The Barry Silbert segwit2x agreement with >80% miner support.

[mackenzied]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjZk7N7RXfA

"Miners' work only has value if users value it."

It is coming. I suggest you Bitmain's paid shills to accept the reality. UASF is far more superior to Cartel's HF agreement because they have no base. They are only miners. They are not special snowflakes. Users make bitcoin valuable not miners.

UASF > Cartel HF

I think most real users want bigger blocks and the benefits that come with it (lower fees, faster confirmations).

UASF support is fake/astroturfing.

But maybe there will be a network split if some miners insist on it.

Bitcoin works in the community, so it always needs to vote by the majority, and we need to vote for the community benefit. Miners refuse it because when transaction costs decrease, they will exploit less, that is their selfishness. I want them to work in the community.

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[Carlton Banks]

For what it's worth, I quite like the combo of 2MB base size and segwit, just not the miners' agreement's alleged planned execution of it. It still only smells of a bargaining tool to me and hopefully that's all it will end up being (see chest thumping.)

[thumps cognition]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Are you stupid? Because it's either me or you that is

[dinofelis]

Another example of a Nash equilibrium, signalling, and the Tragedy of the Commons: the parable of the big barrel of wine:

http://www.chabadofmv.com/templates/blog/post_cdo/aid/1086982/PostID/17549

There was once a king who was visiting a town. In preparation for the king’s visit the town decided to fill a giant barrel with wine and present it to the king upon his arrival. Where were they going to get so much wine to fill the giant barrel? They came up with a brilliant idea; each family of the town would bring one flask filled with wine and pour it into the giant barrel and this way the barrel would fill with wine.

They placed a Giant barrel in the center of the town with a ladder reaching to the top and every day people lined up to pour their flask of wine into the barrel.

The day finally arrived and the king visited the town. The people were so excited to present the king with this wonderful gift. The king was shown the barrel and was given a kingly goblet. They filled his goblet with wine from the giant barrel. The towns people were shocked by the look on the king’s face as he drank the wine, the king was obviously very unhappy. When asked why he was so unhappy he responded, “It’s just plain water”.

It turns out that each family thought to themselves why should I be the one to pour in a flask of wine I will pour in water instead, I am sure no one will notice if there is just one flask of water among all that wine. Everyone in the town made the same calculation and so no one poured in wine but rather water instead. Everyone was relying on someone else.

This is a logical game-theoretical outcome, also called the Tragedy of the Commons.

Each participant has two possible strategies: pouring in water, or pouring in wine.  The first strategy is less costly than the second one for any configuration.   In a barrel full of water, it would be outright stupid to pour one bottle of wine: what you will drink will essentially be water.  In a barrel full of wine, it would not change much to the outcome, you will be drinking wine, and it is cheaper to put in water.  Whatever the others do, putting in water and drinking what comes out is always better than putting in wine and still drinking what comes out.

This is why the Nash equilibrium of this system is a barrel full of water.  There is no way of obtaining a barrel full of wine.

[dinofelis]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Whoohoo !  That's a whopping $30.- per year mining pools exchanges and other big actors will have to concede if they need to run a full node !

[hv_]

Sorry - could you pls elaborate a bit on that 'catch-22 in a decentralized system' ? What is the clou here?

You mean, the expression "catch-22" ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)

Jumping to another Nash equilibrium is such a case.  Are you aware of the prisoners dilemma ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

It illustrates a kind of non-trivial Nash equilibrium.  "tragedy of the commons" is another game-theoretical catch-22 situation.

I don't know if this helps ?

Tx - I had no deeper dive into that yet - interesting...

[dinofelis]

Sorry - could you pls elaborate a bit on that 'catch-22 in a decentralized system' ? What is the clou here?

You mean, the expression "catch-22" ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)

Jumping to another Nash equilibrium is such a case.  Are you aware of the prisoners dilemma ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

It illustrates a kind of non-trivial Nash equilibrium.  "tragedy of the commons" is another game-theoretical catch-22 situation.

I don't know if this helps ?

Tx - I had no deeper dive into that yet - interesting...

It is Satoshi's genius invention: have a decentralized system that obeys game theory in such a way that the Nash equilibrium coincides with "respecting the established rules" ; if there is no central authority any more deciding on those rules and having the (moral?) authority/raw power to force the change upon someone, this *locks in* the rules for ever.  In other words: Satoshi's genius invention is the notion of immutability in a decentralized system.

[hv_]

Sorry - could you pls elaborate a bit on that 'catch-22 in a decentralized system' ? What is the clou here?

You mean, the expression "catch-22" ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22_(logic)

Jumping to another Nash equilibrium is such a case.  Are you aware of the prisoners dilemma ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

It illustrates a kind of non-trivial Nash equilibrium.  "tragedy of the commons" is another game-theoretical catch-22 situation.

I don't know if this helps ?

Tx - I had no deeper dive into that yet - interesting...

It is Satoshi's genius invention: have a decentralized system that obeys game theory in such a way that the Nash equilibrium coincides with "respecting the established rules" ; if there is no central authority any more deciding on those rules and having the (moral?) authority/raw power to force the change upon someone, this *locks in* the rules for ever.  In other words: Satoshi's genius invention is the notion of immutability in a decentralized system.

Yes - in ideal theory this might work - but still the imbalanced incentives (only miners) lead to centralization (sure proper metric needed ...) , and repulsive forces I cannot see much except keep code & rules = protocol as simple as possible (validity of blocks) than there should be room for more (best guess).

[franky1]

For what it's worth, I quite like the combo of 2MB base size and segwit, just not the miners' agreement's alleged planned execution of it. It still only smells of a bargaining tool to me and hopefully that's all it will end up being (see chest thumping.)

[thumps cognition]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Are you stupid? Because it's either me or you that is

i know my post will get deleted but here goes

1. to even fill the 6mb witness area. people need to first move funds over to segwit key pairs. <- most important part
2. IF EVERY tx used segwit keypairs then the 2mb base will be filled but only ~2.2mb of the 6mb witness will be filled making 4.2mb data weight
3. comparison of bip9 segwit IF EVERY tx used segwit then the 1mb base will be filled but only ~1.1mb of the 3mb weight will be filled making 2.1mb data
4. to get to that point a majority of the 46m outputs need to be on sgwit keys for the majority of users to be spending 'segwit' outputs to achieve anything close to it

it would take alot of time, months/years if ever for a block to be bip9segwit 2.1mb of 4mb or BSsegwit 4.2mb of 8mb, due to the headache of moving funds across to new keypairs to dilute down the native keypairs that only utilise the base block

[hv_]

For what it's worth, I quite like the combo of 2MB base size and segwit, just not the miners' agreement's alleged planned execution of it. It still only smells of a bargaining tool to me and hopefully that's all it will end up being (see chest thumping.)

[thumps cognition]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Are you stupid? Because it's either me or you that is

i know my post will get deleted but here goes

1. to even fill the 6mb witness area. people need to first move funds over to segwit key pairs. <- most important part
2. IF EVERY tx used segwit keypairs then the 2mb base will be filled but only ~2.2mb of the 6mb witness will be filled making 4.2mb data weight
3. comparison of bip9 segwit IF EVERY tx used segwit then the 1mb base will be filled but only ~1.2mb of the 3mb weight will be filled making 2.1mb data
4. to get to that point a majority of the 46m outputs need to be on sgwit keys for the majority of users to be spending 'segwit' outputs to achieve anything close to it

it would take alot of time, months/years if ever for a block to be bip9segwit 2.1mb of 4mb or BSsegwit 4.2mb of 8mb, due to the headache of moving funds across to new keypairs to dilute down the native keypairs that only utilise the base block

Not so sure ...

[dinofelis]

Yes - in ideal theory this might work - but still the imbalanced incentives (only miners) lead to centralization (sure proper metric needed ...) , and repulsive forces I cannot see much except keep code & rules = protocol as simple as possible (validity of blocks) than there should be room for more (best guess).

I agree that the miner centralization is a design error of bitcoin, and its main problem is that when the mining pools get too few, they CAN sit in a room and decide upon something - in the same way that until recently, Core could decide upon something (and maybe still can, with difficulties).

In the ideally decentralized view (which bitcoin has never reached, and will never reach) with hundreds of small miners, tens of different development teams, and thousands of users, never colluding over anything, the only possibility is immutability - which is in fact the only REASON to want decentralization in the first place: to have the guarantee that the rules are graved in stone for ever.

Strictly speaking, 3 miner pools having each 33% of the hash rate, but NEVER colluding over anything, would still do the job of immutable protocol, decentralized system and permissionless system.  The problem is that with 3, the guarantee that 2 of them will never sit down together is weak.

It is very very funny to see people desiring a decentralized system asking for "people to sit together and come to an agreement".  Because that's what decentralization was supposed to avoid.

[-ck]

For what it's worth, I quite like the combo of 2MB base size and segwit, just not the miners' agreement's alleged planned execution of it. It still only smells of a bargaining tool to me and hopefully that's all it will end up being (see chest thumping.)

[thumps cognition]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Are you stupid? Because it's either me or you that is

Yes I acknowledge how big 8MB blocks would be potentially. Will they fill up immediately? I seriously doubt it will fill immediately but I do see demand for ~2MB of transactions easily in the current climate of transactions and we've already easily outgrown that. So why would I advocate for any more space than segwit alone provides?

A number of things that I'll list off the top of my head (no doubt there's much more I can't think of right now).
- I believe that there is room for more on-chain growth, even if we move micro-transactions off-chain (which I do believe is the answer to scaling to massive sizes.)
- If we assume bitcoin already needs double the space that it currently has based on current transaction volume, it means we should already be aiming for double that again at a minimum, and while segwit provides up to 4MB of transactions, it depends entirely on the type of transactions as to how much extra space will actually be available.  Given the most pessimistic estimate of 1.7MB that means we have already outgrown that capacity.
- Why should we aim for a blockchain that has up to 8MB of transactions per block instead of 1MB and require the extra storage? There's a self fulfilling prophecy there if you want to have more transactions on the chain; if you want to fit twice as many transactions you need to be providing twice as much space.
- Segwit transactions will allow one to throw away the signatures if they desire to ease storage space as an argument in favour of more segwit transactions. Yet there isn't a great deal of difference in concept between this and pruning nodes of classic transactions and blocks; if storage becomes prohibitive then nodes should set to prune which is working here and now very safely with running wallets. Yes we will see more pruned nodes in the future but we have the technology now to allow them to run fully validating nodes without necessarily storing every single block and transaction.
- Storage space and bandwidth has gotten cheaper. I'm not advocating for any planned continuous growth based on any outdated concepts like Moore's law but most of us can easily afford a lot more space and bandwidth now. 1MB has been manageable for a number of years now already. 8MB is much more I agree but again I can't see us suddenly going from 1 to 8MB just by activating the change.
- I am absolutely against the idea of a change of PoW and it has nothing to do with the fact that 95% of the mining is done with my software and I've gotten my place in bitcoin from the mining world. I firmly believe that any disruptive change of the size of a PoW change will cause massive destabilisation of bitcoin and it would take a long time to recover. Additionally any move towards an "asic resistant" algorithm is folly and purely a temporising measure. In the words of the hardware people I have worked with over the years: There is no such thing as an asic resistant algorithm. It's only a matter of time before we end up in exactly the same place we currently are with mining and at the cost of ridiculous instability in the meantime. For the record I have only a single 7TH miner to my name and I mostly use it only for testing since I can't even justify the electricity costs of running it here so it's clearly not because I'd lose my ability to mine. Additionally it would be trivial for me to create a pool for any other mining algorithm too. The reason I mention PoW is mining fees.
- Mining fees - love them or hate them depending on whether you're a miner or a user; if for argument's sake we do not want the network to fork off with a PoW change and fuck off all the miners out there, the reality is that segwit provides a degree of growth in transactions and consequently requires more resources - storage, bandwidth, even if it decreases cpu at verification, and yet does not provide more reward to miners. This is the sticking point that no doubt is pissing off the vast majority of Jihan's cohort. I was happy to sacrifice mining fees temporarily for the growth provided by segwit, though the rest of the mining world was not, but what happens after that?
- With lack of another scaling plan beyond segwit, and in all likelihood a network that will fill that capacity immediately, the only other way to expand transaction space without another technological advancement in scalability is by expanding the base block size.

I've intentionally omitted the quadratic scaling discussion because your argument was about storage space specifically.

[franky1]

Not so sure ...

how long it will take to move 46million outputs to be in segwit kypairs to then actually start utilising the witness area. hint. its not instantly filed just because of 'activation'

remember native keys can only fit ~2500 tx a block usually spending just 2 outputs on average (5000outputs spent per 10 minutes)
do the maths. (hint 9200 blocks minimum)
hint if every block was fill with tx that were ALL moving to segwit keypairs. it would take 2 months of mempool bloating drama to get every output over to segwit to achieve:
barrysilbert(2b:6w) base=2mb witness =2.2   4.2mb total weight


imagine spammers stayed with native keys and 75% of base block was native key.. only 25% of base block was segwit
bip9 segwit(1b:3w):
base=1mb witness =0.25   1.25mb total weight
silbertsegwit(2b:6w):
base=2mb witness =0.5   1.5mb total weight

imagine spammers stayed with native keys and 50% of base block was native key.. 50% of base block was segwit
bip9 segwit(1b:3w):
base=1mb witness =0.55   1.55mb total weight
silbertsegwit(2b:6w):
base=2mb witness =1   3mb total weight

imagine spammers stayed with native keys and 25% of base block was native key.. 75% of base block was segwit
bip9 segwit(1b:3w):
base=1mb witness =0.77   1.77mb total weight
silbertsegwit(2b:6w):
base=2mb witness =1.5   3.55mb total weight

imagine no spammers stayed with native keys and 100% of base block was segwit
bip9 segwit(1b:3w):
base=1mb witness =1.1   2.1mb total weight
silbertsegwit(2b:6w):
base=2mb witness =2.2   4.2mb total weight

[-ck]

I can see franky1 posting but I can't see what he's saying since he's the number 1 ignore I have on at the moment. If someone feels his posts are pure trolling (as they normally are), point them out and I'll delete them.

[d5000]

I don't see why a chain split is to be avoided ; I would say, on the contrary: the more it splits, the more different versions can compete in the market, and the better the outcome will be.  [...]

In fact, in a certain way, alt coins do that already, but I think that it would be better, instead of starting new chains all the time, to fork off from existing ones, to have initial distributions which mean something.  After all, to get something going, it is much better to hand it out to a large existing audience than to try to win a new audience.

I disagree somewhat. A chain split would mean a severe usability reduction. Every user that uses a certain number of Bitcoin services (e.g. exchanges, merchant sites, remittance services) is deprived from using a part of them in the case of a chain split if he doesn't want to use both chains. And using both chains is also a severe usability hassle (even if there were "multichain" clients).

Usage is what actually gives value to cryptocurrencies - without usage, they would be simply a software with no real use cases, because "low-to-zero" valued blockchains are easily attackable and wouldn't even usable as a Factom-style "notary" ledger.

So my stance is that alt-chains are a cleaner way to experiment with different implementations. If you are worried about the distribution of the supply, then your alt-chain can simply use a snapshot from the Bitcoin balances at a certain block (like "BTX" and "CLAMS" have done).

That's also why I support the agreement and only would support UASF in the case it has a real chance to get a supermajority of miners, exchanges/economy and users.

[DooMAD]

For what it's worth, I quite like the combo of 2MB base size and segwit, just not the miners' agreement's alleged planned execution of it. It still only smells of a bargaining tool to me and hopefully that's all it will end up being (see chest thumping.)

[thumps cognition]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Are you stupid? Because it's either me or you that is

It wouldn't have to fill up very quickly if the blocksize was variable and could only increase by finite increments.  It looks as though what I'm proposing is officially more moderate than what a significant number of your opponents are considering.  Plus the number of your opponents appears to be increasing.  There's probably not much time left to compromise before they put their plans into action and you potentially end up with 8MB blocks earlier than a variable approach would permit.  

[ComputerGenie]

I ask you personally, without the politics, just the technicals. Do you think Core 0.13.1 is a good version of Bitcoin?

It's off topic, but I don't want you to feel ignored. No, it wasn't, and if you need clarification just look at the 0.13.2 Change log. To delve even further off topic, about the pointlessness of a specific 7 month old release of a specific client in a conversation about a protocol, would be equally pointless.
Good day to you, sir.

[ComputerGenie]

...What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year...

Who cares? Are all of the people, that are spouting about how big the chain will become, still on Windows 98 "because XP took up too much HDD space", too?
It's 2017, if storage space and bandwidth are your best claims for throttling a protocol, then perhaps you shouldn't be involved in the protocol.

[hv_]

...What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year...

Who cares? Are all of the people, that are spouting about how big the chain will become, still on Windows 98 "because XP took up too much HDD space", too?
It's 2017, if storage space and bandwidth are your best claims for throttling a protocol, then perhaps you shouldn't be involved in the protocol.

Yep - new tech is always challenging newer tech - not other way around. Our brain just cannot follow or predict this, same as most retarted never could see btc trading at 2800$ ...

Rellax friends, let the parameters float and see what the markets and tech developers will do for us!

Far better than artificially setting up rules/limits for the past - that's not how our world is designed to grow.

It's all about disruption - and yes give it a try and try to change the 21Mio - that's the challenge but last one that is healthy to disrupt...

[CoinCube]

...
Of course, there are MANY Nash equilibria.  There are as many Nash equilibria as there are thinkable protocols ! But ONCE you are in ONE Nash equilibrium the system cannot leave it.  It is only if there is a concerted effort that makes MANY entities decide TOGETHER to jump to another equilibrium, that this new equilibrium becomes the active Nash equilibrium ; however, BY DEFINITION, "a large part of all entities colluding" is exactly what is the end of decentralization, which, by hypothesis, means that entities don't collude.

So, a decentralized system (one in which entities don't collude and have no central leadership) where game theory is hence applicable, that finds itself in a Nash equilibrium, will remain in that Nash equilibrium for ever.  The Nash equilibrium being the protocol, it means that the protocol will remain the same for ever, hence is immutable.

QED.
...

Your error here is in your concept of collusion. Collusion is an opaque or secretive conspiracy of one group to cheat or deceive others.

In contrast communication is the transparent process of signaling information and interests. Communication as long as it is open and transparent does not suddenly turn a decentralized system into a cartel. Instead it allows evolution from one decentralized state or Nash equilibrium to a new higher order equilibrium.

You are essentially redefining "decentralization" as a system where the actors cannot communicate signal their interests or cooperate in any manner. This is not what decentralization is.

Decentralized systems are not systems where communication is impossible nor are they immutable. Decentralized systems are living systems who transiently occupy fixed equilibrium points until a consensus is achieved to evolve to a superior state. They are evolving and dynamic entities not fixed monoliths.

Here is another take on the topic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralised_system

Decentralised systems are intricately linked to the idea of self-organisation—a phenomenon in which local interactions between components of a system establish order and coordination to achieve global goals without a central commanding influence. The rules specifying these interactions emerge from local information and in the case of biological (or biologically-inspired) agents, from the closely linked perception and action system of the agents. These interactions continually form and depend on spatio-temporal patterns, which are created through the positive and negative feedback that the interactions provide.

[dinofelis]

I don't see why a chain split is to be avoided ; I would say, on the contrary: the more it splits, the more different versions can compete in the market, and the better the outcome will be.  [...]

In fact, in a certain way, alt coins do that already, but I think that it would be better, instead of starting new chains all the time, to fork off from existing ones, to have initial distributions which mean something.  After all, to get something going, it is much better to hand it out to a large existing audience than to try to win a new audience.

I disagree somewhat. A chain split would mean a severe usability reduction. Every user that uses a certain number of Bitcoin services (e.g. exchanges, merchant sites, remittance services) is deprived from using a part of them in the case of a chain split if he doesn't want to use both chains. And using both chains is also a severe usability hassle (even if there were "multichain" clients).

I don't see why.  After all, a chain split doesn't "halve" the users or the coins: the old chain remains exactly as it was, with all the holdings etc... and all its functionality, and all its users.  Of course, if the old chain loses traction, then of course, it will lose out to the new chain - but I don't see the difference with an alt coin.  

In fact, the ONLY difference between a new alt coin (with a fresh genesis block) and a (bilateral) hard fork, is the initial distribution of the new coin.  With a new genesis block, this distribution "starts from scratch", which could be a pre-mine with or without ICO, a new eco system of miners/minters etc... and the slow building up, or not, of an eco system, which takes time, which can go wrong etc...

With a hard fork, you take as an initial distribution, the actual bitcoin distribution at the moment of forking.  In fact, technically, you could even start a new genesis block and take as an initial pre-mine in that block, all the UTXO on the bitcoin block chain at a given block height, instead of forking off from a given block and keeping the old, messy chain dangling there.

For instance, in the proposal to change bitcoin to a PoS coin, or to change the PoW of bitcoin, it could just as well be done that way: a new genesis block, that is (verifiably) the UTXO of the bitcoin block chain at a certain height (one could even leave out Satoshi's stash for instance, so that this burden is gone) ; this is equivalent to forking off at a given block and forbidding Satoshi's addresses, but it would technically be much cleaner.

Usage is what actually gives value to cryptocurrencies - without usage, they would be simply a software with no real use cases, because "low-to-zero" valued blockchains are easily attackable and wouldn't even usable as a Factom-style "notary" ledger.

Well, I'm absolutely convinced that the market prices of coins have *strictly* nothing to do with any form of usage, but are purely speculative.  Under any realistic estimation, the demand of bitcoin for usage (buying stuff with, apart from buying alt coins or fiat) should result in a bitcoin price of, say, $20,- to $100,- at this moment (I can explain this with Fisher's formula).  Most alt coins should be very close to a few tens of cents at best.  I have a less good view on ethereum, if one considers "gambling" a genuine buying of stuff.

So my stance is that alt-chains are a cleaner way to experiment with different implementations. If you are worried about the distribution of the supply, then your alt-chain can simply use a snapshot from the Bitcoin balances at a certain block (like "BTX" and "CLAMS" have done).

Yes, but that is exactly what a fork is (see above).  There's no difference in principle between a compacted new genesis block with a coinbase that gives the bitcoin owners their original holdings in the new coin, and a "clumsy genesis block" which is a 140 GB piece of block chain.  Everybody can go and check that the coinbase of the fork is "right" ; it is simply a more compact form of the information that is used for the new coin from the 140 GB bitcoin chain up to the splitting point.

A fork is an alt coin with the same coin distribution at the point of forking than the original coin.  

If the fork wins in the market, or if the miners abandon the old coin, then there is some psychological effect that calls the "only continuation of property" which is the new coin, the name of the old coin.   If both continue to exist, there is no fundamental difference between an alt coin and a fork, apart from the initial distribution of coins.

That's also why I support the agreement and only would support UASF in the case it has a real chance to get a supermajority of miners, exchanges/economy and users.

But if that is the case, no UASF is necessary because the Core stuff would activate.