Topic: Ethereum Anti-ASIC fork, is it the right time for bitcoin too? - page 5. (Read 2478 times)

I mean Proof of Concept (as in working prototype, not as in Proof of X consensus algorithm)

But yeah, that too!

You mean PoCW?

Godspeed to you! While I doubt that a PoW-scheme change will make it into an "official" upgrade-hardfork any time soon (at least without an acute state of emergency) I'm looking forward to see a working PoC.

Now you're talking. A proof of concept would surely help your cause. Good luck.


I believe nothing about it will be considered hostile, or a threat, or a hard fork attempt. Why would it?

Decentralization is the key to security of bitcoin. If you are discussing drops in hashrate it is more complicated than what people usually believe ...
The incentive system of bitcoin keeps it secure enough in very hard situations,  it has always been secure despite very low network hashrate in the start. It is because there is a sophisticated equilibrium between hashrate/value/price/severity-of-threats and brilliant design principles of bitcoin keep it in safe thresholds as long as we are dealing with rational behavior of players and remaining in the game theory domains of application.


You are free to say whatever you wish to, no doubts. I just politely asked  for more constructive discussion rather than sticking with one issue and rehashing it ever and ever.

As of your inquiry for a timetable, I'm considering a demonstration of dual ASIC+GPU mining fork of bitcoin on a testnet and it will be launched in April 2019 expectedly. But it is not anything related to a fork attempt because as I've mentioned above-thread there are other issues to be included in a hypothetical hard fork.

We need to discuss everything in details with prominent Core figures and have their support or at least to become absolutely sure about it not being considered a hostile act or a shitty ico/altcoin attempt. Without this condition being somehow fulfilled there will be no fork as far as I'm concerned.

And how does Bitcoin resist against a corrupt financial system if you weaken its security?  Some might argue what matters for Bitcoin is that sweeping changes are put on testnet to make sure you don't wreck the network.  Are we permitted to discuss your timetable for putting this on a testnet?  Is that allowed?  Or do you just want some friendly "yes-men" to inhabit your topic and tell you how great your radical and unproven theories are?  'Cause I'll be honest, you don't really see that around here.

To quote a popular adage:
"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

This has nothing to do with speculative investments or prices.  Bitcoin has numerous contributors who all believe in what they're doing.  I can promise you that you don't have a monopoly on wanting what's best for this little project of ours.  The only difference I can see is that the other contributors tend to spend less time arguing about what should be done and more time developing, coding, testing and demonstrating beyond all doubt that their ideas are viable.  They don't just lay out a roadmap, they actually go and build the road and then see who follows it.  

Don't ask for permission.  Don't wait for people to pledge their support.  Just do it already and let the code speak for itself.  Not only is this about as encouraging as I'm capable of being, it's also likely to be the only way your idea is going to move forward.

@Doomad, @AGD, @Wind_Fury
We are done with "consensus" argument now, I don't believe in it and you are fans, ok. Good luck with your consensus oriented community  

I'm not just part of it, are we clear?

I write in this forum just for one purpose: to discuss about what is best for bitcoin as a revolutionary monetary system for the future of humanity and for resisting against corrupted financial and banking system right now.

I'm not part of your community and do not care about speculative investments honorable members of this community possibly have made and their expectations for prices to bump.

So, let's discuss what matters for bitcoin rather than anything else, thank you.

He said he was backed by the people of Iran, which makes it a 'we' until there will be an actual voting. In this case it might be reduced to singular.

That much has been evident from the offset.  Like it or not, change doesn't happen unless others agree.



Reject whatever you like, but it's not us who needs to convince you of anything.  You're the one proposing the change.  You need us to stop rejecting your argument.



There's that "we" stuff again.  If a proposed idea don't have consensus, then it categorically isn't "we", it's just "you".  But, by all means, make your improvements, put 'em on a testnet and give people that choice.



And no one is stopping you from going ahead without hesitation.  Just don't expect everyone else to automatically tag along for the ride.  You can make absolutely any changes you like.  Some users may like those changes, others may not.  It's just a chance you'll have to take.  There's no "magic" involved.  It's just people running the code they want to run.  

If you're convinced that your code is going to be better, then good for you, I guess.  But some of us don't share your enthusiasm and would like to see it in action first before we decide.  Feel free to keep arguing, but at this stage you'd probably be better off just concentrating on your code.

Who said anything about conspiracy? I'm just rejecting your "consensus" argument.

It is like 6-7 years that this term is not applicable to bitcoin since it is no longer an innocent scientific experiment. There is no way to build such thing and Luke is just wasting our valuable time by making such a naive statement about "consensus". What they should do is giving people a choice instead of making decisions on behalf of them. Noted? I'm not talking about this goddamned "community" I'm talking about people!

If hypothetically at some state of the art, we have gathered some gamblers and speculators  as users for bitcoin it does not mean we need to listen to them and just them, we need to improve bitcoin to attract other groups by giving people a better choice :

1- A truly decentralized bitcoin that they can mine and secure directly (solo) at home without such a noise and hit and slavery for pools.

2- A much better performing network that utilizes average technology for average people more efficiently.

3- A system free of spvs and bloated full nodes both, auditible/verifiable by millions of full nodes that could be setup in few minutes and keep running with reasonable cost.


It is not only about ASIC resistance but also a series of postponed improvements and it needs a serious contribution but not in the consensus level that you are discussing or Luke Jr is talking about and I'd do it with no hesitation, not when a magical consensus happens when enough contribution is in the sight.

I like this spirit.. just I am not sure how we could have a laboratory to have quicker transitions of ideas to running codes.. for example, having a fork and call it "bitcoin lab" as a real coin in market that changes itself quicker than usual may be another option for bitcoin community.

UPDATE:
what I really care about is the fact that ideas can't wait too much to be effective. all ideas that can bring an improvement have their own expire dates, and after that they will be useless, which means, such slow approach to upgrade just kills the active entities of any societies.

Ok, then do you believe that there is a conspiracy, involving Core, to centralize Bitcoin for you to find reason to fork it without consensus?

Is that what this whole topic is about? You can say it, I won't judge.


Then you should start working on your hard fork for a POW upgrade immediately. Good luck!

But honestly, listen to yourself.


Ok.

And ened to such a ridiculous situation? Bitcoin being taken hostage? I wouldn't really give any credits to such a "discussion". Please quote one solid argument from this epic discussions that is not already refuted above-thread.


This "consensus" thing is another joke. ASIC manufacturers would pay some shills to play a naysayer role in any debate. I don't GAS for "consensus" who made this word from the first beginning? This consensus game was over when bitcoin started to prove itself as being an opportunity to make easy money and was attacked by ASIC manufacturers.
Luke is great in coding but obviously he has no clue about socio politics and economics. In bitcoin, you don't need "consensus" for a hardfork, you need reason and good faith and being loyal to the cause, let a corrupted 'community' go to the hell they deserve.

Who cares about decentralization? Obviously no one!

Yes, and they are very busy and intelligent people. We should be trying to keep the conversations with them as intelligent as we can, for wasting their time in the forum. No more demanding that "we need a POW upgrade now" like a social justice warrior. The matter was discussed before many times.

Plus Luke Dashjr has said that he will support a hard fork for a POW upgrade, but only if there's consensus behind it.


Who wants centralization? No one.

Not true.

Not true.

Sure it is.

Yeah, BTC Core developers are heroes, regardless of the fact they have different opinions. They always defended right things, like not increasing blocks, etc. Decentralization is the core value for all of us. PoS is centralized for sure. But as for ASICs cancellation, I am not quite sure it's the best solution.

Greg is the one who bothers engaging in public discussions, Luke hasn't showed up here since eternity and btctalk is the reference site for such discussions, still thanks for heads up. From his P2P pool I understand he is against centralized pools as well, good news, now it is encouraging even more. 

Bitcoin is an open, permissionless system. Anyone can participate in the system in any way and/or capacity that they want. You can have your opinions, but you cannot judge another person, or impose how they should participate in it.


Why are you picking him out? Gregory Maxwell is only one of the Core developers, not Core. His views does not represent the whole.

There's one developer who wants a POW change, Luke Dashjr.

I see and it is sad, though I have reasons to be rather optimistic:

Firstly we need to understand that Bitcoin is not a joke to be narrated by clowns or opportunists. Craig wright has spent millions to change anything about bitcoin and look where he has ended, almost nowhere. Bitcoin has a solid conceptual design, forget about the code and implementation details, the underlying basic idea, producing money by work, securing and transferring it by work and doing it in a decentralized consensus based p2p network, it wouldn't be a feasible strategy for any party no matter how powerful/delusional to take over it.

Secondly we have Core devs, still officially committed to decentralization which is a good point to start from. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of these guys neither I think coding is kinda magic on the contrary I don't GAS about technical part it is about a far more important thing: HISTORY.

I mean, just  look at Gregory Maxwell, he is a living encyclopedia of bitcoin, he has been involved in almost every single important event in this ecosystem and although I don't like his super conservatism and passiveism against ASICs, pools, bootstrap/synchronization nightmare, on-chain scalability, ... (you say) and I'm absolutely against downward compatibility and too much soft forking which (is his holy grail btw), no doubts he has a lot to share because he is committed to decentralisation and privacy as far as we are discussing intentions and incentives and ethics. And it is almost the same for most of these guys. All we need is finding a non-hostile decent approach to this, a compromise. I see potentials because I see good faith.

Well, it is not how I understand the problem.  We have this power law distribution of wealth , you are right but PoW is resistant against it if we could have it implemented flawless, unfortunately it is not the case right now.
We have two majors flaws in bitcoin that need immediate fix:

1- Small memory footprint of the naively direct way bitcoin uses sha2 in its proof of work and its consequence of being vulnerable to ASIC attacks which we are discussing here and should be improved indisputably.

2- Winner-takes-all incentive system that inevitably leads to mining variance and proximity premium flaws which are responsible for pooling pressure and the situation we have with pools. I have been working on this issue since a while:
An analysis of Mining Variance and Proximity Premium flaws in Bitcoin

Getting rid of pools: Proof of Collaborative Work

Of course there are other problems:  the disastrous situation with setting up/synchronizing full nodes from scratch, spv wallets, wallets not actively participating in security of the network, ... to name few, but I think the above two problems are BIG bad flaws that has escalated centralization threats to the dangerous levels we are experimenting nowadays.

Conclusively, my point could be summarized like this:
Despite power law distribution of wealth and its natural force toward centralization, an advanced implementation of bitcoin is not defeatable easily by means of simple factors like economy of scale. Centralization is mainly a consequence of flaws in detail design/implementation of core concepts and delayed improvements.

So in your subsequent screed, we establish that the discussion contained within this topic has absolutely nothing to do with scaling or adoption, but in that regard, you have even more sections of the code you'd ideally like to tamper with (as if the part in this thread wasn't controversial enough already).  I'm so glad we got that straightened out.

If you're going to change everything and the kitchen sink, why not launch an altcoin and prove beyond doubt that your ideas are actually workable?  Or, at the very least, let's see a Bitcoin testnet first.  If there's a working concept to draw direct comparisons with what we currently have, to actually see the purported improvements in action, people might be more receptive to the ideas.  Definitive proof is infinitely preferable to some well-intentioned suggestions of what you think would be better.