BitCoin Adopting Unique Alt-Coin Features

[Triffin]

Just looking for an honest answer here without everyone hyping their favorite Alt-Coin ..


To date, has any Alt-Coin been launched with superior features that BitCoin cannot adopt ??
We've had POW/POS hybrids, pure POS coins, now "anonymity" is the 'flavor of the month' ..
I view alt-coins as "research and development projects" and if anything really useful was
developed that BitCoin would merely subsume same under their paradigm ..

Is this a valid viewpoint on my part or will an Alt-Coin eventually be developed with features
that BitCoin can't adopt  ??

Triff ..   

[kolinko]

I think Ethereum is quite close to that feat, although they still haven't launched.

There are also projects, like ours - Orisi.org - which can potentially bring so-called sidechains to fruition. Sidechain is an alt-coin that's pegged 1 to 1 to Bitcoin. So you have a different architecture, perhaps even not based on Blockchain, but you're using Bitcoins as a currency on that alternative architecture.

So technically, any feature that any other alt-coin has, can be replicated directly within Bitcoin ecosystem. If not through a direct implementation, then through the usage of sidechains. You might also want to check out http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2014/06/bit-thereum.html for more details.

[gmaxwell]

I think Ethereum is quite close to that feat, although they still haven't launched.

Hm. Adopting script changes is _trivial_— in fact we've done it before. From a technical perspective P2SH replaced the script system with a copy of itself nested inside a hash.

Really the stuff that is not integrable is things that make economic changes (e.g. freicoin), have very negative scaling impact, or involve very different security assumptions (e.g. trusting a centeralized party).  The biggest barrier so far as been the lack of actual innovation or at least it not being clear if the changes that they make are useful and not totally broken.

[miffman]

I actually wanted to know this; what exactly about bitcoin can change and what can't? things like the hard limit obviously, but what else? Could we hop onto a new algorithm once SHA-256 is broken?

[TimS]

I actually wanted to know this; what exactly about bitcoin can change and what can't? things like the hard limit obviously, but what else? Could we hop onto a new algorithm once SHA-256 is broken?

From a technical perspective, you can change anything (in pseudocode: if blockNum < X: oldBehavior() else: newBehavior()), but it's only meaningful if nearly-everyone agrees that's what Bitcoin should do. So from a realistic/human perspective, you can only change things that people agree you can change, e.g. none of the changes on this Prohibited changes list can be expected to happen, because they fundamentally change what it is to be Bitcoin. Anything that doesn't fall under that heading is fair game. Changing the hash algorithm because the old one is failing is something that I think nobody would object to (although they're sure to have different ideas about how to deal with the problem).

If SHA-256 were to be broken (e.g. in the same sense that MD5 is - we knew it was coming for years before it became easy to find collisions), we could and would move to a new, more secure hash algorithm. I think the most likely scenario would be (calling the new algorithm H):
A change is announced that at block X (some weeks/months in the future), we will add OP codes for transaction scripts to hash using H instead of SHA-256. People will be expected to move all money stored in older addresses to the new format. Those who wait too long risk their money being stolen due to the vulnerability in SHA-256.
A change is announced that at block Y (some months/years after X, to give people time to transition), we will switch from SHA-256 to H for transaction IDs, block headers, etc. (with appropriate difficulty adjustment so that we can still target roughly 10 minutes/block to start with) Transactions using SHA-256 will become non-standard to discourage their continued use. Old outputs will still be valid, although they might be easily stolen.

[Mikez]

I think Ethereum is quite close to that feat, although they still haven't launched.

There are also projects, like ours - Orisi.org - which can potentially bring so-called sidechains to fruition. Sidechain is an alt-coin that's pegged 1 to 1 to Bitcoin. So you have a different architecture, perhaps even not based on Blockchain, but you're using Bitcoins as a currency on that alternative architecture.

So technically, any feature that any other alt-coin has, can be replicated directly within Bitcoin ecosystem. If not through a direct implementation, then through the usage of sidechains. You might also want to check out http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2014/06/bit-thereum.html for more details.

After reading the OP, first thing that came to mind was the Ethereum project, then something like StorJ(haven't heard of Orisi until now, but will definitely have a look!).
I think a lot of people think Bitcoin won't ever change, or adapt, or get some different features. I hope the Core devs prove them wrong!

[gmaxwell]

I think a lot of people think Bitcoin won't ever change, or adapt, or get some different features.

Some people have said this— but the history doesn't really support it. With how fast (and, often, recklessly) various players have moved in the larger economy technical development may seem slow by comparison… but while a stream does not carve a canyon over night, it does so all the same. Someone looking to create a speculative asset boom by copying a bit of other people's code and hopping out weeks later before it busts might honestly say that within the time frames they care about Bitcoin won't adapt... But some are in this for the much longer term possibilities.

[kolinko]

[re:ethereum] Hm. Adopting script changes is _trivial_— in fact we've done it before.

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here... but Ethereum is turing-complete, and that would be hard to implement in Bitcoin. Right?

[gmaxwell]

Playing a bit of devil's advocate here... but Ethereum is turing-complete, and that would be hard to implement in Bitcoin. Right?

Not at all. It's actually so easy to implement turing-completeness that we implemented it accidentally in the first OP_EVAL patch and took it out (the recursion limits didn't actually work). The implementation in their demo code on github is (or was, I haven't looked in a while) just basically a replication of bitcoin script with a single JUMP opcode added. It's not uncommon for things to be accidentally turing-complete (using the non-pedantic definition which permits bounded memory or computation time as turing complete (otherwise what ethereum has proposed is not either)).

Now, making a system that won't magically implode into insecurity because almost no one validates it anymore takes more work than this, but it's unclear that anyone knows at all how to solve this if validation is made expensive. None of the things ethereum people have discussed there would be particularly difficult to implement in Bitcoin— and many of the ideas like prefixing scripts with an operation count and weighing fees against them were proposed for Bitcoin long before ethereum existed.

All that said, Turing completeness doesn't actually increase the expressive power of cryptocurrency much— the examples usually given for ethereum can also be accomplished with finite state machines. The primary advantage an actually turing complete machine has appears to be that some problems can have much smaller encodings for them, the primary disadvantage is that someone can give you a script and determining exactly what it can do (e.g. if you'd like to agree to it as a contract) can potentially be much harder than a reduced computation model.

[ThomasCrowne]

Don't disagree there aren't any features that couldn't be adopted from altcoin-x into bitcoin it's more a question of willingness to do so.  Alotta people talking about just how flawed the PoW mechanism in bitcoin is currently with regards to mining centralization, etc.

Just try getting the bitcoin-core developers to go 'against the grain' as it where when you have mining consortiums literally pumping tens of millions of dollars into the current sha256 PoW mechanism...ain't gonna happen.  The big boys are firmly entrenched and I suspect any radical changes to the underlying bitcoin protocol won't be forth-coming anytime soon :/

[gmaxwell]

Just try getting the bitcoin-core developers to go 'against the grain' as it where when you have mining consortiums literally pumping tens of millions of dollars into the current sha256 PoW mechanism...ain't gonna happen. 

Sure it will. If mining centralization undermines the usefulness and values of Bitcoin people will take action— it's not even a question about bitcoin-core developers (though we're bitcoin users too!), since anyone can offer a modified version... The users of bitcoin are not going to just sit back when something moots the system.

[jonald_fyookball]

Just try getting the bitcoin-core developers to go 'against the grain' as it where when you have mining consortiums literally pumping tens of millions of dollars into the current sha256 PoW mechanism...ain't gonna happen. 

Sure it will. If mining centralization undermines the usefulness and values of Bitcoin people will take action— it's not even a question about bitcoin-core developers (though we're bitcoin users too!), since anyone can offer a modified version... The users of bitcoin are not going to just sit back when something moots the system.

Anyone can offer an alternate version in theory, but the devs are by and large trusted parties.
It opens the topic of: how is consensus reached when it comes to forking changes?

[kjj]

Anyone can offer an alternate version in theory, but the devs are by and large trusted parties.
It opens the topic of: how is consensus reached when it comes to forking changes?

The devs aren't really trusted in the technical sense.  They simply do not have the ability to overrule your policy.

At any rate, consensus is only possible in the subset of the network that has compatible rules.  This is often a one-way street.  If you change your source so that your node rejects blocks with 0xDE in some set location, your node will not ever converge with the rest of the network.  But if your change catches on, the rest of the network can switch to your chain.  Old nodes will occasionally go off on a fork, but if most of the hashing power is on your side, they will quickly reconverge every time.

[Triffin]

Here's another thread that addresses my BitCoin feature adoption question in the OP ..
Poster's here may be interested in the points raised ..

 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=694410.0

My take away ..

=====
posted by 'darkota'
"If the alt-coin isn't using Bitcoin's codebase/Bitcoin-based, then Bitcoin can't incorporate w/e(features etc) that Alt-coin has. Basically, alt-coins that use Bitcoin's codebase are useless, because as mentioned by OP, Bitcoin can simply copy what that alt-coin has into Bitcoin itself. Alt-coins that aren't using Bitcoin's codebase are the only ones that stand a chance to even remotely stand alongside/compete with Bitcoin."
=====

Triff ..

[BitcoinLlama]

I think one of the anonymizing coins will be very important but so far i personally don't think that darkcoin is the one, perhaps XC coin. Ultimately it isn't in bitcoins interest to adopt some of these more "nefarious" aspects.

[gmaxwell]

Alt-coins that aren't using Bitcoin's codebase are the only ones that stand a chance to even remotely stand alongside/compete with Bitcoin."

I certantly wouldn't agree there. For people that are actually willing to write code an inability to just copy and paste is not much of a barrier.

How about, you know, actually offering a distinct value that justifies having a whole other currency (e.g. friecoin)?

Edit: I removed some spam plugging Bytecoin based (e.g. bytecoin, monero, fantom, etc.) coins from this thread which also spammed other threads— but to the extent that there was a genuine misunderstanding, and not just a desire to spam I figure I should comment... the bytecoin ring signature is pretty straight forward to add to Bitcoin— though it implies a pretty considerable scalability tradeoff. Andytoshi and I have come up with some pretty substantial cryptographic improvements, e.g. https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizardry/brs-arbitrary-output-sizes.txt

[jubalix]

Alt-coins that aren't using Bitcoin's codebase are the only ones that stand a chance to even remotely stand alongside/compete with Bitcoin."

I certantly wouldn't agree there. For people that are actually willing to write code an inability to just copy and paste is not much of a barrier.

How about, you know, actually offering a distinct value that justifies having a whole other currency (e.g. friecoin)?

Edit: I removed some spam plugging Bytecoin based (e.g. bytecoin, monero, fantom, etc.) coins from this thread which also spammed other threads— but to the extent that there was a genuine misunderstanding, and not just a desire to spam I figure I should comment... the bytecoin ring signature is pretty straight forward to add to Bitcoin— though it implies a pretty considerable scalability tradeoff. Andytoshi and I have come up with some pretty substantial cryptographic improvements, e.g. https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizardry/brs-arbitrary-output-sizes.txt

I pretty much agree with gmax here.

See there are so many people wanting feature x y z....firstly those features are almost always hype as in not really a feature and not delivered anyway.

Eg faster transactions. Anyone who has played any FPS should understand latency times, and how this limits data between different points. "faster" block times in BTC code base just mean more orphans, and pternitally more competing chains. But so many people don't get this.

BTC needs to be just BTC. If improvements are genuine, then the forked coin will survive on that basis.

It is far preferable to have competent dev on BTC, did you see the devs on the last release?

Gmax and friends should not be constantly peppered with I want feature X.

The crytpo landscape at the moment is dividing in BTC/Peercoin/POS/NXT/Ripple/CPU coins.....?Maidsafe/etherium?

if you feel strongly go and dev a coin or pay some one to dev a coin

[franky1]

anyone wanting faster blocks can grab the bitcoin sourcecode and simply change the blocktimes from 10 minutes to 2 minutes, and then also bring the 25btc per block down to 5btc per block (thus equaling the same output over time)

and then run it with maybe 20 volunteers or so mining it in their own little pools calling it bitcoinB if you want...

and if people want to use it... well people will move over to your coin

oh wait, theres already altcoins like this..... hmm ok, and people are still staying with bitcoin