BIP 16 / 17 in layman's terms

[chrisrico]

I don't like to upgrade. I really appreciate the work that goes into new features and versions, but sometimes things go wrong and I want to stay months behind. I certainly see the value in the improvements being discussed, but what I need is working and my main priority is keeping it that way.

Have you tested the 0.5 (or whatever) migration to qt? It's a pretty slick interface.

[Technomage]

To me this is not about which solution we use or when we apply it, we can keep going for a couple of months more if that is required. Multisig is an important feature but there is now something even more important going on which is the centralization of the mining network. This issue has proven that we actually have a much bigger problem right now.

This problem will never entirely go away but what we can do is make it better, a lot better. We can start by reducing the power of Deepbit and other large pools. Join me in the biggest boycott Bitcoin has ever seen. This can be done and this HAS TO BE DONE.

Read more here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=61219.0

[realnowhereman]

I can't say I've entirely understood how BIP16 or BIP17 work (but I'm not completely ignorant of them); however:

• BIP16 feels "hackish"; that is not to say BIP17 is therefore "the one", and it might be that an as yet unwritten BIP18 is the answer.  That being said, there is an awful lot of "hackish" already in the scripting part of bitcoin... OP_CODESEPARATOR makes me uncomfortable anyway.
• The inertia needed to be overcome for a change, suggests that changes should be made very judiciously.
• Deadlines are for closed source software.  The most uncomfortable part about this for me was the sudden announcement of a deadline.

In general: I think if there is controversy, then the answer is not to rush it is to delay.  But  then again... I'm not the project lead am I? 

[[Tycho]]

Right now, it looks like one person/pool (Tycho/deepbit) has enough hashing power to veto any change.

I really didn't expected to see such a lie from Gavin. Other pools have at least 50% of hashing power, just Slush and BTCguild are 27% combined. How can I outhash all the network with my current 32% ? (according to blockchaininfo's pie chart)
Of course I can't veto any change. I respect Gavin for all his hard work for Bitcoin's future, but this post was really SHOCKING for me. Is it really him ?
May be he sees that at this moment only 2% of the network supports his proposal and this is the way he wants to push it - by forcing Deepbit into adopting /P2SH/ and then outhashing other miners with Deepbit's share.

I'm not supporting /P2SH/ at this moment exactly because I don't want to be single deciding force and vote against majority of other miners.
(of course I don't like this "hackish" proposal too, and there are shady rumors about reasons for Gavin to support it, but I will implement it if significant amount of other miners will)

[[Tycho]]

And this is why I am watching the thread.
Tycho, can you inform us to any downside to this new change? I am a bit worried about fixing things that are not broken.

I don't actually think that this proposal can break something, but rather expect some better solution for this problem.
Well, I also believed that Gavin's OP_EVAL patch is good too because he is Gavin, and Deepbit was the first pool to support and vote for OP_EVAL. Until it turned out to be exploitable, buggy and not the thing Gavin really wanted. Luckily no harm was done, but lesson learned.

1 Objection: there are clearly no consensus between devs or miners about the exact method of implementing pay-to-script thing. That's the reason I would prefer dividing it into two separate stages - 1) implement plain multisig and long-address multisig support, 2) decide about pay-to-script method and move 1 into it.
This would give us both time for deciding on stage 2 and allow 2-factor authentication and escrow-services support with a small downside of using pubkeys instead of pubkeyhashes and a bit longer output scripts.

2 Objection: (less important) this proposal makes strange use of scripts: it's like having a compiler that can only allow the source to contain just one line #include "source2.c", which contains the actual script. Somewhat hackish. I would prefer either normal scripts or no scripts at all in TX's output.
Also I don't like the script to be in serialized form, but this is not a real downside at all.

3 Objection: I don't want to become the single entity to decide on this. That's exactly the opposite of what Gavin says. With current 2% of /P2SH/ support Deepbit would be the force to push /P2SH/ into existence, not the other way around.

[Technomage]

I really didn't expected to see such a lie from Gavin. Other pools have at least 50% of hashing power, just Slush and BTCguild are 27% combined. How a can outhash all the network with my current 32% ? (according to blockchaininfo's pie chart)
Of course I can't veto any change. I respect Gavin for all his hard work for Bitcoin's future, but this post was really SHOCKING for me. Is it really him ?
May be he sees that at this moment only 2% of the network supports his proposal and this is the way he wants to push it - by forcing Deepbit into adopting /P2SH/ and then outhashing other miners with Deepbit's share.

I'm not supporting /P2SH/ at this moment exactly because I don't want to be single deciding force and vote against majority of other miners.
(of course I don't like this "hackish" proposal too, and there are shady rumors about reasons for Gavin to support it, but I will implement it if significant amount of other miners will)

What are you talking about? There has not been any real vote yet, what the network supports currently is not an indicator of what the support would be when the real vote starts. Right now the whole situation is a mess and nobody knows what is going on.

In the end the whole issue comes down to two things. Who am I going to trust more, the opinion of the developers or pool operators? I don't understand the issues with the code but I do know that it's the developers that have the best understanding. I do know that even the developers are not united in their opinion, Gavin supports BIP 16 and Luke supports BIP 17 etc.

So it's a complex issue but an even bigger issue is the power big pool operators hold over this. It's not just you Tycho but all the other big pools like Slush and Guild. This power has to be reduced, not for P2SH but for the development of Bitcoin in general. I hope everyone understands this.

[[Tycho]]

What are you talking about? There has not been any real vote yet, what the network supports currently is not an indicator of what the support would be when the real vote starts.

Actually AFAIR, the "voting" ENDS 1 Feb.

[interlagos]

... and there are shady rumors about reasons for Gavin to support it ...

Is it something along the lines of CIA remote-brainwashing peoples without them even knowing it?
That what I would think if I were a conspiracy theorist, but it seems too far fetched to believe...

I have a practical question though, when multiple public/private keys are used to produce a single bitcoin multisig address,
does it mean that all private keys originate on the same (potentially compromised) computer and then one of them needs to be transferred to a phone or another device? Or does the second key orginate from that second device? In this case what is the exact procedure to create a multisig bitcoin address for the end user?

[Technomage]

Actually AFAIR, the "voting" ENDS 1 Feb.

Well, this just proves my point that the whole situation is a mess. The 2 percent support still doesn't tell us what the real opinions are, for example Slush has stated that he supports P2SH and his pool is much more than 2 percent. I'm not quite sure which BIP he prefers, however.

[[Tycho]]

Actually AFAIR, the "voting" ENDS 1 Feb.

Well, this just proves my point that the whole situation is a mess. The 2 percent support still doesn't tell us what the real opinions are, for example Slush has stated that he supports P2SH and his pool is much more than 2 percent. I'm not quite sure which BIP he prefers, however.

He is for BIP16.
And I don't know how he is going to mine enough voting blocks before 1 Feb.

[[Tycho]]

... and there are shady rumors about reasons for Gavin to support it ...

Is it something along the lines of CIA remote-brainwashing peoples without them even knowing it?
That what I would think if I were a conspiracy theorist, but it seems too far fetched to believe... :)

No. Luke-jr initiated a rumor that Gavin is hired by some company going to produce hardware/software solution for 2-factor authentication and this is the reason he is pushing so hard.

Disclaimer: I don't think that this is true.

I have a practical question though, when multiple public/private keys are used to produce a single bitcoin multisig address,
does it mean that all private keys originate on the same (potentially compromised) computer and then one of them needs to be transferred to a phone or another device? Or does the second key orginate from that second device? In this case what is the exact procedure to create a multisig bitcoin address for the end user?

No, the whole point is in having private keys on separate devices.

[[Tycho]]

Also, Gavin's signature says "Send Tycho a PM or email and ask him to support P2SH for a more secure Bitcoin" like I'm currently against "more secure Bitcoin".
But I'm not.

[Technomage]

He is for BIP16.
And I don't know how he is going to mine enough voting blocks before 1 Feb.

I think the deadlines are right now the biggest problem and many seem to agree with that. This has a very low chance of working out with these deadlines I believe, but there can always be a new vote.

[piuk]

BIP 0011 has been accepted and is already supported by the network - yet there are no clients that have a ui to construct Multi-sig transactions yet. Perhaps that should be priority? bitcoin-qt has no ui for constructing P2SH transactions. I also expect there will be situations where people try and send funds to a pay to script addresses from clients / exchanges that don't have P2SH support, sending the BTC into a black hole. I don't see the point in rushing it.

[Technomage]

Also, Gavin's signature says "Send Tycho a PM or email and ask him to support P2SH for a more secure Bitcoin" like I'm currently against "more secure Bitcoin".
But I'm not.

This is a good point. I'm not against you personally, I just believe it's unhealthy for a few individuals (including you) to hold too much power over the development of Bitcoin.

The same thing is true with Bitcoin that is true in politics, people who do not have power do not care and thus remain ignorant of the issues. Studies of the Swiss direct democracy system have proven that when people feel they have more power, they study the issues at hand much more carefully.

This is why it's in all of our best interest if miners in general become a bit more aware of their voting possibilities.

[[Tycho]]

Actually I can manually ask many bitcoin developers with good reputation about what vote should I give, but there are 2 problems:
1) They possibly will be all for /P2SH/
2) This won't solve my goal of having better solution

Asking my miners to vote would be "democratic", but sadly they don't know what's the difference, how this will affect Bitcoin and will mostly fall for current FUD on the forum.
Surprisingly I got just only one PM asking me what I'll be voting for, so looks like most forum members don't really care or they believe that time will settle things.
(No, this doesn't means that you should PM me now :)

[Steve]

I hope people don't get turned off or frustrated by this process…that's exactly what this is, a process.  I think some people have allowed what should be an objective debate on technical merits to turn a little personal and have said things that they probably regret.  And people shouldn't allow themselves to get their identity wrapped up in a solution that they've proposed.  A rejection of a technical proposal is not a rejection of you as a person.  I have no reason to believe that anyone here is acting in anything but the best interests of bitcoin.

1 Objection: there are clearly no consensus between devs or miners about the exact method of implementing pay-to-script thing. That's the reason I would prefer dividing it into two separate stages - 1) implement plain multisig and long-address multisig support

I want to voice my opinion against long-address multisig.  In my opinion, that's the last thing that should be implemented (actually, it's not the last thing that should be implemented…it should *never* be implemented…it's even more hacky than BIP-16).  P2SH is the proper way to handle multi-sig (and many other types of transactions).  And as I've said earlier in this thread, all transactions should eventually be P2SH.  P2PK (pay to public key…the current style transactions) is a just special case of P2SH.

Lastly, everyone should be in favor of implementing P2SH in some form.  The kind of transactions it enables will add great value to bitcoin.  In fact, if bitcoin doesn't do this, it will create an opportunity for a competing coin that does provide this innovation…this is the kind of fundamental improvement that could allow an alt-coin to overtake bitcoin.  So, everyone that has invested their time and/or money into bitcoin should be in favor to getting this implemented.

[paraipan]

... and there are shady rumors about reasons for Gavin to support it ...

Is it something along the lines of CIA remote-brainwashing peoples without them even knowing it?
That what I would think if I were a conspiracy theorist, but it seems too far fetched to believe...

No. Luke-jr initiated a rumor that Gavin is hired by some company going to produce hardware/software solution for 2-factor authentication and this is the reason he is pushing so hard.

Disclaimer: I don't think that this is true.

wow, i didn't know any of that. Bitcoin is a powerful technology that has potential for good or bad. That's for sure.
So, supposing that, if some entity realized that bitcoin as a whole is untouchable how would you get a grip on it ? Could be hard-coding a "new feature" that offers some control in the future like p2sh for example. If you ask me, bitcoin could be mass adopted in a year globally, but we would have a dumb'ed down version that only makes p2sh transactions, no way to change it and no way to generate an original address, that way we would pay forced heavy taxes to Governments.
Perfect central control without people able to protest with a policed world government. How would you push those small changes ? Having on your side their "leader" ? And if Bitcoin doesn't have a leader ? Nah, the people are too stupid to think for themselves they always have a one, real anarchy is a myth.

I know Gavin is a good person and i'm with him, not for long at this pace, but bitcoin is not his creation and he is just one of us. He states being thick-skinned and able to manage a project like this without issues but succumbs on the first occasion someone doesn't agree with him. People here posted some questions and concerns about the new "hackish" bip but he chooses go his way without addressing them properly. We're not programmers you know, so if one of them tells us Gavin is wrong there is a small chance him being right. So if more of them tell the same thing... meh

[Inaba]

As I've been asking in other threads, but have yet to get an answer, I will ask here again.  Why is this such a rush?  Why the secretive "upgrade?"  What is wrong with this proposal that it requires it to be force pushed through at such a rapid pace?

This needs to be weighed and measured and the potential consequences thought out.  Why is this not being done?

[Technomage]

Lastly, everyone should be in favor of implementing P2SH in some form.  The kind of transactions it enables will add great value to bitcoin.  In fact, if bitcoin doesn't do this, it will create an opportunity for a competing coin that does provide this innovation…this is the kind of fundamental improvement that could allow an alt-coin to overtake bitcoin.  So, everyone that has invested their time and/or money into bitcoin should be in favor to getting this implemented.

This is one of the reasons why I understand that Gavin is trying to rush this. The whole development of this feature could stall for 6 months if we get tired of this debate and just forget about it. On the other hand if the devs can't agree on which BIP to use and neither do the big pool operators, we have a problem.

I have a hard time deciding what I would vote myself because the FUD that is spread over these different BIP's is getting to me. I have confidence in the devs but I don't know. The feature is so important but at the same time it's something that changes things a lot, so it shouldn't be applied lightly.