Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[vokain]

Side chains are certainly altcoins.

Maybe in your universe.

Lol how are they not?

They are essentially watered down versions of Bitcoin lol with a separate block chain.

Side chains are implemented on top of bitcoin - they dont directly change the underlying protocol, only interact with it - like a wallet would.

However, some changes to core are required to support certain sidechain proposals.  

Edit:  Actually, when you tke into account the tokens for using sidechains ( eth, factoids, etc.) then, yeah, the lines really do begin to blur. Maybe call it alt-coin-lite?

Good morning good morning

So in this case, discussion of sidechains as a technological application of Bitcoin should be okay but once you step into the actual tokens or implementations  of sidechains then I think it becomes off Bitcoin topic?

[cypherdoc]

continuing the ramp:

[Erdogan]

continuing the ramp:

Have a look at https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/?q= it is more up to date.

[cypherdoc]

Go on smoothie.  Go on evoorhees.  Fuck off to greener, censorship-free pastures where may you attempt to attack Bitcoin all you want.

Don't let me stop you.  You're free now...move into the light...  

iCEBLOW throwing his weapons.  or, blowing his weapons.

or, in medical terms, engaging in "projectile vomiting".

[sgbett]

I'm not against bigger blocks. I am, however, vehemently against some minority coercing rather than appealing on merit a change that affects every member of a system for some collectivist notion of "the common good" without everyone's voluntary consent. Great, bigger blocks can fit more transactions, but maybe we should wait until there is full consensus that fees are indeed too high and we all agree to move together to using bigger blocks. Til then...Perhaps we can even work out a dynamic block size schedule based on rigorously proven and acceptedly fair feedback cycles by then and not have to go through the whole process again.

If XT is so great, no one should have to sell it to anyone, people will just switch.

But people won't because there is greater risk cost to switch than to stay until some situation demands full consensus migration. Antifragility.

Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do. Then miners would start mining coins that they couldn't spend anywhere useful, and SPV users would find that they can't transact with the businesses they want to deal with. The currency would be split, and in this case XT would be in a far weaker position than Bitcoin.

The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

Bitcoin is not ruled by miners. In a hardfork, miners barely matter at all. (Softforks are different.) What's important is what the economy does.

If the economy splits without full consensus in either direction, then this may happen:

mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes if one block's large and the other small, all i need a tx that's included in the large block but not the small one. then doublespend it on the small one, which will be rejected necessarily by the large block blockchain.
mircea_popescu: now i have bitcoin separated in two addresses, one for each chain.
mircea_popescu: the attempt may fail, but the cost to me of this failure is not significant, so i can keep on trying until it succeeds.
mircea_popescu: the only way to guard against it is, obviously,for the ."large" chain to maintain 1:1 identity with the "small" one. because you don't just fork bitcoin.,
ben_vulpes: i still fail to see how you're going to make a txn that gets included in the large block chain and not the small block chain.
artifexd: ben_vulpes: You don't. You keep sending money to yourself until it happens.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes what do you mean ? it necessarily will occur.
mircea_popescu: since one contains more txn than the other by definition.
mircea_popescu: suppose i make 50k 1btc txn. they don't fit in a 1mn block. they do fit in a 10mb block. what now ?

If that happens, trouble for those on the fork and any businesses/entities that forked over without full consensus.

Its doing my head in now just how much these arguments (that rely on ignorance) keep being repeatedly used to try and scare people.

It ignores the fact that for big blocks to be happening, there must already be 75% of hashing power signalling support for it. When that happens the first big block can be mined, before that bigger blocks are not mined.

So now you have 75% of the network working on a chain that supports bigger blocks and mining bigger blocks, whilst 25% try to mine a chain that only contains <1MB blocks.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out which chain will *very quickly* becomes longest.  Everyone using bigger blocks carries on as normal, the orphaned miners on their 'orphaned' chain can continue to try and operate as long as they like but they can't actually affect the longest chain, which gets ever longer. This idea that they have two sets of coins is of no concern to anyone other than them, because they are the only people that recognise their orphaned blockchain. The coins in the new addresses on their orphaned chain cannot be spent on the main chain because they don't exist there.

The only possible attack here is that over the next several months MP will explicitly reject blocks from nodes advertising they are 70010 protocol. For this to have any material effect though, he would need >50% of the current network hashing power to also explicitly reject those blocks, so that people running XT are disincentivised to continue doing so.

With any less than 50% then MP is economically disadvantaging himself, and then it is a question of how big his pockets are (I'm sure they are very, more power to him) and how much he is prepared to risk.

So lets be realistic about what MP can achieve, he has to get >50% to switch to BitcoinMP (i.e. auto reject > 70010 protocol) to kill XT. However, switching to BitcoinMP now increases the risk of any blocks you mine becoming orphaned until >50% are on BitcoinMP too.

Conversely, big blockers need >75% to signal 70010 support to kill core. Upgrading to XT now (or advertising as 70010) has no disadvantage unless BitcoinMP has >50%

What we really need is for someone to knock up mpnodes.com to help people figure out whether there is any advantage to be had explicitly supporting <1MB

In the meantime the majority continues to express ambivalence. Lets see how that pans out.

[TheRealSteve]

Have a look at https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/?q= it is more up to date.

Graph might be more informative though: https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/dashboard/#user-agents

[Erdogan]

Have a look at https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/?q= it is more up to date.

Graph might be more informative though: https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/dashboard/#user-agents

Hah, looks like china is not big on nodes.

[vokain]

I was ignorant of the 75% thing until last night.
Now I wonder, pools are fickle. If 75% is achieved and bigger blocks start being validated, what could happen if 75% goes back down for whatever reason? I don't know enough technically to articulate this too well, but maybe there's something there.

Edit: just read about the 1000 blocks condition

[cypherdoc]

I have been thinking about the mail from the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto, whoerever it is. His argument is not about the technical side of the debate but about politics and long term future.

I think people need to talk less about the technical implications and more about the political implications of this fork.
 
The argument of this guy is that if the XT fork is sucessful, that means that in the future someone with enough political influence can make a fork successful. That means that one days the President of the United States, who definitely has enough political influence, will be able to push a succesful fork. And we all know what that would mean: no more 21 million limit. We will be back to central banking.

The argument that the community will decide what is its best interest is invalid. Aristotle already knew that democracy turn into demagogy. And history and economics show that the outcomes of democratic process don't align with the best interest of the voters.

Basically the problem is that: by forking we are choosing a democratic political process, and it's the very same process which lead to central banking and is currently unable to stop it.

Just because someone makes a client (XT or original satoshi client) doesn't mean they make people choose to use that client.

If that were so then Satoshi himself had political influence thus negating your point entirely.

I don't see anything that XT is doing other than allowing people a choice to switch their client to one that supports bigger blocks (and a few other minor things).

Ultimately people choose what they want to use.

Political influence lol.

Sorry but I make my own choices by thinking with my brain, not who is in the lime light.

It's people who have chosen central banking.

Trusting people for making good choices in monetary matters is a recipe for central banking. Populism will always win at the end of the day.

no, the Blockstream core devs already had their own Jekyll Island moment in the backwoods of California early last year.

[cypherdoc]

still ramping:

[Erdogan]

I have been thinking about the mail from the nickname Satoshi Nakamoto, whoerever it is. His argument is not about the technical side of the debate but about politics and long term future.

I think people need to talk less about the technical implications and more about the political implications of this fork.
 
The argument of this guy is that if the XT fork is sucessful, that means that in the future someone with enough political influence can make a fork successful. That means that one days the President of the United States, who definitely has enough political influence, will be able to push a succesful fork. And we all know what that would mean: no more 21 million limit. We will be back to central banking.

The argument that the community will decide what is its best interest is invalid. Aristotle already knew that democracy turn into demagogy. And history and economics show that the outcomes of democratic process don't align with the best interest of the voters.

Basically the problem is that: by forking we are choosing a democratic political process, and it's the very same process which lead to central banking and is currently unable to stop it.

Just because someone makes a client (XT or original satoshi client) doesn't mean they make people choose to use that client.

If that were so then Satoshi himself had political influence thus negating your point entirely.

I don't see anything that XT is doing other than allowing people a choice to switch their client to one that supports bigger blocks (and a few other minor things).

Ultimately people choose what they want to use.

Political influence lol.

Sorry but I make my own choices by thinking with my brain, not who is in the lime light.

It's people who have chosen central banking.

Trusting people for making good choices in monetary matters is a recipe for central banking. Populism will always win at the end of the day.

no, the Blockstream core devs already had their own Jekyll Island moment in the backwoods of California early last year.

^^
Trusting not people, but regulators to manage the money? Just cheezus man, raise your head and look.

[cypherdoc]

If XT is so great, no one should have to sell it to anyone, people will just switch.

There is avast difference to discussing XT vs "selling" XT to users.

Kind of hard to discuss it if reddit moderators keep deleting posts/threads related to XT and moving XT discussion to alt coin section of this forum.

People can only switch if there is enough discussion about XT.

They won't just wake up one day and go "i'll with go to xtnodes.com and download the latest client" without anyone previously mentioning it on a forum etc.

Ultimately users will choose what they want in the end.

All of this back and forth is drama and kiddy BS. Pick a stance and stick to it without the ad hominem or personal attacks (<----directed at those going out of their way to bash others).

You can discuss proposals to change the Bitcoin main chain, but a forked chain that is not also the main chain is an altchain and not truly Bitcoin.

[–]theymos -1 points 4 days ago
Discussion of hardforks is not silenced. That's why a possible hardfork has been discussed ad nauseam on /r/Bitcoin for the past few months. XT-specific submissions are removed because XT is not Bitcoin.
permalinksavecontextfull comments (189)reportgive gold

...yet XT is using the exact same chain/protocol as core aside from the future possibility of block size increase.

Not an alt chain in any sense as it has been used on other coins like litecoin that are completely separate chains and protocols.

XT operates just like CORE as of right now.

and preserves the past historical ledger perfectly and reissues identical coins on the XT chain.  you don't lose.

[cypherdoc]

Side chains are certainly altcoins.

Yeah and they don't run on top of Bitcoin. They run parallel like any other alt coin.

Yet once again it is okay to discuss side chains on reddit? Lol

and there is every incentive by a SC founder to make it dominant over the MC.  why?  b/c it would force all current Bitcoin cold wallet holders to migrate to the new dominant innovative SC which itself has it's early adopters/designers who stand to make a fortune by flipping their founder's coin to the panicked Bitcoin migraters.

thus, every corporation/entity that consults with Blockstream to design an innovative, proprietary SC will, before they pay a dime in consulting fees, force Blockstream to sign an airtight non-compete to prevent any backporting of said innovation back to Bitcoin.

[cypherdoc]

But I don't agree that 75% of hashrate or whatever is network consensus.

I predict that miners won't (vote to) change unless there is network consensus.

one down:

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3h6lk8/toomim_bros_supports_democracy_and_bitcoin_xt/

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

But if the old ledger will not preserve the XT ledger perfectly, what happens if suddenly the 75% drops 25% or otherwise? Why 75%?

Its not a moving target. Its a change point. If you want to change back, for whatever reason, you start a new process to get the network to follow you.

[vokain]

But if the old ledger will not preserve the XT ledger perfectly, what happens if suddenly the 75% drops 25% or otherwise? Why 75%?

Its not a moving target. Its a change point. If you want to change back, for whatever reason, you start a new process to get the network to follow you.

I see now. Thank you. Also just read about the 1000 blocks conditional.

[cypherdoc]

I can understand that theymos is in a very difficult spot - he is probably right (in a literal, technical sense) in the assertion that XT as a theory is on topic, but as a viable, downloadable solution it becomes an alt-coin. Until it reaches consensus,

But what troubles me is the zeal with which this policy is still being executed across the platforms. At this point, who really benefits from a suppression of debate?
(bear in mind that we are free to discuss it here and many other topics)

During the fall of the Berlin wall, there was a pivotal moment when the border guards finally recognised the futility of their duty, and allowed people through unchallenged.

Way out of the mess: Core adds a largeblock patch, different from gavins but who cares. Othere XT patches are delayed to make them look important.

If not, they go the way of the Xfree86 developers - into the fog.

Next fight is over the name. I suggest renaming XT to core by april depending on 75% supermajority as expressed by just doing it.

It would have to follow a BIP. But isnt this scenario what MH and GA wanted all along?  The failure to get this resulted in XT.

Exactly. It is the way out, no fork, everybody is happy (some just a tad butthurt).

i'm not sure about that.  no one, esp me, wants to live under a Blockstream totalitarian regime that only will act when they have a gun pointed at their heads.  look at some of the kludges they've slipped into the code w/o anyone knowing according to Hearn's forking article.

[Peter R]

Bitcoin XT (larger blocks) just moved into 3rd place:

[cypherdoc]

continuing the ramp:

Have a look at https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/?q= it is more up to date.

ty for that.  oh my gaud  :

[cypherdoc]

It ignores the fact that for big blocks to be happening, there must already be 75% of hashing power signalling support for it. When that happens the first big block can be mined, before that bigger blocks are not mined.

So now you have 75% of the network working on a chain that supports bigger blocks and mining bigger blocks, whilst 25% try to mine a chain that only contains <1MB blocks.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out which chain will *very quickly* becomes longest.

you had to go and ruin it, didn't you?