"Dirty Deals in Smoke-Filled Rooms" J. Ranvier discusses a Mike Hearn proposal

[Ragnarly]

Highlights

In summary, a service has launched that allows dishonest users attempt to defraud merchants, and now Mike Hearn is proposing as a solution that we change the Bitcoin protocol to allow a majority of miners to vote on the blockchain to confiscate the newly-minted coins of any other miner.

If this proposal sounds problematic to you, that's because it is. As several other individuals in the thread pointed out, this fundamentally changes the nature of the Bitcoin network and adds a mechanism via which other changes the Bitcoin users do not want (blacklists) can be secretly added at any time in the future.

And

Why are fundamental changes to the Bitcoin protocol, with wide-ranging implications relevant to all Bitcoin users, being discussed in relatively obscure corners of the Internet?

It may be the case that email lists are where programmers feel most comfortable "talking shop", but it also remains the case that Bitcoin doesn't belong to them.

Bitcoin belongs to everyone who uses it. No amount of code contributions will ever give some set of "core developers" the right to impose their decisions on the rest of the network. In fact, the degree to which they recognize that fact is the exact degree to which they will remain relevant to the future. Bitcoin users have a choice of software implementations these days, and implementations which attempt to rule the network instead of serve it will be dropped.

Individuals wishing to propose existential changes to the network should have that discussion in the public sphere, where the users are, so that those users have the best information possible regarding which implementations they should trust.

Core developers are not philosopher-kings who rule the network by imposing their judgement on the hoi polli, and they shouldn't act like it. (Note that this is not the first time Mike Hearn has floated proposals he knew Bitcoin users wouldn't like as trial balloons in relative obscurity). Once there is consensus among the community, or at least after they are aware of the proposal, then the development mailing list is an appropriate place to discuss how to implement it.

[leopard2]

Sources?

[justusranvier]

Sources?

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/32258096/

http://bitcoinism.blogspot.com/2014/04/dirty-deals-in-smoke-filled-rooms.html

[giszmo]

Uff. Too long, didn't read beyond 20%.

Yeah, Mike Hearn is one of the more ambivalent players here. I love most of what he does and usually defend him but what I'm most concerned about is that on the one hand he promoted micro payment channels (transaction channels) and now whines about zero conf payments not being safe. Damn, get transaction channels out and we win soooo much more than we could ever win by messing with the protocol as suggested here. Damn.

[Bit_Happy]

"If this proposal sounds problematic to you, that's because it is. As several other individuals in the thread pointed out, this fundamentally changes the nature of the Bitcoin network and adds a mechanism via which other changes the Bitcoin users do not want (blacklists) can be secretly added at any time in the future."

That would harm BTC and give new life to dozens of competing alt coins.

[MarketNeutral]

It's the confidence that bitcoin users have in the perception of the bitcoin protocol as it currently exists which gives bitcoin its value.

It's the confidence that bitcoin users have in the perception of the bitcoin protocol as a trustless system which gives bitcoin its value.

It's the confidence that bitcoin users have in the perception of the bitcoin protocol as a decentralized system which gives bitcoin its value.


No doubt Mike Hearn is a smart guy, but his technological arrogance is such that he's playing with fire by desiring to change the core principles as established by Satoshi, the very principles that have caused bitcoin to be the success it is today.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you, Mike. Bitcoin has value precisely because it is not what you want it to be.



Overall, if Mike Hearn feels so strongly about his ideas, then he should create his own altcoin/payment system distinct from bitcoin.

But that's unlikely, for I assume Mike Hearn et al are pursuing such dangerous ideas based upon potential personal profit.

[Carlton Banks]

tl;dr version

• Mike Hearn proposes to let miners vote on "reallocation" of blocks with double spends attempts
• Multiple others point out that this would let the miners vote to "reallocate" any block they wanted to. Examples of many different ways of abusing that mechanism cited
• Mike says "hey you guys don't understand!" in as many different ways he can, and also "bitcoin is a failure if my idea doesn't work!" with enthusiastic/well meaning cadence
• TierNolan and gmaxwell discuss using side-chains of various designs to mitigate the problem in the only usage case that is affected (in person payments)

In summary, Mike proposes a pernicious and controversial mechanism, and no-one agrees that that's the way to solve the problem of offering double spending as a service. Mike tries hard to suggest it's not controversial or pernicious, and no-one agrees with that either.

Case closed. (file under "Mike Hearn - controversial proposals")

[BldSwtTrs]

Is Mike Hearn an NSA mole?

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Is Mike Hearn an NSA mole?

Was going to say the same thing. I think Mike Hearn is compromised, if this single idea of his goes through, then what the other bitcoin developers said about compromised developers is simply not true and they do indeed control Bitcoin.

So either Google is forcing him to "destroy" Bitcoin, or the government(or some government), or he is simply wishing to destroy Bitcoin himself.

[adamstgBit]

having the majority of the miners decided to relocate a block is perfectly acceptable, i don't get what the big deal is, if you can get 51% of the mining power to agree.... its all good whatever it is, isn't?


that is what makes bitcoin gr8

[Carlton Banks]

if you can get 51% of the mining power to agree.... its all good whatever it is, isn't?

No.

It's not possible to tell which transaction is the double spend. So this idea isn't based on being to prove anything. Current bitcoin rules are based on proving things. The rules you're talking about only let miners disallow blocks where it can be proven they're breaking the rules.

Mike has come up with a way of guessing which transaction is the double spend. It proves nothing, but uses an assumption based logic. Hence it is a guess. So some people might think it's a smart idea, but it's actually a way to:

• blacklist miners (for whatever reason)
• blacklist transactions (for whatever reason)
• blacklist addresses (for whatever reason)

So the idea won't survive it into a core software release, without risking forking bitcoin. I predict the Mike fork would lose the hashing power battle.

Edit: the ability to target transactions and/or address are not part of Mike's proposal, only immature mining rewards can be confiscated.

The problems still remain: miners could develop a cartel to drive minority miners out of the market, as the voting is arbitrary, and not based on any kind of proof.

[TheFootMan]

Sources?

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/32258096/

Strangely that link, when clicking on 'view entire thread' at the bottom gives the message 'There are no messages in this thread. '


I got to it from the main interface of the archive of the bitcoim mailing list: http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/bitcoin-development/

Here's a link to the discussion:
http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/bitcoin-development/thread/CANEZrP2t09bzmDkkWK3V2GpqEt54KhFnUQ8_u9ULMqniMaOA8Q%40mail.gmail.com/#msg32261414

[justusranvier]

Strangely that link, when clicking on 'view entire thread' at the bottom gives the message 'There are no messages in this thread. '

There can't possibly be any usability problems with the Sourceforge web interface, because Gavin Andresen himself insists that the bitcoin-development mailing list is perfectly accessible to the general public.

[TheFootMan]

Strangely that link, when clicking on 'view entire thread' at the bottom gives the message 'There are no messages in this thread. '

There can't possibly be any usability problems with the Sourceforge web interface, because Gavin Andresen himself insists that the bitcoin-development mailing list is perfectly accessible to the general public.

As a matter of fact, I wasn't aware of this proposal from Mike Hearn until I read this very thread. I've now spent a few hours reading, researching and trying to understand all of it. I learned something more about the bitcoin protocol in the process. Thanks OP.

I think everyone involved could benefit from taking a step back and being a bit calmer. While Justus Ranvier maybe went a bit over the hill with his blog title 'Dirty Deals in Smoke-Filled Rooms', I don't think anyone should take that at face value. And esp. not Gavin.

That's just a title used on a blog entry, and nothing to be worked up about. Also, it it a bit sad to see that both Gavin and Mike berates Justus for putting the issue on the table for the larger community.

First of all, a dev mailing list, is more obscure than bitcointalk and reddit. While I understand that there's a very low signal to noise ratio in this forum and on reddit, making a post on one of these places or other places (developer blog?) I think could be beneficial.

Now, as much as Gavin and Mike has done and does for bitcoin, should we all just applaud them and not question their actions? While we should appreciate their actions and contributions, I don't think neither of them should be spared for scrutiny and criticism, in fact I think they both should welcome this, esp. constructive criticism.

It's important to understand the situation from all sides. while Gavin and Mike are devs and wants to discuss with likeminded people without having to deal with too much trolls, it's also important to realize that there's members in the community like Ranvier who genuinely are concerned and worried about what Mike Hearn is bringing up here, and he's brought up controversial ideas before, like colored coins.

Bitcoin is built on a principle of neutrality, and suggesting to impose restrictions and power through changes to the protocol making it possible to remove this freedom is something that should worry us as a community.

We must realize that anyone wanting to disrupt the network will do so in sneaky ways, and they will be very persistent at it. It's known that NSA has infiltrated organizations before to lobby changes to fit their agenda.

Let us not be naive about this. And while Gavin and Mike might scoff of the idea that they could be working for an intel organization, because in reality they know for a fact that all of that is a lot of bullshit, we who do not know them well, do not know what associations they have off the record, who they speak to, who pays them and who has them in a tight grip.

And a NSA plant could have a long term plan for what he wants to accomplish.

As much as I would like to trust these devs, it's important that the community have their eyes on them, and that should not be looked at as a bad thing.

But here are a few observations:

- Mike's persistent. Defending his idea with great vigour.
- He was not happy about Ranvier's input in his thread regarding the coinbase reallocation to discourage finney attacks, even telling Ranvier in a condecending way not to get in his way, even with ad hominem attacks. If he just took a step back, and said: Ok, Ranvier, I understand your concerns, and next time, when I have some controversial idea like this one, I will surely make a blogentry about it, and post a link on bitcointalk and reddit, it would take 5 mins of my time, and it would prove I'm open about my ideas.

What it reminds me a bit about is politicians making decisions late at a friday, when all journalists have gone home for the weekend to their families, or rushing through a new law right before a public holliday or somesuch. It's still on public display, it cannot be denied, but how many eyes are on it, was it announced? How many knew about it?

Then... when we look logically at it all, this was just a discussion on the bitcoin dev mailing list, like any other discussion. However, what Mike suggests is disturbing, and likewise is his arguments. It seems like his arguments is constructed in a way to push his agenda, not to have an unbiased discussion listing the cold facts.

There are links to his original posts in this thread. If you're interested you should read them.

In my view, he's stressing the fact that real time transactions is very important. I agree that it is important, but not to any cost. He also uses big phrases and talks about 'the end of bitcoin' and what will happen if these changes are not implemented.

To me it seems like typical political speak where you paint the picture of some evil, and then propose a solution or method to remove that evil. And the more evil you can make that thing look, the more support you hope to achieve from others.

The userbase deserve to know about these discussions going on, and they deserve to be educated and to be in on it. Not everyone has english as their first language, not everyone is a software engineer, but they're still here, making this entire experiment possible, donating of their time on several different levels, being a part of the bitcoin ecosystem.

The devs should try to put themselves in the shoes of the ordinary users at times, we all understand they need to protect their time and don't want to go into flamewars, but have some respect for the users and opposing views.

Gavin accusing Justus of FUD was sad to learn about (check comments in Justus' blog). What Justus was saying was not out of line, and I think his blogpost (http://bitcoinism.blogspot.no/2014/04/dirty-deals-in-smoke-filled-rooms.html) was an interesting one.

We cannot have a community where the attitude of the top devs are: "Ssssh.. don't bother me, I'm an expert, and I cannot be bothered with the cesspit that is the bitcoin userbase."

While the bitcoin dev list is for discussing dev issues, and there's no rule saying that there's certain issues can be discussed only after having being publicized, I don't think you need much of a fine-tuned bitcoin-meter to see what kind of issues that will be the most controversial.

Stealing people's funds are in essence what Mike suggests that we do. Luckily the other devs chiming in on the discussion had valid counter arguments which I hope that he understood.

Why does he, as a core dev, keep insisting on these changes for coin control? These issues are disturbing, and while I respect his right to have his opinions and ideas, I'm not sure how well these ideas of his correlate with the 'bitcoin spirit'.

He is a dev that must be watched, because he won't stop pushing these ideas. And if some of his suggestions starts getting traction among the core devs, the userbase has to stand up and voice their opinion. Because the userbase IS bitcoin.

We must remember:

“Give me control over a nations currency, and I care not who makes its laws.”  ~Baron M.A. Rothschild

Let's not be naive, let's sleep with the eyes wide open, and participate in all debates and keep ourself vigilant and educated.

And then lastly, I want to comment on a couple of comments done by Gavin and Mike:

Gavin responding to Ranvier:

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Coinbase reallocation to discourage Finney attacks
From: Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen@gm...> - 2014-04-23 17:47:53
Attachments: Message as HTML   
>
>
> I've formulated my replies to you and this proposal in a more public
> venue, where such discussions of existential changes to the protocol
> more rightfully belong
>
>
I strongly disagree.  It makes perfect sense to discuss changes here,
first, where there are lots of people who understand how the system works
at a very detailed level.

And why do you think your blog is more public than this open, publicly
archived mailing list???

--
--
Gavin Andresen

While Gavin has a point, he should acknowledge Ranvier's concern when he responds to him, and show himself as the greater man. And the last sentence of Gavin is condecending and unnecessary. It's quite easy for me, as an outsider to understand Ranvier's concern, and while he might go at it with a frisky attitude, he has a very good point. If it were not for his blog post, and someone linking to it in this thread, I would be completely unaware of the entire discussion.


Quote by Mike Hearn on reply to Ranvier:

I don't think Twitter is an appropriate medium for discussing the details
of byzantine consensus algorithms.

I'm not going to bother arguing in replies to a blog post.

I think mike could be well served in dropping the elitist attitude of his. It's not that hard to see that concerns that Ranvier has.

And again, Mike in response to Ranvier.

If you want to try and argue that the development list is the wrong place
to discuss development, please do so on another thread (or your blog).
Let's keep this thread for discussion of the original proposal - ideally,
discussed with the dryness that a topic as nerdy as distributed consensus
algorithms deserves

I think the whole mess could easily be avoided if everybody involved was a bit more humble.


There are people involved with bitcoin who actually have a grand view of it, and have visions for its future and greatly care about how it evolves in the coming years, and what code goes into the protocol and what changes are being made.

Open discussion is great, and exchanging ideas is great, and disagreement is to be expected, but a core dev having a heavy hand on the 'regulation and power'-handle ready to crank it down, that's something everybody in the community should know about.

Confiscating and freezing assets of entities is something that bitcoin is supposed to move away from. Bitcoin is not traditional banking 2.0.

[justusranvier]

This is probably worth highlighting:

Hmm, then I think your faith needs to be shaken. Bitcoin  is money, and money is a purely artificial social construct. The interpretation of what a bitcoin means, or what a dollar means, has always been and always will be a human decision taken in order to achieve some socially useful goal. How could it be any other way? Do you want humanity to be enslaved by its own money?

This notion that the block chain encodes some kind of natural, immovable law that's above human judgement is a very strange one to me - I guess it comes from the fact that encryption *is* based on some kind of natural law. Without the key you can't decrypt a message no matter how strong the consensus is. But Bitcoin doesn't use encryption anywhere, just digital signatures. The only thing approaching natural law, that stops majority consensus controlling everything, is lack of information. Hence all the discussion around privacy and anonymity that goes on all the time.

Get it?

Mike Hearn is fine with changing the network to take your bitcoins away as long as he think it achieves "some socially useful goal."

[TheFootMan]

This is probably worth highlighting:

Hmm, then I think your faith needs to be shaken. Bitcoin  is money, and money is a purely artificial social construct. The interpretation of what a bitcoin means, or what a dollar means, has always been and always will be a human decision taken in order to achieve some socially useful goal. How could it be any other way? Do you want humanity to be enslaved by its own money?

This notion that the block chain encodes some kind of natural, immovable law that's above human judgement is a very strange one to me - I guess it comes from the fact that encryption *is* based on some kind of natural law. Without the key you can't decrypt a message no matter how strong the consensus is. But Bitcoin doesn't use encryption anywhere, just digital signatures. The only thing approaching natural law, that stops majority consensus controlling everything, is lack of information. Hence all the discussion around privacy and anonymity that goes on all the time.

Get it?

Mike Hearn is fine with changing the network to take your bitcoins away as long as he think it achieves "some socially useful goal."

Sorry about the 'ad hominem', but Mike Hearn is some kind of an oddball, reminds me about about Matthew N. Wright in some of his argumentation.

The real question is:

- Why is Mike Hearn so eager to put features into bitcoin that will lessen it's current mode of privacy and owner control and making it easier for third parties to control the funds of others?

- The same man recently stated that everybody should use google login for their web apps, why - so that everything can be recorded by google/nsa?

- Why is he using silly argumentation to attempt to further his ideas. Ie. the notion that bitcoin is soon dead because it's fraud rate will be close ot 5% for every-day payments is very far fetched.

I thought that the very reason most people are involved in bitcoin, esp. on a very commited level is because they want something different from the current banking system that we have.

Personally I don't want my transfers to go through a clearing-house, and if they don't like me or my associates, they will deny the transfer, or if they chose to excert violence towards me, they might confiscate the funds.

By the very nature of bitcoins, none of this should be possible. Sorry. If someone is a criminal and breaks the laws in a country, then go after that person, I don't see why monetary instruments should be a tool for the rulers to crush anyone at will.

What we essentially see is that confiscation of funds are used as a way to eradicate opponents and difficult people. Let's charge this man with a serious crime, and at the same time confiscate all his bank accounts, so he can't pay for his defense.

Does Mike Hearn not see where he's going with all this? What's his agenda? To be the bitcoin police? To make things just? Bitcoin works well the way it does, without the need to introduce stuff like this.

[justusranvier]

I thought that the very reason most people are involved in bitcoin, esp. on a very commited level is because they want something different from the current banking system that we have.

Bitcoin users who feel this way are going to need to get very vocal, very quickly, or the assholes in the world who do not want the unwashed masses to have this option are going to dismantle it.

[TheFootMan]

I thought that the very reason most people are involved in bitcoin, esp. on a very commited level is because they want something different from the current banking system that we have.

Bitcoin users who feel this way are going to need to get very vocal, very quickly, or the assholes in the world who do not want the unwashed masses to have this option are going to dismantle it.

Justusravier, I take it you're the same person who wrote that blog entry about "Dirty Deals in Smoke-Filled Rooms" ? And the same one who had a clash with Mike Hearn on the bitcoin dev. mailing list ?

In that case, I applaud you for your effort, and I'm a bit worried about the response you've received from Gavin and Mike. Even if they think that you're annoying, your involvement should be applauded and not ridiculed. It's important to see both sides of the coin, also for developers. When you posted on that mailing list, you had a concern, it was not to waste your own time. Therefore I think that should be respected, but my impression was that you got laughed out of the room so to speak.

That's not good.

While we should not taking everything online so serious, bitcoin is mostly an online phenomena, and I do think that core devs have a greater resposibility than the rest of the userbase, also in terms of how they behave.

So my questions currently are:

1. Is there any reason to worry that the current mode of bitcoin development is starting to deviate from the original intentions of Satoshi?
2. Who are the people pushing for such a bad change, and what associations do these people have?
3. What can normal people do about it, normal people who have their plate mostly full with real life issues already?
4. Should there be a new foundation, replacing or in addition to the existing bitcoin foundation, and if so, how would we assure that this foundation also did not become corrupt?
5. Would perhaps the best idea be to monitor the source code and make efforts to alert the community if certain changes were implemented?
6. Is power of various resources in the bitcoin community to centralized? I noticed there's an overlap of mods of bitcointalk and r/bitcoin for instance. Who controls the wiki and so on. I think it's important that there's not a single person or group of persons having too much power. Even if they do not intend to misuse their power, they might if a gun is put to their head, or to the head of their families.
7. The cryptocurrency world is fast paced, and it is hard to pay attention to everything that happens, is there a central repository where the most important issues are handpicked and highlighted? I noticed your blog seems to be a good source.

I would probably have more questions, but let's start with this.

[murraypaul]

In that case, I applaud you for your effort, and I'm a bit worried about the response you've received from Gavin and Mike. Even if they think that you're annoying, your involvement should be applauded and not ridiculed. It's important to see both sides of the coin, also for developers. When you posted on that mailing list, you had a concern, it was not to waste your own time. Therefore I think that should be respected, but my impression was that you got laughed out of the room so to speak.

I didn't read it like that, what I saw was people saying that they would continue to discuss Bitcoin development on an open Bitcoin development mailing list, and thought it slightly silly to try to divert the discussions to someone's personal blog instead.
And given the blog post title, I don't blame them. It totally mischaracterised the discussion.
There were no deals being done. Noone was plotting to change the way the code operates without telling anyone.
Person A said: I think this would be a good idea.
Pretty much everyone else said: No it wouldn't.
How is that bad?

[justusranvier]

1. Is there any reason to worry that the current mode of bitcoin development is starting to deviate from the original intentions of Satoshi?
2. Who are the people pushing for such a bad change, and what associations do these people have?
3. What can normal people do about it, normal people who have their plate mostly full with real life issues already?
4. Should there be a new foundation, replacing or in addition to the existing bitcoin foundation, and if so, how would we assure that this foundation also did not become corrupt?
5. Would perhaps the best idea be to monitor the source code and make efforts to alert the community if certain changes were implemented?
6. Is power of various resources in the bitcoin community to centralized? I noticed there's an overlap of mods of bitcointalk and r/bitcoin for instance. Who controls the wiki and so on. I think it's important that there's not a single person or group of persons having too much power. Even if they do not intend to misuse their power, they might if a gun is put to their head, or to the head of their families.
7. The cryptocurrency world is fast paced, and it is hard to pay attention to everything that happens, is there a central repository where the most important issues are handpicked and highlighted? I noticed your blog seems to be a good source.

I don't have specific answers to these questions.

In general, it's not a good idea to rely on single individuals or organizations to protect your interests. The interests which are threatened by Bitcoin are very good at subverting that kind of organization.

The most important thing you can do as a Bitcoin user is realize that you've got options. Satoshi's client is no longer the only game in town, with libbitcoin and btcd maturing as viable alternatives.

If it were up to me the community's focus would be on making the Bitcoin network heterogenous, with no single implementation running a majority of the network. The fact that all miners run on the same reference implementation is only slightly less of a problem than the 51% attack everybody is so worried about.

The international Bitcoin community should be hard at work building independent alternatives to US-centric services and software if they want their own interests to be protected.