Bitcoin adoption: A technical challenge

[aliashraf]

OK. Then how many years away are you before publishing a whitepaper, or having a Github repo available for contributors, or a Proof of Concept?

I'm not away from anything, WE are away. I'm doing my part and will continue doing it, what's yours?

I'm not a fan of whitepapers, it has been a while, in bitcoin and cryptocurrency whitepapers are neither white nor a paper, rather a colorful advertisement for running ICOs and making dirty money by scamming people and hurting bitcoin ecosystem.

I'll formalize core protocols in step #3 and Github repo is scheduled for step #5 as I've clarified above

To be crystal clear:

1) I'm not under any form of a contract, it is not a scheduled project with budget and time tables.

2) I won't do anything about it without a minimum of community support/contribution, why should I? After all, WE are in step #1 i.e. discussing outlines and finding more contributors.

Now my question: If we could have a better bitcoin in terms of scaling, decentralization and privacy without touching or hurting legacy bitcoin, without spreading FUD, without consuming legacy bitcoin resources while we are helping and strengthening legacy bitcoin, what would be your responsibility?
I mean other than naysaying and accusing peers of being incompetent or the project being vaporware?

[AverageGlabella]

I'm not away from anything, WE are away. I'm doing my part and will continue doing it, what's yours?

I'm not a fan of whitepapers, it has been a while, in bitcoin and cryptocurrency whitepapers are neither white nor a paper, rather a colorful advertisement for running ICOs and making dirty money by scamming people and hurting bitcoin ecosystem.

I'll formalize core protocols in step #3 and Github repo is scheduled for step #5 as I've clarified above

To be crystal clear:

1) I'm not under any form of a contract, it is not a scheduled project with budget and time tables.

2) I won't do anything about it without a minimum of community support/contribution, why should I? After all, WE are in step #1 i.e. discussing outlines and finding more contributors.

Now my question: If we could have a better bitcoin in terms of scaling, decentralization and privacy without touching or hurting legacy bitcoin, without spreading FUD, without consuming legacy bitcoin resources while we are helping and strengthening legacy bitcoin, what would be your responsibility?
I mean other than naysaying and accusing peers of being incompetent or the project being vaporware?

Whitepapers when done correctly can be the general information needed for a new concept or project but I would agree that when looking at the Bitcoin whitepaper its not very useful for beginners and thats what a whitepaper should be designed for. It should be a basic introduction to the concept and able to be read by everyone and not just technical Bitcoin users. This is why I have mentioned that ease of use is very important to adoption.

Creating a better Bitcoin has already been done to death and none of them have the success that Bitcoin has. Its not because they are not better than Bitcoin but because Bitcoin is known as the first cryptocurrency to gain momentum. Anyone else trying to replicate and add to Bitcoin will forever be known as altcoins and will not be as successful.

[aliashraf]

Creating a better Bitcoin has already been done to death and none of them have the success that Bitcoin has. Its not because they are not better than Bitcoin but because Bitcoin is known as the first cryptocurrency to gain momentum. Anyone else trying to replicate and add to Bitcoin will forever be known as altcoins and will not be as successful.

I don't think so.
Firstly, I can't classify most of the altcoins as being better than bitcoin, they are not! People are used to making wrong design choices. Let's take a look at the top of the list:
Ethereum with its universal machine is just a disaster, an exemplary case of a very bad design choice, state bloat will destroy it eventually let alone Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik who feel free to manipulate it because, they say, it is a project!
Ripple is not even a legitimate permissionless cryptocurrency and bitcoin cash is just a simple and naive fork of bitcoin.

I'm not aware of any alt deserving the label "better bitcoin" and it is absolutely understandable: you can't leave a great innovation behind in just a few years. It's time tho.

Secondly, I'm not proposing an altcoin, this project is about a sidechain as I've introduced it above thread. I'm thinking of a better version of bitcoin that co-exists with it as a sidechain, absorbing it gradually (one-way) while helping it by encouraging solo mining.

[pooya87]

Creating a better Bitcoin has already been done to death and none of them have the success that Bitcoin has.

you are confusing "claims" (or advertisement) with "actions". it is very easy to claim to be better and in the eyes of most people it may look better (check top 10 altcoins!) but to actually be better you'll need some innovation and to go in an entirely different direction than bitcoin. in short when you see there is a ton of similarities between bitcoin and another altcoin, there is a good chance they are worse than bitcoin!
why? because they take the idea that works perfectly well with bitcoin and try to adapt it to their own purpose and it doesn't work that way.

Ethereum with its universal machine is just a disaster, an exemplary case of a very bad design choice,

it was perfect design choice, you are only mistaken about the purpose. ethereum was never meant to be "universal machine" it was just their advertising technique. the reality was ethereum was a premined coin with a big ICO to make the creators of it millionaires overnight. the design was chosen in that way to give it that short term advantage and hype to get the biggest pumps.
the developers have to be really stupid to not know seconds apart blocks will lead to a bloat of nearly 3 TB blockchain!

[aliashraf]

Ethereum with its universal machine is just a disaster, an exemplary case of a very bad design choice,

it was perfect design choice, you are only mistaken about the purpose. ethereum was never meant to be "universal machine" it was just their advertising technique. the reality was ethereum was a premined coin with a big ICO to make the creators of it millionaires overnight. the design was chosen in that way to give it that short term advantage and hype to get the biggest pumps.
the developers have to be really stupid to not know seconds apart blocks will lead to a bloat of nearly 3 TB blockchain!

I liked the sense of humor 

BTW, I think the scamming part was not a design-purpose from the first day. "They" should have talked to Vitalik's dad and convinced him for the scam, initially it was a trivial "generalization" idea to replace the bitcoin's automata with a Turing-complete machine, a very bad design choice for a consensus-based decentralized system, IMO.

[Wind_FURY]

OK. Then how many years away are you before publishing a whitepaper, or having a Github repo available for contributors, or a Proof of Concept?

I'm not away from anything, WE are away. I'm doing my part and will continue doing it, what's yours?

We? No. This is you until you convince the community to follow you. How do we know you're not trolling with Collaborative-POW, blockchain-sharding, and with the other "great" ideas?

I'm not a fan of whitepapers, it has been a while, in bitcoin and cryptocurrency whitepapers are neither white nor a paper, rather a colorful advertisement for running ICOs and making dirty money by scamming people and hurting bitcoin ecosystem.

Satoshi made a whitepaper, and many other scientists do, to present their ideas.

I'll formalize core protocols in step #3 and Github repo is scheduled for step #5 as I've clarified above

To be crystal clear:

1) I'm not under any form of a contract, it is not a scheduled project with budget and time tables.

OK. Would "within 20 years" be a fair estimate?

2) I won't do anything about it without a minimum of community support/contribution, why should I? After all, WE are in step #1 i.e. discussing outlines and finding more contributors.

You have a Proof of Concept, whitepaper? How can we know if we can support it?

Now my question: If we could have a better bitcoin in terms of scaling, decentralization and privacy without touching or hurting legacy bitcoin, without spreading FUD, without consuming legacy bitcoin resources while we are helping and strengthening legacy bitcoin, what would be your responsibility?
I mean other than naysaying and accusing peers of being incompetent or the project being vaporware?

Am I wrong to be cycnical with the kind of social-engineering attacks, and trolling within the community?

I'm here to learn, and grow.

[aliashraf]

OK. Then how many years away are you before publishing a whitepaper, or having a Github repo available for contributors, or a Proof of Concept?

I'm not away from anything, WE are away. I'm doing my part and will continue doing it, what's yours?

We? No. This is you until you convince the community to follow you. How do we know you're not trolling with Collaborative-POW, blockchain-sharding, and with the other "great" ideas?

See? It is your problem. You think I have an obligation to convince "the community" about my ideas being great, it is not true!

As of now, the purpose of this topic is proving the feasibility of a scalable, decentralized secure sidechain for bitcoin, better than bitcoin and denouncing claims about the existence of dilemmas and trilemmas and trade-offs.

It is not about me being or not being smart or possessing great ideas, it is about the feasibility for bitcoin to get mass-adopted. I've presented an outline for such a bitcoin and I'm ready to jump into the details if I find enough reasons for this.

Re-thinking winner-takes-all and designing an alternative PoW model is not a trivial job, it is one of the most sophisticated technologies to approach and more complicated would be presenting it to a community poisoned with false claims and political propaganda.

It is also worth mentioning that I've been presenting crucial parts of my work in this forum in the last couple of years and in some occasions you have been contributing and you just can't pretend not being aware of what I'm talking about.

In one special occasion, you started a topic asking for more information about sharding and I presented you with a very important part of my work; How it is not and should bot be considered a security/scaling trade-off, remember? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5112524.msg49929370#msg49929370

[Wind_FURY]

OK. Then how many years away are you before publishing a whitepaper, or having a Github repo available for contributors, or a Proof of Concept?

I'm not away from anything, WE are away. I'm doing my part and will continue doing it, what's yours?

We? No. This is you until you convince the community to follow you. How do we know you're not trolling with Collaborative-POW, blockchain-sharding, and with the other "great" ideas?

See? It is your problem. You think I have an obligation to convince "the community" about my ideas being great, it is not true!

If you want the community to accept, and run your software, then yes you do. Are you telling us that we should trust and follow you blindly?

[aliashraf]

If you want the community to accept, and run your software, then yes you do. Are you telling us that we should trust and follow you blindly?

With the current state of minds and the atmosphere taken into account, it is both too soon and resource-intensive, convincing the community, it is time to convince individuals that there is a chance to do something good about bitcoin, show me just one case that anybody has succeeded in
convincing the community about anything, in past few years.

[Wind_FURY]

If you want the community to accept, and run your software, then yes you do. Are you telling us that we should trust and follow you blindly?

With the current state of minds and the atmosphere taken into account, it is both too soon and resource-intensive, convincing the community,

Then write a whitepaper. Satoshi started Bitcoin from nothing but a whitepaper, because the idea was so convincing and good.

it is time to convince individuals that there is a chance to do something good about bitcoin,

How?

show me just one case that anybody has succeeded in
convincing the community about anything, in past few years.

That's actually good. No one is following anyone blindly.

[Andriian]

If you want the community to accept, and run your software, then yes you do. Are you telling us that we should trust and follow you blindly?

With the current state of minds and the atmosphere taken into account, it is both too soon and resource-intensive, convincing the community,

Then write a whitepaper. Satoshi started Bitcoin from nothing but a whitepaper, because the idea was so convincing and good.

As far as I know, Satoshi created software first to check if everything works as expected. Bitcoin whitepater was written by him/her only after the implementation and just before approaching community.

By the way, that process is vise versa to what most of other crypto projects are doing. That may be even a single case. At least, I don't know other examples in crypto when a whitepaper was created only after a software is ready for production.

[pooya87]

By the way, that process is vise versa to what most of other crypto projects are doing. That may be even a single case. At least, I don't know other examples in crypto when a whitepaper was created only after a software is ready for production.

other projects aren't really writing any "whitepaper" though. they have changed the meaning of it too. it is currently used as a way of advertising the useless token they are trying to sell by giving vague information and only false promises. and sometimes even create and solve imaginary problems in one place!
that's 99% of the cases.

[Wind_FURY]

If you want the community to accept, and run your software, then yes you do. Are you telling us that we should trust and follow you blindly?

With the current state of minds and the atmosphere taken into account, it is both too soon and resource-intensive, convincing the community,

Then write a whitepaper. Satoshi started Bitcoin from nothing but a whitepaper, because the idea was so convincing and good.

As far as I know, Satoshi created software first to check if everything works as expected. Bitcoin whitepater was written by him/her only after the implementation and just before approaching community.

By the way, that process is vise versa to what most of other crypto projects are doing. That may be even a single case. At least, I don't know other examples in crypto when a whitepaper was created only after a software is ready for production.

Pardon my mistake, sorry. But that gives a better example, because Satoshi had a Proof of Concept, AND a whitepaper to show.

[aliashraf]

As far as I know, Satoshi created software first to check if everything works as expected. Bitcoin whitepater was written by him/her only after the implementation and just before approaching community.

To be honest, I don't care about what Satoshi did but AFAIK it was not the case.

I'm aware of this thinking by code thing, not a fan tho, I've tried it, works for small projects and smart hacks, lots of fun but not really applicable in most of the occasions, especially not for pushing an already invented technology to its edges, what we are talking about and desperately need for bitcoin.

[Theb]

Bitcoin mass-adoption is subject to technical developments that should and can happen simultaneously in three critical fields: Decentralization, Scaling and Privacy.

If you are looking for things that can affect Bitcoin's mass adoption then we have a complete opposite view about it. Mass adoption won't really start without the support of our own governments, two out of the three fields you have mentioned won't really be given by the government namely decentralization and privacy is something is what they are concerned the most mainly because of the crimes and illicit activities revolving around the industry. The mass adoption won't really take place if you just focus on the internal factors you are mentioning about technical development since it's already there and really the only thing missing is to be supported by the government. External factors (governments/lawmakers) are really want you need to start looking for since this literally will be the green light for all the developments happening within in the industry.

[mda]

The only obstacle to mass adaption is government sabotaging of native scaling. But sooner or later it'll become overcome and we'll say good bye to our dear government.

[aliashraf]

-snip-
 External factors (governments/lawmakers) are really want you need to start looking for since this literally will be the green light for all the developments happening within in the industry.

By governments you mean the US authorities, don't you? No? But it is the truth!

Speaking of monetary systems there is just one government in the world, the US government, they do whatever they want with the world economy using their USD dominance as leverage, since World War II, and it is both stupid and impossible to tolerate. Unlike what most people believe bitcoin is not an alternative to fiat currencies, it is an alternative to USD in the first place.

We have nations oppressed by USD right now and the rest of the nations are not completely satisfied by its dominance. The world monetary system needs to be changed and there is no alternative other than bitcoin, it should improve.

[Wynn1427]

I agree with the USD dominance and leverage aspect. I believe both fiat and cryptocurrency can co-exist for periods of time, but not indefinitely as reserve currencies have only been seen to last somewhat short period in history.

Back on to topic, so your intent is a hierarchical side chain (not sure how this can be a one-way pegged without setting BTC as some backed standard?). Mass adoption would need to happen at least in US at a personal level somehow. If person X trades for something, person Y needs to accept the trade and believe what they received has some value and may choose to exchange it for their future needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.). Novel ideas are great but mass adoption is the key (why the need it and cant live without it).

[aliashraf]

@Wynn1427,

Decentralization is the first key to mass adoption and scaling is the second one. Both are necessary but decentralization comes first because it makes it possible to resist. Actually some believe that there is an axiom of resistance that bitcoin is built on it by Satoshi.

The priority of decentralization was what correctly justified the Core view in scaling debate, you can't naively increase the load on a system by compromising its essential design principle, its purpose and decentralization is such an important and elementary feature for bitcoin. An unscalable but decentralized bitcoin could exist, somehow, but it is not true for the opposite case.

The basic purpose of this project is higher degrees of decentralization rather than scaling the latter comes as a bonus and a surprise once we figure out that the same flaw that is threatening decentralization of bitcoin by pools, is degrading its performance substantially: A bad design choice for Pow, winner-takes-all model.

So, fixing pooling pressure flaw is not just about a better bitcoin as a utility, it is about resistance, the ability of bitcoin to survive despite what govs all around the world and the US government especially do or wish to do. This resistance is at stake right now, and mass adoption is conditioned by the results of this game. Let's win it!

[Stedsm]

All in all, you're speaking about a "currency" and not a cryptographic element (experiment) anymore. The day since we started comparing BTC to other individual Fiat currencies and started adopting because of its value in USD rather than its actual value i.e.; 1 BTC equals 1 BTC always. Since then, the adoption of BTC is being drifted more towards these qualities while the technical part has been left to a smaller set of Devs who were already involved since the beginning. While considering everything what I said:

Decentralization is never going to take place fully in the world of BTC because we (not me and you maybe, but most likely everyone) need something "highly secure to control our funds", I mean we want something to rely upon so badly that we can even compromise it to an Institution that can provide us with the same. We want Governments to get involved to stop criminal activities (yeah, we are relying over them ) and help us keep the activities clean and as smooth as possible because these authorities have got our back and they're the first to f*ck us as and when we try to save ourselves from disclosing our relations in BTC and paying taxes to them.

While about Scaling, I'm also not in the favor of any forks because forks create diversities in a community which was meant to be unique as well as united forever but that couldn't happen based on the fact that opinions change from person to person. And alts? Kick'em off all of them. They're just doing me one favor - cheaper fees and that's it. Nothing else can they do. Now back to the topic, scaling will also not be easier considering that if you come up with a new idea, the time it'll take to get implemented will already have a lot more traffic involved till then. It's like we try to make the roads bigger and broader from time to time, but during that period, quantity of vehicles won't remain the same and increases to almost double or sometimes even more. I guess scaling is not going to be any easier a topic here to get done till a system to deal with this quantity issue is invented and presented to the community and make them agreed to the same (that will be a different story as LN took a lot of time before everyone understood and adopted it, still it's very complicated).

Until Centralization remains, Privacy is ought to be compromised to various organizations where we will be storing our funds and need to meet their KYC AML obligations before we're able to get a hold on our funds back at many places.