BIP 16 / 17 in layman's terms

[Inaba]

There can't be a democracy if the vast majority of those with voting power are ignorant on what they're voting for.

I agree 100%

I find it interesting that major changes were implemented to the client/protocol that helped pools before we started considering changes that would help the common bitcoin user. That is probably something that is endemic of our society. Helping the big interests in a society first makes it more difficult to implement changes for the betterment of all stakeholders.

What are you referring to here?  BIP 16 (or 17, or 12, etc..) have no benefit to pools and everything to do with miners.

[[Tycho]]

I would like to point that BIP17 has no chances of winning.
The question is WHEN bip16 will be over 55% and starts working.

well if you say so....
Thats already 40% of the hashing power.
What exactly are you waiting for before you enable the support in your pool?

I'll start working on it when I'll see significant support from other miners. (2% is not significant)
BTW, according to Gavin's e-mail today, Deepbit is 28%, not 40%.

I'm saying that BIP17 has no chances not because of me, but because I seriously doubt that it will be supported by anyone besides Eligius.

[phatsphere]

i'm not a bitcoin dev, but i was already involved in many projects. from what i read here, i think the best way is to go with the proposal that has been tested at most so far, and most of the devs have studied the actual implementation. the reason is that in that case most of the current devs know about how it works, what its implications are and about the possible pitfalls. also, even if another proposal is better on paper and in theory, what actually counts is a very good, well tested implementation, it needs to be implemented near perfectly from the start! in that light, a superior theoretical approach, only checked by a few, will be much worse.

and yes, this means it could go something wrong, but that won't kill the internet and it won't kill the blockchain. a new client version will fix that -- and that's only the unlikely worst case scenario.

[Costia]

I would like to point that BIP17 has no chances of winning.
The question is WHEN bip16 will be over 55% and starts working.

well if you say so....
Thats already 40% of the hashing power.
What exactly are you waiting for before you enable the support in your pool?

I'll start working on it when I'll see significant support from other miners. (2% is not significant)
BTW, according to Gavin's e-mail today, Deepbit is 28%, not 40%.

I'm saying that BIP17 has no chances not because of me, but because I seriously doubt that it will be supported by anyone besides Eligius.

thats a deadlock
the others are waiting for you

[Rassah]

thats a deadlock
the others are waiting for you

There's no incentive for others to wait or switch. Why would they be waiting for Deepbit?

[[Tycho]]

I'll start working on it when I'll see significant support from other miners. (2% is not significant)

How do you expect to see support from other miners when the massive majority of them are in a traditional pool?

I'm talking about support from other pool operators.

[chrisrico]

I find it interesting that major changes were implemented to the client/protocol that helped pools before we started considering changes that would help the common bitcoin user. That is probably something that is endemic of our society. Helping the big interests in a society first makes it more difficult to implement changes for the betterment of all stakeholders.

To what are you referring?

[Costia]

thats a deadlock
the others are waiting for you

There's no incentive for others to wait or switch. Why would they be waiting for Deepbit?

psychological reasons.
he's the "leader" of a big chunk of the bitcoin network
people will assume that he knows what he's doing and that after having 40% of the hashing power the full support for bip16 will be soon enabled.

[[Tycho]]

I would like to point that BIP17 has no chances of winning.
The question is WHEN bip16 will be over 55% and starts working.

well if you say so....
Thats already 40% of the hashing power.
What exactly are you waiting for before you enable the support in your pool?

I'll start working on it when I'll see significant support from other miners. (2% is not significant)
BTW, according to Gavin's e-mail today, Deepbit is 28%, not 40%.

I'm saying that BIP17 has no chances not because of me, but because I seriously doubt that it will be supported by anyone besides Eligius.

thats a deadlock
the others are waiting for you

That's complete nonsence. Why would they wait for me ? Just because of Gavin's words about me ?
slush and BTCguild combined are more powerful than Deepbit and they are working on it already.
I don't see any point of being first, and I think that I must never be the first.

[Luke-Jr]

I'm saying that BIP17 has no chances not because of me, but because I seriously doubt that it will be supported by anyone besides Eligius.

I'm not the only one who concedes BIP 17 is better than BIP 16, and certainly better than nothing. Hopefully the pressure to rush BIP 16 will lighten up after it fails to meet its voting deadline, and people who just want P2SH rushed in will realize BIP 17 is not delaying things.

Your hash rate is going down only in the past few days as people switch.

I'm pretty sure Tycho is aware that his hashrate has been dropping for quite some time before BIP 16 already. There's no reason to think people are switching over this issue in particular.


Gavin, I would appreciate it if you would stop emailing other pool operators in secret to try to convince them to support BIP 16 (or at least stop with the FUD I've been hearing). Is there a reason these emails can't be posted openly?

[LightRider]

I find it interesting that major changes were implemented to the client/protocol that helped pools before we started considering changes that would help the common bitcoin user. That is probably something that is endemic of our society. Helping the big interests in a society first makes it more difficult to implement changes for the betterment of all stakeholders.

To what are you referring?

Specifically the ability to reward the generated coins in a new block to multiple addresses, thus making it easier for many new pool operators to payout to their miners. I recall that being a significant boost to the pool op community.

[Luke-Jr]

I find it interesting that major changes were implemented to the client/protocol that helped pools before we started considering changes that would help the common bitcoin user. That is probably something that is endemic of our society. Helping the big interests in a society first makes it more difficult to implement changes for the betterment of all stakeholders.

To what are you referring?

Specifically the ability to reward the generated coins in a new block to multiple addresses, thus making it easier for many new pool operators to payout to their miners. I recall that being a significant boost to the pool op community.

Except that still hasn't been merged, though it should have been by now considering it has been well-tested for over 8 months and has zero effect on anyone who doesn't want to use it... There are also other mining-related improvements that should be, but also haven't been merged, which are needed to solo mine too (all bitcoind releases so far cannot handle the load required to solo mine). I'd like it if I (or someone else qualified) were allowed to maintain solo mining, at least until p2pool matures enough to be a viable replacement for solo mining, but the developers with push access seem content to let it stagnate until finally removing 'getwork' entirely in the future. But this is really getting off-topic IMO...

[[Tycho]]

I'm saying that BIP17 has no chances not because of me, but because I seriously doubt that it will be supported by anyone besides Eligius.

I'm not the only one who concedes BIP 17 is better than BIP 16, and certainly better than nothing. Hopefully the pressure to rush BIP 16 will lighten up after it fails to meet its voting deadline, and people who just want P2SH rushed in will realize BIP 17 is not delaying things.

Well, may be Gavin did it intentionally, trying to force me into joining efforts with you and thus cause a major split in pools/devs team to weaken the bitcoin community ? :)
Who knows what he really wanted...

[[Tycho]]

So you are saying 5-10 individuals having an argument can weaken the Bitcoin community?

I had no doubts about someone not getting the joke.

But yes, much less than 5 induviduals can weaken the community, and it's not the pool owners, of course.
At this moment it was only a small confrontation between Gavin and Luke-jr (but Gavin attacked me too while I did nothing wrong).
Imagine what can happen if 2 or 3 core devs will have a fight over something ? That's exactly why I hope some new full clients will appear, like Ufasoft's one, but opensource.

[Gavin Andresen]

(but Gavin attacked me too while I did nothing wrong).

I apologize-- I did not mean to attack you, I thought I stated nothing but facts. I am also sorry I didn't speak up about some of the things that were said about you earlier in this thread (e.g. suggesting an attack on your pool is NOT cool) but I don't have time to read every forum post as soon as it is posted...

[Luke-Jr]

I just don't like traditional pools and think people should consider what they are giving up when joining them.

I did. That's why I started my own pool.

[finway]

I'd like to see what [Tycho] said. 

[slothbag]

I say the core dev team need to play hard ball on this.. Make the change they agree is best, if Deepbit and other pools don't upgrade to the latest version then I assume the blockchain will fork, with official clients going one way and the pools going another.  The difficulty will plummet on the official chain and mining will be very profitable for the official client users.  The mining pools can keep pushing forward with their forked chain, but for how long? with no development it wont last long.  If enough warning is given to official client users that x, y, z pools will not be sticking to the official chain, then they have a chance to mine somewhere else or solo mine at the cut-over date.

If Bitcoin cant resolve this issue with a majority (peers) rule, and 6 pool operators can dictate the rules then the project is in trouble anyway.

[slush]

if Deepbit and other pools don't upgrade to the latest version then I assume the blockchain will fork

Don't worry, this likely does not happen. Nobody want to work on forked chain alone...

[Rassah]

So the only way bitcoin can change is if 60% of the solved blocks in a set amount of time support something? Is that correct? If so I think that is very good. I think it should be extremely hard to change/attack bitcoin.

^ This. If this whole thing has proven one thing it's that Bitcoin is a pain in the ass to change in any way, and that's good. Stability is good.