Can someone tell me what this means?

[ncentrepreneur.investor]

I was reading the book blockchain wars and ran across this sentence. “ Bitcoin is decentralized enough to never be broken or sued but does not have the perfect decentralization that would degrade system design qualities.” I read it three times and don’t understand the second part of the sentence. Can someone explain it in a different way? I think that there is God, and then Bitcoin. But this passage might make me wrong. Lol

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[franky1]

there is no company that owns bitcoin...
.. but there is a central hub of developers(core) that have a hierarchy of code control of the protocol.. and they do not like random(decentralised) people having idea's that differ from theirs. they treat anyone that has idea's to grow bitcoin that do not align to their plan as outsiders and to treat all attempts to add bitcoin scaling as a threat/challenge to the hub group of devs. and to try to force the outsider into making an alt rather than integrate the scaling into bitcoin

[jackg]

Yeah I agree with frankly that it could be a grievance to the scalability problems, the fairly slow network, or the lack of features (such as smart contract resemblance).

(smart contracts being a feature may not be something I directly agree with being implemented without its own chain - sandbox - but the author might)

[seoincorporation]

“... but does not have the perfect decentralization that would degrade system design qualities.”

Bitcoin is decentralized but a group of developers takes the decision about the changes in the code. These changes are called BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals), and there are 3 types of BIPs:

Standards Track BIPs - Changes to the network protocol, block or transaction validation, or anything affecting interoperability.
Informational BIPs - Design issues, general guidelines. This type of BIP is NOT for proposing new features and do not represent community consensus
Process BIPs - Describes or proposes a change in the process. Similar to Standards BIPs but apply outside the Bitcoin protocol.

And this is why its decentralization can't degrade or destroy the design qualities as the book mention.

If you want to learn more about this, I leave the wiki link here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_Improvement_Proposals

[DooMAD]

there is no company that owns bitcoin...
.. but there is a central hub of developers(core) that have a hierarchy of code control of the protocol.. and they do not like random(decentralised) people having idea's that differ from theirs. they treat anyone that has idea's to grow bitcoin that do not align to their plan as outsiders and to treat all attempts to add bitcoin scaling as a threat/challenge to the hub group of devs. and to try to force the outsider into making an alt rather than integrate the scaling into bitcoin

Or put another way, some people have ideas which are incompatible.  They believe their ideas are good, but are unable to find support within the community to implement these ideas.  This is often because their ideas are, in fact, misguided.  Developers have a responsibility to ensure changes don't adversely impact the security and stability of the network.  You could keep taking that rejection personally, playing the victim and whining about it at every opportunity (and you probably will).  Or, you could take a pause.  Seriously reevaluate your ideas and look at them objectively.  Consider whether these ideas would be deemed acceptable by a majority of network participants.  Is your proposal something that everyone would want, or just something you want?  Would your ideas (intentionally or unintentionally) coerce others to carry an additional burden of resource cost in order to make your idea work?  Does the concept stand up to to game-theory, or could it potentially be exploited?  Does it have any potential repercussions that could in any way undermine, weaken or threaten the protocol?  

Chances are, you just haven't thought it through to conclusion.  You can't blame devs for that (except for the part where you keep doing exactly that...).

[BlackHatCoiner]

and they do not like random(decentralised) people having idea's that differ from theirs.

This is definitely not how it is. The Bitcoin Core developers are no close to dictators, which is what you make it sound like. If someone has an idea, they're free and welcomed to propose it. If there's consensus found on the idea, the developers will start implementing it.

And a developer has no power over me. If they want to enforce their idea by implementing it themselves without further discussion, I'll simply deny to run their software. Simple as that.

and to try to force the outsider into making an alt rather than integrate the scaling into bitcoin

You're the only person who sees "outsiders" and "alts". I only see people who've understood there's no further future for scaling on-chain, and try to accomplish it off-chain. One advantage of SegWit was to increase transaction capacity per block, but it was never intended to completely solve scaling.

If you have an idea on how to solve scaling, feel free to say it. But, to catch up with you, changing the block size makes no difference to scaling.

[franky1]

blackhatcoiner.. YOU and your buddies are the idiots that think if someone has an idea they should fork and start a new network and see who joins.

you forget the emphasis that the core devs DECIDE what code gets ACK'd into core
only certain dev cores get to ack and commit the code to a RC

you forget the emphasis that the core devs DECIDE that any other large full node client that is not core should get REKT and treated as an alt/competitor and be forked

a user cant just add its own idea into cores github and have it turned into a RC, where it gets released as a new 0.23.x variant where the community then download or not download depending if they want the feature or not.

there is no multiple versions of with different idea's where people choose which version to run which then get activated once a majority of version 0.23.Y is being used.

there actually is a hierarchy of control of how things get voted in as accepted to core. and these moderators of the levels are well known. and only one version is released at a time and that versions just gets blindly downloaded as an update rather than a choice of options....

the community do not get to decide different features side by side. its now more or a single brand that just gets updated. and instead of a choice. its more of a waiting game or a forced to update that decides WHEN something activates. as there is no alternative to just say no to

do you even remember why they called it CORE. to be the central repository of protocol rules.

the core devs do not like competing full nodes. they even admit that they feel just having a competing full node puts extra work on THEM as it means them as arbitrators of the protocol then are forced to have to review other brands code.

they think they are the managers/authority of the protocol.

so heres a plan..
stop social drama protecting human influencers that you admire. and instead think about the code and protocol the random real community of users are reliant on.
think about the and stop trying to protect the devs.
devs should come and go. so you should not be caring about trying to keep devs in power by your loyalism to humans more than the loyalist to the protocol that needs to grow and evolve

oh and maybe do some research on history of all the REKT campaigns and the evolution of CORE from bitcoin-qt, and just do that research without the social group loyalist hat on

...
and while your at it.. do realise the devs cries about how bitcoin scaling cant work.. is their agenda.. they lie..
for instance ethereum is half the age but the blocksize is more than double but they are not crying.. why?. because we are not in 1999 where people are on dialup and where hard drives are small
core devs play the lies of it being 1999 where scaling bitcoin cant work becasue hardware cant cope.. but reality of real world examples show that not to be the case..

and i am not talking just about blocksize.. im talking about many other features core devs' decline.. like a fee formulae.(yes it can be implemented after all their own crappy math cludge of treating legacy vs segwit fee's differently, which has proven to work) so it is possible to put a fee formula that actually benefits users. but their politics of their agenda doesnt want that.

other things like limiting sig-ops per tx and such so that people cant bloat up block with just a few tx's so that more people can add more tx's per block.. that got declined because its against the core agenda

[BlackHatCoiner]

blackhatcoiner.. YOU and your buddies

Just a parenthesis; me and "my buddies" form the overwhelming majority.

that think if someone has an idea they should fork and start a new network and see who joins.

This is not what I think, nor what I said.

you forget the emphasis that the core devs DECIDE what code gets ACK'd into core

But, you decide to run their software. Just having the upgraded client is pointless if you don't use it. You, therefore, matter. You action has a consequence. If the developers make a change you disapprove of, they have no power whatsoever. In the same way the miners don't get to dictate you what are the protocol rules, just because they have a certain percentage of the hashrate.

stop social drama protecting human influencers that you admire. and instead think about the code and protocol the random real community of users are reliant on.

The people you hate outnumber you. Stop thinking of how you can make us think different and realize that you are the problem.

[franky1]

blackhatcoiner.. YOU and your buddies

Just a parenthesis; me and "my buddies" form the overwhelming majority.

you dont. there is like 12 main "buddies" in your little fan club(cough community)..
there are thousands of topics from thousands of people wanting bitcoin scaling. and only a few dozen topics of your fan agenda of offramping people to altnets as the solution. where its the same dozen people defending altnets as the "solution"

your buddies are the fans of core devs. but that does not make you the majority of the community of all users.
you are the majority of the small group of core dev loyalist fanclub.. thats the difference

heck even your mindset that you think you 12 are the majority is more admission and proof of the hierarchy you love so much. thinking your better then the rest due to ass-kissory of a small central group that think they are the authority.

so yea. it was a laugh seeing you prove my point

your "community" consists of core devs and their loyal fan club
you denie that users and random decentralised people are the real "community"

now go do a topic count on how many people ask and talk about BITCOIN scaling and how many are involved in your altnet solution of keeping bitcoin slim and stagnant, to offramp people away from bitcoin ant into your favoured altnets


learn the size of the actual wider bitcoin community and not just your small version of the community you think is the community

oh and one last funny

that think if someone has an idea they should fork and start a new network and see who joins.

This is not what I think, nor what I said.

If you don't like it, fork off. That's the beauty of decentralized systems.

You sinned... You called blabber, our magnificent consensus; fork off!

i can find more examples. but you get the point
screw it i know your going to be belligerent and dare me.. so heres just another of many posts that reveal how you dont want anyone apart from core devs making the decisions, and prefer everyone else to make a new altcoin/altnet

It seems that it's just my opinion, but I don't believe that users should have the freedom to choose what is defined as Bitcoin. They have the freedom to experiment with it, to use it, to create new things on top of it, but not to change it. Satoshi chose these consensus rules and every person who refuses to accept them is free to follow a different chain.

YOU are a altnet admirer and majority user.
i use the bitcoin network and want the bitcoin network to grow.. but you think you are the bitcoiner and i am the competing altnet admirer..

try to learn the roles are the opposite to what you think.. YOU are the small "community" that want to aspire to grow altnets, by stifling bitcoin design and functionality to promote your altnet

..
i can name your "community majority" off by heart
i know you cant name the ACTUAL bitcoin community majority of thousands/millions of users that want bitcoin network scaling off by heart (i know your tempted to waste hours trawling through thousands of topics to copy and paste name just to pretend you have good memory, pretending you didnt trawl them all and instead just remembered them).. but by posting so many names you are proving my point..  the point is the real community is wider than your fan club

[Zilon]

I think it is simply rephrasing the first statement. in the first statement " Bitcoin is decentralized enough to never be broken or sued" is clear enough to state that bitcoin is beyond the centralized monetary system and in the second statement "but does not have the perfect decentralization that would degrade system design qualities.” which tells us that despite Bitcoin not having a central authority the decentralized nature of Bitcoin is strong enough to resist been broken or sued

[franky1]

I think it is simply rephrasing the first statement. in the first statement " Bitcoin is decentralized enough to never be broken or sued" is clear enough to state that bitcoin is beyond the centralized monetary system and in the second statement "but does not have the perfect decentralization that would degrade system design qualities.” which tells us that despite Bitcoin not having a central authority the decentralized nature of Bitcoin is strong enough to resist been broken or sued

well actually. scam artist CSW did sue the core devs and some of the main website owners that host bitcoin stuff like the white paper

it didnt affect the bitcoin protocol and the real wide community care about.. but it did affect and scare the small clubhouse that certain people are loyal too.

[ImThour]

“Bitcoin is decentralized enough to never be broken or sued but does not have the perfect decentralization that would degrade system design qualities.”

It depends all on the author's understanding of the actual concept. Saying it's decentralized and not enough doesn't make sense.
Either it is, or not. I would say, Bitcoin is decentralized and does not have to be perfect as it's unique like every human on this planet.
About system design qualities, I don't see any attack on Bitcoin as of now and the other chains have been exploited worth millions in the past years.

[franky1]

“Bitcoin is decentralized enough to never be broken or sued but does not have the perfect decentralization that would degrade system design qualities.”

It depends all on the author's understanding of the actual concept. Saying it's decentralized and not enough doesn't make sense.
Either it is, or not. I would say, Bitcoin is decentralized and does not have to be perfect as it's unique like every human on this planet.
About system design qualities, I don't see any attack on Bitcoin as of now and the other chains have been exploited worth millions in the past years.

the data (blockdata) is decentralised over hundreds of thousands of nodes..
the rules, are bug checked and fixed and changed by only a small group of devs..  and they hate decentralised people outside their group entering their group and having an independent mindset

[tadamichi]

and while your at it.. do realise the devs cries about how bitcoin scaling cant work.. is their agenda.. they lie..
for instance ethereum is half the age but the blocksize is more than double but they are not crying.. why?. because we are not in 1999 where people are on dialup and where hard drives are small
core devs play the lies of it being 1999 where scaling bitcoin cant work becasue hardware cant cope.. but reality of real world examples show that not to be the case..

Real world examples show that 65% of ethereum nodes already run in the cloud, so much about decentralization. Their node count is also much lower than Bitcoins. You can’t criticise something, then bring on another example and just ignore it’s effects, and then accuse people of lying. Scalability won’t be fixed by what sounds cool on paper.

https://ethernodes.org/network-types

[franky1]

and while your at it.. do realise the devs cries about how bitcoin scaling cant work.. is their agenda.. they lie..
for instance ethereum is half the age but the blocksize is more than double but they are not crying.. why?. because we are not in 1999 where people are on dialup and where hard drives are small
core devs play the lies of it being 1999 where scaling bitcoin cant work becasue hardware cant cope.. but reality of real world examples show that not to be the case..

Real world examples show that 65% of ethereum nodes already run in the cloud, so much about decentralization. Their node count is also much lower than Bitcoins. You can’t criticise something, then bring on another example and just ignore it’s effects, and then accuse people of lying. Scalability won’t be fixed by what sounds cool on paper.

https://ethernodes.org/network-types

there are many many ways to aid bitcoin scaling on the bitcoin network. its not just about blocksize.. my point was that the altnet loyalists that think they are majority of the community and favour devs that only want to sniffle bitcoin evolution, or add things if it favours offramping to altnets .. is by them trying to portray that those that want bitcoin scaling only want massive blocksize growth ASAP as their counter argument to cry that bitcoin shouldnt evolve or those wanting scaling should leave the real bitcoin community and start their own altcoin.

there are many things that can evolve bitcoins network. the fee's, the sigops. the bloat per TX. also even without exceeding the now deemed safe 4mb(weight) they can remove lot of cludgy code and allow more transactions without exceeding that 4mb weight.

but its not technology that hinders the evolution, its the politics..

main point being for about 7 years now. there has been 1 defacto client everyone FOLLOWS. which has for the same number of years had one defacto maintainer that has had the github privileges to accept and finalise a Release Candidate which has then got a few key holding members that show signed messages that they have reviewed and accepted the code as clean which everyone FOLLOWS and trusts..
that same top hierarchy of people are the defacto main devs and dev helpers that have coded in the features THEY prefer to see

[tadamichi]

and while your at it.. do realise the devs cries about how bitcoin scaling cant work.. is their agenda.. they lie..
for instance ethereum is half the age but the blocksize is more than double but they are not crying.. why?. because we are not in 1999 where people are on dialup and where hard drives are small
core devs play the lies of it being 1999 where scaling bitcoin cant work becasue hardware cant cope.. but reality of real world examples show that not to be the case..

Real world examples show that 65% of ethereum nodes already run in the cloud, so much about decentralization. Their node count is also much lower than Bitcoins. You can’t criticise something, then bring on another example and just ignore it’s effects, and then accuse people of lying. Scalability won’t be fixed by what sounds cool on paper.

https://ethernodes.org/network-types

there are many many ways to aid bitcoin scaling on the bitcoin network. its not just about blocksize.. my point was that the altnet loyalists that think they are majority of the community and favour devs that only want to sniffle bitcoin evolution, or add things if it favours offramping to altnets .. is by them trying to portray that those that want bitcoin scaling only want massive blocksize growth ASAP as their counter argument to cry that bitcoin shouldnt evolve or those wanting scaling should leave the real bitcoin community and start their own altcoin.

there are many things that can evolve bitcoins network. the fee's, the sigops. the bloat per TX. also even without exceeding the now deemed safe 4mb(weight) they can remove lot of cludgy code and allow more transactions without exceeding that 4mb weight.

but its not technology that hinders the evolution, its the politics..

Politics will always be involved no matter what, but was there really cases where a really beneficial proposal was made that went trough the process and then got rejected for no reason? I think from these contrarian views in discussions like now, it actually shows that we had hit a good middle ground. When change is really necessary there will be consensus, im sure, because then game theory kicks in.

main point being for about 7 years now. there has been 1 defacto client everyone FOLLOWS. which has for the same number of years had one defacto maintainer that has had the github privileges to accept and finalise a Release Candidate which has then got a few key holding members that show signed messages that they have reviewed and accepted the code as clean which everyone FOLLOWS and trusts..
that same top hierarchy of people are the defacto main devs and dev helpers that have coded in the features THEY prefer to see

But this isn’t set in stone forever, this privilege can be lost quickly if they do iffy things. We as a network can react to things when necessary, this is not a dictatorship.

[DooMAD]

but its not technology that hinders the evolution, its the politics..

I know your god-complex doesn't allow you to recognise the fact that you've never proposed an idea that would constitute an evolution, but trust us when we tell you your ideas are very much a step in the wrong direction.  You think you're here to save us, lecturing from up on your goddamn high-horse, but as I've said before, you're just a windbag with nothing to offer.  Stop acting like you know best.  You know jack-shit.  

It's not a conspiracy to "hold Bitcoin back", you're just a dumbass who doesn't understand anything and would completely annihilate the protocol if somehow given the means and opportunity to "fix it".  Bitcoin works exactly how it's supposed to.  You don't know how to improve it.  You only know how to break it.  Please STFU.  For once in your life, listen to reason and don't keep waffling on like the ignorant gasbag you are.

[franky1]

doomad
i have no god complex. there are litteraly thousands of people that want bitcoin to evolve(not altnet solutions)
i am not alone.. i am not above others..  i am just the ones that you get triggered by because i have done my research and can show stats and code to back it all up. and you hate it

im informing people using stats and code.. YOU are crying and getting angry and throwing insults and telling people for fork off F$$k off and STFU.. notice the difference

anyway you are one of the typical 12 fans of altnets i was talking about..
where YOU think you have the authority(god complex) to tell people to fork off and go away and shut up when they dont tow the line and kiss your ass

no surprise you would turn up.. did blackhatcoiner contact you and ask you to back him up.. sounds about normal for every topic that you lot happen to try defending your "community"(offramp to altnet agenda group)
ill just continue to call you fangirls.. it stands for
"Form Another Network, Grab Idiots Reserved Locked Sats"
well it doesnt stand for that but it does explain the scheme you want to play for profit, which explains your motives of really trying to push people to stop using bitcoin in preference to your favoured altnet

anyways.. glad your admitting your influencer devs are holding bitcoin back.. one step forward by you admitting such
ill come to the silly things they are holding back that are not needing to be held back below.. ill mark it with a ** so you know

But this isn’t set in stone forever, this privilege can be lost quickly if they do iffy things. We as a network can react to things when necessary, this is not a dictatorship.

and if there was a bit of bad nefarious code in say version 24. where majority updated and activated some timebomb bug.. .. where are they going to get a version 25 from?
who would you trust to code version 25?
 where is the alternative dev group to diversify and decentralise the options of what node software to run to protect the network (and no im not talking about lite wallets)

anyways lets give the history lesson of the politics at play

the 2016-17 segwit saga...
they proposed a thing that would offer fee discounts...
people thought great legacy addresses finally getting fee's below a couple pennies..
.. nope. instead the game was to not give discounts. but to math cludge the code whereby new formats people had to move funds into paid normal rates and legacy was to be treated as 4x more expensive
https://api.blockchain.info/charts/preview/fees-usd-per-transaction.png?timespan=all&h=600&w=1200
check out the flat line and then in the middle the 2017 event. see how the transaction prices then are not flat line cheap... ask yourself why

also they said they solved malleability. again legacy formats were not solved. again new format people had to move funds into would benefit. but its was not solving malleability it was getting people to have to migrate to malleability free formats.(theres a difference)

these new formats did not offer any transaction count increases to blocks.
https://api.blockchain.info/charts/preview/n-transactions-per-block.png?timespan=all&h=405&w=720
if you look the transaction count has been stagnant below the 2500 for the last 5 years

yet they did want to allow more blockspace to use for cludgy scripts(witness/signatures) of the new format.. which proves that more blockspace is indeed safe for the network...
BUT they wanted to still lock up and hinder and **not allow legacy transactions to use the extra space. and forced legacy to stay within the 1mb block size.**

.. so it released their agenda code in november 2016.. and the devs got all excited thinking by chiristmas 2016 it would activate because they thought everyone loved it.. ..... um... may 2017 came around not even 50% were liking it.. it wasnt really looking like it was going to activate.
so the politics moved in to change the code and add in some code(MANDATED ACTIVATION) that would force it to activate by ignoring any miner that was not flagging acceptance of it
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/compare/master...shaolinfry:bip-segwit-flagday#diff-97c3a52bc5fad452d82670a7fd291800bae20c7bc35bb82686c2c0a4ea7b5b98R1829
. this mandated date forced it in..
and so by summer 2017. it activated..

and yet 5 years later. not everyone is using segwit. 5 years later the transaction count has not seen any big increase even though they pretend to offer (but cludge up the offer) of upto 4x more blockspace. (hindered by limiting legacy utility to not be able to use that space.)

and so.. that shows the dictator politics over ruled the actual community that wanted actual changes but didnt get what was truly promised.

which is why after 5 years there are still hundreds/thousands of topic comments from different people asking about scaling bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

there are thousands of topics from thousands of people wanting bitcoin scaling.

And yet, there's no better proposal than Lightning, as much as you hate it. People might want scaling, but that's the best we have, whether they like it or not. If they want bigger blocks (which doesn't mean they want scaling) they can have them. The fact most don't is because they don't form the majority. The Bitcoin Cash team attempted to make this change and failed miserably.

your "community" consists of core devs and their loyal fan club

No, it doesn't. It's consisted of people who run the code. Period. If the Core developers make a change we disapprove of, there's nothing changed.

now go do a topic count on how many people ask and talk about BITCOIN scaling and how many are involved in your altnet solution

You avoid the big picture. Topics do not take part in bitcoin. Topics don't tell me what I'm allowed to propagate and what not. Running a bitcoin full node does. And if I don't agree with propagating 10 MB blocks, it doesn't matter what the topics say, nor what you're years whining about; I'll simply reject them.

Oh, and my "altnet" solution, which is neither mine nor of an alternative network, makes things scale. Raising the block size doesn't. The transaction capacity per megabyte remains the same.

i can find more examples. but you get the point

I'll skip the fact that you quoted me in a humorous post, no surprise you have zero sense of that either. I have never said that if you have a different, innovative idea, you should fork off. But, raising the block size, which was my reference there, has only proved to make things work weaker, and does contributes nothing to scaling.

If you, though, still want to raise the block size, even if you're part of a small minority, you have the power to do it. But, you're forked off. That's the beauty of decentralized systems I was saying.

[tadamichi]

But this isn’t set in stone forever, this privilege can be lost quickly if they do iffy things. We as a network can react to things when necessary, this is not a dictatorship.

and if there was a bit of bad nefarious code in say version 24. where majority updated and activated some timebomb bug.. .. where are they going to get a version 25 from?
who would you trust to code version 25?
 where is the alternative dev group to diversify and decentralise the options of what node software to run to protect the network (and no im not talking about lite wallets)

It will take me and others a few seconds to go back to version 23 then. What you forget is that the dev group isn’t homogeneous, they have differing views and so on, they’re not sitting in a back room together somewhere. And in the case you mentioned, where some nefarious code would be injected, they would split into different groups and then you have the alternative dev group, it forms naturally.

The probability that this change would go unnoticed is extremely low and that no devs would step up to open a different repository, even lower. There will always be an amount of honest devs that can be relied upon, that’s the beauty of decentralization, because there can be bad actors, but we can just go around them, they will never get control over the majority.

There’s also a big amount of coders, that didn’t work on core yet, so even if someone controls all core devs(which will never happen). There will never be a shortage of honest actors, even in the worst case. The majority will just go to them, because it wouldn’t make sense for them to keep running a broken version. It will never make sense for the majority to run a version that works against them. There’s just no scenario where people couldn’t react to this. That’s what makes decentralization different from centralization.

anyways lets give the history lesson of the politics at play

I’ll research about this, i wasn’t around at that time, so im not qualified to speak on it.