Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 38. (Read 2032247 times)

Sure.  

Why do we have a consensus layer in the first place?  It is a way for us to agree on what transactions are valid and what transactions are invalid.  For example, we all agree that Alice shouldn't be able to move Bob's coins without a valid signature, and that Bob shouldn't be able to create coins out of thin air.  The consensus layer is about obvious stuff like that.  In order for Bitcoin to function as sound money, we need to agree on "black-or-white" rules like this that define which transactions are valid and which are invalid.

Notice that the paragraph above discusses valid and invalid transactions.  No where did I say anything about blocks.  That's because we only really care about transactions in the first place!  In fact, how can a block be invalid just because it includes one too many valid transactions?  

Satoshi added the 1 MB limit as an anti-spam measure to deal with certain limitations of Bitcoin's transport layer--not as a new rule for what constitutes a valid transaction.  We should thus think of every block that is exclusively composed of valid transactions as itself valid.  The size of the block alone should not make it invalid.  Instead, if a block is too big, think of it as likely to be orphaned (a "gray" rule) rather than as invalid (a black-or-white rule).  Perhaps above a certain block size, we're even 100% sure that a block will be orphaned; still we should view it as a valid block!  It will be orphaned because the transport layer was insufficient to transport it across the network--not because there was anything invalid about it.

whoa.  look at that 7% drop in crude oil that just occurred.  someone wants out:

I'm actually quite excited about this idea.  It has a sort of inevitable feel to it.

My comment does not mention, or even allude to, the content of the posts.  As such, you are the only one who mentioned HF and XT.

The difference, as I see it, is that you cry censorship when off-topic posts you like are moderated, but turn on a dime to complain about lack of moderation when the posts in question do not suit you.

Make your own damn subreddit about FrappuccinoCoin if you don't like the BTC mods' "epitome of authoritarianism."  They are not your servants, and it's hilarious to watch your hypocrisy in action.

it's a repetitive spam attack; over a dozen times the exact same slanderous post attempt at character assassination.  have you forgotten the case seems to be going nowhere and that i deny the allegations?

everybody gets it already. i am a BitcoinXT proponent and i am a threat to you Cripplecoiners.  the HF dispute has nothing to do with it as much as you'd like to tie the two together.

but of course, i wouldn't expect you to see the difference.

Yesterday you were complaining about mod "censorship" and today you are demanding the same mods censor posts you don't like.

That is because bitcoins are a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold. Unfortunately much like gold some characteristics limit its direct use as a mean of exchange. Gold's shortcoming is in its physicality, Bitcoin's own is the decentralization tradeoff.

I think Bitcoins are absolutely a unique collectible. I hate to "call up" authority but its own creator was well aware of that:

So if there is a blocksize based fork, and the largeblock branch can hold the lead for a few hours, the branch based on smallblocks will disappear quickly. There will probably not be time to establish the infrastructure to allow trading between them, and no time to create confusion whether a specific payment is valid or not.

If the largeblock branch can not hold for a few hours, it will disappear, it will act like a failed attempt at changing the blocksize. A new largeblock can then be attempted later, when a miner is sufficiently certain that it will succeed.

tl;dr A fork based on a largeblock is totally not destructive.

So the issue I see with BIP100 is if the majority of Miners collude to form a cartel to set the limit they can set it too low to suite the cartel's preferences, the difference between BIP 100 and BIP 101 to me, is that BIP100 miners cant leave the carrell and mine bigger blocks if there is a market for it, in the case with BIP100 the cartel needs to vote.

Whereas with BIP101 Miners can form a cartel but if it becomes more profitable to mine larger blocks they can break from the cartel without having to get a majority vote.

the innate incentive that limits the ability for cartels to form is important, BIP 100 is a change to an innate incentive in Bitcoin.  

Playing devils advocate here and creating a worse case scenario, imagine the optimal market equilibrium for block size and transaction cost resulted in the demand for a 16MB block, a majority of miners could form a voting cartel, and set a limit at 8MB, there would be no reason to do this in a free market because they would loose revenue, but in a controlled market for transaction fees where Sidechains exist, it becomes possible to manipulate the block size to undermine competition, a simple way to do it would be to limit your completion's revenue by limiting block size, if you were uncompetitive in block propagation that would give you an unfair advantage. In the case with SideChains the cartel could supplement revenue by being paid to Merge Mining side-chains that other miners dont have assess too.

giving the power to set block size to the miners by vote of the majority seems to me will ultimately tend towards centralization, where in BIP101 this power is vested in the market and incentives that govern it. More important, it's not a change to Satosis design which seems to have the incentive balance just right.  

I think the answer is much simpler than this.

Which network will be easier and less expensive  to plug up with a spam attack for a prolonged period of time?

here's further evidence the Reddit mods are steering the blocksize debate. they're letting this guy spam attack me with false allegations despite me reporting him.  same post about a dozen times:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gutfp/if_youre_not_running_a_node_youre_not_really/cu1x6fl

awemany might have answered your question here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3eaxyk/idea_on_bitcoin_mailing_list_blocksize_freely/cu1tzuh

IOW, as a full node operator wanting to stay on the longest chain at all times, set your maximum block size high enough so as  not to be exceeded.

Okay... I'm going to have to agree with that.

But what if, when everyone is voting, an attacker sees that 50% is advertising < X MB and 50% is advertising > X MB with X obviously been larger than any block seen before.  By publishing a block of size X + 1 byte, the attacker effectively splits the network in half.  If he was previously 25+% of the network, he is now 50% of the two new forks and can either cause further bifurcation or anything else you can do with half the network.  Even if the attacker only has small hashpower, it will still cause a hash war between the two forks.

I suppose this could be mitigated if most nodes refuse to build on a block that is larger than what a supermajority votes for.

I don't think it would be a problem.  Like Erdogan said, the miners will use the "tip-toe" method of increasing the block size.  Worst case, a large block gets orphaned and nobody tries again for a while.  But if the larger block doesn't get orphaned, then the network will assume that that size is now supported (thereby setting a new effective upper limit).


This doesn't put the power directly in the miners' hands.  It keeps the power where it already is: in everybody's hands!  It just makes it much easier for people to exercise the power they already possess.  


I disagree.  For example, I would not set my node's limit to anything greater than 32 MB until I understood the 33.5 MB message size limitation better.  I expect many people would do the same thing.  Rational miners won't dare to randomly publish a 100 MB block, because they'd be worried that it would be orphaned.

Furthermore, since miners would likely use the "tip-toe" method, the effective block size limit will grow only in very small increments, helping to reveal any potential limitations before they become problems.

You know that you can do this now, right?  And always could.

The code is open source, you can (of course) just change it and compile.