Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

I am a Monero Pimp & I love Bitcoin conflict

meanwhile:

[thezerg]

I hate the fact that politics must be played.  But after this debacle, sidechains had better be more awesome than the second coming of Satoshi if they want to make mods that are so much more complicated than changing a constant that there is simply no comparative basis.
My guess is that they want to delay blocksize so they can cram sidechain mods into the same fork as a negotiated compromise.  But this is turning into a huge mistake.  They are burning all the goodwill they had, and making us suspect them of not wanting what's best for bitcoin.  This reputation is going to badly affect their ability to get consensus in the future.

The opposition to Gavin's 2000% jump proposal comes unanimously from every active technical contributor to Bitcoin Core who has spoken up. This should suggest to you that your understanding of the comparative basis likely miscalibrated.  Though there is no comparative basis, 2WP sidechains are something that just requires non-broken smart contracts, it's not something that needs a hard-fork (and the centralized fedpeg sidechain stuff is indistinguishable, uncensorable, and unblockable: you can't prevent people from using it no matter how much you think you should be able to tell them that they can manage their funds).

Considering how often cypherdoc brags about his thread here being filled with economic wisdom, it's surprising to see views like "changing a constant simple and safe", after all 21 million bitcoins is merely a constant (and, pedantically, one the system didn't originally enforce....).  Try another strawman.
 

I'm tired of your pedantic FUD.  The system originally had a 30+MB implicit limit which was then reduced.  AFAIK the fact that the system didn't enforce the 21million was a bug.  The intention was always sound money. 

Seriously, look at ANY Bitcoin pitch.  Every single one explicitly predicts features that require more transactions than can fit in 1MB.  The promise was NEVER "someday, you'll never use bitcoins but your bank will".  At the same time from the very beginning Satoshi even said that as the network grows, the full nodes would become more centralized.  But he understood that that does not matter because membership is STILL permissionless.  Yes, it might require more money to buy a bigger computer and network but anyone can still join.  Just like it requires more money to mine today.

You have a problem with 20MB, fine.  So propose 8, 4 or something that is not just "wait and see".  However, I never saw a post from you guys about how you tried it with 20MB and it didn't work. But I saw a careful analysis by Gavin showing how it DID work. 

And scalability is harming the network RIGHT NOW, because developers aren't going to base all their work on something that won't work (or won't work without who-knows-how-high fees).

As Cypherdoc will attest, I was Blockstream and sidechain's biggest supporter on this topic.  But now I say he was right.  I no longer trust that you guys aren't trying to steal all Bitcoin's value into a sidechain.

[gmaxwell]

If you're going to argue that the "original" has some kind of terribly weight to it, then you need to come to grips with all the other ways it was originally broken.  The limitation to 1MB was intentional, not a bug.  Nor was the additional temporary soft limits below 1MB.   No one in the technical community is arguing that it should by 1MB forever, other than a panic end run around the process, breaking up consensus, and a huge leap thats completely out of proportion with safe operation or current demand just doesn't make sense.

Every single one explicitly predicts features that require more transactions than can fit in 1MB.  The promise was NEVER "someday, you'll never use bitcoins but your bank will".

Good thing then that there is no one in the technical sphere saying that.

You have a problem with 20MB, fine.  So propose 8, 4 or something that is not just "wait and see".  However, I never saw a post from you guys about how you tried it with 20MB and it didn't work. But I saw a careful analysis by Gavin showing how it DID work.

Many things have been proposed, moreover, when we tried it and it didn't work we went about _fixing_ the problems in the system. (Heck, good luck getting an older version of Bitcoin core synced with the chain with the _current_ sizes!). Do you read Bitcoin Development? do you read the commit and pull request feed? Do you read the bitcoin-dev channel logs? If not why would you have expected to see these things?  The only reason to take technical work out of the ordinary open to everyone technical channels is political gamesmanship. I for one prefer to avoid making it look like Bitcoin is blowing up (in spite of whatever concerns I will gladly bring to people's attention in the appropriate forums).

The constant attacks on sidechains/blockstream are because you think you can manipulate people with pat answers-- but the claims are bogus and easily established as such; the opposition to the 2000% jump in the Bitcoin development community universal it's Gavin thats the odd man out, yes indeed, that includes all the tech people at my company too-- but it's easy to show our views on the subject existed long before the company.  Worse, it's illogical, huge blocks and the ability to willy nilly change Bitcoin would make sidechains a lot easier to deploy.  In terms of interests, I'd be all for it, if I were not concerned about it being an existential threat to Bitcoin as a practical, decentralized system.

And scalability is harming the network RIGHT NOW, because developers aren't going to base all their work on something that won't work (or won't work without who-knows-how-high fees).

I like your euphemistic "developers" where are these mystery people? What are the project's you're talking about? As far as not knowing what the fees will be in the future-- thats fundamental, less than a half dozen miners could decide tonight that all future txn will need 1 BTC fees.

meanwhile:

Yea, well, got a chart of Bitcoin since Monday?  Ahem.

[cypherdoc]

guys, i think it's pretty clear that Greg isn't even going to consider Jeff's proposal as viable, unless you'd like to say otherwise Greg.  your non-response to my query says so not to mention your rhetoric.

thus, we all have to make our own plans whether or not to support XT.  i know i will be.

edit:  oh btw, since Sidechains Whitepaper release in October?  $380 to where we are today. Ahem.

[gmaxwell]

guys, i think it's pretty clear that Greg isn't even going to consider Jeff's proposal as viable, unless you'd like to say otherwise Greg.  your non-response to my query says so not to mention your rhetoric.

I did respond to your query! Jeff's proposal is a bit underdefined right now, but to the extent that it isn't it's a good step forward. (Have you read it? It makes many of the points I've been making that you so vigorously have disagreed with...)

[cypherdoc]

guys, i think it's pretty clear that Greg isn't even going to consider Jeff's proposal as viable, unless you'd like to say otherwise Greg.  your non-response to my query says so not to mention your rhetoric.

I did respond to your query! Jeff's proposal is a bit underdefined right now, but to the extent that it isn't it's a good step forward. (Have you read it? It makes many of the points I've been making that you so vigorously have disagreed with...)

i've read the salient parts of it and i don't agree with all of his assumptions.  such as the part about large blocks causing centralization.  i think the dynamic is inc blocks-->inc users-->inc merchants-->inc full nodes-->inc value-->inc price.  the reason full node #'s should actually inc, not dec, is the growth dynamic that will encourage more merchants to fund their own nodes for security reasons and that they can write them off thru the business.  it's ok to push most full nodes up one level to merchants and/or supernodes.  users in foreign countries or behind Tor don't need to run full nodes.  the value of the network will grow with the square of the user numbers.  in fact, centralization is exacerbated with 1MB blocks.  that's so clearly obvious as tx's are pushed off network onto centralized services like CB.  plus, the small niche community of user geeks is a much easier target for law enforcement.  diffusing Bitcoin and the user base out into developing countries is also where Bitcoin stands the greatest chance to really take hold and entrench itself.  i guarantee you a little African kid is more likely to say FU to his gvt than you would be to the USG from the use of Bitcoin.  

[PenguinFire]

It is crazy this thread is still going.     I remember posting in it like a month ago.

[cypherdoc]

guys, i think it's pretty clear that Greg isn't even going to consider Jeff's proposal as viable, unless you'd like to say otherwise Greg.  your non-response to my query says so not to mention your rhetoric.

I did respond to your query! Jeff's proposal is a bit underdefined right now, but to the extent that it isn't it's a good step forward. (Have you read it? It makes many of the points I've been making that you so vigorously have disagreed with...)

btw, you can now stop saying that Gavin is the only core dev who advocates 20MB block incs.  that's distorting the argument.  or maybe that's what you want to do.  he's continues to negotiate in good faith with modifications of now 8MB and also is ok with Jeff's new proposal.  and it's now 2 core devs in favor of an inc, Gavin and Jeff, and Mike.  since you and Pieter apparently give lip service to inc blocks, altho we wouldn't know it given your rhetoric, perhaps you should make your own counter proposal commitment with hard numbers.  wouldn't that be the right thing to do?

[cypherdoc]

It is crazy this thread is still going.     I remember posting in it like a month ago.

wow, that's a LONG time ago!

[rocks]

I hate the fact that politics must be played.  But after this debacle, sidechains had better be more awesome than the second coming of Satoshi if they want to make mods that are so much more complicated than changing a constant that there is simply no comparative basis.
My guess is that they want to delay blocksize so they can cram sidechain mods into the same fork as a negotiated compromise.  But this is turning into a huge mistake.  They are burning all the goodwill they had, and making us suspect them of not wanting what's best for bitcoin.  This reputation is going to badly affect their ability to get consensus in the future.

The opposition to Gavin's 2000% jump proposal comes unanimously from every active technical contributor to Bitcoin Core who has spoken up. This should suggest to you that your understanding of the comparative basis likely miscalibrated.  Though there is no comparative basis, 2WP sidechains are something that just requires non-broken smart contracts, it's not something that needs a hard-fork (and the centralized fedpeg sidechain stuff is indistinguishable, uncensorable, and unblockable: you can't prevent people from using it no matter how much you think you should be able to tell them that they can manage their funds).

Considering how often cypherdoc brags about his thread here being filled with economic wisdom, it's surprising to see views like "changing a constant simple and safe", after all 21 million bitcoins is merely a constant (and, pedantically, one the system didn't originally enforce....).  Try another strawman.
 

MV = PT

A hard cap on the supply "M" was always the intent.
During my time spent immersed in Bitcoin never was the intent to limit Velocity or Transactions too be enforced by the Bitcoin protocol.

The idea of limiting Velocity or Transactions is a radical one, M is intentionally limited in the Bitcoin experiment, not V or T. Thinking it's OK to move Bitcoins V or T to a shidechain that is managed by the same incentives scheme that preserves the Bitcoin protocol is as radical as increasing "M" in the Bitcoin experiment.  

and to think there is no difference between "2WP sidechains are something that just requires non-broken smart contracts" in effect Sidechain Elements, a fantastic achievement by the way, and doing the same thing without a trust or a distributed server enforced by Bitcoin protocol to manipulate V or T  off the Bitcoin blockchain is an expression of macro economic ignorance.  

Well stated.

gmaxwell, trying to conflate the supply limit and blocksize limit as equivalent "constants" and thus implying that changing the blocksize is as impactful as changing the supply is absurd. Changing the supply limit fundamentally destroys bitcoin, but increasing the blocksize limit is absolutely needed to make it successful.

There are 2 basic economic truths that you, Peter, LukeJr, etc have misrepresented for the past several weeks IMHO.

1) To ensure there are enough long-term fees to support and protect Bitcoin after the inflation rate levels off, it is necessary to significantly increase  the blocksize and tps. More available transactions, in turn drives more usage of Bitcoin, increasing the overall value of the system. Additionally it is the minimum fee structure that will generate fees over many transactions, not supply pressure forcing higher fees over a small number of transactions as the blockstream devs have been promoting.

2) Significantly increased blocksizes in absolutely no manner reduces Bitcoin's decentralization. Bitcoin's decentralization is the mining security process which anyone can participate in. Miners work through pools and blocksize has no effect on them. We could go to 1TB blocks tomorrow and miners would not notice. At the same time pools are already centralized to the point that they can handle whatever blocksize is needed. There will still always be enough pools that if any misbehave, miners would leave the abuser in droves and switch to an honest pool.

The only reason Satoshi added the 1MB limit was to prevent a bad actor from quickly bloating the blockchain prior to SPV-type wallets. That was the only reason. Now that most people have SPV-type light wallets, the limit does not really matter. Those still running a full node can manage it.

Bitcoin is first and foremost an economic system, the basic crypto used in Bitcoin are just tools. The entire position you and the others have taken have demonstrated that either: a) you guys do not understand the economics behind Bitcoin and it's security mechanism or b) you do but Blockstream has completely corrupted your ability to view the situation properly. In either case I have found the arguments you and the others have used to be lacking and more to the point seem to intentionally confuse the issues here.

The most beautiful aspect of Bitcoin is it's voluntary consensus mechanism. This means there is no group of "experts" to dictate terms to any of us, and anyone can choose the branch of their own choosing. You can be sure I am following the branch and view of Bitcoin's future that aligns to wide scale usage, and from the voting patterns I've seen at reddit and elsewhere most others will as well.

[cypherdoc]

https://twitter.com/cypherdoc2/status/609716846103625728

[justusranvier]

I don't believe anyone who claims to be concerned with centralization in Bitcoin.

In general, I don't take claims about motives at face value, because people can and do lie about their motivations (usually to themselves first).

So when somebody claims to care about X, the first thing I ask myself is, "is their behavior consistent with caring about X?"

In the case of people who claim to be concerned about centralization, if that's what they care about then they should show the most concern regarding the areas of highest centralization.

There are thousands of nodes.
There are about half a dozen core developers
99% of the nodes are running on a single code base (Bitcoin Core)

Even if larger blocks reduced the node count from the thousands to the hundreds, the Bitcoin Core monoculture and development monopoly would still represent more centralization.

Anybody who expresses concern about the centralization which may or may not occur with 20 MB blocks who isn't panicking about the lack of implementation and developer diversity is motivated by something other than a preference for decentralization.

[cypherdoc]

If you're going to argue that the "original" has some kind of terribly weight to it, then you need to come to grips with all the other ways it was originally broken.

what other things did Satoshi get wrong?

[tvbcof]

If you're going to argue that the "original" has some kind of terribly weight to it, then you need to come to grips with all the other ways it was originally broken.

what other things did Satoshi get wrong?

One of the most interesting things I heard recently is Todd's exploration of the commit logs and his findings that transaction fees themselves seemed to be an after-thought hacked in a month before the initial release.  Not sure what to make of this frankly.  The two options for support after the inflation is gone would be subsidization-for-exploitation (a-la e-mail) or transaction fees.  The later made a much more palatable sales pitch to my ears.

[cypherdoc]

If you're going to argue that the "original" has some kind of terribly weight to it, then you need to come to grips with all the other ways it was originally broken.

what other things did Satoshi get wrong?

One of the most interesting things I heard recently is Todd's exploration of the commit logs and his findings that transaction fees themselves seemed to be an after-thought hacked in a month before the initial release.  Not sure what to make of this frankly.  The two options for support after the inflation is gone would be subsidization-for-exploitation (a-la e-mail) or transaction fees.  The later made a much more palatable sales pitch to my ears.

you actually still listen to that guy? 

go here and search for the word "determined" and read that sentence.  satoshi talking about it on Nov 17, 2008 before the initial release is evidence he knew all along what the transitive motivation for miners would be.  besides, a good strategy of open source coding is to get a barely working implementation of a good idea out asap so that others can pick it apart and help contribute.

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg10006.html

[cypherdoc]

among the other misperceptions that the anti-scaling tacticians are employing is about how Satoshi never meant for Bitcoin to reach Visa levels, or at least never considered it.  that's wrong too.  here he also talks about bandwidth:

Satoshi Nakamoto wrote:
> The bandwidth might not be as prohibitive as you
> think.  A typical transaction would be about 400 bytes
> (ECC is nicely compact).  Each transaction has to be
> broadcast twice, so lets say 1KB per transaction.
> Visa processed 37 billion transactions in FY2008, or
> an average of 100 million transactions per day.  That
> many transactions would take 100GB of bandwidth, or
> the size of 12 DVD or 2 HD quality movies, or about
> $18 worth of bandwidth at current prices.


https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg10006.html

[justusranvier]

you actually still listen to that guy? 

go here and search for the word "determined" and read that sentence.  satoshi talking about it on Nov 17, 2008 before the initial release is evidence he knew all along what the transitive motivation for miners would be.  besides, a good strategy of open source coding is to get a barely working implementation of a good idea out asap so that others can pick it apart and help contribute.

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg10006.html

Is anyone keeping a list of lies told in the context of the block size limit debate?

"The number of nodes has dropped by 90%"
"Transaction fees were an afterthought added at the last minute"

[cypherdoc]

also, about this hangup about every single user being capable of running a full node:

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section eight) to check for
double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the
network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to
specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.  A server farm would
only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with
that one node.

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

[cypherdoc]

you actually still listen to that guy? 

go here and search for the word "determined" and read that sentence.  satoshi talking about it on Nov 17, 2008 before the initial release is evidence he knew all along what the transitive motivation for miners would be.  besides, a good strategy of open source coding is to get a barely working implementation of a good idea out asap so that others can pick it apart and help contribute.

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg10006.html

Is anyone keeping a list of lies told in the context of the block size limit debate?

"The number of nodes has dropped by 90%"
"Transaction fees were an afterthought added at the last minute"

seems like a job for the Wall of Shame? 

but yes, should the core devs be held liable for any misperceptions spread?  after all, they are the stewards of the code and in a highly responsible and critical position.  Gavin understands this which is why he doesn't spend all day running his mouth on Reddit or here.

[tvbcof]

If you're going to argue that the "original" has some kind of terribly weight to it, then you need to come to grips with all the other ways it was originally broken.

what other things did Satoshi get wrong?

One of the most interesting things I heard recently is Todd's exploration of the commit logs and his findings that transaction fees themselves seemed to be an after-thought hacked in a month before the initial release.  Not sure what to make of this frankly.  The two options for support after the inflation is gone would be subsidization-for-exploitation (a-la e-mail) or transaction fees.  The later made a much more palatable sales pitch to my ears.

you actually still listen to that guy?

Sure.  I listen to everyone.  When a guy says the same thing over and over again (hint hint) it get's tedious and I tend to skim.  In the case of Peter Todd, he seems to be the among the most keenly aware that defensibly against subversion is the most critical thing to maintaining a value proposition of the blockchain which is a position I share.  He is also unusually good at spotting certain kinds of risks from a technical perspective.  I pay close attention to what he says though I don't run across him much these days.

go here and search for the word "determined" and read that sentence.  satoshi talking about it on Nov 17, 2008 before the initial release is evidence he knew all along what the transitive motivation for miners would be.  besides, a good strategy of open source coding is to get a barely working implementation of a good idea out asap so that others can pick it apart and help contribute.

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg10006.html

Thanks for the link (really!)  I'd not run across that particular piece of mail, or don't remember the details and timings of things if I did.  I do find it interesting that you bloatchain folks cherry pick around the concept of transaction fees so blatantly in your attempts to get everyone buying coffee with native Bitcoin.  Of course these attempts have proven a laughable failure because Bitcoin is so deficient for this kind of a role, and it's failure has nothing to do with resistance and fees neither of which has been much of a factor over the last half-decade even at the 1MB setting.

Personally I don't put a lot of emphasis on what Satoshi thought or didn't think.  Times change and people's interpretations and philosophies change.  Mine have in various substantive ways.  If Satoshi actually was one guy (or even a group of guys) whatever he may have been thinking about before 2011 may not be what he would be thinking now.  Beyond that, it is perfectly possible that whatever he was thinking then OR now is not something I would agree with.  Since I don't believe in God I don't believe that he is/was one.

On Satoshi, it is worth note that the fallout of his 1MB setting was even the half-decade, an respectable 'market cap', and a lot of attention that has interceded the system can still be brought up with a cheap storage device, an affordable network connection, a bit of power, and a place to operate where one would not end up with a bullet in the head right away.  If this happy (to me) outcome was Satoshi hoped for with his cap, good on him.  If he was clever enough to sell it to those he found gathered around him at the time by being less than complete in his rational, even better.

Everyone and his brother has had the idea of hitching a highly subsidized ride on the blockchain for messenging, time-stamping, secure data storage, etc.  The 1MB setting has been the downfall of each.  Without it it is highly unlikely that the system would look like what we have today (and what I like very much.)  If/when the 1MB thing goes away there are a lot of these 'bad' ideas waiting in the wings to capitalize on the mistake.