What is the right and fair way to stop Mike Hearn?

[augustocroppo]

Augusto, I'm not arguing that we are not trying to define node trust.  We are.  But, in the words of the great hen master:

"What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,
allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party."

In this debate, we discuss the important distinction of trust in human third-party institutions and human perceptions versus purely machine derived trust.  Even PGP's web of trust requires human input, where as Bitcoin, using a combination of cryptography, p2p and probability, today does not.  

To sum up these concepts, let's coin a new phrase: "human trustless".  Combining those two Websters definitions, a "human trustless" solution is one that does not require trust in humans.  

I like trillion's definition, too. 

"'Trusting the network' is pretty much the definition of trustless."

 

You are funny, bro.

The Bitcoin software still need human input to work. Trust is still necessary to operate the Bitcoin software. The end user still need to trust the whole network will accept the private-key in his wallet to sign a transaction. Sometimes the end user will have to trust a third party to hold a wallet with his/her private-keys because he/she lacks the skills to install the Bitcoin client.

"Trusting the network' is pretty much the definition of trustless" is just laughable nonsense.

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[colour]

I haven't "invested six months".

I read a thread where it was unanimously claimed that a team of yours had been working on this stuff for 6 months. I am sorry for misrepresenting the facts, should have listened to the talk instead.

[NanoAkron]

I haven't "invested six months".

I read a thread where it was unanimously claimed that a team of yours had been working on this stuff for 6 months. I am sorry for misrepresenting the facts, should have listened to the talk instead.

If he has genuinely been thinking about this for 6 months, how come he hasn't considered any of the oppositions we've raised inside just a couple of days?

[tvbcof]

I haven't "invested six months".

I read a thread where it was unanimously claimed that a team of yours had been working on this stuff for 6 months. I am sorry for misrepresenting the facts, should have listened to the talk instead.

If he has genuinely been thinking about this for 6 months, how come he hasn't considered any of the oppositions we've raised inside just a couple of days?

Probably because a vast majority of the gripes are based on a gross misunderstanding of both the problem and the solution.  If one has been thinking about a problem, one can easily lose sight of what types of misunderstandings are possible (or even likely in certain social conditions.)

Sounds to me like Mike has been doing mostly other things while he waits patiently for the code to be released so work could begin in earnest.  The code is complex enough so that it will probably be many years before it is even close to being fully vetted.  But it would still be mighty useful for non-core addons and such (which is what is under discussion here.)

[trilli0n]

I haven't "invested six months".

I read a thread where it was unanimously claimed that a team of yours had been working on this stuff for 6 months. I am sorry for misrepresenting the facts, should have listened to the talk instead.

Mike said it himself. Quoting his talk in London, at 10:54 into the video:

"So lately, what I've been looking at, actually for the last six months or so, but I haven't been able to try it yet - the code isn't open source - is something new. And this is a proof of a passport."

So not "Starting thinking about". Very different things!

[erik777]

You are funny, bro.

;p

The Bitcoin software still need human input to work. Trust is still necessary to operate the Bitcoin software.

Which is why we are here.  We're concerned because Mike is responsible for bitcoinj, which many use and trust today.  It is better to resolve concerns now before they become code than to have to fork, fix and convince later. 

The end user still need to trust the whole network will accept the private-key in his wallet to sign a transaction.

We trust Bitcoin because it is not based on third parties.  We just the algorithms and the probability because they are built on a foundation of distrusting people in contrast to prior competitors. 

the end user will have to trust a third party to hold a wallet with his/her private-keys because he/she lacks the skills to install the Bitcoin client.

True.  Individuals will always be free to trust third parties and, to some extent, the wallet they downloaded.  The risk of wallets is partially mitigated by them being open source, subject to open source peer review, binaries having MD5s, knowing that the developers don't have an obsession with passport integration, etc,...  To be sure, there are ways to improve this in light of recent back door discussions driven by NSA revelations.  But, the general shortcomings to wallet security that require end-user trust are not deliberate and by design by the majority of us.  We do the best we can today while striving to make it better tomorrow.       

The important thing is that the protocols and blockchain are not built based on this type of third-party trust, which is what we're discussing here.   Yes, I get that Mike is not completely trusting a third party with passport authentication in the traditional sense.  But, it is clear that not only does it introduce assumptions that depend on third parties, such as the ability of governments to protect the data, it introduces new potential vulnerabilities and is actually less useful than a solution that is "human trustless", particularly if we want to solve this problem for everyone rather than just have a UK-centric solution where everyone without an ePassport lives in Iowa. 

Also, the problem Mike brought up includes when you don't want to rely on a third party to mediate the transaction.  If you are willing to use escrow services, then this whole discussion isn't nearly as relevant, because the third party you choose to trust becomes your direct counter-party rather than the person you are talking to at the cafe. 


 

[tvbcof]

Here is a scenario. In a small country with a brutal dictator inflation is rampant. People switch to cryptocurrencies to avoid confiscation of their wealth.

I must admit, I don't worry too much about this scenario because I don't see any way for Bitcoin to have any real impact in a country where using it is illegal.

Man, I couldn't dis-agree more.  To my way of thinking Bitcoin won't have any real impact in a country where using it is LEGAL.  This because there are plenty of solutions for the 'tards-n-trinkets' sphere (cash, visa, paypal, gold, etc) and they work fine.  Who needs yet one more?  And Bitcoin with its half-baked stabs at privacy, p2p function, security paradigmn, etc, starts out with a disadvantage to competition operating in the 'fat tail' region of the exchange economy.

Bitcoin might be a good way to obtain high quality beacon data to target users for marketing campaigns (or worse), but that only benefits a small sub-set of society.  And nobody who I personally give a shit about (any more...)

There are about a million ways a government can round up Bitcoin users beyond strange mathematical games - most obviously, find anyone advertising a price in Bitcoins and punish them. For people to use Bitcoin they have to be able to spend it, and to be able to spend it you need to find merchants willing to accept it, and for a merchant to accept it requires advertising that fact.

If you think brute forcing salted passport hashes is the easiest way to crack down on Bitcoin, then that implies you believe the government has no ability to just go into the marketplace and use undercover agents to ask around. Seems unlikely. Also remember you could just not run nodes in that country, or run them but without providing passport proofs (you could provide a sacrifice proof instead, or no anti-sybil data at all).

All very valid and good points.  For that reason it is also the area that Bitcoin (or some project) should be working on.  It's not like totalitarian regimes are especially rare or impact only a small group of unfortunates today.  Nor is it like totalitarian regimes are not a legitimate threat for a larger group of people tomorrow.

A reliable and transferable value solution is very possible (as evidenced by Bitcoin's performance up till now) and I strongly disagree that it could not be useful to individuals and groups working under totalitarian regimes where it would, of course, be 'illegal'.  I use 'useful', and your 'have a real impact' interchangeably..

Also - maybe this isn't obvious, but I write my talks to be interesting, not as a cast-iron manifesto of things that are guaranteed to happen. Using zk-SNARKS to prove ownership of a passport for anti-sybil purposes is an interesting idea, but that doesn't mean it'll actually ever be implemented. We can't even prototype it today!

FYI I agree that Satoshi was probably not a hard core crypto anarchist. He started to back away from the project around the time people were suggesting WikiLeaks should accept donations with it (what he called "kicking the hornets nest"). I doubt he would have been happy about the Silk Road, which opened just two months after he stopped posting publicly.

In my brief looking, it seemed to me that 'Satoshi' was amazingly mum on almost any political issues.  I remember running across the text you reference.  It could easily be explained by his understanding of the state of the project at that time and the risks to it without inferring anything one way or another about his politics.  I'll defer to your judgement on the rest of his attitudes because you seem to be one of the people who had the most contact with him.

I'll note that I myself became aware and interested in Bitcoin as a direct result of the Wikileaks thing, and it's a good bet that a lot of other people from a lot of other walks of life and affiliations did as well.  Surely 'Satoshi' would have recognized this and contemplated it's ramifications.

[Mike Hearn]

Indeed. Ironically enough given the contents of this and other threads, it was the Wikileaks blockade that brought me back to Bitcoin as well, after leaving it in 2009.

All very valid and good points.  For that reason it is also the area that Bitcoin (or some project) should be working on.  It's not like totalitarian regimes are especially rare or impact only a small group of unfortunates today.

No disagreement that Bitcoin in totalitarian countries would be a great thing, but I don't have any ideas about how to make it work. Advertising that you accept a currency seems fundamental.

Mike said it himself. Quoting his talk in London, at 10:54 into the video: "So lately, what I've been looking at, actually for the last six months or so,

Perhaps this is a British English thing? When I say I'm "looking at" an idea, what I mean is that I've been examining it and thinking about it. If I had actually made it work I'd have said so!

When the code comes out I still intend to try out making a ZKPOP, just because it'd be interesting scientific research and hey, if I'm ever going to publish a crypto paper, this would be a good candidate. Also it's useful in contexts outside of Bitcoin, like for Tor and anti-spam systems.

I don't plan to try integrating it with Bitcoin itself, because unlike MITM attacks, flooding Bitcoin with bogus peers is a somewhat theoretical attack. Flooding Tor with bogus peers is not theoretical, so if it works OK I might give a heads up to those guys and they can investigate more if they find it interesting. Tor relay operators are already not anonymous and Tor's architecture places less emphasis on decentralisation, so it'd be less of a culture clash for them.

[colour]

And so it begins: http://www.businessinsider.com/report-ceo-of-major-bitcoin-exchange-arrested-2014-1

So whenever you transact Bitcoin to someone, you will possibly become an accomplice in criminal activity conducted with these coins.

Man, who wants to take such a risk? Luckily, CoInvalidator are here for the rescue. They will make sure our coins are only coming from and going to upstanding citizens (unlike that naughty, naughty Charlie Shrem person). 

[justusranvier]

No disagreement that Bitcoin in totalitarian countries would be a great thing, but I don't have any ideas about how to make it work. Advertising that you accept a currency seems fundamental.

What you need to do is spend 2+ weeks outside the G7 and pay close attention to how average people go about their lives and businesses outside of the tourist areas.

Wander around Lima, Peru, for example and you'll find plenty of unlicensed currency exchangers who operate in defiance of the law because enforcing those laws would require more resources than the regulators have at their disposal.

It's a bit different in the digital realm since there are plenty of talented programmers in the US and Europe who are willing to sell every tinpot dictator in the world monitoring technology in exchange for blood money, but that just means the programmers inventing circumvention measures have to work a bit harder.

[erik777]

When the code comes out I still intend to try out making a ZKPOP, just because it'd be interesting scientific research and hey, if I'm ever going to publish a crypto paper, this would be a good candidate. Also it's useful in contexts outside of Bitcoin, like for Tor and anti-spam systems.

I don't plan to try integrating it with Bitcoin itself, because unlike MITM attacks, flooding Bitcoin with bogus peers is a somewhat theoretical attack. Flooding Tor with bogus peers is not theoretical, so if it works OK I might give a heads up to those guys and they can investigate more if they find it interesting. Tor relay operators are already not anonymous and Tor's architecture places less emphasis on decentralisation, so it'd be less of a culture clash for them.

I just read this after I sent you the PM summarizing my perceptions, and I'd like to say, this the best response you've provided so far towards clarifying your intentions.  All of us can respect scientific curiosity, and can see contexts outside bitcoin where ZKPOP could be a better fit. 

It would be a nice plus if, in addition to "a somewhat theoretical attack", your reasoning supported the concerns others had and some of the overall principles of how new Bitcoin networking capabilities could continue to live to a higher standard than its counterparts.  For now, though, I'm glad to hear you at least have no intention of trying to pursue this in the context of bitcoin. 

   

[dewdeded]

Tor relay operators are already not anonymous and Tor's architecture places less emphasis on decentralisation, so it'd be less of a culture clash for them.

This is untrue. Many TOR relays and exit nodes are run anonymous.
Offshore providers don't do KYC and accept anon payments like Bitcoin, Webmoney and many more.

Why are you telling lies?

I run 3 TOR relays anonymously.

[erik777]

No disagreement that Bitcoin in totalitarian countries would be a great thing, but I don't have any ideas about how to make it work. Advertising that you accept a currency seems fundamental.

What you need to do is spend 2+ weeks outside the G7 and pay close attention to how average people go about their lives and businesses outside of the tourist areas.

Wander around Lima, Peru, for example and you'll find plenty of unlicensed currency exchangers who operate in defiance of the law because enforcing those laws would require more resources than the regulators have at their disposal.

It's a bit different in the digital realm since there are plenty of talented programmers in the US and Europe who are willing to sell every tinpot dictator in the world monitoring technology in exchange for blood money, but that just means the programmers inventing circumvention measures have to work a bit harder.

I always like to bring up Argentina when I do presentations on bitcoin.  They pay a premium of 60% in the black market for the US dollar because their peso suffers 30% annual inflation.  They pay a similar premium for bitcoins and gold.  For them, they are looking for any store of value that protects them from inflation. 

Interestingly, I don't know how legal it is to pay their citizens in bitcoins with all the regulations they have, but if US companies who convert US dollars to Argentine Pesos (ARS) to pay employees there chose instead to pay with bitcoins purchased with USD, they could save a lot of money.  Presuming that Argentine people pay a 60% premium for bitcoins in ARS when compared to the official US dollar exchange rate and the price of bitcoins in USD, if they offered to let the employees volunteer to be paid any percent of their pay in bitcoins at a 5-10% discount when purchased in USD, the employees would still flock to it because they'd still effectively be getting bitcoins at a huge discount over ARS/BTC market rates, equating to a huge raise.  In other words, US companies could save 10% while giving their employees a 50% raise!  lol   

The reality is that global companies operating in Argentina, though, tend to pay employees there with revenues they earn there, keeping ARS circulating in Argentina. 

I wish there was an easy way to know the legal requirements in Argentina or any other high inflation nation to determine if they either restrict or permit pay in bitcoins.   
 
Bitcoin's Promise In Argentina (Forbes - Apr 2013)

[Mike Hearn]

This is untrue. Many TOR relays and exit nodes are run anonymous.
Offshore providers don't do KYC and accept anon payments like Bitcoin, Webmoney and many more.

From the perspective of "can we shut down Tor" all it means is that the hosting provider ends up being considered the owner. It's still possible to find and shut down the nodes, obviously.

[theymos]

If you want to shut down Tor, just DDoS 6 of the 10 authoritative directory servers to keep them down for a few days, and the whole network will break. Or compromise these servers and you can umask any Tor user. Unlike Bitcoin, Tor is 100% centralized.

[ElvisMachuca]

I think Mike Hearn is way out of line with all his actions.

What is the correct and fair way to remove Mike Hearn from the Bitcoin development?

Can this be done by community vote?

Can this be done by developer vote?


I have nothing against this person and he can develop "bitcoinj" all he want's and stay a Bitcoin expert (at NSA and Circle or in the media). But he should not be part of the core Bitcoin client developtment.

The problem has to be addressed at the source.

That place is the Bitcoin Foundation. They are the ones that give Mike Hearn the power to be core developer.

So you need to convince the foundation, or you need to be hire as core developer by the foundation in order to over ride Mike.

Goodluck

[coinrevo]

nobody needs a foundation to tell people how the network should be run. distribute developer control and make sure the goals are inline with the users goals. such a mechanism is needed in any case.

[BitCoinDream]

If you want to shut down Tor, just DDoS 6 of the 10 authoritative directory servers to keep them down for a few days, and the whole network will break. Or compromise these servers and you can umask any Tor user. Unlike Bitcoin, Tor is 100% centralized.

From this what I understand, authorities can get control of these 10 authoritative directory servers to get their pas data. These data will have the IP details of Satoshi... right ?

[MarketNeutral]

I think Mike Hearn is way out of line with all his actions.

What is the correct and fair way to remove Mike Hearn from the Bitcoin development?

Can this be done by community vote?

Can this be done by developer vote?


I have nothing against this person and he can develop "bitcoinj" all he want's and stay a Bitcoin expert (at NSA and Circle or in the media). But he should not be part of the core Bitcoin client developtment.

The problem has to be addressed at the source.

That place is the Bitcoin Foundation. They are the ones that give Mike Hearn the power to be core developer.

So you need to convince the foundation, or you need to be hire as core developer by the foundation in order to over ride Mike.

Goodluck

That's the crux of it. Well said.

[theymos]

From this what I understand, authorities can get control of these 10 authoritative directory servers to get their pas data.

Maybe, though the servers are located in a few different countries.

These data will have the IP details of Satoshi... right ?

No, the attacker would only be able to affect new Tor connections.