The Barry Silbert segwit agreement with >80% miner agreement. (Part II)

[d5000]

This reminds me LTC round table when 12 miners called themselves all users.

It's not only miners. In my country, for example, most exchanges have supported the agreement. And there is a very, very big fish supporting it: BitPay. The company that has the most merits that Bitcoin has actually some "real world" usage, and is not being used only for speculation.

With HF you can add some good features to protocol why rush so much.

That is a valid stance and I agree that Segwit2x is not perfect. I see it more as one of the few possibilities we have to unlock the current stalemate without a chain split. And perhaps, in 6 months some of these "good features", in theory, could be integrated in the hard fork.

[CoinCube]

That is a valid stance and I agree that Segwit2x is not perfect. I see it more as one of the few possibilities we have to unlock the current stalemate without a chain split. And perhaps, in 6 months some of these "good features", in theory, could be integrated in the hard fork.

This is my position as well. I don't actually believe it is urgent to unlock the stalemate "right away". Profound difficulty in modifying the protocol is a measure of immutability and will actually increase confidence in the long run provided we can ultimately resolve this in a satisfactory manner.

That is of course assuming we avoid a split. Regardless of ones opinion of the Core developers or the Mining Groups they both add to the value of the bitcoin ecosystem. A split destroys a good portion of this value and is all around bad news.

[CoinCube]

would seem to belie either a willful ignorance or maliciousness.

damn hypocrit

Come on folks. This thread only has one rule. No personal insults towards individuals or groups. It’s not that hard. I did not delete the posts upthread but going forward I will delete anything that that has a personal insult in it.

I will also send you a nice PM thanking your for your message informing you why I deleted your post and inviting you to repost your contribution minus the personal attack.

False personal attacks based on no evidence should be deleted.

In this thread all personal attacks will be deleted going forward.  Personal attacks against either Core developers or the Mining groups is utterly counterproductive. In no way does it facilitate communication, understanding of the position of competing groups or ultimately consensus.

If anyone wants to make the “Core developers are evil” or the “Miners are demons” threads you are welcome to do so elsewhere.

[jbreher]

would seem to belie either a willful ignorance or maliciousness.

Come on folks. This thread only has one rule. No personal insults towards individuals or groups. It’s not that hard.

It is also not hard to avoid intentionally misrepresenting the position of those you do not agree with in order to ridicule their position.

[dinofelis]

I don't want BTC hijacked by miners and their GREED...

Then you should not use any crypto currency on which the consensus decisions are done by PoW, and where PoW is delivered by "specialized hardware".  Bitcoin was MEANT to be decided by greedy miners.  It is its fundamental principle, and one of its biggest inventions.

[dinofelis]

They also claim that only miners should run nodes, that it's okay if eventually Bitcoin nodes just exist in five data centers.

That has nothing to do with "bitmain and friends", that's just a logical observation.  I've demonstrated this several times already.  Full nodes only *inform their owners*.  They have no *power* over the protocol.  They can only inform their owners that the actual protocol of the block chain doesn't correspond to the protocol the node would like to see ; they notify this to their owners by stopping and coming to a halt.

Now, "nodes coming to a grinding halt" being equivalent to switching off your node, has not much power over the protocol as it is determined by the miners.

If the miners come to a consensus decision, and accept each-other's consensus decisions, hence only build one single block chain, the only thing a full node can do, is accept it, and download it, or not accept it, and stop.   Miners have no need for other full nodes to get one-another's blocks because they are strongly linked to one another for reasons of efficiency.  They don't need "Joe's node in his basement" as a filter to give them only those blocks from their peers that Joe's node agrees with ; on the contrary, miner pools try to catch one-another's blocks directly from each other, to limit the wasted hash rate on orphaned blocks.  Given the current very low orphan rate, you can easily estimate the very small amount of time a block needs to propagate to all the other significant pools: there's no "Joe's node in his basement" there.

Now, USERS (not full nodes, but users, that means, people trading coins, buying coins, spending coins) don't use full nodes, but use WALLETS, that need to connect to a full node that contains the up-to-date block chain.  If they don't connect to such an up-to-date node, then they just punish themselves, not seeing their own ownerships, and not being able to transact.  So users need somehow to connect their wallet to an up-to-date node.  Miner pool nodes are such nodes.  And all other nodes that accept whatever miners make as the current block chain (you know, the ONLY ONE that is out there).  Any node disagreeing with whatever is this block chain, simply stops, and hence cannot be used by a user to connect his wallet to.

Full nodes agreeing with the effective miner protocol, hence, are active proxies of whatever the miners had consensus on as being the single block chain.  They can only copy it, if they want to remain active.  Users can connect their wallets to such a node.   Full nodes that, for whatever reason, do not agree with something on the single block chain out there, simply stop at the point where they disagree, and that's it.  Such a node is not actively updating its local copy of the block chain any more, and hence is not usable by a user that needs to transact.

So the only thing that full nodes can do, is to act as a proxy server for whatever block chain the miners have consensus on.  If they disagree, they stop, and render themselves useless to users.  

However, admitting this is very hard, because it shows the bare reality that the only *technical* decision power in bitcoin is by miner pools, and that the decentralization level of bitcoin is at most 20 nodes, but actually, the majority resides with 5 of them.  The only *economic* power in bitcoin, the users voting with their money, need the sole block chain out there to vote on, and hence need a proxy server (a full node) that has the most recent copy of the single block chain out there.  These are the two powers in bitcoin.  And full nodes are not part of them.

Full nodes have utility for its owner.  Full nodes have utility as proxy servers, to aid in the DISTRIBUTIVITY of the network, but can't help with de decentralization (different entities deciding).

It is simply factually wrong that full nodes have any decision power: they don't.   This is logically so, this has nothing to do with "politics".  It is simply derived from the technical workings of bitcoin.  If you have a full node that doesn't agree with the single block chain out there, it stops, and by stopping, it doesn't stop any consensus decision from being taken, and it doesn't stop any user from transacting on the chain you don't want him to use.  As these are the only decisions of power that can be taken in bitcoin (consensus, and voting with your money), and full nodes can't influence them, they have no power, and hence don't contribute to decentralization.

This is why only the miner full nodes are the "primary data sources" of block chain, and all other full nodes are just their proxies, copying their data and putting them at disposition exactly as the miner full node would, or rendering themselves useless if they don't.  Proxies all over the world increase indeed, the network robustness ; but this is like facebook that has many data centers all over the world: we're talking about a distributed network, but facebook is not decentralized: there's one CEO that is the source of all decision power with facebook.   In the same way, full nodes are like facebook's data centers: they help getting the data everywhere, lowering the network load on the central nodes which are the data producing centers: the miner nodes.  But they have no independent political decision power.  There's no difference between Joe running a full node in his basement, and Joe running a small proxy server for facebook on his own costs.

Miners are the salesmen of block chain, they should also finance the distributed network of nodes from which they serve their customers, the users, in the same way facebook finances its own distributed network of data centers around the world.   Volunteers helping miners to bring their block chain to users, are just paying out of their pocket, the infrastructure miners should finance to get their product (block chain) to their customers (people doing transactions).

[pokapeski]

this agreement is joke from community . This reminds me LTC round table when 12 miners called themselves all users.
I have never been fo staing at 1MB forever but this binding segwit to HF in 6 months is joke.
HF to just increase to 2MB is weak. With HF you can add some good features to protocol why rush so much.
I don't want BTC hijacked by miners and their GREED...
this agreement is joke from 90% users running core client that are my 2 cents

Agreed. UASF is the way with a blockchain with no miners

 

[dinofelis]

this agreement is joke from community . This reminds me LTC round table when 12 miners called themselves all users.
I have never been fo staing at 1MB forever but this binding segwit to HF in 6 months is joke.
HF to just increase to 2MB is weak. With HF you can add some good features to protocol why rush so much.
I don't want BTC hijacked by miners and their GREED...
this agreement is joke from 90% users running core client that are my 2 cents

Agreed. UASF is the way with a blockchain with no miners

 

That's perfectly possible, but that's a proof of stake consensus chain, not a proof of work consensus chain.

My personal opinion is that bitcoin's scaling problems will be solved once the "bitcoin" brand has eroded away his first mover value, which seems to come quicker than I thought.  Most probably, by August or November, this will already be the case.  Once the unicity of bitcoin's brand name is not the main stake any more, forking will not be hampered by "but we should get the bitcoin brand name with our chain", and one will be able to fork without fear.
That's just my personal intuition at this point.

[pokapeski]

this agreement is joke from community . This reminds me LTC round table when 12 miners called themselves all users.
I have never been fo staing at 1MB forever but this binding segwit to HF in 6 months is joke.
HF to just increase to 2MB is weak. With HF you can add some good features to protocol why rush so much.
I don't want BTC hijacked by miners and their GREED...
this agreement is joke from 90% users running core client that are my 2 cents

Agreed. UASF is the way with a blockchain with no miners

 

That's perfectly possible, but that's a proof of stake consensus chain, not a proof of work consensus chain.

My personal opinion is that bitcoin's scaling problems will be solved once the "bitcoin" brand has eroded away his first mover value, which seems to come quicker than I thought.  Most probably, by August or November, this will already be the case.  Once the unicity of bitcoin's brand name is not the main stake any more, forking will not be hampered by "but we should get the bitcoin brand name with our chain", and one will be able to fork without fear.
That's just my personal intuition at this point.

Please meet my friend, the byzantine general :p
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5rSSvomx2bk/UvMQM_fd8LI/AAAAAAAA_4A/0R-fJ5f4eTA/s1600/maurice-by-emilian-stankev-from-rulers-of-the-byzantine-empire-published-by-kibea.jpg



edit: just in case. I was not intending to be offensive with the post. just a joke.

[dinofelis]

this agreement is joke from community . This reminds me LTC round table when 12 miners called themselves all users.
I have never been fo staing at 1MB forever but this binding segwit to HF in 6 months is joke.
HF to just increase to 2MB is weak. With HF you can add some good features to protocol why rush so much.
I don't want BTC hijacked by miners and their GREED...
this agreement is joke from 90% users running core client that are my 2 cents

Agreed. UASF is the way with a blockchain with no miners

 

That's perfectly possible, but that's a proof of stake consensus chain, not a proof of work consensus chain.

My personal opinion is that bitcoin's scaling problems will be solved once the "bitcoin" brand has eroded away his first mover value, which seems to come quicker than I thought.  Most probably, by August or November, this will already be the case.  Once the unicity of bitcoin's brand name is not the main stake any more, forking will not be hampered by "but we should get the bitcoin brand name with our chain", and one will be able to fork without fear.
That's just my personal intuition at this point.

Please meet my friend, the byzantine general :p




edit: just in case. I was not intending to be offensive with the post. just a joke.

You mean the "nothing at stake" difficulty ?   There's a solution to that in fact.  But it would alter so much the idea behind bitcoin, that it wouldn't be bitcoin any more.   The only difficulty with "nothing at stake" is the silly idea that consensus needs to be rewarded.  If you do proof of stake without reward, then there's no "nothing at stake" problem, because there's also nothing to gain from double-staking.  The problem in bitcoin and most alt coins, is that one wants to reward consensus, which makes consensus part of a gain strategy, which renders consensus decisions, exactly, part of a game-theoretical notion.

This is not necessary.  The only thing that was needed in the consensus decision, is to avoid Sybil attacks, to make your "evil" consensus decisions more probable and sustainable than would be the case if most users wanted the system to function honestly.   With proof of work, you have to waste economic resources to prove your 'unicity'.  Of course, nobody is going to waste huge amounts of resources from his pocket to help the system coming to consensus, so this is why PoW NEEDS to reward consensus decisions, which, in its turn, leads to all the game-theoretical problems, that end up by economies of scale, to centralize the consensus decision in the hands of an oligarchy. Which is what happened to bitcoin.
Without proof of work, there's no resources to be wasted ON PURPOSE.  But we need another way to protect against Sybil attacks, and to avoid that an evil minority pretends to be a large majority "voting over consensus".  One way would be to use "real world ID" or something, but that goes against the spirit of crypto.  But a very simple way is to "prove stake".  To associate your ID and your weight by stake.  You cannot Sybil it because you cannot prove more stake than you really hold.

The silly thing in proof of stake coins, is that they KEPT the reward scheme of PoW consensus. Let us not forget that the reward in PoW was necessary to compensate the economic losses of proof of work, that nobody would be willing to pay for otherwise, "for the community".  But in PoS, there's only a node you need to keep running.  All non-mining full nodes are voluntary contributions to the bitcoin network that do not get paid.  If these nodes were signing with PoS, they would establish a consensus decision, and there's no need for rewards.  

In fact, rewards, which are necessary in PoW, render indeed, PoS problematic with the "nothing at stake" strategy.  But without rewards, there is no "nothing at stake" strategy to be had, and the problem doesn't exist.

In non-rewarded PoS, the (only) reason to stake, is that you want the chain to work correctly, because you have value on it (your stake).  You have no incentive (because no reward) to keep on double-staking, because the only thing you do, is to increase the chances that your crypto fails, and the only thing you have, is a stake.

[CoinCube]

How to Give Everyone More Control
https://medium.com/@jimmysong/how-to-give-everyone-more-control-b3391c0f7816

Politics has gripped Bitcoin and it’s about the only thing people have been wanting to talk about for the past few years. I’ve written before about how the Bitcoin ecosystem is like the three branches of government, with Developers being the legislative branch, Miners being the executive branch and Users being the judicial branch. I’ve also written before about how Bitcoin changes through consensus, and how consensus is not supposed to be easy.
In this article, I examine an alternative path to the current political stalemate and how that can help empower Developers, Miners and Users.

Current State of Miners
Among mining manufacturers, it’s pretty obvious that Bitmain is the biggest and most successful. They produce somewhere around 50–75% of the Bitcoin network hash power through their chips and other manufacturers have a tough time competing with them on price. Their first product, the S1, came out in 2014 when there were many more competitors (CoinTerra, KNC Miner and Spondoolies Tech to name a few). They distinguished themselves by having the product on-hand at various Bitcoin conferences and unlike many of their competitors, having great supply chain management helped them win fans around the world.

As Bitcoin experienced a 3-year bear market, many mining manufacturers simply went out of business as the economics turned from wildly profitable to barely survivable. It didn’t help that many had products that often had defects and delivery issues. Bitmain not only survived this time, but thrived, and managed to capture significant market share.

Whatever your opinion of the company may be, Bitmain is the most dominant Miner and they are the 800 lb gorilla in the mining space.

Current State of Developers
It’s well known that Satoshi Nakamoto made the first Bitcoin client and released it to the world in 2009. Many people have contributed to what’s called the “reference client” and Bitcoin Core, as it’s now called, has hundreds of developers that contribute to the open source repository.

What’s less known is that there have been many different attempts to create alternative Bitcoin clients. Obelisk, btcd, Toshi and bcoin are just some of the many attempts at creating new Bitcoin clients from scratch. Bitcoin Unlimited, Bitcoin XT and the newest Segwit2x are some forks of Bitcoin Core. While each has had a varying degree of success, it appears most of the network continues to run Bitcoin Core. Most estimates are well over 90%.
Why is Bitcoin Core the most popular? There’s certainly history to consider. People managing money tend to be conservative and changing any part of the tool chain for managing money tends to be a dicey proposition as any errors may cause monetary loss. Further, Core has the largest developer community and the most rigorous development processes in place.

Whatever your opinion of Bitcoin Core may be, Bitcoin Core is the dominant client on the network and they are the 800 lb gorilla in the development space.

Balance of Power
While before 2014, the Miners and Developers generally got along, things started to change once the issue of scaling came up. We’ve gotten to the point where the scaling conflict is often seen as Bitmain vs Bitcoin Core (I’m sure neither are happy with that characterization). We have two dominant groups that have been in conflict.
Miners are frustrated because they’ve been asking for large blocks for years. From Bitmain’s perspective, none of the Developers seem even interested in any sort of hard fork. When they ask, the usual responses range from “follow the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal process” (which inevitably gets voted down) to “fork off”.
Developers are frustrated because they’ve been asking for Segwit for years. From Bitcoin Core’s perspective, the Miners seem to be obstructing good technology for no good reason. When they ask for a reason, the usual responses range from “we want larger blocks” to “you’re carrying water for Blockstream”.

Consensus and Control
Generally, when there’s a conflict that’s not getting resolved, you have to go up a level of abstraction to figure out the problem. While scaling is the reason everyone claims for this conflict, the actual reason may lie higher up. And when you think about the actual consensus process that’s required to change Bitcoin, it’s clear that both sides want more control than they currently have.

And this makes sense. Both groups are interested in more say over the long haul as Bitcoin becomes more and more valuable. A small concession or precedent set now has consequences going forward. Bitcoin Core may be thinking a hard fork now would set a precedent for additional, possibly more dangerous, hard forks later. Bitmain may be thinking cooperation on a soft fork without getting some concession would set a precedent for being dominated and having requests ignored later.

Bitcoin Unlimited in this context can be seen as a way to get around the Developers by replacing them entirely. Similarly, BIP148 and other UASF proposals are a way to get around the Miners.
This has brought us to the current impasse. Both sides want control, but given that Bitcoin is a consensus-based system, there’s no way to give each side what it wants and keep Bitcoin on a single chain.
The way to solve this problem, then, is not by trying to solve the presenting technical issue, but by solving the deeper issue of control. The question isn’t so much “how can we scale bitcoin” but “how can we give each side more control?”

The Naive Solution
The most obvious way to give each side more control would be to split Bitcoin in two, or what I would call the Solomon Solution. We can hard fork Bitcoin and each side can do whatever it wants on their chain. One side would have to find new Miners (or even a new Proof-of-Work function) and the other side would have to find new Developers.

While this has some appeal, splitting Bitcoin in two has the potential to cause significant collateral damage. Indeed, most contentious forks have this as a possible endpoint as both sides have the ability to hard fork. Bitcoin may be the baby that dies if nobody agrees.

A More Thoughtful Solution
So far, we’ve only been talking about two of the three branches of the Bitcoin governance: Miners and Developers. When the two disagree, the ideal solution would be to have the Users adjudicate. Unfortunately, safe, liquid adjudication is only available after a hard fork when the price between the tokens can float.
But what if we can give both Miners and Developers control over separate, smaller domains? What if each could run separate chains and each could change and use them according to their needs and desires? Further, what if these separate chains were actually extensions of Bitcoin itself?

Wouldn’t Users naturally utilize the one that they preferred? Wouldn’t the best idea win instead of the best political player?

If this sounds familiar, it should. This is what the whole sidechains project is all about.
What are sidechains?

If you haven’t heard about sidechains, think of them as a separate blockchain where you can deposit and withdraw Bitcoins. That is, if you deposit 1 Bitcoin to the sidechain you add 1 Bitcoin to your balance on the sidechain and if you withdraw 1 Bitcoin from the sidechain, you subtract 1 Bitcoin from your balance on the sidechain.
The separate blockchain can have all sorts of new features and won’t actually affect Bitcoin. And this is the key. You can give control of one sidechain to the Miners and another to the Developers. In fact, you can add lots more sidechains for a variety of purposes to see how well they work. Users can vote with their feet by going to sidechains that they find most useful. Merchants, for example, may want to go to a sidechain that’s much quicker to confirm. Exchanges may want to go to a sidechain with more financial instruments available.
That sounds awesome! Why don’t we have it yet?

Good question. One sidechain implementation already works. The sidechain is called Liquid and has been developed by Blockstream. They utilize something called a federation, which is a fancy way of saying deposits to the sidechain are Bitcoins sent to multisig addresses.

The Liquid security model requires a bunch (11+) of known, trusted entities (like exchanges) and that’s still in the process of being set up. The good news with Liquid is that it requires no changes to Bitcoin in order to work. The bad news is that you have to trust that a majority of entities won’t steal from you.
The other sidechain implementation is something called Drivechains. The good news is that Drivechains don’t require (less) trusted entities and the code is almost done. The bad news is that Drivechains require a soft fork.
Wouldn’t this give everybody what they want?

It certainly seems so. Having the market decide instead of committees seems like a much more scalable solution (pun intended). And indeed Paul Sztorc has proposed Drivechains as an alternative to Segwit or 2MB blocks. Segwit can easily be deployed on one sidechain and larger blocks in another sidechain.
It’s not all good news, however. There’s the obvious fact that BIP148 and BUIP0055 are scheduled for August 1 and October 18 respectively. Both are potentially contentious forks and may very well cause some serious disruption.
Liquid requires finding enough trusted entities in enough jurisdictions. Many Users don’t like having to trust other entities so this may be a non-starter.

Drivechains requires a soft fork where Miners validate new rules. Further, there are some technical issues that may need to be addressed as well as code that needs extensive review and testing before a soft fork can happen. Developers and Miners would ultimately have to agree to pursue this path.
Conclusion

The benefits of a sidechain solution are pretty clear. Developers and Miners are empowered since they can try out new, riskier features on sidechains and don’t have to get anyone’s approval for doing so. Each can control their own sidechain without disrupting any other part of Bitcoin. Users are empowered since they can have a choice of features without having to leave Bitcoin.

The downsides of a sidechain solution are a bit murkier and require a more thorough examination of the incentives to really evaluate properly.

As Bitcoin enters its fourth year of scaling conflict, creative solutions like Drivechains and Liquid deserve more rigorous consideration. There very well may be technical or trust issues that are insurmountable but it’s vital that as a community, we leave no stone unturned.

We are currently embroiled in a bitter political war. This is because we’re essentially stuck in a zero-sum game of consensus building. Innovation is a better way to resolve conflict than politics. Politics is messy, divisive and harmful. Innovation is clean, unifying and constructive. If an innovative path can be found, we owe it to ourselves as a community to find it.