accept consensus and switch to the majority(BU).

in short
BU wont CAUSE a split by banning minority.. but the minority to BU can cause a split by refusing to join the majority and refusing to just give up

though BU could trigger at low majority. they wont actually do it. they would wait a bit longer and do whats safe and not risking the rewards due to orphans.

BU relies on consensus..
segwit relies on bypassing consensus(first going soft to avoid node consensus, then banning opposition to avoid orphan risk)

[AliceWonderMiscreations]

It's not just 75% - the first phase is 75% for a full difficulty adjustment period.

When they stay at 75% for a full difficulty adjustment period then they will start broadcasting willingness to mine a bigger block.

When enough have signalled intent to accept bigger blocks for a full adjustment period WITHOUT dropping below 75% then they will start mining bigger blocks.

That's what I have seen them posting, so it will take maintaining 75% consensus for several difficult adjustment periods BEFORE the first bigger blog.

The only thing that could throw a wrench in that is UASF in which case they may need to emergency hard fork earlier.

[manselr]

Who cares about BU? nobody will accept it because Core keeps doing all the hard coding jobs. BU software is always several steps behind. Their coding team is lightyears away from Core's understanding of bitcoin, they will never get anywhere, it will join the XT and Classic trashcan soon.

[franky1]

It's not just 75% - the first phase is 75% for a full difficulty adjustment period.

When they stay at 75% for a full difficulty adjustment period then they will start broadcasting willingness to mine a bigger block.

When enough have signalled intent to accept bigger blocks for a full adjustment period WITHOUT dropping below 75% then they will start mining bigger blocks.

That's what I have seen them posting, so it will take maintaining 75% consensus for several difficult adjustment periods BEFORE the first bigger blog.
whereby the extra time gives extra oppertunity to get even better than 75% to reduce orphan risks and reduce the nodes left unsynced, by letting the 25% decide to upgrade or be left behind


The only thing that could throw a wrench in that is UASF
which is a fake buzz word for a HBS (Hard because its node and pool enabled. Bilateral Split because its about banning opposition.
which blockstream are stroking the sheep to sleep pretending its "soft"(the S of UASF) but its not soft at all. its just bait and switching with acronyms of fake meaning (node and pool enabled = hard)

in which case they may need to emergency hard fork earlier.

FTFY

clarity

soft and hard is simply
soft: pool only vote
hard: nodes and pools vote

below these umbrella terms is what could happen.. in both hard and soft it can either continue as one chain. or bilateral split
softfork: consensus - >94% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: small 5% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced and dead
softfork: controversial - >50% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: long big% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced and dead
softfork: bilateral split - intentionally ignoring/banning opposing rules and not including them. result: 2 chains

hardfork: consensus - >94% nodes, then >94% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: 5% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced / dead
hardfork: controversial - >50% nodes, then >50% pools no banning/ignoring of minority. result: big% orphan drama then one chain. minority unsynced / dead
hardfork: bilateral split (UASF)- intentionally ignoring/banning opposing rules and not including them. result: 2 chains

if blockstream want to ban anything thats not blockstream then they can play on their 26% hashpower(today stats) all they like. and pretend its achieved 100% by just ignoring the other 74% of the network.. they are still going to be on a minority and less height altcoin chain.

[AliceWonderMiscreations]

Who cares about BU? nobody will accept it because Core keeps doing all the hard coding jobs. BU software is always several steps behind. Their coding team is lightyears away from Core's understanding of bitcoin, they will never get anywhere, it will join the XT and Classic trashcan soon.

If Core's solution is one that a large sector of users, including miners, really do not want - do they really understand Bitcoin?

[Carlton Banks]

Why waste your time writing this:

It's not just 75% - the first phase is 75% for a full difficulty adjustment period.

When they stay at 75% for a full difficulty adjustment period then they will start broadcasting willingness to mine a bigger block.

When enough have signalled intent to accept bigger blocks for a full adjustment period WITHOUT dropping below 75% then they will start mining bigger blocks.

That's what I have seen them posting, so it will take maintaining 75% consensus for several difficult adjustment periods BEFORE the first bigger blog.

When you could just be honest and admit that this is the real "consensus mechanism" in BU:

The only thing that could throw a wrench in that is UASF in which case they may need to emergency hard fork earlier.

....which is just an invitation to an endless string of noisy, shouty 51% fork after 51% fork?




Alice Wonder, why aren't you able to present clear, honest arguments?

[franky1]

carlton wants BU to altcoin.. he even calls it an altcoin..
carlton pretends to cry fears of an altcoin
carlton wants BU to altcoin.. he even calls it an altcoin..
carlton pretends to cry fears of an altcoin
carlton wants BU to altcoin.. he even calls it an altcoin..
carlton pretends to cry fears of an altcoin
(his pretense changes by the hour)

yet its blockstream that will trigger the altcoin.. and thats carltons real fear.. blockstream having to trigger because they are an altcoin or fear the community where blockstream is being left as the minority. and not owning and controlling the network.

they hate anything not blockstream
all of the implementations that are not blockstream have been attacked.
rather than seeing them as part of consensus and the diverse decentralised nature of bitcoin

carlton doesnt care about bitcoins consensus or diverse decentralisation of multiple implementations. he just wants his king to control it all