Is Bitcoin still experimental?

[Meitzi]

When you go to Bitcoin Core source readme file ( https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin )
You will see very early line

What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is an experimental digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone,

In my opinion, whole word is an experimental.
In that sense, I do not see why BTCitcoin would need to state itself as an experimental.
It is more than 10 years old. I would just say it is in active development.

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[vjudeu]

It is no longer experimental, because the latest version is "22.0" instead of "0.22.0", the leading zero is missing

[n0nce]

It is no longer experimental, because the latest version is "22.0" instead of "0.22.0", the leading zero is missing

Wait for real? I just noticed this, that it went from 0.21.0 to 22.0! Is there an announcement for this anywhere? I don't think the release notes of 22.0 included anything about this numbering change.

[achow101]

It is no longer experimental, because the latest version is "22.0" instead of "0.22.0", the leading zero is missing

The version number is not an indicator of experimental or beta status.

Bitcoin Core still (intentionally) contains a line that says "this software is experimental". The line saying that Bitcoin Core is beta software was removed in 2014.

Is there an announcement for this anywhere? I don't think the release notes of 22.0 included anything about this numbering change.

It is a cosmetic change and does not indicate anything of significance, so there was no announcement or celebration because there is nothing to announce or celebrate.

[n0nce]

Is there an announcement for this anywhere? I don't think the release notes of 22.0 included anything about this numbering change.

It is a cosmetic change and does not indicate anything of significance, so there was no announcement or celebration because there is nothing to announce or celebrate.

Alright, but even then I wonder who decided on that and why etc., I mean sure it's just a version number, but I wonder how I missed this change completely..

[BlackHatCoiner]

Hey, Meitzi, you should note this:

Bitcoin Core still (intentionally) contains a line that says "this software is experimental".

If you're asking if Bitcoin is still experimental, then I'd gently respond it'll most likely be until the whole world adopts it. But, saying that the software, the Bitcoin client developed by the Bitcoin Core team, is experimental isn't the same thing.

Look, they both are in an experimental stage, but there's difference between the currency as a social experiment, and the software, as a developing project. They obviously have a connection, since the whole thing relies on the software, but Bitcoin could still be experimental while the software entirely idle and considered “completed” from significant changes.

[achow101]

Alright, but even then I wonder who decided on that and why etc., I mean sure it's just a version number, but I wonder how I missed this change completely..

The PR is https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/20223.

I wrote the change, and 12 other developers (including most of the maintainers) ACK'd it. It was also discussed multiple times in some issues and on IRC.

The why is primarily to stop the constant questions of "when 1.0" every time a release is made. Additionally the change aligns the version number with our actual process (we were incrementing the minor version number for versions designated as major releases) and how many people perceive the version number (I see a lot of people who wrote and said the version number without the leading 0).

[n0nce]

Alright, but even then I wonder who decided on that and why etc., I mean sure it's just a version number, but I wonder how I missed this change completely..

The PR is https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/20223.

I wrote the change, and 12 other developers (including most of the maintainers) ACK'd it. It was also discussed multiple times in some issues and on IRC.

The why is primarily to stop the constant questions of "when 1.0" every time a release is made. Additionally the change aligns the version number with our actual process (we were incrementing the minor version number for versions designated as major releases) and how many people perceive the version number (I see a lot of people who wrote and said the version number without the leading 0).

Interesting. I skimmed the IRC log and it's like 4 people arguing about it for 30 minutes and then the meeting is just ended lol. I get the GitHub approvals but then what's the purpose of the IRC chat, that poor guy's questions about standard versioning method are just ignored basically. I myself like just dropping the 0, it's the easiest and aesthetic choice, but had no issues with keeping the 0 either, I don't think it implies there should be a 1.x eventually.

[Shymaa-Arafat]

They said in the MIT lecture11 about fees (min 6:30 in https://youtu.be/wXWbdiOBW5w) that there is a bug from the original Satoshi code and was still there till the lecture time April 2018 that
When you're spending from a multi-seg transaction you have to push a zero byte in the stack first


So is it still there, or has something to do with the zero in the version number?

[odolvlobo]

When you're spending from a multi-seg transaction you have to push a zero byte in the stack first.

So is it still there, or has something to do with the zero in the version number?

It is still there. It has nothing to do with the version number.

It will never change because it is not really an issue, and changing it would require a hard fork. FYI, there is also a bug in which the new target computed each 2016 blocks is computed incorrectly. It will also never change for the same reason.

[pooya87]

When you're spending from a multi-seg transaction you have to push a zero byte in the stack first

This may not even have been a bug. Instead it may have been done intentionally for scalability. It is an arbitrary item that is popped from the stack and ignored, a soft fork could have been introduced to interpret that item too. For example an extra script so that each OP_CheckMultiSig(Verify) would need to perform additional checks.

[Shymaa-Arafat]

This may not even have been a bug. Instead it may have been done intentionally for scalability. It is an arbitrary item that is popped from the stack and ignored, a soft fork could have been introduced to interpret that item too. For example an extra script so that each OP_CheckMultiSig(Verify) would need to perform additional checks.

Like extra bits for future use, seems a good argument to explain it,
 I suggest should write it as a comment on the lecture for other learners

[mindrust]

When you go to Bitcoin Core source readme file ( https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin )
You will see very early line

What is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is an experimental digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone,

In my opinion, whole word is an experimental.
In that sense, I do not see why BTCitcoin would need to state itself as an experimental.
It is more than 10 years old. I would just say it is in active development.

It is. You still can lose all your money over night and nobody will bail you out. Most people that invest in crypto are not aware of this. It doesn't necessarily mean a bad thing as long as you don't invest more than you could afford to lose.

[HeRetiK]

Is there an announcement for this anywhere? I don't think the release notes of 22.0 included anything about this numbering change.

It is a cosmetic change and does not indicate anything of significance, so there was no announcement or celebration because there is nothing to announce or celebrate.

I was slightly amused to see this release happen just a few weeks after I stumbled upon this website on "Software's most popular versioning scheme": https://0ver.org/

Almost as if you guys felt called out However even then Bitcoin was already marked as having left the school of ZeroVer, so whoever runs the website seems to have been aware of your pull request.

[20kevin20]

Both Core and Bitcoin itself are probably still experimental. We barely have it as a legal tender and proper regulations anywhere in the world. There is a very small number of countries trying to help, but from here to mass adoption and to the real test (worldwide real usage, not just crypto fans) is a long way to go. I think only mass adoption would make it non-experimental.

[Dabs]

Give it about another 20 to 50 years. Until then, people will continue to call it experimental. One could say fiat money is experimental and is failing, but it lasted a hundred years. There are plenty of science experiments with people that have been going on for decades.

[n0nce]

Give it about another 20 to 50 years. Until then, people will continue to call it experimental. One could say fiat money is experimental and is failing, but it lasted a hundred years. There are plenty of science experiments with people that have been going on for decades.

You could even argue capitalism itself is still an ongoing experiment
Right now, it's not going too well in fact, with an ever increasing gap between poor and rich.


I don't know any other open source software project with as many talented devs, thorough security analysts and general global attention as Bitcoin and yet any other software project that comes near to Bitcoin in one of those aspects is long out of experimental stage. So I'd say Bitcoin is quite humble in still calling itself experimental

It has resisted a ton of attacks, you could even argue it's the software project that should be the most profitable to attack, yet it's still secure, still decentralized and still increasing in interest, adoption and price.

Experiment is going well so far!

[Dabs]

You could even argue capitalism itself is still an ongoing experiment
Right now, it's not going too well in fact, with an ever increasing gap between poor and rich.

We're going a little off topic here, but I'd argue the other one called "communism" is an ongoing experiment with several countries, and almost all of them I would consider to have failed already. The fact that there are poor and rich in capitalist countries reflects on either the people or the circumstances of the people, not the government or the businesses. Lot's of self-made millionaires were born into poor families. Lots of people born rich are now poor. It goes both ways.

[n0nce]

You could even argue capitalism itself is still an ongoing experiment
Right now, it's not going too well in fact, with an ever increasing gap between poor and rich.

We're going a little off topic here, but I'd argue the other one called "communism" is an ongoing experiment with several countries, and almost all of them I would consider to have failed already. The fact that there are poor and rich in capitalist countries reflects on either the people or the circumstances of the people, not the government or the businesses. Lot's of self-made millionaires were born into poor families. Lots of people born rich are now poor. It goes both ways.

I agree; also did not want to go off-topic, just show that almost anything can be called experimental basically... It's hard to define or say if something's 'not experimental anymore'.

I think only mass adoption would make it non-experimental.

Even then, you could argue it's still an ongoing experiment (like literally capitalism and communism themselves; both are mass adopted and in a way still experimental).

Let me explain: every time a milestone is reached, like 'legal tender', 'mass adoption', 'global reserve currency', ..., the circumstances are completely changed and we're in a new kind of experiment. For example, let's say BTC exited 'experimental' status in El Salvador and it is mass adopted globally, it'll be again experimental, because it's a whole different situation, economy, size, scale, political system and landscape; so it'll be 'experimental' again and it's not guaranteed that it will work globally the exact same way it works in El Salvador.

[buwaytress]

I've used that term myself on occasion. Call it what you want, but I consider my involvement and interaction with Bitcoin as experimental.

And for as long as there's going to be fresh tech and fresh usage (segwit a few years ago, coinjoin for me a while back too, and Lightning use more recently), constantly evolving entry and exit points (fiat conversion I mean), I daresay those adventures in finding new ways to interact with Bitcoin, very much a huge social and financial experiment.

[n0nce]

FYI, you should quote @20kevin20 since he's the one who made the statement (while the other one simply copy/paste his post and add few enter).

Fixed. Wanted to report in the plagiarism thread but you already did

[takuma sato]

The "This is experimental software" line is probably a disclaimer in order to protect from people suing the developers in case something went wrong and loss of funds happened due a glitch in the code.

[pooya87]

The "This is experimental software" line is probably a disclaimer in order to protect from people suing the developers in case something went wrong and loss of funds happened due a glitch in the code.

You can't sue developers of an application that is released under MIT license if something went wrong because when you started using that software you agreed to accept it "as is" and without warranty of any kind. Whether it is experimental or not has nothing to do with it.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The "This is experimental software" line is probably a disclaimer in order to protect from people suing the developers in case something went wrong and loss of funds happened due a glitch in the code.

As said by pooya87 above, once you install it, you agree on the terms written in the MIT License. Although, it is, indeed, a disclaimer. It's telling you that you should be aware and responsible for any actions you take. That it's a new, innovative type of money. Nothing the society had ever seen before.

This experimental line is not going to be removed any time soon.

[Wind_FURY]

Give it about another 20 to 50 years. Until then, people will continue to call it experimental. One could say fiat money is experimental and is failing, but it lasted a hundred years. There are plenty of science experiments with people that have been going on for decades.

Good point. Because the Core Developers, and only the Core Developers are in cryptocurrency development for the science. All of the other coins, the shitcoins, are in it for profit. MAYBE EXCEPT for a HANDFUL of altcoins.

[ABCbits]

The "This is experimental software" line is probably a disclaimer in order to protect from people suing the developers in case something went wrong and loss of funds happened due a glitch in the code.

You can't sue developers of an application that is released under MIT license if something went wrong because when you started using that software you agreed to accept it "as is" and without warranty of any kind. Whether it is experimental or not has nothing to do with it.

But it's more complicated if he meant the protocol (which covered on BIP) rather than implementation. Few BIP use different license (such as BSD, CC or doesn't include license). AFAIK most license prevent developer/author getting sued, but i've no idea what could happen if someone sue author of BIP without license.

[n0nce]

The "This is experimental software" line is probably a disclaimer in order to protect from people suing the developers in case something went wrong and loss of funds happened due a glitch in the code.

You can't sue developers of an application that is released under MIT license if something went wrong because when you started using that software you agreed to accept it "as is" and without warranty of any kind. Whether it is experimental or not has nothing to do with it.

But it's more complicated if he meant the protocol (which covered on BIP) rather than implementation. Few BIP use different license (such as BSD, CC or doesn't include license). AFAIK most license prevent developer/author getting sued, but i've no idea what could happen if someone sue author of BIP without license.

I don't see how you'd sue someone for a protocol specification though. Since for losing funds you need to use an implementation of that protocol, and as was mentioned Core implementation is under MIT, so you accept any faults etc. when using Bitcoin Core, even if they're coded to spec. At least that's how it would work in my mind, but I'd like to hear other opinions of course!

[Dabs]

I think you can only sue developers of closed sourced wallets or custodial wallets. You can't sue open source code devs because you should be able to compile it yourself.

Really, people should learn about cold storage and multi-signature wallets no matter how much value they plan to hodl.

[NotATether]

P.S. BIP 143 actually use PD license, it's just dumb example.

But you can't sue the author of a public domain work because the author has legally waived all their ownership from it (so there is no warranty that can apply to them in any case).

[a.a]

Well, lets say I write a malicious BIP with Copyright to myself, were I propose to store the privatekeys on my private email address. Some on Bitcoin Team think it is very neat solution, and implement it. Now the Network adapts it and now I get the privatekeys. I steal now the privatekeys and make the great fire-sale. Are now the devs my accomplices? Or is my action of stealing the BitCoins the criminal act and the bitcoin devs just negligent?

Or in German law, you can not exclude any liability. So for example, you make an online lottery... you can exclude any liability by declaring that you can not sue if you not win. But you can not exclude e.g. the liability for bodily harm, even if it is not in the possibilities to get bodily harmed by a online lottery.

Is Bitcoin money? Or is it something else? Can it be actually stolen?

And last but not least:
Who do you sue, if they(the node owners) disable the whole bitcoin network? Participation in the bitcoin network is not obligatory. So you can not sue anybody if there suddenly a 51% attack is possible and somebody is running the whole bitcoin network on his raspi with McDonalds Wifi.

[20kevin20]

Even then, you could argue it's still an ongoing experiment (like literally capitalism and communism themselves; both are mass adopted and in a way still experimental).

Let me explain: every time a milestone is reached, like 'legal tender', 'mass adoption', 'global reserve currency', ..., the circumstances are completely changed and we're in a new kind of experiment.

A very interesting food for thought. Yeah, we're definitely going experimental with every single new addition. Anything new could turn into opposition or support from certain parties, and stuff like SegWit is definitely a new atmosphere, a new environment and a new experiment. Thanks for your input. If so, since Bitcoin can be easily changed by just modifying its codelines unlike for example physical materials such as lead or gold, it might in fact be experimental at all times and will be even 100 years from now.

[NotATether]

Well, lets say I write a malicious BIP with Copyright to myself, were I propose to store the privatekeys on my private email address. Some on Bitcoin Team think it is very neat solution, and implement it. Now the Network adapts it and now I get the privatekeys. I steal now the privatekeys and make the great fire-sale. Are now the devs my accomplices? Or is my action of stealing the BitCoins the criminal act and the bitcoin devs just negligent?

It is not a practical scenario. BIPs are peer-reviewed almost as rigorously as academic papers so the chances of anyone with brains (dev or otherwise) of even moving the BIP to the debate stage is zero.

[Syke]

You can't sue open source code devs because you should be able to compile it yourself.

Sure you can. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-court-let-craig-wright-194612053.html
Releasing code as open source does not absolve it of other laws, i.e. copyright/trademark/patent/etc. laws.

[NotATether]

You can't sue open source code devs because you should be able to compile it yourself.

Sure you can. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-court-let-craig-wright-194612053.html
Releasing code as open source does not absolve it of other laws, i.e. copyright/trademark/patent/etc. laws.

Except the link you posted isn't about a copyright, trademark, or patent lawsuit, and the legal claims are not about the open source software.

The claims are specifically in the allegation that those devs are stopping Craig Wright from accessing [what he thinks is] his coins.

This is different from an accusation such as: You merged some code that violates my rights (such as a multimedia codec or an algorithm that someone has patents for, or using logos from a parent project that are protected, or contributing reverse engineered code to open-source projects)