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

[Amph]

probably fake and it doesn't make sense, if anyone use that boost it's like they are doing nothing, and the result would be the same earnig as before

also the only boost you can get is by adding or having better hardware, via software there is no optimization that can be done anymore on the mining scene

just look at this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1843662.0, cgminer for bitcoin asic, is as optimized as it get there is no room for anything

Read here:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.00575

if that was possible still the there is no advantage because everyone now would be able to use it, and if everyone has the 20% boost it's like they have only added more to the diff and earning will be the same as before

[1714657692]

1714657692

[bones261]

I do not see any controversy whatsoever in Bitmain optimizing their miners. Just like I do not see card counting as cheating in blackjack. BTW imnotback, I refuse to be relegated to Litecoin, even though I am a purported communist. After getting pissed off over a month ago, because my small time transaction took over a day to confirm, I wanted the scaling problem to be solved, the day before. I didn't care how. Now, I would much prefer neither BU or Segwit get the needed support. Of course, my opinion really doesn't matter at all since my 1.0 BTC of holdings doesn't amount to much. However, I have been thoroughly entertained since June of 2014 with my measly stake. Much cheaper than my unsuccessful attempts at card counting. It may have been giving me an edge,(although I should have probably not tried to drink excessively on several jaunts.)  but the risk of ruin was always far greater for me than any casino due to my disparagingly small bankroll compared to theirs.  

[anonymoustroll420]

if that was possible still the there is no advantage because everyone now would be able to use it, and if everyone has the 20% boost it's like they have only added more to the diff and earning will be the same as before

To make an ASIC chip, you need a billion dollar facility. Bitcoin ASIC manufacturers design chips, get foundries to make them and put them on a PCB. There are only a handful of foundries in the world.

There are patents on ASICBoost in most countries that have foundries. No foundry will risk a lawsuit to make the chip for anyone that the patent holder doesn't give permission to. This gives patent holders exclusive rights to the tech, which  leads to the creation of monopolies.


The other issue, the main issue right now, is that the secret way of using ASICBoost prevents many network upgrades from working, including segwit. This gives miners incentives to oppose these upgrades.

The devs have not decided that they want to make these optimizations impossible. They have instead decided to make the secret way of using ASICBoost impossible. The normal way that shows up on the blockchain will still work. The economic majority will still need to support this change, along with a portion of miners, in order for it to work.

[FiendCoin]

Now that the cat is out the bag...

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-a-mining-manufacturer-blocking-segwit-to-benefit-from-asicboost-cm770504

Jihan Wu is holding up Bitcoin development and trying to push it in a direction beneficial to him at the expense of the entire network.

AND of course the shills have no problem with it 

[iamnotback]

Now that the cat is out the bag...

http://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-a-mining-manufacturer-blocking-segwit-to-benefit-from-asicboost-cm770504

Jihan Wu is holding up Bitcoin development and trying to push it in a direction beneficial to him at the expense of the entire network.

AND of course the shills have no problem with it  

No we are protecting Bitcoin's value as immutable protocol and enabling experimental development to continue on Litecoin where it belongs. And there's not a damn thing any of you can do to change this outcome.  

Bitcoin is not a government. You don't get a vote. You don't even understand what makes Bitcoin valuable, that is why you are not allowed to decide because you would destroy it, not knowing WTF you are doing.

BTW imnotback, I refuse to be relegated to Litecoin  

No disrespect but neither you nor I have a vote in this matter.

Litecoin is what we will be transacting with. I already got my LTC at $6.50. How long are you going to wait before you come to grip with reality? $50? You are losing your relative wealth as we speak.

[andyatcrux]

if that was possible still the there is no advantage because everyone now would be able to use it, and if everyone has the 20% boost it's like they have only added more to the diff and earning will be the same as before

To make an ASIC chip, you need a billion dollar facility. Bitcoin ASIC manufacturers design chips, get foundries to make them and put them on a PCB. There are only a handful of foundries in the world.

There are patents on ASICBoost in most countries that have foundries. No foundry will risk a lawsuit to make the chip for anyone that the patent holder doesn't give permission to. This gives patent holders exclusive rights to the tech, which  leads to the creation of monopolies.


The other issue, the main issue right now, is that the secret way of using ASICBoost prevents many network upgrades from working, including segwit. This gives miners incentives to oppose these upgrades.

The devs have not decided that they want to make these optimizations impossible. They have instead decided to make the secret way of using ASICBoost impossible. The normal way that shows up on the blockchain will still work. The economic majority will still need to support this change, along with a portion of miners, in order for it to work.

Well said. People are doubling down and digging in deeper to defend this as a some sort of "free market" issue, when it goes much deeper than that.

[iamnotback]

You need to distinguish overt and covert boosting. The proposed BIP only addresses covert boosting.

If miners all used covert boosting Bitcoin could never gain, or gain only with significant increases complexity or loss of functionality many different protocol improvements, including:

(1) Segwit. (2) UTXO commitments. (non-delayed, at least) (3) Committed Bloom filters (4) Committed address indexes (5) STXO commitments (non-delayed). (6) Weak blocks (7) Most kinds of fraud proofs -- to state a few.

Are you stating that the difference between a vulnerability and an optimization is that an optimization allows for future changes but an vulnerability locks things in place?

The whales who control the majority of BTC want small blocks and immutability. Thus I think they would say that the attack is the proposed BIP which seems to be clearly designed to play favorites in the free market and disable the free market from making the protocol immutable as Satoshi (Nash) apparently intended.

[andyatcrux]

And another interesting comment:

They just lose the advantage they have over their own customers.

Because if Bitmain can't do it covertly then if they either can't or can reconfigure via s/w to do it overtly then their customers (who have the same boost capable hardware) will either not be at an efficiency disadvantage or they demand that they receive the software to also be able to do overtly.

But what if Bitmain release the s/w for covert boosting anonymously, then their customers might fight the BIP, because their customers might reside in jurisdictions where the Western patent applies.

When you put it this way it certainly makes sense why Bitmain went with the covert operation. But doesn't this add to the question of whether miners play the role of the dominant "voters" vs just signalling readiness?

Wouldn't the conflict of interest wherein a company like Bitmain may choose an upgrade or scaling solution based foremost on compatibility with their covert ASICBOOST (or whatever else may come) rather than what is best for the security and long term viability of Bitcoin as a whole, be bad for everyone?  Doesn't this make a case in favor of Users and coders acting as a balance check?

Disclaimer: I know what i may not know, so don't take my questions as a bold assertion of fact. Also, I am a little drunk.  

[iamnotback]

And another interesting comment:

They just lose the advantage they have over their own customers.

Because if Bitmain can't do it covertly then if they either can't or can reconfigure via s/w to do it overtly then their customers (who have the same boost capable hardware) will either not be at an efficiency disadvantage or they demand that they receive the software to also be able to do overtly.

But what if Bitmain release the s/w for covert boosting anonymously, then their customers might fight the BIP, because their customers might reside in jurisdictions where the Western patent applies.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the Chinese miners turn on the overt version after this

I wouldn't be surprised for them to turn on the covert version!

A HF war seems possible if this BIP is activated on a flag day.

When you put it this way it certainly makes sense why Bitmain went with the covert operation. But doesn't this add to the question of whether miners play the role of the dominant "voters" vs just signalling readiness?

Wouldn't the conflict of interest wherein a company like Bitmain may choose an upgrade or scaling solution based foremost on compatibility with their covert ASICBOOST (or whatever else may come) rather than what is best for the security and long term viability of Bitcoin as a whole, be bad for everyone?  Doesn't this make a case in favor of Users and coders acting as a balance check?

Disclaimer: I know what i may not know, so don't take my questions as a bold assertion of fact. Also, I am a little drunk.  

@gmaxwell is in danger of causing a ridiculous HF war with his desperate flag day activation of this communistic BIP:

Holy fricking shit. So does this mean my Antminer S9 is 30% less efficient than an Antpool S9, assuming Antpool is using this exploit?

Yes, effectively. The efficiency gains are probably less than 30% in reality from ASICBOOST, but the software on the public machines is also extremely inefficient in the way it manages the string voltages.

People experimenting with the software on the S9 claim to have got 20% efficiency independently of ASICBOOST by controlling the ASICs properly. It's possible their private farms are using both the proper control and ASICBOOST for very large efficiency gains over what they are selling publicly

Dear god. Well, I hope someone figures it out and us little guys can upgrade our firmware and get to a level playing field... between this and Jihan's ridiculous tweets, Bitmain is trying real hard to destroy their brand.

I don't think that miner realizes he just admitted he'll be supporting Jihan's stance because he will be prevented from using any overt version by patent law. Thus he will have to use a covert version of the upgrade when it is anonymous released on the Internet.

This covert boost was a very clever ploy because it leverages game theory, economics, technology, and law! Wow. That is out-of-the-box thinking. I'm impressed.

@gmaxwell doesn't yet realize he has been outplayed. Checkmate. Litecoin is his destiny, as planned by the Chinese.

Normalize the efficiency by blocking the attack; and only the covert form of asicboost that potentially gets in the way of protocol improvements.

Incorrect. The BIP would block use of the overt case in Western jurisdictions where the ASCIIBOOST patent applies. But the Chinese could continue to use the overt boost, because they have a patent already in China and afaik  China doesn't enforce Western patents. So you aren't normalizing. You are just making it impossible for the Western owners of the hardware to ever get a level playing field. If you attempt your crazy flag day activation, they'll probably anonymously release the covert s/w so then all the Western miners with their hardware will block your BIP and you'll have a HF war on your bloody hands. Great for your reputation.

[franky1]

meanwhile bitcoins segwit 31% block flagging is only temporary due to a hack expect it to drop back down below 30% in the next fortnight

https://twitter.com/f2pool_wangchun/status/848582740798611456

Wang Chun‏ @f2pool_wangchun

Someone hacked major mining operations and their stratum had been changed from antpool, viabtc, btctop to us. Our hashrate doubled instantly

10:07 am - 2 Apr 2017

[Velkro]

Apparently, Jihan Wu has been covertly using some patented exploit called asicboost to gain 20%+ efficiency on his hardware that’s incompatible with SegWit. It all makes sense now. Hope he gets his ass sued off.

That is so shady of him, money above everything.
Good it was revealed, now we can push segwit

[franky1]

Apparently, Jihan Wu

apparently?
says.........
.... oh gmaxwell

hmm,
waiter wheres the salt

all i see is more social politics with no proof. all so gmaxwell can try playing the fake victim to get his control

[andyatcrux]

Are these arguments against ASICBoost accurate?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/63qagj/ryan_shea_greg_maxwell_recently_created_segwit/dfwaj46/

The reddit post contains:

1 ASICBOOST is not a more efficient POW. It's a way to skip doing some of the work.

2 More importantly, ASICBOOST works best by sometimes creating empty blocks. I do think miners have the right to create empty block, but incentivizing it for no reason at all is incredibly unecessary and stupid.

3 Most importantly, it's incompatible with many proposed upgrades to the Bitcoin protocol. The most notable one would be segwit, but it also blocks crucial upgrades for SPV wallets. It basically blocks any update that would require a commitment in the block header, such as:

Segwit.

UTXO commitments. (non-delayed)

Committed Bloom filters

Committed address indexes

STXO commitments (non-delayed)

Weak blocks

Most kinds of fraud proofs

[iamnotback]

Apparently, Jihan Wu has been covertly using some patented exploit called asicboost to gain 20%+ efficiency on his hardware that’s incompatible with SegWit. It all makes sense now. Hope he gets his ass sued off.

That is so shady of him, money above everything.
Good it was revealed, now we can push segwit

Actually immutability above everything, which is the holiest of pursuits for a Bitcoin supporter. I have to take my hat off to him. Well played indeed. But of course he has probably been consulting with MP.

Is @gmaxwell about to cause a HF war on Bitcoin with his nonsense?

No miner threshold is proposed in this document. It is specified as a block height flag day (height currently not specified, up for public discussion).

DANGER!

But couldn't miners and then whales treat it as a HF and refuse to mine on blocks that implemented the BIP?

In that case, would a block height trigger not put us in danger of a HF war?

A miner majority doesn't guarantee that whales can't sell the majority hashrate fork and buy the minority hashrate fork, thus elevating the hashrate of the one they choose and killing the one they don't allow.

I can see the butthurt for Gregory and he is getting desperate because he knows soon he is going to be working for the Chinese doing work on Litecoin.

Here is the followup:

if the users of the network are requiring it then it doesn't matter what miners do. Users choose the miners.

People could create a 'fork' any time, for any reason. And, lol, it would be probably the most profitable day of my life if some idiots insisted on making a covert-boosting fork.. I'd buy as many their covert-boosting-fixed coins as they wanted to sell.

That is my point. And the whales have the most BTC and thus make the decision. And they have already told you that if you ever try to break Bitcoin's immutability, they will take your BTC. Please do bet the wrong way and lose your BTC. You don't remember your exchange with MP, the whale who controls a million BTC himself and has a WoT of the majority of the wealth in Bitcoin. Also you've been checkmated by Bitmain as they can just release the covert s/w to kill your BIP. You can safely assume MP was behind this cleverness. He was also the DAO attacker. Be careful. Luckily you can have SegWit on Litecoin, so your work won't be wasted. I worked very hard the past week to help SegWit get activated on Litecoin. You're welcome. Hope you do great things with Litecoin.

[andyatcrux]

How exactly do any UASF proposals break the immutability of Bitcoin? Serious question. Ledger will remain unchanged, Bitcoins will remain unchanged. What am I missing here?

(I am asking someone to tell me like I am 5 years old without posting a wall of text and non-referenced/tagged links. We can continue talking about this stuff in the echo chamber of bitcointalk but it'd be nice to have some digestible evidence for the community at large)

[iamnotback]

How exactly do any UASF proposals break the immutability of Bitcoin? Serious question. Ledger will remain unchanged, Bitcoins will remain unchanged. What am I missing here?

(I am asking someone to tell me like I am 5 years old without posting a wall of text and non-referenced/tagged links. We can continue talking about this stuff in the echo chamber of bitcointalk but it'd be nice to have some digestible evidence for the community at large)

Immutability of the protocol of Bitcoin. If we can mutate the protocol, then Bitcoin is not a level playing field. It looses its value as a stable metric of value which beyond the influence of anybody.

The gaming of the mining will be met by other gaming the mining. That is just free market competition. The free market finds ways around patents.

But if we have King Blockstream acting as a government lord, then Bitcoin is as worthless as any other fiat.

@gmaxwell is protecting the "improvements" he wants to make to Bitcoin's protocol. He is saying he knows what is best and will modify that level playing field. He will not be allowed to do this. He has been banished to do his scaling work on Litecoin. None of you can change this outcome. Bitcoin will retain small blocks and so Litecoin will get much of the scaling. Hope Gregory takes it in stride and doesn't get too depressed.

Why is taking advantage of an opportunity that is legal in the protocol sleazy?

The optimization is not sleezy. What is sleezy is lying to the community saying that the reasons you are blocking bitcoins progress forward is ABC, when you are hiding a secret competitive feature from the customers you are selling the equipment too.

That's fucked on multiple angles.

Good luck defending that. Only someone hopelessly entrenched beyond all reasoning or hired to spin PR would think that's ok.

Don't be so butthurt just because you were too incompetent to do your due diligence. Bitmain was actually helping to enforce immutability of the protocol, which is the holiest of pursuits for a Real Bitcoin supporter. Some of us understood what was going on and we tried to tell you all, but you ignored us. Bitmain is doing a great service teaching fools to get their head out of their arse. But instead of learning, you want to shoot the messenger so you can double down on your continued ignorance.

[franky1]

How exactly do any UASF proposals break the immutability of Bitcoin? Serious question. Ledger will remain unchanged, Bitcoins will remain unchanged. What am I missing here?

(I am asking someone to tell me like I am 5 years old without posting a wall of text and non-referenced/tagged links. We can continue talking about this stuff in the echo chamber of bitcointalk but it'd be nice to have some digestible evidence for the community at large)

in short.
a block should only be rejected if it breaks the rules that consensus desire.

but if new banning mechanisms reject blocks because of WHO made the block. whereby the transaction data is acceptable, but rejected purely on biased/social reasons. then things start to go grey

whats next
lets say
Gmaxwell say "jihan is destroying coins by putting coins into a address.. so we must now increase the 21m coin cap" - even if no coins are destroyed
Gmaxwell say "jihan is going to split the network.. so we must now invoke our own split"- even if no split deadline  by non-core is made
Gmaxwell say "jihan could be using asicboost we need to destroy ASICS" - even if is btcc or f2pool that might be the ones using it

[Quickseller]

And by trying to block covert applications of technology, @gmaxwell is proposing to make it more difficult for others to compete with patents.

He is proposing making the covert way of doing this one optimization impossible, because the covert way of this optimization makes many kinds of network upgrades harder and causes miners to do strange things, like occasionally mine empty blocks, reorder txes or include never-seen-before txes.

He is not banning any kind of optimization.

Personally I think these optimizations should be made impossible to do, it's disengenous to call them efficiencies, more like shortcuts, as these kinds of optimizations do not contribute to the security of the network as they can be made impossible to do so that attackers cannot use them either.

Network "upgrades" can still take place, and can be done via hardforks.

Most of the side effects of ASICBOOST are mostly harmless to the network (with the exception of empty blocks, which sometimes have a legitimate reason to be broadcast anyway).

If ASICBOOST were to start being used more broadly, then we could see a market for ASICs regarding the "BOOST" portion of the technology, which may make the network less vulnerable to malicious mining actors if manufacturers are diversified.

[FiendCoin]

And by trying to block covert applications of technology, @gmaxwell is proposing to make it more difficult for others to compete with patents.

He is proposing making the covert way of doing this one optimization impossible, because the covert way of this optimization makes many kinds of network upgrades harder and causes miners to do strange things, like occasionally mine empty blocks, reorder txes or include never-seen-before txes.

He is not banning any kind of optimization.

Personally I think these optimizations should be made impossible to do, it's disengenous to call them efficiencies, more like shortcuts, as these kinds of optimizations do not contribute to the security of the network as they can be made impossible to do so that attackers cannot use them either.

Network "upgrades" can still take place, and can be done via hardforks.

Most of the side effects of ASICBOOST are mostly harmless to the network (with the exception of empty blocks, which sometimes have a legitimate reason to be broadcast anyway).

If ASICBOOST were to start being used more broadly, then we could see a market for ASICs regarding the "BOOST" portion of the technology, which may make the network less vulnerable to malicious mining actors if manufacturers are diversified.

ASICBOOST is a bullshit shortcut to make Jihan Wu more money at the expense of the network.

To keep using it will prevent useful upgrades to the protocol.

One man's greed should not be able to stand in the way of progress.

[andyatcrux]

How exactly do any UASF proposals break the immutability of Bitcoin? Serious question. Ledger will remain unchanged, Bitcoins will remain unchanged. What am I missing here?

(I am asking someone to tell me like I am 5 years old without posting a wall of text and non-referenced/tagged links. We can continue talking about this stuff in the echo chamber of bitcointalk but it'd be nice to have some digestible evidence for the community at large)

in short.
a block should only be rejected if it breaks the rules that consensus desire.

but if new banning mechanisms reject blocks because of WHO made the block. whereby the transaction data is acceptable, but rejected purely on biased/social reasons. then things start to go grey

whats next
lets say
Gmaxwell say "jihan is destroying coins by putting coins into a address.. so we must now increase the 21m coin cap" - even if no coins are destroyed
Gmaxwell say "jihan is going to split the network.. so we must now invoke our own split"- even if no split deadline  by non-core is made
Gmaxwell say "jihan could be using asicboost we need to destroy ASICS" - even if is btcc or f2pool that might be the ones using it

Interesting points, thanks for the feedback. But isn't it up to the full nodes to decide upon upgrading their software? Would this not be a form of consensus? Is the debate that only miners should have a vote?  

Immutability of the protocol of Bitcoin. If we can mutate the protocol, then Bitcoin is not a level playing field. It looses its value as a stable metric of value which beyond the influence of anybody.

The gaming of the mining will be met by other gaming the mining. That is just free market competition. The free market finds ways around patents.

But if we have King Blockstream acting as a government lord, then Bitcoin is as worthless as any other fiat.

@gmaxwell is protecting the "improvements" he wants to make to Bitcoin's protocol. He is saying he knows what is best and will modify that level playing field. He will not be allowed to do this. He has been banished to do his scaling work on Litecoin. None of you can change this outcome. Bitcoin will retain small blocks and so Litecoin will get much of the scaling. Hope Gregory takes it in stride and doesn't get too depressed.

Okay, I see you have a strong opinion about some of the core devs connection to Blockstream. So you see any change to the protocol as a negative, whether that be segwit, or any variation of an emergent.  Food for thought.

Perhaps I am overstating the importance of people running full nodes, but I always thought they served as a counterbalance between the miners and the developers. Anyhow, thanks for your thoughts on the matter. I will try to approach the issue with an open mind, although as you've said before, there is (maybe?) nothing we can do about it.