Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[adam3us]

the bitcoin network is really controlled by the economic majority.  Thats kind of what cant be evil is about, an attempt to replicate that type of thinking into a corporate structure to fail-safe it.  Not even miners can fork the protocol if no full nodes nor users like the change.

You are aware of the Eyal and Sirer paper on this, right?  As I understant, a majority coalition of miners can force users to change the protocol, by sabotaging the "orthodox" chain.  Then it would be in the interest of uses and any "orthodox" miners to upgrade to the protocol chosen by the cartel.

They can only force soft-forks, hard-forks are ignored by full-nodes and clients.  An attempted forced-hard fork results in hostile miners forming an alt-coin with no users.  The limiting factor is soft-forks are quite flexible and can do a lot, some of which could be undesirable.

If the change is minor (e.g., "postpone the next reward halving to 2018"), most bitcoin users will not mind.  Only ideological purists will be upset, but all they could do is create yet another fork, with a PoW that cannot be mined by the current equipment.  But then no orthodox miners could mine this new "true bitcoin reborn" chain either, so it would start out with a minuscule CPU-based network.

the nuclear big-red-button option of tweaking the PoW hash is a meta threat to miners that they dont quite have the upper hand - if they abuse it, or get too crazily centralised - people would worst case be willing to push it.

Probably thats a MAD argument that keeps miners somewhat sensible as if that button is pushed they are sitting on $500m of scrap electronics with a low scrap parts salvage value.

outside of some disagreement that sidechains create more risk than they remove (I say they remove risk, because bitcoin is exposed to offchain risk & monetary shocks from eg mtgoxings, such that sidechains are a clear improvement over offchain economically)

What would prevent a sidechain from being a scam?  Sidechains will not be cleared, audited, or reulated, by Blockstream or anyone else.  Their protocols cannot be constrained in any significant way, without destroying their presumed merits.  Or is there anything in the whitepaper and other literature that I have missed?

Outside of spam limits which could be protocol enforced, its caveat emptor, you shouldnt put money into a chain unless there is some assurance that security & bitcoin protocol knowledgeable people have audited it.  People could certify chains (like sign them - "my name is blah and I'm a security researcher with reputation and I and my buddies audited this code and its good") or wallets could etc.  Its good and a feature that people can opt to use uncertified chains.  You want a situation where there is real open possibility for technical innovation & competition in chain features.

You also want no central control so no chains can get black listed.

Adam

[cypherdoc]

you're still that little dog who nips at my trouser bottoms.

I thought you said you didnt do ad-hominems to troll and fan reaction?  Just a few posts back too.  

Decorum!

Stuff like that is why bitcointroll.org is redirecting here.  Also it pushes out more tech focussed people who want some civility and dont have the USENET flame war developed rhinoceros hide and egos to say "fuck you too" and keep talking.

What the tvbcof said seemed pretty reasoned to me, and if you read it neutrally, not to be calling Gavin names, just talking about hypothetical conflicts of interest, independence etc.  

I share his view about balance of power helping also, eg you can see that Microsoft & Apple are both pretty world domination evil corporations.  And yet the growth of apple's market penetration of OSX has weakened eithers ability to execute on their rent-seeking actions.  Thats a pretty conventional understanding of the real-world.

Adam

Adam, you're soft and need to develop a back bone.

you don't understand how to develop a popular thread nor sustain interest in one over a several year time period either it appears.  the reason this thread is so popular and long lasting is precisely b/c i am NOT a troll.  i bring a large amount of dedicated, insightful info, and logic to this thread and balance it with a healthy bit of "discipline" towards those who i think deserve it. it's my way of screening out the real trolls. i've been very effective at it over the years yet you conveniently try to lump this thread with bitcointroll.org while ignoring what Justusranvier just said a few posts up about how this thread has a high SNR unlike other threads throughout the forum. the high # of views and the mere fact that you are here are testimony to this fact.  you have no insight into the relationship i have with tvbcof going back 4 yrs so you ought not comment on it.  i actually don't mind him and i think he actually likes me.  but we go back and forth with each other once in a while and it provides entertainment for everyone.  we have a "volatile relationship" so to speak.

speaking of trolling, btw, did you or BS hire brg444 to come here and troll me and promote SC's?

[HeliKopterBen]

i view Bitcoin as digital gold which is the principle behind this long thread.  but better.  no one can transmute gold atoms into SCgold. 

Here is food for thought... What if the dollar had somehow been pegged at an elemental level to gold from the beginning?  Would the dollar still be sound money today?  Obviously, a very fragile and subjective peg maintained by central banks did not work.  Gold lost is dominance as the world's reserve currency because of lack of utility but if that utility could have been preserved by scaling gold's utility at a fundamental level vs scaling at such a weak level (USD), then it may have worked.

I believe this is the crux of the whole issue and you are right, there is no precedent for it.  Unfortunately, the only way I see to figure out if a protocol level peg will be strong enough is by trial and error in a live environment.  Theoretically, this should be the last major untested change to the main chain as all other major changes can be done on side chains before being implemented on the main chain, if ever.

[JorgeStolfi]

[A majority cartel] can only force soft-forks, hard-forks are ignored by full-nodes and clients.  An attempted forced-hard fork results in hostile miners forming an alt-coin with no users.  The limiting factor is soft-forks are quite flexible and can do a lot, some of which could be undesirable.

Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly.  Here is a more detailed scenario:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qdfat/without_downvoting_me_to_hell_can_someone_explain/cn5s41z

Is there anything wrong with that, technically or economically?

Only ideological purists will be upset, but all they could do is create yet another fork, with a PoW that cannot be mined by the current equipment.  But then no orthodox miners could mine this new "true bitcoin reborn" chain either, so it would start out with a minuscule CPU-based network.

the nuclear big-red-button option of tweaking the PoW hash is a meta threat to miners that they dont quite have the upper hand - if they abuse it, or get too crazily centralised - people would worst case be willing to push it.

Probably thats a MAD argument that keeps miners somewhat sensible as if that button is pushed they are sitting on $500m of scrap electronics with a low scrap parts salvage value.

That button is not MAD but SAD, assured self-destruction. Or not even that,  It would just create another junk coin, with a minuscule network, that bitcoin users could start using -- if they would rather use a junk coin than give in to the cartel.  By definition, the faithful miners would not be able to mine it.  Meanwhile, the cartel's fork would continue working as before, with at least 51% of the original hashrate; and the only option for users and miners to keep using bitcoin would be to upgrade to the cartel's protocol.

Putting it more simply: an entity that can jam some process for sufficiently long time can force the people who depend on that process to accept changes to it, as long as the changes are not as bad as the jamming itself.

Outside of spam limits which could be protocol enforced, its caveat emptor, you shouldnt put money into a chain unless there is some assurance that security & bitcoin protocol knowledgeable people have audited it.  People could certify chains (like sign them - "my name is blah and I'm a security researcher with reputation and I and my buddies audited this code and its good") or wallets could etc.  Its good and a feature that people can opt to use uncertified chains.  You want a situation where there is real open possibility for technical innovation & competition in chain features.

You also want no central control so no chains can get black listed.

That is my understanding, and that is I why I cannot see any technical content in the sidechains proposal.  Unless it specifies some things that every sidechain must do (or must not do), with a mechanism to enforce those constraints, it will not bring any new tools or ideas to cryptocurrency technology.  So far it is only a nomenclature proposal: "let's use the word 'sidechain' for any project or entity that could 'own' some bitcoins for some time".

Why wouldn't Bitstamp be already a sidechain, for example?

EDIT: not worse --> not as bad as

[adam3us]

You know my experience of flame fests and trolling is the effective way to deal with it is to create signal, let the ad-hominems slide and circle back to the interesting tech/policy discussion.

Anyway its your thread so if you two enjoying saying fuck-you too to each other all-day long, knock yourself out.

speaking of trolling, btw, did you or BS hire brg444 to come here and troll me and promote SC's?

Nopes dont know him personally and i was presuming he was in the thread for a long time.

You know a lot of people think sidechains are the coolest thing since bitcoin itself.  He might be one of those people?

Adam

[cypherdoc]

as for Daniel's video, you're late, as i already posted about their podcast and commented on it 5d ago here:  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg9945975#msg9945975

I posted the article http://bitcoinist.net/the-two-ideologies-in-bitcoin/ which came before the podcast and covers more topics & is clearer IMO.

Actually not even.  The podcast is on a completely different topic: a response to Vitalik Buterin's bitcoin maximalism assertion (its pretty funny everyone is too polite to accuse Vitalik of ether maximalism given the percentage of the premine he owns).  

I encourage you (or others) to read David Krawisz article http://bitcoinist.net/the-two-ideologies-in-bitcoin/ he is quite knowledgeable about economics and able to reason.  He draws a conclusion that is a little different to what most are assuming: that it is investors that drive bitcoins price & network effect, and transactional usage follows; rather than the assumption many make that it is the usage that drives intrinsic value & network effect.  I am not sure about that - maybe its a bit of both, but its an interesting and well reasoned argument, that is somewhat reassuring - we're not fully beholden to the success of people like bitpay trying to integrate merchants and the success of those merchants in having people pay in bitcoin etc. if Krawisz is to some extent right.

Adam

sorry, posted the wrong link. and yes, you're still late.  this is the right one:  
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg9840830#msg9840830

btw, Daniel and i do think alike in many regards which is why i post his pieces here on this thread regularly.  and he's right, speculation aka investment/SOV the collective efforts of speculators/merchants/users/devs/miners is what has driven Bitcoin to where it is today. i am living evidence of this of the investment side.  and i invested b/c of Bitcoins Money Function, not it's potential to be a trading platform for speculative assets.  which is why any proposals to change the current rules have the burden to prove to all of us that there shall be no screw ups or invalid assumptions.  esp those economic when coming from a bunch of coders.

[justusranvier]

Sidechains are not a proprietary technology.  Everything is FOSS, open IP.  And we invested a fair bit of mental energy and legal review already into making sure it stays that way, even if blockstream management were someone replaced or blackmailed; to imagine yourself or a company a perpetual lifetime role is naive, and we've seen it before eg digicash patents got sold by the investors when they went bankrupt to some company that sat on them, preventing people who wanted to innovate using ecash.  We're all anti-patent and want to avoid that kind of crap creeping into bitcoin.  I have some first hand knowledge that some companies are patenting things related to bitcoin, and probably much more I dont know about.  I suppose someone could search patent db though filing is a long slow process.  At ZKS where I was working on our ToR-precursor and ecash, back in 1999-2001, Austin tried to buy digicash patent and making it available in the public domain, we failed to buy it sadly.  John Gilmore was our advisor and he'd helped cook up an open patent license GNU like scheme.

Its not our softfork - its a softfork to enable a generic extension mechanism.  We have no monopoly (and wouldnt want one) on use of the op code.  Our only defence is meritocracy - if we build better, more secure sidechains and people prefer to use them.  We wont be getting the fees off the sidechain either because those go to miners.  If we have the technical edge and people use our stuff that seems sort of fair enough to me.

Personally I guarantee I trust each and everyone of our team more than J Random web2.0 startup CEO.  What do those guys want?  To make a profit.  Would they stop at sabotaging bitcoin to get there?  I doubt it.  Some of the bitcoin web2.0 startup guys are cool and bitcoin enthused.  But they're getting patents some of them, and not all of them will survive.  Crappy things the less cool startup CEOs might try eg the red-ilist or other things so sucky I wouldnt even describe them for fear it'd give people ideas that they lack the technical competence to design.

I do get where you're coming from, in the past I was the guy holding people to account eg PGP incorporated when they were busy trying to include key escrow into PGP ostensibly for corporate data access.  (I imagine people selling stingrays tell themselves something also).  Partly due to my efforts that was never included in the open-pgp IETF spec.

Sidechains are just a mechanism to extend bitcoin.  The interesting thing is the extension not the chain.  If a better way to do it materialises great.  If some sidechain innovations are so cool and well validated from $1b resting on them for a year that it allows bitcoin core to merge them fantastic.  Actually Pieter Wuille views that as the best way to view the utility of sidechains, to enable longer and live validation of things that could then go into bitcoin where that'd be difficult to impossible to gain that confidence on directly.

There can also however be one-size fits-all limits.  Some extensions are mutually incompatible, or too risky though interesting (eg snark contracts, zerocash) unless a way to contain the risk in chain is found.  Also you can get some new scaling possibilities by having chains with different blocksizes.  Its more decentralised and safer to have a small bitcoin main block and a medium sized sidechain block, than introduce a large main bitcoin block as there is an escape route and choice.  You can within limits get your cake and eat it.

What I see in this answer is statements that safeguards have been established, without any description of what they are or why we should assume they'll be effective.

I also see a lot of appeal to past performance which amount to, "trust us."

Despite being more verbose, in substance it's identical to the reply I got from Peter Vessenes when I asked him the same question two years ago:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113400.msg1227012#msg1227012

[cypherdoc]

Adam, how can you possibly say you're not "for-profit" when in fact that is precisely what Blockstream is?  do you seriously expect us to believe that Reid Hoffman, et al invested $21M while not expecting at least a 10x return on their investment?

you still didn't answer me as to why we should "trust" you and Blockstream when it goes against the very ethos of what Bitcoin is all about.

[smooth]

Adam, how can you possibly say you're not "for-profit" when in fact that is precisely what Blockstream is?  do you seriously expect us to believe that Reid Hoffman, et al invested $21M while not expecting at least a 10x return on their investment?

I read somewhere that they invested personally instead of via organized venture funds specifically because they are bitcoin supporters and the investment didn't really meet the usual criteria for the funds (roughly described by you as a 10x return). I can't vouch for any of this being actually true or relevant, but I did read it.

[brg444]

you're still that little dog who nips at my trouser bottoms.

I thought you said you didnt do ad-hominems to troll and fan reaction?  Just a few posts back too.  

Decorum!

Stuff like that is why bitcointroll.org is redirecting here.  Also it pushes out more tech focussed people who want some civility and dont have the USENET flame war developed rhinoceros hide and egos to say "fuck you too" and keep talking.

What the tvbcof said seemed pretty reasoned to me, and if you read it neutrally, not to be calling Gavin names, just talking about hypothetical conflicts of interest, independence etc.  

I share his view about balance of power helping also, eg you can see that Microsoft & Apple are both pretty world domination evil corporations.  And yet the growth of apple's market penetration of OSX has weakened eithers ability to execute on their rent-seeking actions.  Thats a pretty conventional understanding of the real-world.

Adam

Adam, you're soft and need to develop a back bone.

you don't understand how to develop a popular thread nor sustain interest in one over a several year time period either it appears.  the reason this thread is so popular and long lasting is precisely b/c i am NOT a troll.  i bring a large amount of dedicated, insightful info, and logic to this thread and balance it with a healthy bit of "discipline" towards those who i think deserve it. it's my way of screening out the real trolls. i've been very effective at it over the years yet you conveniently try to lump this thread with bitcointroll.org while ignoring what Justusranvier just said a few posts up about how this thread has a high SNR unlike other threads throughout the forum. the high # of views and the mere fact that you are here are testimony to this fact.  you have no insight into the relationship i have with tvbcof going back 4 yrs so you ought not comment on it.  i actually don't mind him and i think he actually likes me.  but we go back and forth with each other once in a while and it provides entertainment for everyone.  we have a "volatile relationship" so to speak.

speaking of trolling, btw, did you or BS hire brg444 to come here and troll me and promote SC's?

Same old, bland platitudes  

Adam has made a valient effort the last few pages at presenting cogent, reasonable & insightful arguments in defense of his team and its projects and yet we are left with the same old cypheroc tired ad hominems. Ever since the introduction of the sidechain discussion you have persistingly made a clown of yourself in your own thread and displayed seemingly intentional inability to maintain an honest discussion.

Your ego and the apparent pleasure you enjoy at flattering it is quite pathetic I must say.

(PS. Adam, I'm in Québec, please, please do hire me, I make real good coffee)

[brg444]

Adam, how can you possibly say you're not "for-profit" when in fact that is precisely what Blockstream is?  do you seriously expect us to believe that Reid Hoffman, et al invested $21M while not expecting at least a 10x return on their investment?

I read somewhere that they invested personally instead of via organized venture funds specifically because they are bitcoin supporters and the investment didn't really meet the usual criteria for the funds (roughly described by you as a 10x return). I can't vouch for any of this being actually true or relevant, but I did read it.

From the horses' mouth

And that’s why I’m participating in this first-round financing as an individual investor, and why Blockstream itself will function similarly to the Mozilla Corporation. Here, our first interest is maintaining and enhancing Bitcoin’s strong open ecosystem. And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-future-of-the-bitcoin-ecosystem-and-trustless-trust-why-i-invested-in-blockstream

Of course cyphertroll wants to hear nothing of that. Blockstream are a bunch of mobsters willing to sell out their proprietary technology to any crook on the street so as to maximize profits for their investors.

[brg444]

i thought this comment from coinlock debating aminok on Reddit was interesting:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qtdxi/thoughts_on_sidechains_by_lukas_ryan/cn9zpi7

This guy still believes that the technical peg is a price peg so yea.....

[brg444]

...
so i ask you, Adam, why should i do a 180 degree flip in what i was sold back then and now "trust" you to do what's right for Bitcoin when you have a fiduciary duty to do what's right for Blockstream?

I seem to recall at least Maxwell pro-actively disavowing this supposed fiduciary duty to do what's right for Blockstream if it also does not happen to be what right for Bitcoin.  He gets to pick up his marbles and go home if he doesn't like how things are going (where as most people have to leave their marbles in such situations except for vested stock and the like.)  This is a novelty as far as I know.  And one I'm liking!  If this is simply a marketing gimmick it worked on me.  I've a favorable opinion both of the devs who write this into their contract, and the investors and managers of Blockstream who at least allow it as a term.

Of course, as always, I happen to see sidechains as not only 'right' for Bitcoin but basically Bitcoin's best hope for success.  Naturally this goes some distance toward helping build my confidence in the enterprise as well, and makes it quite understandable why this novel contract agreement bullet-point is acceptable to all.  It would be fascinating to see how the construct stands up in U.S. court (but I hope it doesn't come to that, of course, and am not expecting it.)

you're missing the point.  the act of leaving by those devs requires a conscious act and decision to do the "right" thing.  how can we keep trying to sell Bitcoin to the world as a "trustless" system when we have to "trust" Blockstream devs to do the right thing?

Bitcoin is not "trustless" in the way you'd like it to be.

Fortunately proper game theory incentives make it so that every actors behaves in the best interests of the group, for his own sake.

[cypherdoc]

Oh great, incendiary loud mouth brg444  back in the mix. Just when I thought we had a proper chance of a decent discussion to get going.

[brg444]

Oh great, incendiary loud mouth brg444  back in the mix. Just when I thought we had a proper chance of a decent discussion to get going.

There is no such chance with you in the mix.

You have refused or flat out ignored the most logic counter-arguments to your "concerns" and prefer dancing around spewing the same platitudes. It's like groundhog day with you.

[cypherdoc]

Oh great, incendiary loud mouth brg444  back in the mix. Just when I thought we had a proper chance of a decent discussion to get going.

There is no such chance with you in the mix.

You have refused or flat out ignored the most logic counter-arguments to your "concerns" and prefer dancing around spewing the same platitudes. It's like groundhog day with you.

If the best way to deal with a troll is to ignore him, then why don't you leave, especially  since I'm the one doing most of the talking around here? Or maybe it's because you find what I have to say not all together unreasonable? 

[brg444]

Oh great, incendiary loud mouth brg444  back in the mix. Just when I thought we had a proper chance of a decent discussion to get going.

There is no such chance with you in the mix.

You have refused or flat out ignored the most logic counter-arguments to your "concerns" and prefer dancing around spewing the same platitudes. It's like groundhog day with you.

If the best way to deal with a troll is to ignore him, then why don't you leave, especially  since I'm the one doing most of the talking around here? Or maybe it's because you find what I have to say not all together unreasonable?  

Not quite, your thread is merely just one other source of information and sometimes valuable discussion. I certainly would not qualify your opinion as particularly insightful or worthy of merits. You are anything but "reasonable".

Case in point Adam, in the few last post of his has provided more insights and valuable discussion material than certainly your few last thousand posts on here.

Moreover, I shall insist that your inflated ego and self-sense of importance is despicable

[_mr_e]

We don't need sidechains. The internet of coins is almost upon us and will be ready far sooner then anyone can convince the world to deploy sidechains(hint: january): http://bitcoinmagazine.com/18167/what-is-the-supernet-jl777s-vision/

316 users in supernet slack[.com] from all the different corners of crypto, cooperating and developing many different projects together. It's a sight to behold.

[cypherdoc]

Oh great, incendiary loud mouth brg444  back in the mix. Just when I thought we had a proper chance of a decent discussion to get going.

There is no such chance with you in the mix.

You have refused or flat out ignored the most logic counter-arguments to your "concerns" and prefer dancing around spewing the same platitudes. It's like groundhog day with you.

If the best way to deal with a troll is to ignore him, then why don't you leave, especially  since I'm the one doing most of the talking around here? Or maybe it's because you find what I have to say not all together unreasonable?  

Not quite, your thread is merely just one other source of information and sometimes valuable discussion. I certainly would not qualify your opinion as particularly insightful or worthy of merits. You are anything but "reasonable".

Case in point Adam, in the few last post of his has provided more insights and valuable discussion material than certainly your few last thousands post on here.

Blah, blah, blah.

Not in my opinion. As JR said, there's nothing new in what he said. Just his opinions as to where the project stands, that Bitcoin has a "problem ",  and that we should "trust"  him to fix it .  

And neither you, nor Adam, had provided a good reason add to why we should up end 6 years of a " no trust" system just to let them establish a $21M for profit entity that seeks to leverage core development to change Bitcoin into their vision while profiting. The core devs refusal to step down speaks volumes and I think Reid Hoffman, et al, would never have plunked down that amount of money if they didn't think it would make a difference.

[brg444]

We don't need sidechains. The internet of coins is almost upon us and will be ready far sooner then anyone can convince the world to deploy sidechains(hint: january): http://bitcoinmagazine.com/18167/what-is-the-supernet-jl777s-vision/

316 users in supernet slack from all the different corners of crypto cooperating and developing differant projects together. It's a sight to behold.

No thanks