The consensus dead end.

[DooMAD]

Just so you're not derailing yet another LN thread, replying to this here:

so atleast be a man. and for once admit your loyalties

My loyalty is to freedom.  Yours is to fascism and thinking you can tell people what to do.  

I think consensus means those who choose to agree build a chain together.
You think it means "everyone has to agree because I say so".  Which not only sounds utterly childish, but is also demonstrably not the way in which Bitcoin works.  And each time you commit to that untenable position, you prove exactly why no one should ever take you seriously.  Please keep it up.

When I say "if you don't like it, you can fork off", I say it not as an instruction, but as a list of your available options.  It's merely a statement of fact.  If you want to run incompatible consensus rules, you don't have a choice in the matter.  That's just an explanation of how it works.  I don't get how you are still unable to comprehend that fact after all these years.  If you think you can run code that is not compatible and still remain connected to other nodes that deem your rules invalid, then you leave me no alternative but to question your intelligence.

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[Wind_FURY]

The Bitcoin ledger is a single global truth.  Mutually untrusting nodes agree on this one truth, with no central authority to call the shots or enforce rules.

and yet a central group did become an authority in 2017 by dictating a bip91 lag that would mandate a split to ensure that those loyal to the group enforced a new ruleset.

What group? “Core”? I believe the Core developers were neutral until the very last minute when some of them joined the grassroots movement that wanted the UASF. It was mutual consensus between different indivuduals/parties/groups.

Like Taproot, Core is neutral, but needs an aggressive call for LOT=true by the grasroots. Then Core can ignore, or join.

[DooMAD]

*gibberish*

I told you, I'm not wasting any further time explaining why you are wrong about SegWit activation.  There's no point.  For over three years you've been crying foul and for over three years not a single person has rallied to your lost cause.  And it's not like you'll ever understand, even if I explained it 1000 times.  Going forwards, I'm only interested in debating your utterly flawed concept of consensus.

forcing off the network before activation is not how consensus should work

Says you.  There are two fundamental flaws in your comprehension.  Activation and enforcement.  We'll start with the latter:

Clearly you have a problem with enforcement.  You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not in a position to enforce it.  People who are collaborating together, however, can enforce things.  If you work with people and build a network that is based on rules, the participants either follow the rules or they can be excluded from that system by the others.  Much like a society, but less restrictive.  Traditionally, if you break the law, you can be excluded from society in the form of imprisonment or, in some places, even death.  Thankfully, consensus mechanisms are not that draconian (so it's often baffling as to why you're such a whiny little crybaby about it).  Instead, you get to instantly form your own society if you disagree with our one.  The only downside is you don't get to take advantage of the existing infrastructure, the network effects or the security of the society you chose to leave.  You have to build that for yourself if you decide you can't work together with us.  The choice is yours.  And it's not a one-time deal either.  At any point you can re-join our network.  All you have to do is follow the rules (so stop pretending it's on par with a crime against humanity if someone did get forked off, you histrionic drama queen).  Our door is always open.

Now, onto activation.  Activation of a given feature (one that you happen to be totally obsessed with) is not the only occasion where the rules can change.  The "mandatory" part you keep moaning about wasn't even related to activation of the feature (also, you mean bit 6 and bit 8, but you keep saying bit 4, as if you somehow felt it necessary to further illustrate your lack of understanding).  You were so caught up in hating the feature, you mistook a totally different and unrelated change in consensus to be tied to activation of that feature.  But you still can't grasp that fact.  Consensus can change at any time, for any reason the majority deem appropriate.  The majority decide what the rules are.  Block by block.  The minority do get forked off if they don't follow the rules.  Again, if you want to take advantage of our security and our network effects, you follow our rules.  That is how the system you chose to be a part of functions.  

So, to ask the obvious question, why did you join this system if you are fundamentally opposed to how it works?  How misguided do you have to be to complain about an integral, crucial function that underpins the entire foundations of everything we've built?  It sounds as though you understand it so poorly that you believe it to be somehow immoral.  Even though it can't work any other way.  You do see how your position is completely untenable, right?  Logically, you can't take the stance that everyone has to agree when you can't eliminate free will.  What are you going to do?  Hold a gun to peoples' heads to make them agree?  How have you not thought this through to conclusion?  What are all these "scenarios" you run even for if they can't bring you to a rational conclusion?

Bottom line, if you can design a consensus mechanism that forces everyone to agree, feel free to publish it.  You can't stop other people from running incompatible code.  You can't stop me from deciding when someone else's code is incompatible.  You can't stop me choosing to disconnect or ban other nodes if they run code I don't approve of.  What you are proposing is quite literally impossible.  It could never exist.  Even if you were the most gifted programmer in the world, rather than the clueless, raving narcissist you are.  Accept the fact that you can't control people and move on.  Or cry harder.  Up to you.

And even if you had an answer to all of that (hint: you clearly don't), it has been explained to you on more than one occasion that if someone creates a Bitcoin fork and doesn't alter their new chain's network magic, this will result in replay attacks becoming possible.  Don't deflect from this issue as you've deflected every other time it has been raised.  Tell me, in no uncertain terms, how you would prevent replay attacks if a fork won't change it's network magic, since your glorious "everyone-has-to-agree-democracy" system won't allow disconnecting or banning nodes until you're personally satisfied that everyone is in agreement?  It appears that not only do you hate freedom, you also want to endanger the imaginary users of your imaginary totalitarian system.

your influencers mindset is:
this new feature will activate. accept it or fork off. if you dont accept. if you dont fork yourself. we will fork you off.

That's not a "mindset".  That's actually the closest I've ever seen you come to finally understanding the basics.  

[Wind_FURY]

The Bitcoin ledger is a single global truth.  Mutually untrusting nodes agree on this one truth, with no central authority to call the shots or enforce rules.

and yet a central group did become an authority in 2017 by dictating a bip91 lag that would mandate a split to ensure that those loyal to the group enforced a new ruleset.

What group? “Core”? I believe the Core developers were neutral until the very last minute when some of them joined the grassroots movement that wanted the UASF. It was mutual consensus between different indivuduals/parties/groups.

Like Taproot, Core is neutral, but needs an aggressive call for LOT=true by the grasroots. Then Core can ignore, or join.

core group created the lot=true. core are having it in. there is no 2 options of a 0.21.1 with:
0.21.1a (includes lot=true)
0.21.1b (excludes lot=true)

anyways. you ask 'who'
you do realise who paid the salary of the main core devs. yep the same guys that made the NYA were also paying LukeJR as a 'contractor' and invested into blockstream
yep nya USAF and core devs.. all paid by the same group

calling them independent 'grassroots' is funny though.. it makes it seem like it was not organised... a lie on your part. but still funny that you try to present it as such

another funny part is you have been told this stuff years ago.. but you seem to prefer to be a denialist too

the network had a mandatory split caused by this same group. it was not what your buddy said that the opposition chose to leave voluntarily
research flag 'bit4'
it was the same group. wanting it and organising it. they depended on it. it was not independant

I cannot stop you from spreading FUD, and lies about Bitcoin and the Core Developers, but the community went into consensus to activate Segwit, miners followed. No one, in the end of the DRAMA, wanted to follow Gavin, Mike Hearn, Jeff Garzik. The community has spoken, the market has spoken, the miners have spoken through their actions.

[DooMAD]

Thankfully, consensus mechanisms are not that draconian (so it's often baffling as to why you're such a whiny little crybaby about it).  Instead, you get to instantly form your own society if you disagree with our one.  The only downside is you don't get to take advantage of the existing infrastructure, the network effects or the security of the society you chose to leave.  

and thats your ignorance

before activation.. the network should not split because nothing has changed..

That's some brilliant franky1 logic right there, heh.  You want to maintain that nothing changed but at the same time people got forked off?  Which is it?  If nothing changed, how did anyone get forked off?  No doubt that's yet another question you'll completely avoid so you can just repeat the same things you've already said another dozen times.    

so when a certain group of participants want a change. they should only get a change if the entire network agree's

There's that famous "should" again.  Where you think you get to set the terms and decide how it works.  Engage in wishful thinking all you like.  It doesn't work like that, though.  If enough people agree, that's sufficient.  If you think the rest of us need your permission to do something, you don't understand Bitcoin.
 It's as simple as that.  I'm not explaining how I think it should work.  I'm perfectly happy with how it does work.  Remember, you're the one who wants it changed.  You want us to bow to your wishes.  I like it how it is.  We bow to no one.  It doesn't have to be total agreement, otherwise nothing would ever get done.

I'm sure you would prefer a network where rules can't change without your explicit permission.  Anyone can see how that would appeal to your desire for absolute control.  It's just a pity you didn't realise that isn't how this system works.  If only you had done more research.    

What exactly do you think you're going to achieve here?  What do you think will be different next time?  Are you trying to guilt-trip everyone into enacting "scout's honour" going forwards?  Do you think all participants will naturally embody your absurd notions of playing nice?  

[DooMAD]

before activation.. the network should not split because nothing has changed..

That's some brilliant franky1 logic right there, heh.  You want to maintain that nothing changed but at the same time people got forked off?  Which is it?  If nothing changed, how did anyone get forked off?  No doubt that's yet another question you'll completely avoid so you can just repeat the same things you've already said another dozen times.    

the segwit did not activate for the the fork to occur.. meaning no new features caused the fork..
i made that clear right from the start
seems you have a reading problem along with a moral problem

again.. to save many posts
the fork did not occur because the opposition were reading new different rules they didnt understand(true consensus 5% softfork after activation)

the fork occurred BEFORE ACTIVATION

I swear, there is no facepalm gif large enough to express how utterly gormless you are. 

As always, you're the one who needs to learn to read.  Here is a larger font to assist you:

Activation of a given feature (one that you happen to be totally obsessed with) is not the only occasion where the rules can change.  (...)  You were so caught up in hating the feature, you mistook a totally different and unrelated change in consensus to be tied to activation of that feature.  But you still can't grasp that fact.  Consensus can change at any time, for any reason the majority deem appropriate.  The majority decide what the rules are.  Block by block.  The minority do get forked off if they don't follow the rules.

It doesn't matter if the only thing you care about is a particular feature activation that was being decided upon.  That's not the only reason you can be forked off.  How many more times do you need it to be said?  Most 5 year olds would have understood it by now.  The other network rules don't disappear just because you're looking at a certain possible rule change.  Why do you still think it's like an election where people can only pick from the preset outcomes on the ballot and we have to wait for a set date and time for the result?  You have seen with your own eyes that's not how it works. 

How can you possibly believe a proposed feature in the process of being decided upon would somehow magically grant immunity to being removed from the network for other reasons?  If a feature is being debated and a miner happens to start publishing invalid blocks at the time, do you think that miner stays on the network just because the feature hasn't activated yet?  Of course they don't.  Features don't change that.  You cannot argue that point and expect people to take you seriously.  THINK before you click reply.  If the network introduces a rule that bit 6 and bit 8 get disconnected, your precious feature activation does not factor into the equation.  Anyone flagging bit 6 and bit 8 goes bye-bye.  It's done.  History.  Accept the facts.  This is how it is.  "BEFORE ACTIVATION" is irrelevant.  Meaningless.  Not connected in any way, shape or form.  Other network rules exist as well and cannot be ignored.

*waits for franky1 to cry "bEfOrE aCtIvAtIoN" yet again because he can't comprehend*

[Wind_FURY]

funny part is that the blockchain says different to the narrative that was passed to you from FUDDERS like doomad. just because he calls me one. does not make it true. it just deflects his own fud

maybe seek the truth from blockchain data and not spoonfeeds from doomad and your other influencers.

if you want to call the blockchain a lie. that flag bit1 didnt come before flag bit1.
if you want to call the blockchain a liw that the split didnt happen before bit1 threshold..

.. well thats your ignorance and something you have to deal with yourself

the 3 main things your buddies say i fud are
LN HTLC are 12+ decimal tokens that will never be broadcast onto the blockchain
bit4 mandatory split occured before bit1 reached its threshold to get segwit activated
bitcoin has cludgy code that doesnt make tx cheaper. but make legacy transactions more expensive on purpose

if you want to spend a few more years in denial. then thats your business. but the blockchain data and LN code does not lie. so try checking that instead of your buddies opinion f you are atleast interested in the facts

The only person you’re in consesus with, with that post, is yourself. You believe you are right, but the community has moved on and it’s continuing on with the chain. You are an orphaned block insisting that the chain should be mined on top of you.

[Wind_FURY]

windfury.. your just repeating doomad now..

Snip

You want me to be out of consensus, and be part of that small minority that no one went into consensus with? No one will follow the big blocker agenda, for better or worse, right or wrong. The community simply doesn’t believe, and will never come into consensus that Bitcoin Cash is “the Bitcoin”, or that Bitcoin and Bcash “bilaterally split”.

[zeuner]

How did miners accept that change? They were not forced to update their bitcoin client.

It is a misconception to assume it was the decision of the miners (or the developers). When miners switch to a software update that is not fully compatible with respect to consensus rules, they think they can afford to do so because they expect they will still be able to sell the mining rewards. So people who criticize consensus rule changes should ask themselves whether they made sure they did not buy Bitcoins that came from these miners initially. If they did, they should admit that they actually paid for the consensus changes they criticize...

[d5000]

There is hereby a failure of human language usage:  The word “consensus” is overloaded.

In Bitcoin, the word “consensus” has the very specific technical meaning.  It does not refer to an agreement amongst humans, as in colloquial usage.  Rather, it denotes the resolution of a synchronized state in a distributed system.[...]

In Bitcoin, the consensus means that all nodes arrive at the exact same conclusions about the current global state of the blockchain ledger:  The set of valid transactions that exist, the meaning of each of those transactions, and the order of those transactions.

You are of course right, the usage of the word in this thread is a bit ambiguous/imprecise, mixing the "colloquial" with the "technical" meaning, but I think nevertheless the discussion here has to do with consensus.

The "global state" of the blockchain can be altered only following the strict rules of the Bitcoin protocol. Even if I don't double spend a coin and follow other basic rules of the Nakamoto consensus, I cannot simply come up with a new transaction format or use another hashing algorithm. I have to respect these rules and formats, and only then my messages (i.e. transactions) will be taken into account by the algorithm, and resolved according to the Nakamoto consensus.

Thus, hard and soft forks change not necessarily the general principle of the Nakamoto consensus, but other rules that are part of the Bitcoin protocol, which determinate the global state of the blockchain. Hard forks could in theory even change the general Nakamoto consensus principle, e.g. like Ethereum planned the transistion to Proof-of-stake. (Not that I think that would ever happen in Bitcoin.)

But maybe here we shouldn't talk about "the consensus" but about "protocol rules" or "consensus rules", or "how consensus rules are established".

[pooya87]

It is a misconception to assume it was the decision of the miners (or the developers). When miners switch to a software update that is not fully compatible with respect to consensus rules, they think they can afford to do so because they expect they will still be able to sell the mining rewards. So people who criticize consensus rule changes should ask themselves whether they made sure they did not buy Bitcoins that came from these miners initially. If they did, they should admit that they actually paid for the consensus changes they criticize...

If miners or anyone else for that matter run a different software that has different consensus rules and mine blocks that are incompatible with the majority then they will be on a separate chain (ie. an altcoin). Someone who is running a bitcoin client doesn't have to do anything because they won't receive such transactions since they will be rejected behind the scene right away for being invalid.

[zeuner]

It is a misconception to assume it was the decision of the miners (or the developers). When miners switch to a software update that is not fully compatible with respect to consensus rules, they think they can afford to do so because they expect they will still be able to sell the mining rewards. So people who criticize consensus rule changes should ask themselves whether they made sure they did not buy Bitcoins that came from these miners initially. If they did, they should admit that they actually paid for the consensus changes they criticize...

If miners or anyone else for that matter run a different software that has different consensus rules and mine blocks that are incompatible with the majority then they will be on a separate chain (ie. an altcoin). Someone who is running a bitcoin client doesn't have to do anything because they won't receive such transactions since they will be rejected behind the scene right away for being invalid.

With a large network like Bitcoin, the decision usually happens before there are two incompatible chains. Incompatible changes get activated when a certain activation threshold (with respect to mining power) is reached. Miners commit to these changes (or not), and other users get to decide whether they buy the mining rewards from these miners, thereby supporting the change with their money.

[DooMAD]

With a large network like Bitcoin, the decision usually happens before there are two incompatible chains.

Yep, some miners have been known to announce an incompatible chain before it launches.  An unplanned fork probably wouldn't survive for long in the wild.  It's not generally a choice you would make without thinking it through and committing to your decision.  If miners did spend a week or two mining a new chain only for it to subsequently die, that's potentially a large amount of wasted resources.

[Kakmakr]

The developers does not decide what changes will be implemented, they just commit the changes and the full nodes decide if they want to run the updated protocol or not. So consensus to run the new protocol changes are reached when the majority of the full nodes are running the new software.  

The process to accomplish this is very difficult, so the developers cannot simply make changes as they want and think that it will be accepted by the majority of the full nodes.

The changes are also scrutinized from developers from all over the world, so we have good "Peer review" to see if exploits are not going into the backdoor. (remember the Gavin & Mike Hearn backdoor attempt)  

[btc-room101]

Since 2009, some consensus rules have been added, for example SegWit. It surely does good, it's a solution for the block size limit, but I want to know how did that occur. In wikipedia it says that SegWit was activated on block 477120, but who begun that? Changes on consensus rules, as good as they are, are changes. If the majority of its users, change a consensus rule, they immediately stop being the majority. The follow their "Bitcoin".

The forum itself says on a quote that miners don't vote on changing consensus rules, only the order of the transactions. Seeing a change like that makes me wonder what else can the developers change. Should they have an impact on bitcoin? Whether if it's for good reason or not.

How did miners accept that change? They were not forced to update their bitcoin client.

-But why did you enter that title?
Well, I'm a little afraid of bitcoin's future and thus, my funds'. On the long term, one of these may occur:

• Public key to private key reversal. (I've heard that it may be possible to do that with quantum computing and pollards kangaroo method)
• Finding collisions for RIPEMD-160 hashes. Are we sure that 2¹⁶⁰ is strong enough? What if it becomes weak in the next 20-30 years?

Even if the first one can be faced pretty easily by simply creating outputs on addresses that have never spent, the second one requires consensus change. I don't know what they can change in that case, probably use of stronger cryptography, but they will have to change something! Otherwise, bitcoin will be useless. Changing a consensus rule, that important, would sour lots of people. And that's because that moment, the developers would have to "touch" people's money. It'd be a consensus dead end.

Model T, Model A are long gone, now you have Tesla.

BTC is the Model A of crypto.

In the next few years secp256k1 will be cracked, and BTC either move from sha256 to sha1024, or it becomes a training wheel tool for kindergarten crypto

In the next few years, many crypto's will step forward to replace BTC, with larger ECDLP fields, quantum-computers are way off, but 2^256 will be cracked soon with off the shelf hw.

IMHO forever given sha256 and secp256k1 are both NSA, they just wanted to know how long before they're were cracked, of course NSA could crack this stuff all along.

Most corporations and NSA look out 15+ years past what the public see's, always been this way. I remember when the FFT was top secret in big-oil, and was in use in 1950's, but not published until 1960's.

BTC is training wheels for people to learn crypto, when the CIA-NSA is ready to deploy USA-Crypto, you can be sure it will be rock hard, unless they want to back door you.

Quantum Computing is still largely BS, sure kangaroo also seems to be the best to date, its still essentially too slow, a better approach is endomorphisms and there are 1,000's for the secp256k1 field

[Metal Brain]

How does this consensus thing work?

How would I become a part of this consensus?
How is the incentive for mining going to be preserved after the coin creation is not enough? Can consensus create more coin for mining incentive? Without mining bitcoin will collapse, right?

[pooya87]

In the next few years secp256k1 will be cracked, and BTC either move from sha256 to sha1024,

secp256k1 is the curve used in Elliptic Curve cryptography and SHA256 is the hash algorithm.
You can't "crack" the curve, you have to break the cryptography algorithm that is ECC. And if ECC is broken changing the hash algorithm doesn't change anything!
Also there is no SHA1024! If SHA-2 algorithm is broken and became weak then a new version of it should be used not necessarily a bigger digest size. ie version 3 or 4 of SHA not same SHA-2 with 1024-bit digest size.

of course NSA could crack this stuff all along.

Any proof or is it just the tinfoil hat talking?

[BlackHatCoiner]

How does this consensus thing work?

Consensus is a general agreement. Rules that you have to follow such as 21,000,000 coins, halving every 210,000 blocks, block generation every 10 minutes on average etc. If you don't follow these rules, you're not part of the Bitcoin's block chain.

How would I become a part of this consensus?

I guess you mean Bitcoin's? By running a node that is compatible with Bitcoin's consensus rules. Here's a bitcoin client: Bitcoin Core.

How is the incentive for mining going to be preserved after the coin creation is not enough?

Miners' incentive will then be the transaction fees. It'll always be profitable for some nodes to support the network. We may see huge increases of the median fee in the future. We may also not. Lightning Network solves the scaling problem to an extent and I hope that from now up to 10 years, there'll be a serious LN adoption. It'd be great if half of the mempool transactions were broadcasted to open or close a channel.

If you're a beginner to Bitcoin (or don't how LN works), here's a nice thread about the basics of LN: Basics of the Lightning Network.

Can consensus create more coin for mining incentive? Without mining bitcoin will collapse, right?

No and no. I answered you above why.

[DooMAD]

of course NSA could crack this stuff all along.

Any proof or is it just the tinfoil hat talking?

Pretty sure that applies to every post this user has ever made.  I don't think I've ever witnessed them utter a word of sense in all 294 posts.

How would I become a part of this consensus?

Help secure the chain.  Most people do that by running a non-mining full node.  You'll then check every block conforms to the consensus rules which your chosen client enforces.  The alternative is to become a miner.  However, mining likely isn't an option unless you have a fairly significant sum of money you don't mind putting at risk, because you'd have to buy specialist hardware and return-on-investment is not guaranteed.

How is the incentive for mining going to be preserved after the coin creation is not enough? Can consensus create more coin for mining incentive? Without mining bitcoin will collapse, right?

Getting off-topic with this part, but the network will run purely on transaction fees after coin emission ceases.

[Metal Brain]

Here is an excerpt from the link below:

"But there's a catch to this figure. Namely, there's no hard cap on the number of tokens that are in circulation. Rather, it's computer code and community consensus that determine this cap. Although it's unlikely that consensus would be reached to increase the 21 million token cap, the possibility of this happening is not 0%."

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/06/25/3-reasons-bitcoin-is-fundamentally-flawed-as-an-in.aspx

You said that was not possible. Are you sure that old article is wrong?


Will consensus determine how much the transaction fees will be in the future?
Are there transaction fees now? If so, who determined how much they would be?

Is reaching consensus a difficult thing to achieve? Is there good reason to believe bitcoin will evolve from consensus to adapt well to changes when they are needed?