Topic: Bitcoin Core developers along with Blockstream are destroying Bitcoin (Read 321 times)
November 20, 2017, 10:16:39 AM
Every thing has its flaws. The shortcomings of the developers would long be covered in any development of Bitcoin. So, I think this is something reasonable. There must be a far better reason for them to do so. So, keep playing relaxed and safe with bitcoin.
November 20, 2017, 10:11:14 AM
There would seem to be little doubt that companies can influence the Bitcoin Core team now that they accept payments...are on the "payroll."
Is it a "conspiracy theory" as Charlie Lee (of LTC) implied? Or more worrisome? (https://youtu.be/Qxv72532ZbM)
Is it a "conspiracy theory" as Charlie Lee (of LTC) implied? Or more worrisome? (https://youtu.be/Qxv72532ZbM)
October 26, 2017, 04:02:00 PM
What you call centralization I do not. I want Bitcoin Core developers to continue to develop Bitcoin. They have done a mighty fine job so far and long may it continue. They are all volunteer developers and any developer who is interested can join Core and develop. Some are paid by Blockstream, more are actually paid by MIT. I don't mind who pays the developers, but I think it helps keep a good continuity to have some really good paid developers. A Bitcoin without the developers that have helped get it this far would be a disaster and surely be the end of Bitcoin in all but name, the price would tank. Core developers have built up trust, no other set of developers have that level of trust yet, hence Bitcoin market cap is way higher than other cryptos.
October 26, 2017, 03:26:27 PM
For anyone interested in seeing a counter argument to what OP posted, read this:
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/curious-case-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-miners-confirmed-it/[/quote]
Previously posted here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-curious-case-of-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-the-miners-that-confirmed-it-2277787
Maybe I should repost in this section where it might receive more traffic.
This conflict has never really been about blockstream or segwit. It has more to do with miners wanting to replace core devs with puppet devs to give themselves development control over btc.
Quote
The Curious Case of Bitcoin’s “Moby Dick” Spam and the Miners That Confirmed It
The scaling debate has dominated the Bitcoin space for well over two years now. As a central issue, Bitcoin’s one-megabyte block size limit was often insufficient to include all transactions on the network. This ultimately led to the replacement of this block size limit for a block weight limit through Segregated Witness, allowing for up to four megabytes of transaction data. And a group of Bitcoin companies plans to deploy a hard fork to double this by November.
But there is reason to believe the “crisis” may have been fabricated, at least partly. A recent analysis by “LaurentMT,” the developer of blockchain analytics tool OXT, in cooperation with Antoine Le Calvez, creator of Bitcoin statistics resource p2sh.info, shows that the Bitcoin network has had to deal with a load of spam transactions throughout the past two years. Now, in a three-part blog post series dubbing the spam attacks “Moby Dick,” their findings suggest that several major Bitcoin mining pools may have had a hand in this.
“Six or seven pools have played a major role in stuffing blocks with spam transactions,” LaurentMT said. “And charts display what looks like a coordination between these pools.”
The Spam Situation
The very concept of “spam” in the context of Bitcoin is sometimes disputed. Differentiating between “good” and “bad” transactions can be controversial on a network designed for permissionlessness innovation and censorship-resistant payments.
But there is little doubt that certain transactions serve no other purpose than to stuff the Bitcoin network and blockchain. LaurentMT and Le Calvez more specifically define spam as transactions that send lots of tiny fractions of bitcoins to lots of different outputs (“addresses”). These kinds of transactions can’t feasibly have been used to make actual payments, while they do present a significant burden on the Bitcoin network: all nodes need to receive, validate, transmit and (at least temporarily) store all this data.
The analysts found that the Bitcoin network has seen many transactions that fit this category: almost three gigabytes worth of data within a two-year span, adding up to more than 2 percent of the total size of the blockchain, or the equivalent of about a month’s worth of normal Bitcoin use.
“We found that there were four waves of ‘fan-out transactions’ during summer 2015,” LaurentMT told Bitcoin Magazine, referring to the transactions that create lots of outputs. “We think that the first two waves were spamming users and services. The third and fourth waves instead mostly sent the fractions of bitcoins to addresses controlled by the attackers themselves.”
These four waves of spam have been relatively easy to notice, as sudden bursts of transactions clogged up the Bitcoin network for brief periods of time. In some cases these spam attacks were even announced as “stress tests” or “bitcoin giveaways.”
What’s more interesting about LaurentMT and Le Calvez’s analysis is that the two focused on the second half of the puzzle. Almost all the fractions of bitcoins that were sent to all these different addresses have slowly been re-spent back into circulation since. These “fan-in” transactions were not as obvious as the initial waves of spam — but were similarly burdensome.
And, LaurentMT explained, blockchain analysis suggests that most of this spam can be tracked down to one or two entities:
“We’ve identified two wallets that seem to have played a central role in the attacks. They’ve funded long chains of fan-out transactions during summer 2015, and they later aggregated the dust outputs.”
The analysts also suggest that the perpetrator(s) of the spam may have been customers of the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. But that’s where their analysis stops.
The Mining Pools
Perhaps what is more interesting is who used this spam to fill up Bitcoin blocks: Bitcoin mining pools.
The spam outputs, generated by the first four waves of fan-out transactions, had been starting to move since autumn of 2015 — sort of. Whoever controlled these addresses had been broadcasting transactions to spend these outputs over the network. However, for a long time, miners did not include these “spam broadcasts” in their blocks; the transactions were ignored.
Up until the second half of 2016, that is. At a very specific point in time, a group of seven mining pools started to suddenly accept these spam broadcasts and include them in the blocks they mined: 1-Hash, Antpool, BitClub Network, BTC.com, HaoBTC, KanoCKPool and ViaBTC.
“So, either these seven pools had an ‘aha moment,’ and suddenly discovered that Bitcoin is about censorship resistance. Or, they had another motivation to fill up blocks with these transactions — perhaps related to the block size debate,” LaurentMT suggested.
For more clues, LaurentMT and Le Calvez looked for notable events that happened around the time of the mining pools’ sudden change of heart. In their research, they did find some correlation with “strange” occurrences. The first is an open letter from HaoBTC (now rebranded as Bixin) to the Bitcoin Core development team. The second was a rumor about a group of Chinese pools planning to end their cooperation with Bitcoin Core: the Terminator Plan.
Of course, something notable happens in Bitcoin just about every week. These events may well be coincidences and, therefore, there could be a very different explanation for the mining pools’ behavior, LaurentMT acknowledged:
“An alternative explanation could be that the different mining pools adopted new mining policies for completely different reasons. I tend to think political motivations are more likely … but that’s just a personal opinion.”
Bitcoin Magazine reached out to the seven mining pools in question. The only mining pool willing to comment on the issue was KanoCKPool, which denied being involved with any sort of manipulation or coordination, stating it just confirms “any and all transactions available.”
UPDATE: After publication of this article (and on reading the comment from Kano CK Pool), LaurentMT pointed out that Kano CK Pool, along with 1Hash and Bitclub Network, are the only pools that had been confirming some of the spam transactions even before the second half of 2016, indicating that the pool could be telling the truth.
For a full analysis of the “Moby Dick” spam, read LaurentMT and Le Calvez’s three-part blog post series:
Part 1: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/good-whale-hunting-d3cc3861bd6b
Part 2: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/when-moby-dick-meets-the-terminator-d014c315af85
Part 3: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/the-canadian-connection-7f48cafe2369
Or watch Le Calvez’s presentation at Breaking Bitcoin in Paris earlier this month.
The scaling debate has dominated the Bitcoin space for well over two years now. As a central issue, Bitcoin’s one-megabyte block size limit was often insufficient to include all transactions on the network. This ultimately led to the replacement of this block size limit for a block weight limit through Segregated Witness, allowing for up to four megabytes of transaction data. And a group of Bitcoin companies plans to deploy a hard fork to double this by November.
But there is reason to believe the “crisis” may have been fabricated, at least partly. A recent analysis by “LaurentMT,” the developer of blockchain analytics tool OXT, in cooperation with Antoine Le Calvez, creator of Bitcoin statistics resource p2sh.info, shows that the Bitcoin network has had to deal with a load of spam transactions throughout the past two years. Now, in a three-part blog post series dubbing the spam attacks “Moby Dick,” their findings suggest that several major Bitcoin mining pools may have had a hand in this.
“Six or seven pools have played a major role in stuffing blocks with spam transactions,” LaurentMT said. “And charts display what looks like a coordination between these pools.”
The Spam Situation
The very concept of “spam” in the context of Bitcoin is sometimes disputed. Differentiating between “good” and “bad” transactions can be controversial on a network designed for permissionlessness innovation and censorship-resistant payments.
But there is little doubt that certain transactions serve no other purpose than to stuff the Bitcoin network and blockchain. LaurentMT and Le Calvez more specifically define spam as transactions that send lots of tiny fractions of bitcoins to lots of different outputs (“addresses”). These kinds of transactions can’t feasibly have been used to make actual payments, while they do present a significant burden on the Bitcoin network: all nodes need to receive, validate, transmit and (at least temporarily) store all this data.
The analysts found that the Bitcoin network has seen many transactions that fit this category: almost three gigabytes worth of data within a two-year span, adding up to more than 2 percent of the total size of the blockchain, or the equivalent of about a month’s worth of normal Bitcoin use.
“We found that there were four waves of ‘fan-out transactions’ during summer 2015,” LaurentMT told Bitcoin Magazine, referring to the transactions that create lots of outputs. “We think that the first two waves were spamming users and services. The third and fourth waves instead mostly sent the fractions of bitcoins to addresses controlled by the attackers themselves.”
These four waves of spam have been relatively easy to notice, as sudden bursts of transactions clogged up the Bitcoin network for brief periods of time. In some cases these spam attacks were even announced as “stress tests” or “bitcoin giveaways.”
What’s more interesting about LaurentMT and Le Calvez’s analysis is that the two focused on the second half of the puzzle. Almost all the fractions of bitcoins that were sent to all these different addresses have slowly been re-spent back into circulation since. These “fan-in” transactions were not as obvious as the initial waves of spam — but were similarly burdensome.
And, LaurentMT explained, blockchain analysis suggests that most of this spam can be tracked down to one or two entities:
“We’ve identified two wallets that seem to have played a central role in the attacks. They’ve funded long chains of fan-out transactions during summer 2015, and they later aggregated the dust outputs.”
The analysts also suggest that the perpetrator(s) of the spam may have been customers of the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. But that’s where their analysis stops.
The Mining Pools
Perhaps what is more interesting is who used this spam to fill up Bitcoin blocks: Bitcoin mining pools.
The spam outputs, generated by the first four waves of fan-out transactions, had been starting to move since autumn of 2015 — sort of. Whoever controlled these addresses had been broadcasting transactions to spend these outputs over the network. However, for a long time, miners did not include these “spam broadcasts” in their blocks; the transactions were ignored.
Up until the second half of 2016, that is. At a very specific point in time, a group of seven mining pools started to suddenly accept these spam broadcasts and include them in the blocks they mined: 1-Hash, Antpool, BitClub Network, BTC.com, HaoBTC, KanoCKPool and ViaBTC.
“So, either these seven pools had an ‘aha moment,’ and suddenly discovered that Bitcoin is about censorship resistance. Or, they had another motivation to fill up blocks with these transactions — perhaps related to the block size debate,” LaurentMT suggested.
For more clues, LaurentMT and Le Calvez looked for notable events that happened around the time of the mining pools’ sudden change of heart. In their research, they did find some correlation with “strange” occurrences. The first is an open letter from HaoBTC (now rebranded as Bixin) to the Bitcoin Core development team. The second was a rumor about a group of Chinese pools planning to end their cooperation with Bitcoin Core: the Terminator Plan.
Of course, something notable happens in Bitcoin just about every week. These events may well be coincidences and, therefore, there could be a very different explanation for the mining pools’ behavior, LaurentMT acknowledged:
“An alternative explanation could be that the different mining pools adopted new mining policies for completely different reasons. I tend to think political motivations are more likely … but that’s just a personal opinion.”
Bitcoin Magazine reached out to the seven mining pools in question. The only mining pool willing to comment on the issue was KanoCKPool, which denied being involved with any sort of manipulation or coordination, stating it just confirms “any and all transactions available.”
UPDATE: After publication of this article (and on reading the comment from Kano CK Pool), LaurentMT pointed out that Kano CK Pool, along with 1Hash and Bitclub Network, are the only pools that had been confirming some of the spam transactions even before the second half of 2016, indicating that the pool could be telling the truth.
For a full analysis of the “Moby Dick” spam, read LaurentMT and Le Calvez’s three-part blog post series:
Part 1: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/good-whale-hunting-d3cc3861bd6b
Part 2: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/when-moby-dick-meets-the-terminator-d014c315af85
Part 3: https://medium.com/@laurentmt/the-canadian-connection-7f48cafe2369
Or watch Le Calvez’s presentation at Breaking Bitcoin in Paris earlier this month.
Source: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/curious-case-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-miners-confirmed-it/[/quote]
Previously posted here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-curious-case-of-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-the-miners-that-confirmed-it-2277787
Maybe I should repost in this section where it might receive more traffic.
This conflict has never really been about blockstream or segwit. It has more to do with miners wanting to replace core devs with puppet devs to give themselves development control over btc.
October 26, 2017, 01:45:24 PM
It seems to me that the decentralization of bitcoin is a mistake. The last time we see a constant struggle between developers and miners. Internal contradictions do not allow to develop bitcoin and you can blow it from the inside. Now I do not see a clear strategy for the development of bitcoin and it's very sad.
I would rather call Bitcoin an experiment to see if a decentralized system that can't be controlled by any single party can be viable in the long run. Though the best case scenario I'm seeing right this second is that the implosion of Bitcoin will be controlled in such a way that alternatives with extra useful features, like Ethereum, are not hurt very badly in the long run and there are perhaps two or three competing decentralized services in each niche so that one can continue if another collapses.
October 26, 2017, 01:42:38 PM
It seems to me that the decentralization of bitcoin is a mistake.
Do....you have any idea what you're talking about? The entire point of Bitcoin is that it's a decentralized online currency. No one person or group controls it. The Core developers are not some secret group of people that want to destroy Bitcoin. They're a talented group of hardworking individuals that all care very much about their work.
October 26, 2017, 01:39:43 PM
If Segwit2x happens, the miners will use different Github Repository to get the software, effectively "firing" the Core members, making Blockstream lose control and influence over Bitcoin.
False. They have the exact same control they always had, which is the ability to maintain, update and promote the Bitcoin Core client (and develop anything else, should they decide to do that).can no longer lead Bitcoin in the path that could provide them with revenue to repay the investors - somehow.
You seem to be confusing SegWit2x with a chain that has futures trading at a higher price than the current chain.One would certainly think so, but i have found out otherwise.
Some days after hurricane Irma there was a fundraiser for one of the Core developers, whose house had been damaged by hurricane. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise 5 Bitcoins for the Luke Dash jr(Bitcoin Core developer) in order to fix his house and property.
Right, so your reasoning is that Luke needs to have a lot of money or you won't trust him, but Core devs can't accept money from Blockstream.Some days after hurricane Irma there was a fundraiser for one of the Core developers, whose house had been damaged by hurricane. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise 5 Bitcoins for the Luke Dash jr(Bitcoin Core developer) in order to fix his house and property.
The cost for storage is rapidly decreasing as technology is progressing
Arguments for small blocks are primarily about bandwidth, not about storage. October 26, 2017, 09:52:12 AM
It looks like mods missed this thread. Bitcointalk is not free speech forum. Any support of segwit2x is censored here.
October 05, 2017, 10:46:15 AM
It seems to me that the decentralization of bitcoin is a mistake. The last time we see a constant struggle between developers and miners. Internal contradictions do not allow to develop bitcoin and you can blow it from the inside. Now I do not see a clear strategy for the development of bitcoin and it's very sad.
October 05, 2017, 10:36:16 AM
source: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@satoshibakery/bitcoin-core-developers-along-with-blockstream-are-destroying-bitcoin
Quote
Bitcoin Core developers are evil
Right now the miners are using software they fork from github/bitcoin, which is in control of Bitcoin Core developers and Blockstream.
If Segwit2x happens, the miners will use different Github Repository to get the software, effectively "firing" the Core members, making Blockstream lose control and influence over Bitcoin.
And what is Blockstream? It's a company that employs and pays Bitcoin Core developers for their contribution.
Let's not forget to mention that they were funded with 76M$ of capital by the VC firms. With traditional funding, there are also traditional obligations. These were not donations, the investors ofcorse expect to get returns from their invested dollars.
With the 2x part of the fork, the Blockstream loses influence over Bitcoin development and they can
can no longer lead Bitcoin in the path that could provide them with revenue to repay the investors - somehow.
So Blockstream is defending their interests by paying Core developers to continue the propaganda that Segwit2x is an attack on Bitcoin .
And is it really important for Core developers that Bitcoin gets adapted as widely as possible meaning the Bitcoin would raise in value?
One would certainly think so, but i have found out otherwise.
Some days after hurricane Irma there was a fundraiser for one of the Core developers, whose house had been damaged by hurricane. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise 5 Bitcoins for the Luke Dash jr(Bitcoin Core developer) in order to fix his house and property.
Luke Dash has developed first Bitcoin mining pool in 2011. At that time Bitcoin was worth around 0.3$.
Someone who knew about Bitcoin in 2011 and devoted it's time to work on the project, did not invest anything?!?! That tells us, that Luke Dash is not a speculator, he does not know anything about economics, all he is - is a programmer and that's all he knows to do.
It's also important to mention that out of all the developers, he is the one who backs 1MB blocksize limit most of them all! Even worse, he proposed to decrease the blocksize limit to 0.3MB. One would think this is some kind of a joke?
So Luke Dash obviously doesn't own (m)any Bitcoins considering he needed to raise funds for the repairs of his house and property, so he can only make money by getting paid from Blockstream for the development. And i would guess most other core members are like this. They are programmers. They enjoy coding and improving Bitcoin as they did from the start. They did not buy Bitcoins hoping they would get rich, but they probably looked at it from a programming perspective.
Their salary now depends on Blockstream and they have to follow the rules.
Core members have said it in the past that increase of the block size would be okay, even up to 8MB!! So what is wrong with the segwit2x now that it is considered an attack?
The answer is simple. Segwit2x means firing Core developers and Blockstream losing impact, so they will ofcorse do all they can in order to prevent this.
So the conclusion is: segwit2x would only do good for Bitcoin, but Bitcoin Core members are trying to prevent it - only reason being they would lose the influence. If one team of developers gets to decide what happens - is that not centralisation?
Is there any good argument against Blocksize increase? And don't mention the blockchain getting too big. In one year the blockchain has grown from 85GB to 135GB, increasing by 50GB. With 2x block size increase, this would be 100GB per year. The cost for storage is rapidly decreasing as technology is progressing, and in 10 years the estimate block size(with segwit2x) would be 1,135TB. At current prices this would cost around 50$, and we all know in 10 years 1TB of storage could cost a few dollars.
And how many people actually run a full node? It seems all nonsense to me.
Anyways there are a lot of things that i do not understand, that i could be wrong on, so please DO correct me and DO comment, because i do not understand and i would like to know , whether is this theory completly wrong, could be right or something completely else?
Right now the miners are using software they fork from github/bitcoin, which is in control of Bitcoin Core developers and Blockstream.
If Segwit2x happens, the miners will use different Github Repository to get the software, effectively "firing" the Core members, making Blockstream lose control and influence over Bitcoin.
And what is Blockstream? It's a company that employs and pays Bitcoin Core developers for their contribution.
Let's not forget to mention that they were funded with 76M$ of capital by the VC firms. With traditional funding, there are also traditional obligations. These were not donations, the investors ofcorse expect to get returns from their invested dollars.
With the 2x part of the fork, the Blockstream loses influence over Bitcoin development and they can
can no longer lead Bitcoin in the path that could provide them with revenue to repay the investors - somehow.
So Blockstream is defending their interests by paying Core developers to continue the propaganda that Segwit2x is an attack on Bitcoin .
And is it really important for Core developers that Bitcoin gets adapted as widely as possible meaning the Bitcoin would raise in value?
One would certainly think so, but i have found out otherwise.
Some days after hurricane Irma there was a fundraiser for one of the Core developers, whose house had been damaged by hurricane. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise 5 Bitcoins for the Luke Dash jr(Bitcoin Core developer) in order to fix his house and property.
Luke Dash has developed first Bitcoin mining pool in 2011. At that time Bitcoin was worth around 0.3$.
Someone who knew about Bitcoin in 2011 and devoted it's time to work on the project, did not invest anything?!?! That tells us, that Luke Dash is not a speculator, he does not know anything about economics, all he is - is a programmer and that's all he knows to do.
It's also important to mention that out of all the developers, he is the one who backs 1MB blocksize limit most of them all! Even worse, he proposed to decrease the blocksize limit to 0.3MB. One would think this is some kind of a joke?
So Luke Dash obviously doesn't own (m)any Bitcoins considering he needed to raise funds for the repairs of his house and property, so he can only make money by getting paid from Blockstream for the development. And i would guess most other core members are like this. They are programmers. They enjoy coding and improving Bitcoin as they did from the start. They did not buy Bitcoins hoping they would get rich, but they probably looked at it from a programming perspective.
Their salary now depends on Blockstream and they have to follow the rules.
Core members have said it in the past that increase of the block size would be okay, even up to 8MB!! So what is wrong with the segwit2x now that it is considered an attack?
The answer is simple. Segwit2x means firing Core developers and Blockstream losing impact, so they will ofcorse do all they can in order to prevent this.
So the conclusion is: segwit2x would only do good for Bitcoin, but Bitcoin Core members are trying to prevent it - only reason being they would lose the influence. If one team of developers gets to decide what happens - is that not centralisation?
Is there any good argument against Blocksize increase? And don't mention the blockchain getting too big. In one year the blockchain has grown from 85GB to 135GB, increasing by 50GB. With 2x block size increase, this would be 100GB per year. The cost for storage is rapidly decreasing as technology is progressing, and in 10 years the estimate block size(with segwit2x) would be 1,135TB. At current prices this would cost around 50$, and we all know in 10 years 1TB of storage could cost a few dollars.
And how many people actually run a full node? It seems all nonsense to me.
Anyways there are a lot of things that i do not understand, that i could be wrong on, so please DO correct me and DO comment, because i do not understand and i would like to know , whether is this theory completly wrong, could be right or something completely else?
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