Topic: Bitcoin XT - Officially #REKT (also goes for BIP101 fraud) - page 173. (Read 378996 times)

Seriously?  Are we really going to rehash this 43 page thread again?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12330845

Bitshares full nodes are very different to Bitcoin. Bitshares is delegated proof of stake, as far as I understand it there are only 100 full nodes which are incentivized and voted into position by the users based on the amount they hold. Other examples would be Dash which has fully incentivized full nodes implemented in a more decentralized fashion compared to Bitcoin. Ethereum also has some interesting solutions to scalability as well.

+1

I'm not so sure that altcoins have a lot more throughput than Bitcoin after reading this summary of testnet limitations of BitShare 2.0, which is claiming it an reach 100k TPS in the real-world:


Source: https://bitshares.org/blog/2015/09/11/BitShares-2.0-Launching-on-October-13th

I am sorry to oversimplify your argument but you are essentially saying that people can not be trusted to make the best decision in terms of what implementation to run. This is however where I believe the fundamental choice and source of the voluntarism of Bitcoin should and does lie. Not governance structures build on top of an implementation or on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, since then we would run into some of the same old problems that large organizations and states run into. The consensus mechanism for resolving such disagreements already exists and it depends on what code people choose to run and where the miners direct their hashing power. Maybe you are correct and the economic majority will not make the best decision, however this freedom of choice is so important and fundamental for maintaining the freedom and decentralized nature of Bitcoin that this would still be the best path to take. There is an irony in accusing XT of dictatorship while simultaneously saying that people should not be trusted with the freedom of choice.

It is seemingly a disease for you to make arguments on the premise of assumptions that do not hold true.

One that you propose here is that without large transaction throughput and high velocity Bitcoin has no utility.

Well "this in my opinion is not correct". While regular retail consumers may care about the cost of transactions, Bitcoin offers little to no advantage in that regard compared to traditional payment and monetary systems. Aside from certain niche use cases (remittances or conventional international money transfer) most people are perfectly fine using credit cards and fiat for their daily purchases. These systems provide consumer protection and security that is hardly possible using Bitcoin. While these might be costly and put enormous weight on the financial system as well as shift enormous responsibility & trust toward the institutions running these networks most people could not care less.

So essentially what you are doing is pushing for dangerous changes to Bitcoin so that it attempts to compete with systems that are inherently more efficient and scalable given their centralized arrangements. This, to me, is asinine and totally misses the point of what Bitcoin's true value proposition is.

Bitcoin has grown from nothing to a 3.5B$ market cap largely without notable "transactional" utility except for some special uses cases. The reasons for this are obvious to anyone who has been paying attention: its sound monetary theory & its decentralized, censorship-resistant property.

Since then, a trove of entrepreneurs and venture capitalist have tried to shape Bitcoin into the second coming of Paypal, riding the coattails of its novelty features and permissionless aspects. Remember when 2014 was supposed to be the "year of the merchant"? Expedia, Microsoft, Dell, Overstock, Newegg, etc. Somehow you would think all this "utility" would lead to more adoption right? After all people cant wait to spend their bitcoins and use them to shop online....right..right? Well it turns out that no, they don't. It simply doesn't make sense, other than maybe temporarily as a novelty, to purchase bitcoins to make purchases. It is not convenient or economically desirable. Imagine the amount of money that was wasted trying to sell this "utility" to mainstream customers. Just thinking of the giant fail that was the "Bitpay Bitcoin Bowl" says all that needs to be said. The "customer" is simply not buying it. Bitcoin is still looked at as a freak show by most of the general public, they simply don't care for it.

So what are we left with? Should we bother continue on this path or go back to square one and consider what makes Bitcoin great in the first place?

To reiterate Trace Mayer's point: who are the users that are willing to hire Bitcoin and pay for its services? What are the use cases that are absolutely impossible without Bitcoin existing?

As we consider the different avenues we could take it is seemingly clear to me that we always end up at the same point: monetary freedom.

Monetary freedom implies the protection of one's wealth from government inflation, taxes, confiscation or general destructive economic policies. Trace speaks of economic interests in Venezuela and Switzerland using Bitcoin to the tune of millions of dollars to circumvent some of their countries restrictive economic policies. By all account this is what Bitcoin excels at: being a safe haven for one's wealth, an accessible and comparatively cheap way to escape capital controls.

The generalization that you make of what a user is, as if it only relates to transactional interest, is misguided and to some extent downright disingenuous. On the other hand the users I refer to are not some imaginary "mass adoption" fantasy. They are real and are using Bitcoin as we speak. They are not deterred by high transaction fees because they literally have no other options or if they have, they involve costs that are on a whole different level than what you would refer to as "prohibitive" (bankers, lawyers, accountants, government officials).

I think it's time for some of ya'll to get back down to earth, your head as been in the cloud seemingly too long your brain is lacking oxygen.

No one's disregarding Bitcoin's competition. If someone is it is you as you conveniently ignore readily available and very dominant fiat alternatives for the purpose of "transactional utility".

As far as cryptocurrency is concerned there are a multitude of reasons why Bitcoin has little to no competition. If you wish to understand why I suggest this excellent article from Mencius Moldbug about monetary history. While it may not be factually accurate on all points, it certainly is in regard to inherent network effects and how powerful they are in the context of money:

Fair enough, however only the blocksize itself is fundamental to the protocol level in terms of a hard fork, which makes the other features essentially optional. To be fair however the "black list" within XT is only activated once the node is already under DDOS attack, what this feature actually practically does is quite different to what most would think when people hear the term "black list", nobody is being censored most importantly. When discussing XT in relation to a hard fork, it should really just be a discussion about BIP101, since that is the only feature within XT that would not be optional post fork if you do wish to maintain compatibility with this chain. I would prefer to talk about other solutions then XT however since a more conservative increase of the blocksize would be a better solution in terms of us all reaching consensus.

https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/tree/only-bigblocks

I lean to your position erik, but I take the more optimistic stance that the average bitcoin user can and does understand the implication of the proposals being presented right now. The reality is that XT has proven unpopular with all but those who are dogmatically producing any argument that ends with "XT?". A large majority of users understand the debate and have rejected it for what it it, and, more to the point, want something much, much better.

 

LOL, I love this one.  Let's break it down:

Q> What is a consensus fork?

A> A change in protocol that everyone agrees to. 

Q> What is a split fork?

A> A fork where "both side would be willing to lose the other side."

Q> Which would be easier?

A> A split fork

Q> Why?

A> Because "both side would be willing to lose the other side."

Q> So you are saying a split for would be easier because it is a split fork?

A> huh?

I was specifically replying to this post actually: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12505806

I also agree with you that a third solution will most likely become the better solution once it has been fully implemented in an alternative client or Core. As far as I understand it we are actually mostly in agreement with each other. I can understand how you thought I might have been overly polarizing but I was just responding to a previous post. I would absolutely support a third solution that would represent the middle ground between the two extreme positions that XT and Core presently represent.

it seems there is some fundamental disagreement. the hard-coded list of deprioritized IP addresses fits the technical definition of a blacklist. (see: the dictionary) Wladimir also stated that is was a blacklist, and used that as a basis to reject Hearn's pull. clearly it is a list of IP addresses that is viewed with suspicion (after all, they were listed in the first place due to fears of DDOS)

It's obvious you'll never come around as you are just here to promote XT.  Nevertheless, I'll address this tired underlying assumptions that "people would still need to choose to download and install the new implementation" somehow magically protects Bitcoin for generations to come:

False assumption #1: Everyone who downloads the program completely understands the code.

The vast majority of people do not understand the code, and most are not programmers.  Most of us, even those of us who program and can read code, downloaded and ran Core without having any idea about the details of what it does. (e.g., does it log IP addresses?)  The reason I take time to post on this forum about the risks of XT is so people can make a more informed decision, and if they decide to install XT, will at least hopefully be wise enough to question each upgrade.  Ditto for Core upgrades.  Hopefully, discussion like this help broaden awareness of the risks of new code. 

False assumption #2: Those who do have a better understanding of the features of the program they download are guaranteed to understand the implications of those features. 

The reality is that unless they do understand the implications, they are likely to take the purpose of the code at face value for what its author claims it will do.  Undoubtedly, there are some who installed XT who feel protected from DoS attacks because of the patch Mike put in it.  Unfortunately, had they read the thread with the Core devs when they rejected it, they would of known that (a) the only claim of a Tor attack was on Gavin's node with no evidence that any other node ever had an attack via Tor, (b) neither Gavin nor Mike provided logs or other evidence of the attack when the Core devs requested it, (c) the Core devs listed many reasons why most DDoS attacks are likely to come from non-Tor sources, (d) even Mike acknowledged that innocent Tor users would be harmed by it and (e) when the attack came from likely non-Tor sources, only Tor would effectively be blocked, not the DoS sources it was supposedly intended to counter.  Additionally, (f) this is intended to evolve, and could evolve with enough critical mass combined with XT whitelisting to make it very difficult to unseat XT as the primary code for Bitcoin nodes. 

Does the XT website discuss any of this?  No.  Not only does it ignore all concerns raised by the Core team, Mike has even publicly made statements about the process in which this patch was rejected by Core that very deceptively try to make the Core team look like the bad guys but conveniently leave out the truth of why Core rejected it.  Fortunately, the dialog between the Core devs and Mike on his pull request is very public for those interested in reading it.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6364

 

I have shown time and time again unequivocally how XT is not a dictatorship. There are also no blacklists within Bitcoin XT. You are spreading misinformation, this is not conductive towards constructive discussion.

please point out specific examples, particularly by those who are active in the discussion. i've been watching this debate unfold for the last couple months. i see "1MBers" thrown around as a constant ad hominem, but i rarely see anyone actually defending this position. please recognize that if the answer is not 1MB OR BIP101, then another answer must be found.

i dont give a shit about other altcoins. the reason scaling (read: scaling =/= only increasing block size limit) should be considered important is because scaling is integral to organic adoption. the main questions are 1. time and 2. proper implementation.

Not because I am stuck in the false dichotomy but because some people are literally saying this. Just check further up in this thread, I was just responding and commenting on this. I can also agree that increasing the block size for the sole reason of competing with altcoins is not a good enough reason to implement a protocol change. However that over the long term it should also be considered important to stay competitive within a free market of cryptocurrencies otherwise Bitcoin would most likely be superseded by a competitor over the long term. I do not think that this is a unrealistic position to hold, I suspect that we most likely both already agree with this point already.

Yes, but it turns out that we must let the current limit do its job in order for any new one (that we agree upon later) to be any good.
Limits are supposed to be active during certain stages of Bitcoin's evolutionary cycle in order for this system to function as intended.

you get this impression......how? because you're still stuck in this "small blockists vs. XT" dichotomy? look, those of us who oppose BIP101 aren't unequivocally opposed to increasing the block size limit. but "competing with altcoins" is not a legitimate reason to implement just any protocol change that increases the block size limit. do you understand?

It would be, if the benevolent dictator were still a part of it and got his way.  But, clearly, Core devs have a proven track record of rejecting such hideous proposals for very sound reasons -- very publicly documented in threads.  This is part of the reason the dictator created XT.  Remember, Core recently rejected his blacklisting idea just prior to him promoting XT and including the blacklist code in XT.

If the Core team changes, and begins to accept these bad ideas, I'll be recommending people choose an alternative.  Until then, Core is the best code base with the devs who have proven they are dedicated to protecting Bitcoin.  Let's hope it stays that way.

Ok, now we are getting to the gist of it.
The are only two LARGE limiting factors that should keep the whole crypto-ecosystem "pressurized".

1) First, is the bandwidth factor. The main target here is home networks, but I assume that we might eventually have a system one layer up from there for as long as it remains permission-less enough to operate in that space, though I'm not sure if it's going to be Bitcoin or any other system to get there (if any at all).

2) Second, is the costs to duplicate excessive hash-power to produce many successful PoW systems (and only these contribute the most into the core value proposition here as other security models gradually lose their entropy over time).

What I'm saying is that the competition within this field (of PoW coins) would force each system to fork and increase its limit in order to stay in the game, as the bandwidth factor would continue to increase due to technological innovations allowing the playing field to continue to expand.

From the perspective of any one particular system, it's like a combustion engine really, first the limit "pulls" the volume of transactions, then the volume "pushes" against the limit, as the network effect and the costs to switch (for that particular system) prevent the economic pressure from leaving. The volume should build up enough pressure and "spark" at some point in time for that system to decide to go for the higher limit (and repeat the whole cycle later in time) or risk losing its "precious" pressure to the closest competitor. The exact timing for these kinds of events would become the most interesting part of the game to follow.

It seems strange to me that some people do not think that Bitcoin needs to compete with other cryptocurrencies. That Bitcoin somehow exists in a vacuum and does not need to compete in the free market, that somehow Bitcoins success is guaranteed even if we all just sit on our holdings while having no regard to its utility. This in my opinion is not correct, people do care about the cost of the transaction and the present holders of Bitcoin is not all that matters. For Bitcoin to grow and survive it needs to attract more users. When better and cheaper alternatives exists people will choose those instead of Bitcoin. Bitcoin should be able to compete with other cryptocurrencies and I believe that it can as long as we do not allow the Bitcoin network to become overloaded which would lead to transactions becoming unreliable and over the long term prohibitively expensive.