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Author Topic: BakCoin (was: decline in listening nodes)  (Read 2857 times)
tvbcof (OP)
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May 31, 2012, 09:15:22 PM
 #1


This is a good point, and I respect that you have made it.  It is actually related to a part of my comment that you snipped out where I called attention to the very different nature of Bitcoin vs. others in terms of 'centralized control'.

Anyone who cares to do something other than wave the pom-poms may notice that I have a great deal of respect for and hopes for Bitcoin even in the 'worst' of circumstances and am certainly not immune to recognizing the strong points which it has.


Fair enough.  Let's assume for a moment that your not trolling, and that your concerns are valid.

Do you have any suggestions for improving the protocol?

Boy...not really.  My suggestion (which I made earlier) is to try to leverage Bitcoin's success in development of an architecture which really focuses on scalabity (while retaining the 'p2p' nature as at least I classify it.)  The key would be that a common vision is shared between the solutions and there is general cooperation.

This could take the form of simple sharding of a very Bitcoin-like protocol in which the shards are manageable at an entry-level and value is transferred between shards in more of a 'backbone network'.  An individual could still do a lot of transactions as today by choosing their shards carefully, particularly if their interaction was with vendors who were 'in' a lot of shards.

A solution which I have put some thought into is to have an extremely stripped-down and lightened up varient of Bitcoin with some extensions which could realistically be expected to live in perpetuity and would serve as a trusted 'reserve currency' upon which shards of various form are built.  I started to describe some of my earlier 'thought experiments' as http://bakcoin.org if anyone is interested.  The advantage of such a solution is that it could perhaps avoid the need for a 'backbone network' at all.  Maybe.


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It is a common myth that Bitcoin is ruled by a majority of miners. This is not true. Bitcoin miners "vote" on the ordering of transactions, but that's all they do. They can't vote to change the network rules.
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May 31, 2012, 10:25:51 PM
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We don't control that website, and thus don't control that metric.  Fudders are gonna fud.  It's what they do.

Hmm... that website doesn't really seem anti-bitcoin.  And if you're gonna write all that code you must be at least a little interested.  I was simply thinking someone here might know the owner and ask nicely. :-)

I ment that we can't take it down, and detractors are going to find a way to replicate this even if it didn't exist.

Quote
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And the membership of this forum crossed 10K months ago, but there is no chance that the ownership of this forum is going to start counting IP addresses.  That wouldn't be any more relevant a metric anyway.  Not only do not all members run their own client, much less one full time; there are many more people who use bitcoin who don't have memberships.

of course, but one can guess-estimate the number of non-forum members; just like radio stations estimate listeners from request phone calls... and is really the derivative that matters not the value anyway.

Quote
Again, the growth or decline of the number of listening-but-not-mining clients is irrelevent to the function or resilence of the bitcoin network whether they are on the open Internet or some PVN.  Beyond some minimum number required to support the bandwidth of the network as a whole, that is.  The very fact that we can't know how many (or where are) all the network's nodes happen to exist is, itself, a contribution to it's resiliance.  An attacker can DOS the pools or exchanges, because he can find out it's IP address and a government agent can steal a server because he can find the farm that holds it; but these things cannot stop the bitcoin network for no other reason that you cannot kill what you cannot catch.  At worst, these kinds of events simply disrupt the network temporaroly and force more users towards Tor and I2P.

I'm not worried about technical disruption of bitcoin but social -- after all there still aren't many merchants accepting it.  BTC could just fade away... statistics showing a growing user base would convince merchants to offer it as a payment mechanism.  You are right, the inability to fully count/control the members is a great strength which is why I said "approximate numbers".  Hard numbers would be great, but if those are not available, it would still be useful to have the same kind of partly-fabricated numbers that businesses have used since the beginning of... well the beginning of VCs probably... to justify their business model.



Whatever will be will be.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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May 31, 2012, 10:31:54 PM
 #3


This is a good point, and I respect that you have made it.  It is actually related to a part of my comment that you snipped out where I called attention to the very different nature of Bitcoin vs. others in terms of 'centralized control'.

Anyone who cares to do something other than wave the pom-poms may notice that I have a great deal of respect for and hopes for Bitcoin even in the 'worst' of circumstances and am certainly not immune to recognizing the strong points which it has.


Fair enough.  Let's assume for a moment that your not trolling, and that your concerns are valid.

Do you have any suggestions for improving the protocol?

Boy...not really.  My suggestion (which I made earlier) is to try to leverage Bitcoin's success in development of an architecture which really focuses on scalabity (while retaining the 'p2p' nature as at least I classify it.)  The key would be that a common vision is shared between the solutions and there is general cooperation.


Reading this made me think of this....

http://www.dilbert.com/strips/2012-05-25/

Quote
This could take the form of simple sharding of a very Bitcoin-like protocol in which the shards are manageable at an entry-level and value is transferred between shards in more of a 'backbone network'.  An individual could still do a lot of transactions as today by choosing their shards carefully, particularly if their interaction was with vendors who were 'in' a lot of shards.

A solution which I have put some thought into is to have an extremely stripped-down and lightened up varient of Bitcoin with some extensions which could realistically be expected to live in perpetuity and would serve as a trusted 'reserve currency' upon which shards of various form are built.  I started to describe some of my earlier 'thought experiments' as http://bakcoin.org if anyone is interested.  The advantage of such a solution is that it could perhaps avoid the need for a 'backbone network' at all.  Maybe.



I say Stratum is a better plan, but whatever.  I really wasn't asking for your ideas, only checking to see if you had any.  Now take those ideas and fork the bitcoin code.  Start your new & imporoved altcoin, and we shall see.  If you are right, everyone here, including myself, will eventually be using your altcoin and you will have been the ultimate early adopter.  I, for one, don't begrudge Satoshi his early mining gains, nor would I begrudge yours if you turn out to be correct.  But I don't thingk that you're correct, so I'll hang out here for a while longer.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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May 31, 2012, 10:40:14 PM
Last edit: May 31, 2012, 10:57:30 PM by MoonShadow
 #4

A solution which I have put some thought into is to have an extremely stripped-down and lightened up varient of Bitcoin with some extensions which could realistically be expected to live in perpetuity and would serve as a trusted 'reserve currency' upon which shards of various form are built.  I started to describe some of my earlier 'thought experiments' as http://bakcoin.org if anyone is interested.  The advantage of such a solution is that it could perhaps avoid the need for a 'backbone network' at all.  Maybe.



I went to bakcoin.org and read your ideas.  I hope you're not an econ undergrad, but I suspect that you are.  There is nothing like a little knowledge unconnected with experience to beget such a bad idea.  But don't feel like I'm belittling your ideas, sometimes us old guys have to eat crow.  A deliberately deflationary (and punative) cryptocurrency might have a niche.  Go out and make it, and let the free market decide.

EDIT: On page #3 you refer to the 'monolithic' nature of bitcoin.  I don't think that word means what you think that it means.

EDIT2: What is your understanding of what a 'supernode' would look like in a future with bitcoin exceeding the transaction rates of Visa?  And under what conditions could the successful growth of bitcoin to that transaction level directly lead to it's failure?

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
tvbcof (OP)
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May 31, 2012, 10:56:02 PM
 #5


...

A solution which I have put some thought into is to have an extremely stripped-down and lightened up varient of Bitcoin with some extensions which could realistically be expected to live in perpetuity and would serve as a trusted 'reserve currency' upon which shards of various form are built.  I started to describe some of my earlier 'thought experiments' as http://bakcoin.org if anyone is interested.  The advantage of such a solution is that it could perhaps avoid the need for a 'backbone network' at all.  Maybe.


I went to bakcoin.org and read your ideas.  I hope you're not an econ undergrad, but I suspect that you are.  There is nothing like a little knowledge unconnected with experience to beget such a bad idea.  But don't feel like I'm belittling your ideas, sometimes us old guys have to eat crow.  A deliberately deflationary (and punative) cryptocurrency might have a niche.  Go out and make it, and let the free market decide.

Heh.  Nope.  Engineer.  No interest in economics until maybe 10 years ago when I started to have money to figure out what to do with (though thinking back a long long time ago, I guess I did take an interest in econ 101 and got the top grade...mostly because I had not studied and thought I was behind so I put some dedicated focus on it for a few days.  But it was a fairly shitty university anyway without much competition at that level.)

As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all.  A lot of the material (both presented and not yet presented) is fairly orthogonal.

Anyway, thanks for reading.


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May 31, 2012, 11:03:18 PM
 #6


As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all. 

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?  That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
tvbcof (OP)
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May 31, 2012, 11:10:33 PM
 #7


As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all. 

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?

The basic idea from an engineering point of view is that one starts with a full set of baggage then loses it over time.

That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.


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MoonShadow
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May 31, 2012, 11:14:48 PM
 #8


As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all. 

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?

The basic idea from an engineering point of view is that one starts with a full set of baggage then loses it over time.


And why would that be helpful in your view?

Quote
That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.



Wow.  Gresham's law in inverse.  I don't know how to respond to that.  I'm not even sure that I should other than 'corrolation is not causation'.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
tvbcof (OP)
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May 31, 2012, 11:27:41 PM
 #9


As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all. 

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?

The basic idea from an engineering point of view is that one starts with a full set of baggage then loses it over time.


And why would that be helpful in your view?

I see the opposite as an Achilles heal of Bitcoin in some ways. A controlling factor in it's scaling and a regrettable factor dictating it's evolution.

Quote
That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.


Wow.  Gresham's law in inverse.  I don't know how to respond to that.  I'm not even sure that I should other than 'corrolation is not causation'.

It's arguably a mistake to label 'bakcoin' as a form of money...and certainly a mistake to think of it as one in any normal conception of the word.


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May 31, 2012, 11:30:44 PM
 #10


As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all. 

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?

The basic idea from an engineering point of view is that one starts with a full set of baggage then loses it over time.


And why would that be helpful in your view?

I see the opposite as an Achilles heal of Bitcoin in some ways. A controlling factor in it's scaling and a regrettable factor dictating it's evolution.


Okay, you see it.  Help me see what you see.  Do you hear voices too?  Just because you see it doesn't make it real.  Explain.

Quote

Quote
That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.


Wow.  Gresham's law in inverse.  I don't know how to respond to that.  I'm not even sure that I should other than 'corrolation is not causation'.

It's arguably a mistake to label 'bakcoin' as a form of money...and certainly a mistake to think of it as one in any normal conception of the word.



And how would non-money work as a reserve currency?

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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May 31, 2012, 11:52:57 PM
 #11

this is funny. i'm enjoying this Cheesy
tvbcof (OP)
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May 31, 2012, 11:56:22 PM
 #12


As for the 'deflation' complaint, the whole idea revolves around ratios so absolute values are not even a concern.  The 'deflation' is utilized to facilitate a predictable (and long) lifespan is all. 

And why would you expect that deliberate deflation would contribute to longevity of a cryptocurrency?

The basic idea from an engineering point of view is that one starts with a full set of baggage then loses it over time.


And why would that be helpful in your view?

I see the opposite as an Achilles heal of Bitcoin in some ways. A controlling factor in it's scaling and a regrettable factor dictating it's evolution.


Okay, you see it.  Help me see what you see.  Do you hear voices too?  Just because you see it doesn't make it real.  Explain.

More and more people complaining about a blockchain size, load ave, etc.  That's in the here and now with Bitcoin being .0001% the size that it could be called upon to be.  Or less.

Beyond that:  More people showing concern about a 'network backbone' (I included.)  Theories about 'supernodes' with datacenter class network connectivity with hundreds of cores and load balances distributing the workload to them.  And even that only handles what I would consider relatively modest Bitcoin utilization in a more global view.  Beyond that I've not heard of anyone having any ideas.

Quote

Quote
That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.


Wow.  Gresham's law in inverse.  I don't know how to respond to that.  I'm not even sure that I should other than 'corrolation is not causation'.

It's arguably a mistake to label 'bakcoin' as a form of money...and certainly a mistake to think of it as one in any normal conception of the word.



And how would non-money work as a reserve currency?

Anything cold serve as a 'reserve currency' that met the demands of those using it.  In this case I think that the most critical aspect would be that people trust it.  A good part of my design philosophy here is to reduce the reason for people _not_ to trust it and/or trust it more than other things as a basis for notation.

My document currently does not expand on the concept that all of the 'sponsored exchange currencies' may gain some significant advantages by sharing the workload or supporting bakcoin.  For instance, they can use it as a free-form notepad (of modest size) and everyone will be securing everyone else's notes.  So, there may be other advantages that gold or seashells don't really provide.


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May 31, 2012, 11:58:25 PM
 #13

this is funny. i'm enjoying this Cheesy

It's not funny, it's a market being regulated by strictly market consumers (i.e. a free market working).

A consumer spotted something he has a potential issue with and raised this issue with the rest of the market and now the consumers are all weighing in with their own concerns and reassurances. If the issue is indeed something the consensus feels needs action to be addressed, it will get addressed and if it's not it wont, or maybe partially both and all this will happen without any force involved and without anyone ruling over anyone else.

Btw I'm not saying the market will get it right, but it sure has heck of better chance than some fallible bureaucrat somewhere leeching money stolen from people.

My personality type: INTJ - please forgive my weaknesses (Not naturally in tune with others feelings; may be insensitive at times, tend to respond to conflict with logic and reason, tend to believe I'm always right)

If however you enjoyed my post: 15j781DjuJeVsZgYbDVt2NZsGrWKRWFHpp
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June 01, 2012, 12:12:59 AM
 #14

this is funny. i'm enjoying this Cheesy

It's not funny, it's a market being regulated by strictly market consumers (i.e. a free market working).

A consumer spotted something he has a potential issue with and raised this issue with the rest of the market and now the consumers are all weighing in with their own concerns and reassurances. If the issue is indeed something the consensus feels needs action to be addressed, it will get addressed and if it's not it wont, or maybe partially both and all this will happen without any force involved and without anyone ruling over anyone else.

Btw I'm not saying the market will get it right, but it sure has heck of better chance than some fallible bureaucrat somewhere leeching money stolen from people.

aw come on hazek.  we know each other better now.  i'm just havin fun watching what i don't have the time to do myself  Cheesy
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June 01, 2012, 12:53:08 AM
 #15

More and more people complaining about a blockchain size, load ave, etc.  That's in the here and now with Bitcoin being .0001% the size that it could be called upon to be.  Or less.

Which is the driving force for 1) development and adoption of light & blockchainless clients 2) Stratum and other similar overlay networks such as is used by blockchainless clients (BitcoinSpinner) 3) full implimentation of Satoshi's protocol, in particular the parts that support independent light clients without an overlay network.

Quote
Beyond that:  More people showing concern about a 'network backbone' (I included.)


I've brought up those concerns years ago myself, long before the bitcoin wiki existed, much less had a 'scalability' section.  You're far from the first to bring these issues up.  Don't get me wrong, the practical scalability of the network is a real issue, and just saying "the market will find a way" isn't really good enough, but there are very smart people that have and are working on those issues.

Quote

  Theories about 'supernodes' with datacenter class network connectivity with hundreds of cores and load balances distributing the workload to them.  And even that only handles what I would consider relatively modest Bitcoin utilization in a more global view.  Beyond that I've not heard of anyone having any ideas.


Really?  Never heard of any alternative ideas?  I've personally mentioned Stratum three times in this thread just this week.  I also mentioned BitcoinSpinner & similar clients in this thread; which despite your views actually is the market responding to your issue of scalability.  You  might not like the idea of some guy  running such a server to aid blockchainless clients because you consider it centralization, but have you ever considered running your own Stratum server?  Do I need to add a link so that you can find it?

Quote
Quote

Quote
That actually defys one of the root conditions for an ideal money, namely that it doesn't require special conditions to keep it from rotting, slipping away or killing it's owner.  Otherwise wheat, mercury or plutonium would have made fine commodity monies alongside gold & silver.

Bakcoin is not at all 'ideal money'.  It's totally shitty money, and I tried to make that clear.  The reason for this is that 'good' money attracts 'poor' owners.  At least in terms of meeting the stated goals of the project.


Wow.  Gresham's law in inverse.  I don't know how to respond to that.  I'm not even sure that I should other than 'corrolation is not causation'.

It's arguably a mistake to label 'bakcoin' as a form of money...and certainly a mistake to think of it as one in any normal conception of the word.



And how would non-money work as a reserve currency?

Anything cold serve as a 'reserve currency' that met the demands of those using it. 


That's true enough, taken alone.  usually such need-meeting things have a set of common characteristics that lead most people to collectively refer to such things as "money".  So deliberately creating a currency that is the reverse of good money seems like a poor design decision.

Quote
In this case I think that the most critical aspect would be that people trust it.  A good part of my design philosophy here is to reduce the reason for people _not_ to trust it and/or trust it more than other things as a basis for notation.

So that I am clear on this, are you trying to move the trust metric away from the unit of currency?  Bitcoin tries to eleminate the need for trusted intermediaries and onto the collective protocol & network; are you trying to create a currency that no one trusts for anything or are you trying to move the trust onto the exchanges that would be using bakcoin to start their own smaller cryptocurrencies?

Quote

My document currently does not expand on the concept that all of the 'sponsored exchange currencies' may gain some significant advantages by sharing the workload or supporting bakcoin.  For instance, they can use it as a free-form notepad (of modest size) and everyone will be securing everyone else's notes.  So, there may be other advantages that gold or seashells don't really provide.


I see a number of reasons that I wouldn't trust it for anything, based on just your implied design.  If I, as an end user wouldn't trust it as a medium of exchange, why would I trust an exchange that used it as a backing for their own vanity cryptocurrency?  In turn, why should the exchanges trust it, or each other?

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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June 01, 2012, 02:18:27 AM
 #16

my gaud Moonshadow; you have the patience of Job  Wink
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June 01, 2012, 03:20:28 AM
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Got busy at work and just now saw your edits.  I see your other post as well, and owe at least an analysis of these stratum and such things before responding.  To say the honest truth, I've not been all that interested in crypto-currencies for a while, but our conversation is re-sparking my interest to some extent.

...

EDIT: On page #3 you refer to the 'monolithic' nature of bitcoin.  I don't think that word means what you think that it means.

I remember struggling with a word to use there.  What I meant to indicate is, among other things, that as currently implemented there is one and only one block chain for Bitcoin.  While it is conducive to significant pruning and optimization, all of the load of the entire economy must, by necessity, pass through this artifact.

EDIT2: What is your understanding of what a 'supernode' would look like in a future with bitcoin exceeding the transaction rates of Visa?  And under what conditions could the successful growth of bitcoin to that transaction level directly lead to it's failure?

As I've heard it described, a load balancer would accept transactions and distribute them to processing cores to perform the workload which would otherwise swamp one core.  IIRC, that is fairly well described in the 'scaling' article.

There is no particular rocket science behind such an architecture.  As long as the workload is not terribly sequence sensitive it's a fairly simple solution.  And the nature of the algorithms employed by most load balancers allow them to work at close to wire speed of most media.  They can even do packet analysis, filtering, and modification (over and above what their job requires) at near wire speed.  Even properly designed deep packet operations can be amazingly efficient (which goes some distance toward explaining why I fear actively hostile infrastructure providers.)

There are several big problems here from my point of view:

1) Moore's Law notwithstanding, it will be a fair bit of time before such technology is within reasonable grasp of Joe Sixpack, and longer yet before he's running such a setup in his garage.

2) If/when the transaction load swamps what can reasonable be expected on readily available media (say 10G at this point) it'll be back to the drawing board.  Probably before that since the blockchain itself would be at some risk if it were maintained exclusively in something like memcached.


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June 01, 2012, 04:22:22 AM
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...

EDIT: On page #3 you refer to the 'monolithic' nature of bitcoin.  I don't think that word means what you think that it means.

I remember struggling with a word to use there.  What I meant to indicate is, among other things, that as currently implemented there is one and only one block chain for Bitcoin. 


There is only one truth, however that truth is presently replicated in 10K+ places.  But for the sake of argument, let's consider this...

Quote

While it is conducive to significant pruning and optimization, all of the load of the entire economy must, by necessity, pass through this artifact.

Not, in fact, correct.  The 'light' clients that I have been referring to are also mentioned in Satoshi's white paper.  Presently the network sends the entire block as a whole digital artifact, but that isn't necessary.  The protocol permits a block header, merkle tree, and transactions to be transmitted as indepedent digital artifacts.  This small change in the network implimentation of the protocol would go a long way towards reducing redundency and reducing bandwidth.  It would also permit a light client to request only the headers, merkle tree & only the transactions that contain addresses that concern itself.  Furthermore, full nodes on the edge of the network (think middle Africa) can receive the blocks in a digital stream instead of participating in the full netowrk.  There are several different modals permitted by the protocol than jsut what is presently dominate.  The network is the way it is right now because that core backbone netowrk is required, but it doesn't need to remain the only way to get the blocks.

Quote
EDIT2: What is your understanding of what a 'supernode' would look like in a future with bitcoin exceeding the transaction rates of Visa?  And under what conditions could the successful growth of bitcoin to that transaction level directly lead to it's failure?

As I've heard it described, a load balancer would accept transactions and distribute them to processing cores to perform the workload which would otherwise swamp one core.  IIRC, that is fairly well described in the 'scaling' article.


That was also a deliberately extreme example of a workable solution.  The more likley result would be a high end rack mount server with a gigibit service & a cryptographic hardware co-porocessing unit to off-load the burdens of transaction verifications.  This only applies to nodes that would be taking the full traffic of the bitcoin netowrk in a future that puts bitcoin as larger than the economy of the US, which woudl be comparable to drinking from a firehose.  This kind of node verifies everything that passes through it's control before being forwarded to it's many peers.  It's not necessary for every node to verify the validity of a transaction before forwarding it, by default a lightweight client couldn't verify anything.  All nodes do that now because all full clients are supernodes.  Again, there is nothing that says you can't continue to do so till the end of time, but it's not necessary for anyone besides miners or the truly paranoid.
Quote
There is no particular rocket science behind such an architecture.  As long as the workload is not terribly sequence sensitive it's a fairly simple solution.  And the nature of the algorithms employed by most load balancers allow them to work at close to wire speed of most media.  They can even do packet analysis, filtering, and modification (over and above what their job requires) at near wire speed.  Even properly designed deep packet operations can be amazingly efficient (which goes some distance toward explaining why I fear actively hostile infrastructure providers.)

There are several big problems here from my point of view:

1) Moore's Law notwithstanding, it will be a fair bit of time before such technology is within reasonable grasp of Joe Sixpack, and longer yet before he's running such a setup in his garage.


Well, my 4 year old android cell phone has more processing power than the most powerful Cray available 30 years ago.  That said, why does Joe Sick Pack need to run a full client(supernode) himself?  Why can't he hire a service to act in his behalf?  Or if he doesn't want to trust some corporation to track his balances (such as BitcoinSpinner) what stops him from joining or starting a co-op to do that for him?  Why is it full client or bust?

Quote

2) If/when the transaction load swamps what can reasonable be expected on readily available media (say 10G at this point) it'll be back to the drawing board.  Probably before that since the blockchain itself would be at some risk if it were maintained exclusively in something like memcached.



Why?  Why would that be 'back to the drawing board'?  I don't think that we will ever get there because of the incentives involved with transaction fees, but what if we did?  Full time pruning of teh blockchain puts a high end limit to just how large the blockchain can become without each and every new transaction resulting in the pruning of some previous transaction.  So far, it's impossible for any transaction on the main network with less than a single Satoshi, and likewise impossible for the transaction fee to be less than a single Satoshi.  Overlay netowrks are destined to take much of this traffic burden off the main netowrk in an effort to avoid transaction fees and bundle mutiple transactions into a single send-to-many transaction to settle up at the end of the business day.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'
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June 01, 2012, 05:05:29 AM
 #19

Sounds to me like this "bakcoin" thing IS bitcoin in its current common use, with fiat currency playing the role of your exchange currencies.

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June 01, 2012, 05:20:01 AM
 #20

Sounds to me like this "bakcoin" thing IS bitcoin in its current common use, with fiat currency playing the role of your exchange currencies.

?? How?


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