Topic: BU vs SEGWIT ? (Read 2218 times)

Bitcoin's principle is trustless distributed consensus, which is supposed to lead to "immutability", that is: the rules are graved in stone FOREVER, and the block chain will never pedal backwards: what's on the chain is there for ever, and the rules are the rules for ever.

So a bitcoin "user" subscribes to these rules and that principle, and it is working as it should: the rules are immutable.  Nobody can change them.  Only "insignificant technical details" can change.  Once a technical aspect becomes an economic aspect, it is frozen in.  Like the 21 million coins.  Bitcoin users cannot "decide" to change that number.  It is frozen in.  And now, the block size, and the scarcity of transactions, is also frozen in.  That's bitcoin.  A frozen system, with immutable rules.  As it was designed to be.  If that system is not working as you want to, as you expect to, as they told you to, that's a different story.  But bitcoin is what it is, and will never change.  Unless the immutability is broken, and a centralized authority decides to change something, and has the central power to impose it.  But then it is not a decentralized trustless consensus system any more.  Which can happen.

Such a consensus system, however, can split if the tensions between different views become so untenable, that there is more profit to be made when the community splits, rather than when it stays locked in: a hard fork like ETC/ETH.  But that would sacrifice the most valuable aspect of bitcoin, the most important thing it has going for it: its "first mover" advantage.  So as long as this is strong, I think there will not be enough "partial consensus" to fork away.

If everything is exactly as you say, then what kind of freedom is bitcoin in question, if theoretically, bitcoin users are dependent. It seems to me that bitcoin today still gives independence to the user, and it is not excluded that tomorrow everything will change not in a good way.

Well, if "miners have an intelligent well thought plan", why didn't it happen then already ?  Because the "evil people at core" are not allowing them to collude and activate BU ?  Of course not.  Simply because they cannot agree. And happily, that they cannot agree.  Because if they did, it would mean that there is a >51% collusion between miners, and bitcoin's immutability is gone.

Also, "users" cannot activate segwit.  ONLY miners can.  segwit being a soft fork, it is something users have no say about, and if it gets activated, something users cannot "downvote".

So users cannot impose segwit at all.  

Users cannot decide to activate BU either.  But at least, when miners (with their cunning plan, remember) activate it, if they do not collude for >90%, there will be two coins, and users can then *vote with their money* on how the market cap of bitcoin will be divided between the new coin and the old coin.

Again, nobody is imposing anything on anybody. The evil core people do not have the magic power to hold BU back.  BU not happening, is simply because there's no consensus over it.  Segwit not happening, is simply because there's no consensus over it.  As it should be in a distributed trustless consensus system that provides for immutability.

Also, it is not because they are running BU software to "vote", that they are willing to actually activate the genuine hard fork, meaning, making really blocks > 1 MB.   You don't know how many of the BU voters only do this to avoid segwit, but have no intention to really do the fork.  Because you still have to mine your first block > 1MB and not have it orphaned...

I agree with this. That is one of the reasons I like BU. The miners have an intelligent well thought out plan for how the fork will be activated IF it is activated, and it is done in three very cautious steps with each step taking a full difficulty cycle to complete. User activated soft fork is the only thing that could throw a wrench in their plan, as that may require an immediate fork. They do not want to do that.

With the blocks currently full however, LN then becomes something people have to use out of desperation to conduct normal business rather than out of choice.

As long as the move isn't made out of desperation, because that's how bad choices are made.

Exactly. We need to make a move now, or only after a large or even multiple large crises, we will fork. Probably after then, Bitcoin will have tumbled down a deep bearish trend, and may snowball further due to many people jumping ship.

Often, the change that happens then, is not one of the alternatives you thought it was going to be...

When things get bad enough, change happens... one way or another.

Kind of like an alcoholic hitting rock bottom.

Well, normally, the protocol is protected by the consensus mechanism that imposes immutability, that is, status quo.  So the software will not be able to change the protocol.  That is what we are witnessing.  We see that the dynamics of the consensus mechanism is such, that everything evolves in such a way that nothing happens.

until blockstream decided to avoid consensus by going soft(pool only) and then having extra bits added to bilaterally split to avoid node consensus at activation. if pools stupidly people allow it (26% are all for it as of today)

and then blockstream having their nodes centred nearest the pools as the upstream filters (FIBRE) to filter preferential data downstream...
thus making them the spoon feeders because everything has to feed through them first due to everything else baned out as being an upstream and only accepted as a 'compatible' downstream.

---

segwit wont achieve the quadratic/malleability fixes..(fix is not about activation but disarming voluntary segwit keypair users(malicious people will avoid moving funds to those keys, thus quadratic/malleability will still occur using native keys))
segwit wont achieve the expectant tx count boost..(fix is not about activation but disarming voluntary segwit keypair users(malicious people will avoid moving funds to those, thus maximum expectant boost wont be achieved due to those remaining using native keys))

segwits secret(now public) goal is to grab the network and everyone running their software and needing their rules. leaving anyone else off the chain.

Seems to me that the tide is turning in favor of BU.

Funny how markets work.

That's like saying CentOS development isn't centralized because its open source.

Anyone can make their own software, but no one has the software distribution channel they have. They still decide what goes into the clients that the majority of people use.

The open source nature allows the community to have a chance to change that - and that is what BU is all about, an attempt to change the centralized development of the Bitcoin software.

Nah, it is open source, everybody can make his own node software.  I suppose that mining pools do that, in order to implement their mining strategies.

retaining majority for 6 months leads to many more than 6 months for the minority to try over taking. because they are many blockheights ahead.
losing advantage/chance as time goes on

for the last 8 years people have debated the whole 51% attack vector that can undo months/years worth of work.
but that those fears are dismissed when you actually calculate what is required for a minority to overtake to then gain blockheight(and chainwork).

if 51% A - 49% B
in the first block
460,000X0 - (event trigger)
then
hashrate vs hashrate B 'could' get height become majority
but chances are A get the next block

460,000X0 - 460,001A1
B then see 460,001 and reject it.
B then see 460,001 and reject it.
blah blah blah. they cant sync

at worse B ban communication to A for B to build their own chain(altcoin)(lets imagine B they reconfigure their node in 10 minutes (quick recode and banning) meaning A gets ahead in that setup period that B is wasting
A: 460,000X0 - 460,001A1 - 460,002A2
B: 460,000X0
by which time B are then a block or 2 behind.
B then start mining and making a block, but ofcourse A is also making blocks too
460,000X0 - 460,001A1 - 460,002A2 - 460,002A3
460,000X0 - 460,001B1

over an average of a day(144 blocks) with a 2% differential. A could gain ~3 blockheight
460,144A - 460,144A
460,141B - 460,141B

over an average of a week(1008 blocks) with a 2% differential. A could gain ~50 blockheight
461,007A - 461,008A
460,957B - 460,958B

so now B chances of overtaking are slimmer.

over an average of 2 weeks(2016 blocks) with a 2% differential. A could gain ~100 blockheight
462,015A - 462016A
461,915B - 461,916B

B have not created 2016 blocks in 2 weeks. so their difficulty drops(meaning they can make blocks with less chainwork)
you may think this makes B have the advantage because now they can make blocks faster. but... here is the clincher

if B accelerated by having a few % lower chainwork needed advantage due to lower difficulty. they are still 100 blocks behind. so aswell as building blocks they have to make up for the loss. meaning
if A just made 2016 blocks in the next 2 weeks. B has to make 2116 just to get even.

and here is the punch line.
chainwork.
if it got to a point of
464,031A - 464,032A
464,031B - 464,032B

464,032B's chainwork will be lower than 464,032A chainwork.
imagine each block cost 100 chainworks per block to solve
over the 4 weeks A has a chainwork of 403200 for block 464034A
over the 4 weeks B has a chainwork of 389088 for block 464034B

meaning if B joined the network to attempt an over throw, it gets orphaned anyway, not due to blocksize, not due to hashpower, not due to blockheight, but due to chainwork.

Bitcoin Unlimited and SegWit both of them have advantages relative to each other. No easy to decide choose one.

Development of the software IS centralized with blockstream / bitcoin-core.

I think you think too much that there are "important people deciding".  If you think that, you think that bitcoin is centralized, with some hierarchy that makes "political decisions", like in the fiat world. 

We are just witnessing a dynamical system that *takes its own decisions*, without "important people" or "a hierarchy" deciding rationally, and that was the whole point of a trustless, distributed consensus system: the consensus emerges from a dynamics, and not from some central authority.

It is like a free market deciding on a price.  There's no authority to turn to, or hierarchy to try to talk to, if "the price isn't right".  The price is a dynamically established phenomenon that nobody in authority, decided upon.

In the same way, the consensus over the protocol in bitcoin is, in as far as bitcoin is a decentralized consensus system, just as dynamically determined as the price in a free market with many actors.  Wanting some price settings is wanting an authority, a cartel, a monopoly or something of the kind. 

Of course, like a free market, "market makers" try to set the price to their hand.  But in as much as there are sufficient diverse players in a market, there are no strong market makers that decide upon the price.

The consensus protocol is supposed to "keep status quo" on all economically relevant parameters.  If this mechanism is sufficiently strong, it will simply be *impossible* to modify the block size.  And that's not the fault of Joe or Jack.  It is bitcoin's consensus dynamics.

I don't mind SegWit and LN - I really don't.

They should used because users want to use them, not because they are the only way to get a transaction that costs less than $5.00.

The only way we the users (merchants and consumers) have a choice is with bigger blocks. Keeping the blocks too small for the network isn't letting us choose, it is demanding we either adopt LN or adopt an altcoin.

BU is the users fighting back, saying that is not an acceptable way to treat us.

-=-

The core developers may be exceptional coders, but if they are ignoring the real world issues that exist and instead are trying to force us to use a solution the company they work for is financially invested in, that's authoritarian - it isn't choice, and I won't be a part of that. I'll choose the code by coders who are not authoritarian.

What is segwit?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1ah5V10DP8

Indeed, how does a mere mortal use the lightning network ?   I try to imagine how this works.  Suppose I'm a mere mortal, using bitcoin, say, 10 times a year to buy something on the internet, and to sell something else on the internet.  And Joe, my neighbour, too.  And Jack, my other neighbour, too.  Each of us, we have, say, 5 bitcoin or so.  And we buy and sell 10 things a year with bitcoin.  Like 100 million other mortals.  Suppose that one of these things is, I want to buy a second hand i-phone from a guy in New Zealand (not a professional salesman, just a guy selling his old phone).  
In the old days, he would send me his bitcoin address, I would send him 0.1 bitcoin, and he sends me the phone.  I could use escow eventually.  That's it.  But now, I don't see how "setting up a lightning channel for just 0.1 bitcoin" to a local node, is going to help.  If I do so, at the end, we settle, with a transaction on the chain.  So this takes one on-chain transaction on my part, and another one on the New Zealand side if we set up, and close our connections for this single transaction.

So the only way in which this is beneficial, is that I open a lightning channel to a local node with all the coins I will probably need this year, for my 10 transactions.  But in order for that channel to *last that long*, I need *a reliable node* that will stay open that long, and has sufficient other connections that my payment can reach my destination.   The only way for that to be viable, is that my neighbours, Joe and Jack and so on, also use one of these central hubs, that will reliably transmit stuff across the network ; has enough "escrow coins" to open all these channels, and has enough profit to be a reliable node.

In what way is that "other node" different from a local bank that keeps my coins, knows my transactions, and so on ?  Yes, I keep control.  Yes, I can terminate at any moment.  But the service will have to be paid for.  The destination may be censored.  AML will apply.   What's the difference with a bank account ?