A consensus network, or how to stop a big lose (fork it!)

[pera]

how is 850k of 12+million of existing coins is a 40% "market cap"? it looks to me less than 10% and less than 5% of all 21 million coins

No fork and no Bitcoin Code Authority please !

Bitcoin is Bitcoin not Gox-coin !

Maybe you say that because you think that 850,000btc is not so relevant. What would you say if BitStamp, BTC-E, Coinbase, and Huobi get hacked or "gaged"?

Let's say that now 40% of all coins are owned by one single hacker, would you fork?

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[Erdogan]

It amazes me that people still place such moral value in BTC actually. It's hardly how I view a free market, more a "war of all against all".

Bitcoin is free. As in speech, not beer.

You are free to fork the blockchain however you choose.
You are free to rollback the blockchain to whatever block height you choose.

But remember; others are free with the choice of using your fork or not.

Can't get much more free than that.

Nothing is free of consequences, and bitcoin is not even free to own or compete to own. It currently costs $530, making more than half the world not at liberty to purchase it. They don't even have the liberty to open bank accounts and verify their identities to current standards asked by the exchanges in this free trade paradise.

"Free" is such an abstract concept anyway, especially when it gets onto trade.

NB: I don't want to fork the chain. I said the principle was fine but implied the timeframe was too wide.

This is totally on its head. Even people without bank accounts are free to aquire and use bitcoins. This is an essential trait of bitcoin, one of the reasons we have so much hope for its success.

[jl2012]

how is 850k of 12+million of existing coins is a 40% "market cap"? it looks to me less than 10% and less than 5% of all 21 million coins

No fork and no Bitcoin Code Authority please !

Bitcoin is Bitcoin not Gox-coin !

Maybe you say that because you think that 850,000btc is not so relevant. What would you say if BitStamp, BTC-E, Coinbase, and Huobi get hacked or "gaged"?

Let's say that now 40% of all coins are owned by one single hacker, would you fork?

How do you know that's really a hack? What if MK sold 850k bitcoins to a mega whale for cash, gold bars, and litecoin? Now MK claims it was a hack. So you want to rob the mega whale to pay for your stupidity in trusting MK?

[Bit_Happy]

...
Considering that a fork means nobody really owns any bitcoins because they can be forcibly taken from innocent people for crimes they had nothing to do with, I say we go with the shady entity owning too many bitcoins. How many is "too many", anyway? Is it okay if a shady entity only has, say, BTC50,000? Does it depend on exactly how shady they are? Is there an acceptable shadiness/BTC ratio that we should be enforcing?

Does it depend on exactly how shady they are? is a good way to put it, thanks.

[thelema93]

fork you

[breel]

You do understand you will never convince miners to erase 3,000 blocks of the blockchain however if you did, then Bitcoin is done.  Remember over those 3,000 blocks, newly mined coins have been involved in transactions and this action would double spend all of those.  The coins originally minted would never exist and thus the coins spent wouldn't.  Merchants, other users, exchanges would all see the downstream transactions (which have 6 ro 3,000+ confirmations) suddenly go unconfirmed and invalid.

While this in theory could be done at any time it is generally accepted to be impossible.  If miners by decree can double spend transaction not 1 or 2 confirmations into the blockchain but 3,000 blocks deep then no receiver can ever be sure that the transaction is irreversible.  There is a certain level of faith in all currencies that create the perception of value, and Bitcoin is no exception.  Among those faiths, Bitcoin users believe that while it is possible in theory to 51% the network and undo transactions thousands of blocks deep, that it would have such an economic cost that it infeasible.  All users accept this faith or they wouldn't be using bitcoin (or would require 10,000+ confirmations before concluding the transaction).  Your proposed action (although I think it has no chance) if successful would break that faith.  Without faith in the irreversibility of transactions, there is no value or utility to Bitcoin.  Bitcoin would be dead.  I am not talking the exchange rate goes down a bit and recovers, I mean completely abandoned as a worthless experiment and development moves on to future systems which don't have the vulnerability (likely some floating checkpoint system which acts as a check to the proof of work).

How do you use a currency that at any time could simply be "undone" and erased from your wallet by the actions of a third party?  Would you use that currency?  I know I wouldn't.  I genuinely feel sorry for those who lost significant amounts of money by misplacing their trust in MtGox but this is a situation where the cure is worse than the disease.

Great post!
On the other hand it'd be great to have a way to "invalidate" the stolen coins, that would only affect the thief that could not spend the coins anymore...
All the other coins would increase in value, so that's good for the community as a whole, even if it does not repay the people whom the coins were stolen from.
This invalidation/block could be optional of course.
I think if something like this could work, it would also reduce the potential issues in the future.

[BurtW]

On the other hand it'd be great to have a way to "invalidate" the stolen coins,

No, there is no "on the other hand".

Create an alt with this ability and see how many people would use it.

[jl2012]

You do understand you will never convince miners to erase 3,000 blocks of the blockchain however if you did, then Bitcoin is done.  Remember over those 3,000 blocks, newly mined coins have been involved in transactions and this action would double spend all of those.  The coins originally minted would never exist and thus the coins spent wouldn't.  Merchants, other users, exchanges would all see the downstream transactions (which have 6 ro 3,000+ confirmations) suddenly go unconfirmed and invalid.

While this in theory could be done at any time it is generally accepted to be impossible.  If miners by decree can double spend transaction not 1 or 2 confirmations into the blockchain but 3,000 blocks deep then no receiver can ever be sure that the transaction is irreversible.  There is a certain level of faith in all currencies that create the perception of value, and Bitcoin is no exception.  Among those faiths, Bitcoin users believe that while it is possible in theory to 51% the network and undo transactions thousands of blocks deep, that it would have such an economic cost that it infeasible.  All users accept this faith or they wouldn't be using bitcoin (or would require 10,000+ confirmations before concluding the transaction).  Your proposed action (although I think it has no chance) if successful would break that faith.  Without faith in the irreversibility of transactions, there is no value or utility to Bitcoin.  Bitcoin would be dead.  I am not talking the exchange rate goes down a bit and recovers, I mean completely abandoned as a worthless experiment and development moves on to future systems which don't have the vulnerability (likely some floating checkpoint system which acts as a check to the proof of work).

How do you use a currency that at any time could simply be "undone" and erased from your wallet by the actions of a third party?  Would you use that currency?  I know I wouldn't.  I genuinely feel sorry for those who lost significant amounts of money by misplacing their trust in MtGox but this is a situation where the cure is worse than the disease.

Great post!
On the other hand it'd be great to have a way to "invalidate" the stolen coins, that would only affect the thief that could not spend the coins anymore...
All the other coins would increase in value, so that's good for the community as a whole, even if it does not repay the people whom the coins were stolen from.
This invalidation/block could be optional of course.
I think if something like this could work, it would also reduce the potential issues in the future.

How to judge and who will judge? The court? Then why don't you simply use fiat?

[Erdogan]

You do understand you will never convince miners to erase 3,000 blocks of the blockchain however if you did, then Bitcoin is done.  Remember over those 3,000 blocks, newly mined coins have been involved in transactions and this action would double spend all of those.  The coins originally minted would never exist and thus the coins spent wouldn't.  Merchants, other users, exchanges would all see the downstream transactions (which have 6 ro 3,000+ confirmations) suddenly go unconfirmed and invalid.

While this in theory could be done at any time it is generally accepted to be impossible.  If miners by decree can double spend transaction not 1 or 2 confirmations into the blockchain but 3,000 blocks deep then no receiver can ever be sure that the transaction is irreversible.  There is a certain level of faith in all currencies that create the perception of value, and Bitcoin is no exception.  Among those faiths, Bitcoin users believe that while it is possible in theory to 51% the network and undo transactions thousands of blocks deep, that it would have such an economic cost that it infeasible.  All users accept this faith or they wouldn't be using bitcoin (or would require 10,000+ confirmations before concluding the transaction).  Your proposed action (although I think it has no chance) if successful would break that faith.  Without faith in the irreversibility of transactions, there is no value or utility to Bitcoin.  Bitcoin would be dead.  I am not talking the exchange rate goes down a bit and recovers, I mean completely abandoned as a worthless experiment and development moves on to future systems which don't have the vulnerability (likely some floating checkpoint system which acts as a check to the proof of work).

How do you use a currency that at any time could simply be "undone" and erased from your wallet by the actions of a third party?  Would you use that currency?  I know I wouldn't.  I genuinely feel sorry for those who lost significant amounts of money by misplacing their trust in MtGox but this is a situation where the cure is worse than the disease.

Great post!
On the other hand it'd be great to have a way to "invalidate" the stolen coins, that would only affect the thief that could not spend the coins anymore...
All the other coins would increase in value, so that's good for the community as a whole, even if it does not repay the people whom the coins were stolen from.
This invalidation/block could be optional of course.
I think if something like this could work, it would also reduce the potential issues in the future.

How to judge and who will judge? The court? Then why don't you simply use fiat?

I think you will find that in the case of destruction of a serious amount of fiat, the central bank will print new, but will not give them to the unlucky guy (unless it is a bank).

[breel]

Great post!
On the other hand it'd be great to have a way to "invalidate" the stolen coins, that would only affect the thief that could not spend the coins anymore...
All the other coins would increase in value, so that's good for the community as a whole, even if it does not repay the people whom the coins were stolen from.
This invalidation/block could be optional of course.
I think if something like this could work, it would also reduce the potential issues in the future.

How to judge and who will judge? The court? Then why don't you simply use fiat?

Maybe each user could judge for himself?
Or maybe we could have blacklist plugins that can read list of "blacklisted coins", kind of like AdBlock Plus can get various list of Ads to filter. Then users would just opt in or out of these.

How do I refuse stolen fiat money? there is no way for me to know that any coin/bill is stolen... but with the blockchain it may be feasible.

[breel]

No, there is no "on the other hand".

Why is that?

[jl2012]

Great post!
On the other hand it'd be great to have a way to "invalidate" the stolen coins, that would only affect the thief that could not spend the coins anymore...
All the other coins would increase in value, so that's good for the community as a whole, even if it does not repay the people whom the coins were stolen from.
This invalidation/block could be optional of course.
I think if something like this could work, it would also reduce the potential issues in the future.

How to judge and who will judge? The court? Then why don't you simply use fiat?

Maybe each user could judge for himself?
Or maybe we could have blacklist plugins that can read list of "blacklisted coins", kind of like AdBlock Plus can get various list of Ads to filter. Then users would just opt in or out of these.

How do I refuse stolen fiat money? there is no way for me to know that any coin/bill is stolen... but with the blockchain it may be feasible.

How about the thief sold the stolen coins to innocent people, immediately after the theft?

How about the coins were transferred legitimately, while the sender is such an s-hole, saying that it was a theft?

[SkillRoad]

But forget about "my fix", just tell me please why anyone would use a currency when the current price is totally controlled by a thief?

Do you seriously think MtGox has all user fiat ballances on bank account and just missing Bitcoins ? I doubt, and Im not sure who is bigger thief, if MtGox or the transaction maleability exploiter.

This story is very confusing, very hard hit by bitcoin




_______________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________
Next Coin Lite - Fair Distribution

[breel]

@jl2012: Yes these are correct questions.

1- In the non-virtual world, I believe that person would lose anything gained from a thief (in case of a suit of course), that could apply to a virtual currency. You could add delay between being able to send newly received funds, but that seems like a major hassle for the overall population so maybe not a good idea.

2- Well that's part of the risk of course, would the cons be greater than the pros? maybe.


3- If it is done at the user level, I doubt people want to manually keep up with small stuff it'd be a hassle.
Probably the same if some organizations are in charge of "blacked lists".
I suspect it would be mostly focusing on the BIG ones, like Sheep, Gox, etc. In these cases it probably makes no difference if the claim is legit or not (ie if an external thieft came in, or it was an internal job, both end up with the same result)


But you didn't reply to my question about the fiat, why?

In no part I assumed I knew exactly how something like this would work, I am merely asking the question.
(most of us didn't know how to get a P2P currency and yet we have one now...)

[BurtW]

No, there is no "on the other hand".

Why is that?

Because if the fungibility of Bitcoin is lost then Bitcoin is lost.  See my signature and this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=340272.msg3652657#msg3652657

Also, reading this entire thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=334316.0

is a very good introduction to the fungibility issue.  There are many very good posts by gmaxwell which explain why this is so important.

[breel]

I'll read that thank you!