BU + segwit

[dinofelis]

You fail because you are trying to make points that are not valid to real world situations.
If a single miner did come about, than Bitcoin is done and everyone goes to a new coin.
So this example is worthless.

I hope you see all the contradictions in your attempt at argument.  The single miner was YOUR example to demonstrate that decentralization came from the nodes, not from the miners.  I took your premise to show you how that argument was totally flawed.  Now you start saying that it is not "real world".  No, but it is the perfect illustration of what I was saying: centralisation is mining centralization.

Now, you even admit that in your perfectly decentralized network with one miner, bitcoin would be dead.  So you just admitted the point for which you called me a moron.  

BTW "consensus by proof of work" was defined when miners and validators will a single entity.
Your definition of it, stop apply to Bitcoin when GPUs and ASICs came about.

No.  Your IDEA that consensus was "the majority of the community" was equivalent to "consensus of proof of work" stopped being valid at that point, and what remained was "proof of work" and NOT "majority of community".  In other words, the failed attempt of Satoshi to use "proof of work" as a means of "consensus of community" is what you are talking about, but what effectively is valid, is proof of work.  And if the proof of work is centralized, everything is centralized, and the rest doesn't matter.  The non-mining nodes don't matter.  They are simply proxy servers of the chain made by the miners, nothing more.

[AgentofCoin]

You fail because you are trying to make points that are not valid to real world situations.
If a single miner did come about, than Bitcoin is done and everyone goes to a new coin.
So this example is worthless.

I hope you see all the contradictions in your attempt at argument.  The single miner was YOUR example to demonstrate that decentralization came from the nodes, not from the miners.  I took your premise to show you how that argument was totally flawed.  Now you start saying that it is not "real world".  No, but it is the perfect illustration of what I was saying: centralisation is mining centralization.

Now, you even admit that in your perfectly decentralized network with one miner, bitcoin would be dead.  So you just admitted the point for which you called me a moron.  

What you stated in your first post, is not what I stated.
You are stating that nodes that do not mine have no significance.

I disagree and think that their centralization, which is separate from mining
centralization, is the last stop to full centralization and governmental regulation
of Bitcoin itself.

If you were correct in your IDEA, then what is occurring within Bitcoin, would not right now.
We would have all hardforked long ago, if you are correct.

BTW "consensus by proof of work" was defined when miners and validators will a single entity.
Your definition of it, stop apply to Bitcoin when GPUs and ASICs came about.

No.  Your IDEA that consensus was "the majority of the community" was equivalent to "consensus of proof of work" stopped being valid at that point, and what remained was "proof of work" and NOT "majority of community".  In other words, the failed attempt of Satoshi to use "proof of work" as a means of "consensus of community" is what you are talking about, but what effectively is valid, is proof of work.  And if the proof of work is centralized, everything is centralized, and the rest doesn't matter.  The non-mining nodes don't matter.  They are simply proxy servers of the chain made by the miners, nothing more.

I disagree entirely.

If you are correct, clients like BU would not have needed to be created.
The fact that they were designed to do what they do, proves you incorrect.

Your whole argument and premise is based on a twisting of reality.
At one point you say second layers are bad because of centralizing nature.
and just now you are saying miners are already centralized today. LOol.

[jaybny]

SegWit has already block size increase. But Jihan and Ver and their chinese miners puppets just want to control bitcoin not to increase block size. There's no possible compromise, no more debate we should just ignore and discard them and procede with UASF.
 Bitcoin future is at stake and if Bitcoin fails all alts will follow, people wont believe in crypto

last line of defense poison pill to stop the BU fork - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1833046.0

[ImHash]

What most of you ignore to understand is not whether or not mining is centralized right now, you lack the knowledge about what is centralization and what it means being decentralized. no one should care if mining is in hands of a few but you should care if you ever decided to start mining yourself none of the other few miners could potentially deny you from mining or have a closed source code for mining or could shut you down at will.

Can you right now buy 100K S9 miners and start mining dozens of blocks each day or not? if you can then bitcoin is practically decentralized.

[dinofelis]

What most of you ignore to understand is not whether or not mining is centralized right now, you lack the knowledge about what is centralization and what it means being decentralized. no one should care if mining is in hands of a few but you should care if you ever decided to start mining yourself none of the other few miners could potentially deny you from mining or have a closed source code for mining or could shut you down at will.

Can you right now buy 100K S9 miners and start mining dozens of blocks each day or not? if you can then bitcoin is practically decentralized.

Well, they CAN shut you down at will.  If they decide to orphan all your blocks, you are being denied mining.  You are BTW confusing decentralized and permissionless.  You can still hope that mining is as of now, mostly permissionless. 

But that is not the point.  The majority hash rate decides upon the protocol, unless it hard forks, and the minority continues the old chain with the old protocol (or decides to hard fork away and becomes a minority fork).  The majority hash rate decides upon censorship (like, yes, YOUR blocks, your transactions, ....) and decides upon the transactions it processes and hence the pressure on the fee market.

[jubalix]

See I am not so sure about the miners, I mean if they can get a block with so many more transactions they get more money as that block will eventually fee and so on.

or does the lightning network does this take fees away from miners?


Further, if we the bitcoiners want segwit + BU I think the miners will do it.

Further if any part fails then we patch it, I mean BTC has needed to be hardforked due to bugs a few times in the past.

Lets take the oxygen out of the room from the fighting parties, the miners and the naysayers and just do both, its not a binary out come

[dmeter]

The next step, if the chain divided will be call as to clean the abandoned-lost wallet to bring together all BTC and issued new Genesis block with the exact number of BTC gathered in this mix place and start from the beginning.
And that's part of the test. Test technologies and mass of users by the NSA, FED,ECB .who knows who is behind this, who knows who is behind this. and all we deserve when we believe the founders of which were use TOR network to log into this forum.Whatever can happen will happen.

[silversurferd]

I think bitcoin needs change but what roger has done is  not good , Roger is greedy and is harming the eco system

[stevano]

if it is the middle way has been not found again, the way one of them is the need to divide the two sides did not let each other at loggerheads, that I want to ask is actually what is the subject matter, if indeed BU want to enlarge the bloc's goal to accelerate the transactions that you do with little additional cost.

[Guenter]

With a second layer, all the things I love about bitcoin vanish.

If you control the flow of money, you have power.

Remember when Visa, MC, and PayPal stopped processing donations to Snowden's living expense and legal defense fund?

There was nothing illegal about donating, but they didn't want you to so they didn't let you.

Right now, British banks look to see who is buying a lot of contraceptives and giving that information to police in case a lot of contraceptives are being bought for sex work.

Shouldn't the purchase of contraceptives, whether it is a small amount or large amount, be private?

With a second layer that we have to use for transactions, you can bet your ass both of those kinds of things will happen with Bitcoin too.

A second layer puts a private company in control over the flow of your money and that power will be abused, it always is abused.

Bitcoin will survive but Satoshi's vision will be dead.

As far as I did understand, Lightning is not a "second layer". Both partners of one transaction will have their transactions signed by the other; only if there is a dispute, transaction data will be given to the blockchain. So, usually, there is noone to control people's transactions, for it is the purpose of Lightning to get data off the chain in order to disburden it.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

[Guenter]

If we really want bitcoin a means of payment for masses (like Roger states), we would need thousands of transaction per second. So increasing block size is NEVER a real solution.

[jubalix]

If we really want bitcoin a means of payment for masses (like Roger states), we would need thousands of transaction per second. So increasing block size is NEVER a real solution.

well it might be, you just don't know how tech is going to be....and what will be cored in, plus what usually happens is BU if it won out would have to adopt a segwit soln down the track anyway

[Guenter]

If we really want bitcoin a means of payment for masses (like Roger states), we would need thousands of transaction per second. So increasing block size is NEVER a real solution.

well it might be, you just don't know how tech is going to be....and what will be cored in, plus what usually happens is BU if it won out would have to adopt a segwit soln down the track anyway

That means BU would start with slightly increased block size (let's say doubled) to ease the urgent problems and then do almost the same as the core devs, but with the power in BU's hands?

[Xester]

Can we not have code that does both?

Can some one answer this, why would it not satisfy both parties?

why could BU people not accept segwit code as this seem to just make the block size more efficient and Segwit people accept BU as this just allows block size to be larger

Are not Segwit and BU solutions orthogonal to each other for the most part and so can both exist in a mutually beneficial manner?

Can some one address this?

I am not an expert on this things but in my opinion when we talk about codes there are several things to consider. The reason why core developer does not accept Bitcoin Unlimited its because it runs on hard fork and it is going away from the original form of bitcoin. Bitcoin Unlimited does not want to accept Segwit since they dont see the code fit to run and replace the current code.

[CyberKuro]

SegWit has already block size increase. But Jihan and Ver and their chinese miners puppets just want to control bitcoin not to increase block size. There's no possible compromise, no more debate we should just ignore and discard them and procede with UASF.
 Bitcoin future is at stake and if Bitcoin fails all alts will follow, people wont believe in crypto

Yes, SegWit will increase the block size that acceptable for us as we've been told that if block size increase than a transaction could proceed faster. For me, whether SegWit or BU is not a problem if it can going as the way of bitcoin, still has same basic technology.
However, I don't think bitcoin will fail as majority vote will support it.

[Guenter]

I am not an expert on this things but in my opinion when we talk about codes there are several things to consider. The reason why core developer does not accept Bitcoin Unlimited its because it runs on hard fork and it is going away from the original form of bitcoin. Bitcoin Unlimited does not want to accept Segwit since they dont see the code fit to run and replace the current code.

I guess it is not about code or technics. It is about power and money.
The obvious difficulties bitcoin has with too many transactions are a welcome argument for brutal measures -- with subsequent accumulation of power. You know, "populism"...

[dinofelis]

You fail because you are trying to make points that are not valid to real world situations.
If a single miner did come about, than Bitcoin is done and everyone goes to a new coin.
So this example is worthless.

I hope you see all the contradictions in your attempt at argument.  The single miner was YOUR example to demonstrate that decentralization came from the nodes, not from the miners.  I took your premise to show you how that argument was totally flawed.  Now you start saying that it is not "real world".  No, but it is the perfect illustration of what I was saying: centralisation is mining centralization.

Now, you even admit that in your perfectly decentralized network with one miner, bitcoin would be dead.  So you just admitted the point for which you called me a moron.  

What you stated in your first post, is not what I stated.
You are stating that nodes that do not mine have no significance.

Yes that is what I'm stating.  There are a few cases, when there are network connection problems, where these nodes do play a small role, but that's it.

It is amazing how much this myth that node count has some significance in a Proof of Work system to COUNTER node count influence, is living on.  I think it is because if people would acknowledge that in a proof of work system, the votes are with hash rate, they would see the obvious centralization going on in bitcoin.  So one continues to spread this silly idea that node count has any "voting" meaning, while proof of work was explicitly introduced to counter that.

If you were correct in your IDEA, then what is occurring within Bitcoin, would not right now.
We would have all hardforked long ago, if you are correct.

No, because the only guys that can hardfork, are miners.  At least, as long as PoW is valid.  Bitcoin COULD hardfork with the nodes/users only, if someone implemented a PoS system.  THEN the miners don't decide anything any more.  PoS is a way to give power to the nodes/stakeholders.  But PoW doesn't care the smallest bit about nodes.

BTW "consensus by proof of work" was defined when miners and validators will a single entity.
Your definition of it, stop apply to Bitcoin when GPUs and ASICs came about.

No.  Your IDEA that consensus was "the majority of the community" was equivalent to "consensus of proof of work" stopped being valid at that point, and what remained was "proof of work" and NOT "majority of community".  In other words, the failed attempt of Satoshi to use "proof of work" as a means of "consensus of community" is what you are talking about, but what effectively is valid, is proof of work.  And if the proof of work is centralized, everything is centralized, and the rest doesn't matter.  The non-mining nodes don't matter.  They are simply proxy servers of the chain made by the miners, nothing more.

I disagree entirely.

If you are correct, clients like BU would not have needed to be created.
The fact that they were designed to do what they do, proves you incorrect.

On the contrary.  BU or any other software would of course be needed BY MINER NODES to have NOT the segwit software that would activate segwit automatically if signalling to one another.  In fact, JUST ANY form of software that is not segwit signalling would be needed, and that sticks to the old protocol.  What Joe Sixpack runs on his PC without mining, nobody cares.  Apart from the fact that one doesn't want to piss off Joe Sixpack so much, that he doesn't want to buy new miner coins any more at high price.

Your whole argument and premise is based on a twisting of reality.
At one point you say second layers are bad because of centralizing nature.
and just now you are saying miners are already centralized today. LOol.

Yes, miners are already quite centralized, but not entirely.  There is not yet a SINGLE mining pool, or sufficient COLLUDING mining pools under the leadership of a cartel.  Bitcoin is an oligarchy of about 10 deciders.  Not yet a kingdom with one decider.  LN will be the same, or worse.  

Centralization is unavoidable when there needs to be done an effort to obtain rewards, by economies of scale.  With mining, those economies have been at work and have established an oligarchy, but as long as these oligarchs dispute, we can consider it still a little bit "decentralized".   LN has almost PROPORTIONAL economies of scale wrt the invested collateral.  It will centralize way, way faster.

[AgentofCoin]

You fail because you are trying to make points that are not valid to real world situations.
If a single miner did come about, than Bitcoin is done and everyone goes to a new coin.
So this example is worthless.

I hope you see all the contradictions in your attempt at argument.  The single miner was YOUR example to demonstrate that decentralization came from the nodes, not from the miners.  I took your premise to show you how that argument was totally flawed.  Now you start saying that it is not "real world".  No, but it is the perfect illustration of what I was saying: centralisation is mining centralization.

Now, you even admit that in your perfectly decentralized network with one miner, bitcoin would be dead.  So you just admitted the point for which you called me a moron.  

What you stated in your first post, is not what I stated.
You are stating that nodes that do not mine have no significance.

Yes that is what I'm stating.  There are a few cases, when there are network connection problems, where these nodes do play a small role, but that's it.

It is amazing how much this myth that node count has some significance in a Proof of Work system to COUNTER node count influence, is living on.  I think it is because if people would acknowledge that in a proof of work system, the votes are with hash rate, they would see the obvious centralization going on in bitcoin.  So one continues to spread this silly idea that node count has any "voting" meaning, while proof of work was explicitly introduced to counter that.

If you were correct in your IDEA, then what is occurring within Bitcoin, would not right now.
We would have all hardforked long ago, if you are correct.

No, because the only guys that can hardfork, are miners.  At least, as long as PoW is valid.  Bitcoin COULD hardfork with the nodes/users only, if someone implemented a PoS system.  THEN the miners don't decide anything any more.  PoS is a way to give power to the nodes/stakeholders.  But PoW doesn't care the smallest bit about nodes.

BTW "consensus by proof of work" was defined when miners and validators will a single entity.
Your definition of it, stop apply to Bitcoin when GPUs and ASICs came about.

No.  Your IDEA that consensus was "the majority of the community" was equivalent to "consensus of proof of work" stopped being valid at that point, and what remained was "proof of work" and NOT "majority of community".  In other words, the failed attempt of Satoshi to use "proof of work" as a means of "consensus of community" is what you are talking about, but what effectively is valid, is proof of work.  And if the proof of work is centralized, everything is centralized, and the rest doesn't matter.  The non-mining nodes don't matter.  They are simply proxy servers of the chain made by the miners, nothing more.

I disagree entirely.

If you are correct, clients like BU would not have needed to be created.
The fact that they were designed to do what they do, proves you incorrect.

On the contrary.  BU or any other software would of course be needed BY MINER NODES to have NOT the segwit software that would activate segwit automatically if signalling to one another.  In fact, JUST ANY form of software that is not segwit signalling would be needed, and that sticks to the old protocol.  What Joe Sixpack runs on his PC without mining, nobody cares.  Apart from the fact that one doesn't want to piss off Joe Sixpack so much, that he doesn't want to buy new miner coins any more at high price.

Your whole argument and premise is based on a twisting of reality.
At one point you say second layers are bad because of centralizing nature.
and just now you are saying miners are already centralized today. LOol.

Yes, miners are already quite centralized, but not entirely.  There is not yet a SINGLE mining pool, or sufficient COLLUDING mining pools under the leadership of a cartel.  Bitcoin is an oligarchy of about 10 deciders.  Not yet a kingdom with one decider.  LN will be the same, or worse.  

Centralization is unavoidable when there needs to be done an effort to obtain rewards, by economies of scale.  With mining, those economies have been at work and have established an oligarchy, but as long as these oligarchs dispute, we can consider it still a little bit "decentralized".   LN has almost PROPORTIONAL economies of scale wrt the invested collateral.  It will centralize way, way faster.

You have misunderstood almost everything I have stated.

Very simply, today there are mining nodes and validator nodes. (Satoshi did not anticipate this originally.)
Mining nodes perform "proof of work". Validator nodes perform "consensus compliance".
If a miner node creates a block or action that is outside the current rules, the validator nodes
will reject that block and deem it invalid. If there are enough "honest" validator nodes, a
majority of the node network will fully reject that invalid block and that miner will lose their incentives.
The validators not only validate whether txs are valid but also if the blocks are valid.
Validator nodes are the last check against miner nodes changing the Bitcoin protocol on whims.
Without validator nodes, miners could have hardforked long ago.

You state that Validator nodes have no power and it is a myth that they have any impact on the network.
My above paragraph is simply stated as to why you are wrong. Everything you are talking about as to
miner centralization and node voting is irrelevant to what I was originally talking about.

If you were correct in your opinion that validators are a myth, then a blocksize increase would have
occurred in 2011-2012. Miners do not do, what you say that can do, because if they did, they would
leave the whole network and economy behind, which only hurts themselves. Miners currently understand
that the node network and economies are as important as them and this is why BU was created, it was
done so to bring the node network with them when they hardfork. If your premise and argument was
correct, we would not be discussing this topic. This topic only exists because your opinion is incorrect.

A decentralized free and "honest" validator node network, is that last check against "malicious" or
"centralized" miners. If and when this aspect is removed, then what you are saying is true, but then
Bitcoin has fully failed, and if fully failed, why bother continue with this system? We are forced to start
a new one with new lessons learned.

Edit: So in conclusion, IMO BU will increase the rate that decentralized validators become centralized.
It may even be possible that in worst case scenario, within 1.5 years decentralized validator nodes become
extinct and need to be centralized under companies that are controlled and governed by rules and laws in
which they reside. So, IMO BU will help governments take direct control of protocol aspects within a very short
amount of time.

[Uberse]

Love the idea of presenting forum-postings in the form of a graphic novel! In any case, I did a search on this page for "malleability" and found nothing. Can SegWit's transaction malleability fix be grafted onto BU? I have no idea if it can, but my impression is that it can't and that BU just more or less ignores the fix.

[d5000]

With a second layer, all the things I love about bitcoin vanish.

If you control the flow of money, you have power.

Indeed, the second layer is banking.

There are other second layer techniques like two-way-pegged sidechains (see Rootstock for an example) that are not censurable. They would preserve the actual transaction paradigm ("users sign a TX and get it included in a blockchain by miners"), only that the blockchain would not be the main blockchain but a secondary blockchain pegged to Bitcoin.

There are still challenges for sidechains (above all, the incentive system to ensure security) and the 2-way-peg needs additional Bitcoin measures, as far as I understand it. But I don't think it's impossible. For example, you could design an altcoin with a "bitcoin-pegged token" and a "mining token", and distribute the mining token to miners, while the pegged token would have a fixed supply. That design could work with Segwit and atomic cross-chain trading (ACCT is no science fiction, as it has already implemented in some small altcoins).