ANYONE can create a transaction that is valid only one chosen branch with any wallet! They don't need to be clever bitcoin hackers.
Can you say exactly why the transaction would be valid only on that branch?
Topic: ... - page 12. (Read 61003 times)
I don't think it's helpful to refer to both the existing protocol and Mike's 8 GB block limit monstrosity both as "Bitcoin". It makes discussion difficult. When I talk about "Bitcoin" I mean the system we currently have, in which there is a blocksize limit of 1 MB. That Bitcoin is the own which doesn't see the invalid blocks.
Well, sorry, that is religion, not science or engineering...
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The longest valid chain accepted by Core *is* the longest valid chain, by definition.
Of course not; that is the longest valid chain *only for Core*. For implementations that accept bigger blocks, bigger blocks are (of course) valid, so the longest valid chain may be a different one.
And for implementations of dogecoin, dogecoin blocks are valid. What's your point? For Bitcoin core, 2 MB blocks are invalid no matter how many miners mine them.
That is exactly my point: the word "invalid" is meaningless by itself. Things are valid or invalid only according to some standard, software, person etc. 2 MB blocks are valid for all clients and miners who are running any version of the Bitcoin software that accepts them.
It will not be easy to use the two chains independently, because all transactions are in principle executed on both chains. (That is another reason why they cannot be called "altcoins".) Only transactions that spend coins mined after the fork will be executed exclusively on the same branch.
The XT chain will quickly become polluted with outputs which are invalid on the BTC chain. "Taint" from coinbases generated only on the XT chain will fan out.
Yes; just as any transaction that uses utxos tainted by coinbases of blocks in the small-block branch will execute only on the small-block chain.
But only sophisticated users will know that, and only they would be able to exploit that feature to work with each coin independently. (How would you get your own pre-fork coins tainted that way?)
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Have you read BIP101? It proposes jumping the blocksize limit to 8 MB next year, and then doubling of the blocksize limit every 2 years, for 20 years. That gives us 8192 MB blocks in 21 years. And that's what the sane bitcoiners should want?
Sigh, it wlll NOT give 8 MB blocks next year, nor 8 GB blocks 21 years from now. Those are block size LIMITS. Bitcoin had a 32 MB block size LIMIT for almost 2 years at the beginnig, but teeny weeny block SIZES. In fact it had a 1 MB size LIMIT since then, and yet the average block SIZE is still 0.45 MB.
I wrote "limit" twice in the sentence you are complaining about.
Indeed you did, but then you concluded that BIP101 "gives us 8192 MB blocks in 21 years". It surely will NOT, just as Satoshi's original implementation did not give 32 MB blocks in 2009, and the reformed one did NOT give 1 MB blocks in 2010.
If the block SIZEs ever get close to 8 GB, it means that the traffic is 15'000 times what it is today, which ma mean a user base of hundreds of millions.
No, it doesn't. Any miner can create a full block by generating their own transactions for free.
And why would he do that? Why didn't miners create 32 MB blocks in 2009, or 1 MB blocks since 2010?
Bigger blocks take longer to propagate and have a slightly higher chance of being orphaned. There is no advantage for a miner to pad his blocks, and a slight disadvantage.
Moreover, a miner who, for some reason, wished to fill his blocks to the limit cannot broadcast his spam to the network, because some other miner could mine it and take the fees. But then everybody will realize that those extra 7.5 MB is spam that he created himself. Then his peers, even without explicit agreement, could decide to ignore his blocks and orphan them.
But I do agree that BIP101's schedule is stupid: it is silly to plan parameter changes several years in advance, when no one knows even whether bitcoin will survive to next year.
Good. Then please stop arguing in its favour. The sooner it dies, the better. We need to reject this and find a proper solution.
I do not argue in favor of BIP101. A substantial increase in the block size limit before the end of the year is obviously necessary to keep bitcoin working, as it has so far, for a few more years. Any software that does that will do.
However, it seems that the only way that will happen is through software that is not controlled by Blockstream. People who care about bitcoin's future should try to become independent from the BitcoinCore version.
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
XT is being run by a few hobbyists who dream of a State-sanctioned utopian PanoptiCoin, free transactions and ice-cream forever ... it will always be niche belief system but not accepted by the mainstream.
Throwing around insults to get people to listen to you -
It wasn't intended as an insult, merely bringing enquiring minds up to speed with the state of play in the real world. People who are delusional can be easily offended by truthiness I know.
So everyone that runs XT or disagrees with you is delusional, eh? Reading the bitcoin mailing list gives me all the personal attacks and divisive community behavior I need but at least there are some technical points mixed in with the antisocial rants. You can guess the button I'm clicking next.
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
XT is being run by a few hobbyists who dream of a State-sanctioned utopian PanoptiCoin, free transactions and ice-cream forever ... it will always be niche belief system but not accepted by the mainstream.
Throwing around insults to get people to listen to you -
It wasn't intended as an insult, merely bringing enquiring minds up to speed with the state of play in the real world. People who are delusional can be easily offended by truthiness I know.
You should take your own advice.
Atleast grow some balls to admit your attempt to insult was a fail.
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
XT is being run by a few hobbyists who dream of a State-sanctioned utopian PanoptiCoin, free transactions and ice-cream forever ... it will always be niche belief system but not accepted by the mainstream.
Throwing around insults to get people to listen to you -
It wasn't intended as an insult, merely bringing enquiring minds up to speed with the state of play in the real world. People who are delusional can be easily offended by truthiness I know.
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
XT is being run by a few hobbyists who dream of a State-sanctioned utopian PanoptiCoin, free transactions and ice-cream forever ... it will always be niche belief system but not accepted by the mainstream.
Throwing around insults to get people to listen to you - how's that been working so far?
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
Inevitable how? XT isn't happening, so there's not much projections to make. The BIP100 which probably has the most support right now is not likely to come to pass either for quite a while.
Agreed, nothing is inevitable. In terms of block size increases, BIP 101 has the lead from industry (~9 significant companies that have signed on) while BIP 100 has the lead from miners. Neither are a sure thing and neither are dead in the water. What does seem rather unlikely is no block size increase within the next 18 months. I'm confident that users, miners and industry will put enough pressure on any reluctant devs that this won't be a plausible outcome.
https://scalingbitcoin.org/ -> It's not called BitcoinIsGoodEnough.org for a reason.
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
XT is being run by a few hobbyists who dream of a State-sanctioned utopian PanoptiCoin, free transactions and ice-cream forever ... it will always be niche belief system but not accepted by the mainstream.
As it appears that XT is inevitable it would be nice get a better understanding of the migration path to XT or effects of staying firm with the core... anyone care to make some rough projections?
Inevitable how? XT isn't happening, so there's not much projections to make. The BIP100 which probably has the most support right now is not likely to come to pass either for quite a while.
As a comp sci prof you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to bitcoin. Here is one example:
Some clever bitcoin hackers may be able to create transactions that are valid on only one chosen branch. However, most transactions issued by typical users will be executed in both chains
Well, can you say more specifically what is wrong with that quote?
ANYONE can create a transaction that is valid only one chosen branch with any wallet! They don't need to be clever bitcoin hackers. There is not such thing as bitcoin hackers, unless they find a bug/way to cheat the consensus like that bug where someone was able to create billions of bitcoins in 2010 (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Value_overflow_incident)
No, it doesn't. Any miner can create a full block by generating their own transactions for free.
This is not true. Publishing a large block has a cost to the miner due to fact that the larger he makes his block, the greater the chance that his block is orphaned. This effect is illustrated in Fig. 8 of this paper:
As an example, in the absence of a block size limit, it would cost a miner approximately 100 BTC on average to publish a 128 MB block, assuming a propagation impedance of 7.5 sec / MB.
All the BIPs are a pathetic attempt at reproducing the lame presidential elections soup we all get served.
You think you have a choice? You dont.
To believe that voting is going to help the situation, is the same as forking will improve bitcoin. But it just wont.
And big corps, banksters et al. will win again. and again.. and friggin again.
You think you have a choice? You dont.
To believe that voting is going to help the situation, is the same as forking will improve bitcoin. But it just wont.
And big corps, banksters et al. will win again. and again.. and friggin again.
that just sounds like you are fear driven and frustrated.
i dont see ANY argument in this.
And what do you propose?
As long as Bitcoin remains open source and decentralized (and to remain decentralized we need the nodes to be able to be run under normal computers and normal bandwith) the alternative to the status quo will remain. My fear is that eventually the devs sell themselves and give way too much to regulations and so on. The original idea of Bitcoin by Satoshi was uncompromised and anarchic and didn't gave a fuck about being accepted by governments or not, it was a revolution. Let's see how things turn out.
this is what i support and love about bitcoin.
satoshis vision also included that anybody can use bitcoin (with SPV wallets). he did not want a blocksize limit: it was just added as a TEMPORARY solution to prevent spam in the EARLY days when bitcoin was worth nothing (usd-wise).
i support bigger blocks. i dont see the risk of gov control because of this (many people regularly downloads gigabytes of movies - and you are afraid the government can stop bitcoin? - they'll go after shops, exchanges and pools if they REALLY want to. they can do that in any case).
i support any proposal which reasonably increases blocksize and does scale over time. it may be dynamic or a static regular increase i dont really care.
blocksize and centralization: i dont think this is a real problem nowadays. we have an overlay-network which is used by miners to submit block-headers first and transactions are submitted out of band.
imho: its better if the protocol allows too-big-blocks instead of the opposite. miners do want to make money and they heavily rely on a working bitcoin system (otherwise there initial investment is gone). they wont harm too much...
All the BIPs are a pathetic attempt at reproducing the lame presidential elections soup we all get served.
You think you have a choice? You dont.
To believe that voting is going to help the situation, is the same as forking will improve bitcoin. But it just wont.
And big corps, banksters et al. will win again. and again.. and friggin again.
You think you have a choice? You dont.
To believe that voting is going to help the situation, is the same as forking will improve bitcoin. But it just wont.
And big corps, banksters et al. will win again. and again.. and friggin again.
that just sounds like you are fear driven and frustrated.
i dont see ANY argument in this.
And what do you propose?
As long as Bitcoin remains open source and decentralized (and to remain decentralized we need the nodes to be able to be run under normal computers and normal bandwith) the alternative to the status quo will remain. My fear is that eventually the devs sell themselves and give way too much to regulations and so on. The original idea of Bitcoin by Satoshi was uncompromised and anarchic and didn't gave a fuck about being accepted by governments or not, it was a revolution. Let's see how things turn out.
No, it doesn't. Any miner can create a full block by generating their own transactions for free.
Yup! And they will getting blocks orphaned all the way 
https://tradeblock.com/blog/bitcoin-network-capacity-analysis-part-6-data-propagation
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Next, we examine the size of confirmed blocks that were involved in an orphan race relative to period averages. The chart below suggests that blocks in an orphan race are, on average, ~100kb / 20% larger than regular blocks that are not part of such races. This is likely the result of larger blocks taking longer to relay.
I'm sure that it will be full of miners that love to wasting energy/money.
Not sure if you are being disingenuous or you really don't understand. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter.
BIP101 activates *only* if XT has >75% of hashing power.
BIP101 activates *only* if XT has >75% of hashing power.
No, it activates when >75% of the last 1000 blocks *say* they were mined by XT. That can happen with less than 75% of the hash power saying they are running XT, and you also can't assume that just a block was mined by XT just because it says it was. It is quite possible for me to mine blocks saying I'm willing to accept "big blocks" when I'm actually not.
Only gamblers would run XT marked mining operations without accepting larger blocks. I for one don't believe that a significant amount of hashing power will choose to risk the outcome of a contentious hard fork that they would clearly be responsible for by their deceiptful indication of larger block support. Not a likely scenario IMO.
See slush's comments about his pool.
But more importantly, no pool in their right mind would be running the XT code yet.
The XT code has been severely lacking in testing compared to normal Core code changes.
Fair enough. No pool in mid-January 2016 will be marking XT blocks but not actually running BIP 101 compatible blocksize code. Do you disagree with this? There is no good reason to do this, unless your plan is to go short Bitcoin when a very contentious fork happens. Any pool doing this would suffer greatly from community backlash afterward.
No, it doesn't. Any miner can create a full block by generating their own transactions for free.
Yes, they can. So if BIP 101 were adopted, miners could make 8mb blocks in 2016, scaling gradually to 16mb blocks by 2018 and 32mb blocks in 2020. An ordinary user with an ordinary single computer and ordinary broadband connection will be able to keep up. Will some miners suffer? Probably - but it's not relevant.
Changing the block size up or down is not going to have a tremendous impact on miner centralization. I agree that this is a real problem and that it requires some collaborative effort. The block size has very, very little to do with the conversation however.