Well, well, well, now we know what Jihan Wu’s been up to.

[Killerpotleaf]

And one of the replies was "Optimising algorithm implementation is not an exploit. SHA256 is quantum-resistant. Never figured you for propagandist."

If anything I see this as a strike against Segwit - how the f*ck did Segwit manage to change bitcoin mining parameters to such a degree that they broke an ASIC that does almost nothing other than hashing!?

And now Segwit is "needed for Bitcoin to thrive"?! LOL it's needed for Lightning to thrive, and for Bitcoin to become a settlement layer.

i sympathize with this point of view.

and i find it ironic that core has stressed for so long how critical maintaining backward compatibility is, and then they propose to turn a huge amount of mining hardware into bricks!
core obviously has very little consideration for miners.
they see miners as dispensable work horses, not the critical-consensus-mechanism that is bitcoin
and while i agree that in the event of a hashing power attack the user base can "overrule" miners authority.
i do not think this should be taken lightly
and i'm unsure if that this would be an appropriate response to miners boosting.

[Killerpotleaf]

Statement from Bitmain (Jihan Wu):

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-campaigns/

Short summary:

• We have asicboost designed in our chips but we don’t use it.
• We can legally use asicboost if we want in China.
• If you think we use it, prove that we do.

smells fishy...

but maybe HE can prove what he is saying by running that BIP that kills boosting.

[megashira1]

Adam Meister, The Bitcoin Core Propaganda Minister is gonna have a field day with this one. God help us all.

[FiendCoin]

Statement from Bitmain (Jihan Wu):

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-campaigns/

Short summary:

• We have asicboost designed in our chips but we don’t use it.
• We can legally use asicboost if we want in China.
• If you think we use it, prove that we do.

smells fishy...

but maybe HE can prove what he is saying by running that BIP that kills boosting.

This just gets more hilarious as time goes on 

[quake313]

Statement from Bitmain (Jihan Wu):

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-campaigns/

Short summary:

• We have asicboost designed in our chips but we don’t use it.
• We can legally use asicboost if we want in China.
• If you think we use it, prove that we do.

smells fishy...

but maybe HE can prove what he is saying by running that BIP that kills boosting.

This just gets more hilarious as time goes on 

So we are suppose to believe that Bitmain has this 20-30% efficiency boost and they are NOT using it? That seems kind of hard to believe. I wonder if someone can prove that they are? In any event, interesting times these days. I can not see how anyone can predict the outcome of the scaling debate, it seems like it can go in any direction. Who knows what the next bombshell will bring and where that will lead.

[classicsucks]

Emin Gun Sirer weighed in on this:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/04/05/bitcoin-drama-response/

TLDR;
None of gmaxwell's claims have been independently confirmed, and there are countless patents on ASIC manufacturing that confer far more than 30% speed boost, therefore rendering the FUD about centralization moot.

[Finksy]

Don't forget:

We have very firm belief that the block size of Bitcoin will be increased. It is the Bitcoin that our co-founders signed up for, it is the roadmap designed by Satoshi and it is the destiny of Bitcoin. We will protect it at any cost.

Larger blocks will not be allowed.

I want bigger blocks.  I wanted them 2 years ago.

You'll never get them.

I thought Bitmain sided with you and the whales?

[FiendCoin]

Emin Gun Sirer weighed in on this:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/04/05/bitcoin-drama-response/

TLDR;
None of gmaxwell's claims have been independently confirmed, and there are countless patents on ASIC manufacturing that confer far more than 30% speed boost, therefore rendering the FUD about centralization moot.

Wrong, Bitmain has confirmed it has asicboost in their chips.

[AgentofCoin]

Statement from Bitmain (Jihan Wu):

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-campaigns/

Short summary:

• We have asicboost designed in our chips but we don’t use it.
• We can legally use asicboost if we want in China.
• If you think we use it, prove that we do.

smells fishy...
but maybe HE can prove what he is saying by running that BIP that kills boosting.

This just gets more hilarious as time goes on  

I just read their statement.

10% of it is them admitting that their chips contain the ASICBoost like design.
But deny using them on the main chain but wants others to use ASICBoost too.

90% of it is them commenting about politics, conspiracies, speculations, and division.
Pointing fingers and spreading more hate in order to obfuscate the current issue.

From a strictly PR damage control aspect, they gave too much irrelevant info.
Other miners and developers will be able to read between the lines, IMO.

[Killerpotleaf]

Statement from Bitmain (Jihan Wu):

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-campaigns/

Short summary:

• We have asicboost designed in our chips but we don’t use it.
• We can legally use asicboost if we want in China.
• If you think we use it, prove that we do.

smells fishy...

but maybe HE can prove what he is saying by running that BIP that kills boosting.

This just gets more hilarious as time goes on  

So we are suppose to believe that Bitmain has this 20-30% efficiency boost and they are NOT using it? That seems kind of hard to believe. I wonder if someone can prove that they are? In any event, interesting times these days. I can not see how anyone can predict the outcome of the scaling debate, it seems like it can go in any direction. Who knows what the next bombshell will bring and where that will lead.

maybe they really do have it turned off, maybe they felt it would become all to obvious (30% more empty blocks?) if they did turn it on, so they ( mostly ) run with it off.

in anycase, the link is a MUST read
https://blog.bitmain.com/en/regarding-recent-allegations-smear-campaigns/

[Finksy]

Emin Gun Sirer weighed in on this:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/04/05/bitcoin-drama-response/

TLDR;
None of gmaxwell's claims have been independently confirmed, and there are countless patents on ASIC manufacturing that confer far more than 30% speed boost, therefore rendering the FUD about centralization moot.

Wrong, Bitmain has confirmed it has asicboost in their chips.

Wrong. Gmaxwell stated that Bitmain (or some Chinese presence strongly resembling Bitmain) was covertly using ASICboost in their farms for PoW, not just that it existed in the chip.  This has not been confirmed.  Though I do find it fishy that they would introduce optimization technology into their chips without stating as such (until now), having  the ability to use it, and yet choosing not to implement it in a private setting, reducing their costs by 30%, and it not being detectable...

[iamnotback]

Don't forget:

We have very firm belief that the block size of Bitcoin will be increased. It is the Bitcoin that our co-founders signed up for, it is the roadmap designed by Satoshi and it is the destiny of Bitcoin. We will protect it at any cost.

Larger blocks will not be allowed.

I want bigger blocks.  I wanted them 2 years ago.

You'll never get them.

I thought Bitmain sided with you and the whales?

You haven't analyzed Bitmain's statement carefully.

I'm still waiting for you guys to find an intentional inconsistency in that statement.

[Finksy]

You're right, I only read it once.  I'll spend the night studying Bitmain's statement, to see where they conclusively state that "Larger blocks will not be allowed."  I'll get back to you in the AM, prof.

[iamnotback]

Emin Gun Sirer weighed in on this:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/04/05/bitcoin-drama-response/

Note this doesn't mean you can prove it when you see this evidence:

If ASICBOOST was actually used, we'd see ample evidence on the blockchain. This evidence would be in the form of transactions that are picked according to an algorithm that shuffles the transactions to create a sought collision, instead of sorting them by fee-per-byte.

That only means if you don't see random ordering, then you know it isn't been employed. But if you do see random ordering, you can't prove that it is because of asicboost.

That is a critical point if you want to understand the Bitmain statement correctly.

[iamnotback]

You're right, I only read it once.  I'll spend the night studying Bitmain's statement, to see where they conclusively state that "Larger blocks will not be allowed."  I'll get back to you in the AM, prof.

Don't miss the part about how larger blocks make asicboost less efficient.

[Killerpotleaf]

Bitmain has continuously been advocating for increasing the Bitcoin block size. Increasing the block size will make the collisions even more difficult, damaging the potential benefits of Bitmain’s gain from the private ASICBOOST assumed by Maxwell’s proposal. The conspiracy theories do not add up here.

this?

We have very firm belief that the block size of Bitcoin will be increased. It is the Bitcoin that our co-founders signed up for, it is the roadmap designed by Satoshi and it is the destiny of Bitcoin. We will protect it at any cost..

THIS must be what you find inconsistent...

[iamnotback]

Empty blocks indicate ASICBOOST usage, though they can also arise out of datacenter connectivity issues or from headers-first mining. Counter to popular opinion, empty blocks help bury other blocks and thus provide security. (Thanks to the ever insightful Dan Robinson of Chain for bringing this up!)

Empty blocks were more common in 2015, which afaik before the asicboost patent.

As an alternative motivation, empty blocks also increase transaction fees, by making block space more scarce. But they haven't been frequent enough lately to be that motivation

However, if you were a miner who wanted to bait @Gmaxwell, you might throw some empty blocks out there so he could use that in his smear campaign accusing you of using asicboost even though the number of empty blocks have been far too insignificant to be a practical use of asicboost. (and just for fun, you'd actually use asicboost on them, just because no one can prove anything)

[Killerpotleaf]

Spoiler alert!

Gmax's response to bitmains statement is gonna be somthing like
" you dont use boosting? GOOD you wont have a problem running the BIP-all-your-boosts-are-belong-to-us"
than bitmain will run the BIP... and the space time continue will implode in on itself and then the big bang! you know the rest...

[iamnotback]

First item is to understand why Blockstream refused to accept 2MB blocks along with SegWit.

I haven't actually looked to see their official stated reason, but I can guess that it must be because they know they each time they want to "upgrade" the protocol, they need have some carrot and stick that forces the market to want their upgrade. So keeping blocksize very constrained is necessary so that Blockstream remains in control of the protocol.

In other words, Blockstream can't accept 2MB blocks, because they know their business model depends on them being in control of the protocol of Bitcoin. Also factor in that maybe Bitmain has told them behind the curtain that Bitmain will block all their future protocol changes after the 2MB+SegWit. Blockstream probably couldn't repeat that in public, because Bitmain would deny it and accuse Blockstream of fabricating lies.

Am I correct so far?

[AngryDwarf]

Last time I looked, recent empty blocks have come from 1Hash rather than antpool. And we are talking about a block which was 10 mins after the previous one. Also, BitFury as long been mining blocks which appear to be stuffed with their own transactions, perhaps to hide an empty block? (although it could be some kind of data storage mechanism for another system)
All miners are going to take what ever competitive advantage that they can. Seems like some people are mud slinging so that they can play the victim card because they have failed to develop a consensus solution.