Agreed. But you're also not completely off the hook. There are also economic implications from offchain and voting-pools version of offchain. People also have a right to ask about that similarly. There are actually economic implications. If OpenTransactions sucks a bunch of transactions off-chain that deprives bitcoin of transaction fees, and so it lowers bitcoin security. I am not saying this is a bad tradeoff, just point out that nothing is free of implications.
I dunno, it seems part of the bitcoin social contract is to be deliberately (and ideally enforceably) agnostic about what people do with their bitcoins. It that means sending them to some crazy off-chain system with voting pools or whatever other silly idea, so be it. How is that anyone's business any more than spending them on wikileaks donations?
If bitcoin can't handle people doing crazy things off chain like voting pools or MtGox, then it has some pretty big problems. It seems fairly proven that it can survive MtGox at least.
This includes the so-called federated model of sidechains.
I still see a gargantuan difference between that and changing the protocol.
i agree completely. there's too much FUD being slung around about problems with offchain services. if anything, it's getting better as in the case of exchanges and wallets. not perfect, but better esp for the bigger ones.
and who is anyone to restrict where ppl send their BTC?
well seemingly you, for articulated reasons that we're exploring, would like to restrict people from sending their coins to a sidechain.
I agree people should be able to do what they want with their bitcoin and send them where they want.
Another way to look at sidechains btw is that a federated peg is a multi-sig (with modest parameters eg 5 of 10 and some trustworthy security competent bitcoin interested businesses) and a SPV peg is a bigger federated peg with a 5000 of 10000 multisig with dynamic membership (ie whoever is mining the chain right now). The spv peg op_code is an opcode to understand those dynamic membership multisigs. The dynamic membership multi sigs (DMMS for short) are written about in the sidechain white paper
http://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf and are a different way to look at bitcoin mining, though its actually the same thing.
You can also combine DMMS sigs with regular multisigs, its just an op code so you can program with it. eg IF ( 0.5*DMMS + 0.5*multisig(5,10) ) THEN spend coin. Or IF ( hashrate > 75% AND DMMS ) OR ( hashrate <= 75% AND multisig(5,10) ) THEN spend coin can react to hashrate drops. Different people could even use different peg rules on the same chain depending on their security tradoff preferences.
I dont see that as some how evil or dangerous relating to offchain transactions (we've seen them cause system shocks mtgox etc) or federated pegs or voting pools (then you are depending on the 5 of 10 of their security etc its better but its still non-zero risk) ... its just the next evolution in that direction - more decentralised, more things enforced by the network. For example read Nick Szabo's recent blog post about fiduciary code
http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-dawn-of-trustworthy-computing.html what do you think he's talking about?
You complain about incentive, but I talked about the details of that and there are multiple secure and workable parameter choices with usable tradeoffs , and off-chain transactions and voting pools have incentive too - the holder just steals them for free with no effort!! Thats pure human trust.
Incentive discussion was here
Note also the 51% takes all coins risk depends on the peg script. Its possible to limit that problem and place the risk on the people doing the arbitrage or transfers by forcing the person returning coins to put up a bounty in main-chain bitcoins equal to the exchange which they forfeit if their transfer is proven fraudulent by a chosen % of the sidechain. There can also be caps and time-adaptive delays (longer for more bitcoin). Its a programming language, the op_spv is just an opcode to simplify the coding of one part of it, validating the compact-proofs.
Also for the non-voting pool version the statistics are horrible it used to be that 50% of exchanges that ever existed went down with loss of user funds. Yes its improving but lets ask you a question: do you store investment amounts of bitcoins on an exchange? Or a web wallet? Or an offline/paper wallet with backups? I imagine you do the latter.
Its also (I said this before on this thread) basically embarrassing that bitcoin is repeating the banking governance failures of the last century and of 2008 etc when the entire point of smart-contracts and programable trust is that users can have direct control of their funds and not have to trust third parties.
One of the interesting motivations for wanting the extensibility that sidechains provides is to be able to make that zero trust a reality for more Bitcoin transaction types.
Adam
Adam, I applaud what you are doing, and I think you and Greg Maxwell and many of your investors see a viable business opportunity in this space.
But with all due respect, no one in this debate has ever said that anyone should dictate how people use Bitcoin, and this is not how the debate should be framed.
Blockstream, is counting on people doing what they want with there Bitcoin, with one exception, Blockstream are proposing / dependent on, people doing so after change the insensitive structure that governs Bitcoin by altering the protocol, this is arguably an evil at this sage of the game.
I find the idea of a federated peg with a multi-sig a natural evolution and a necessary innovation to the Bitcoin space, and I wish you all the best in exploring business opportunities in developing it.
I see a market and a need for systems to manage SVS pegs where there is a centralized authority and opportunity for innovation in keeping them honest.
I take exception in Bloxkstreams proposal in the idea of taking it to next level, one you and many other seem to think is a trivial evolution, the idea is to have the SPV proof managed and signed by the cooperation between another decentralized system and the decentralized Bitcoin Blockchain. This will over time, if you've flowed the discussion over the last 100 pages, allow for inflation that will ultimately kill the Bitcoin experiment.
The quote didnt say not to make a profit it said to have a dual objective and compared the approach to Mozilla. Mozilla made plenty of profit (and is a hybrid incorporating both a for profit and a not-for-profit) and also did a good job of making the firefox browser a leading source of user ethos focussed innovation and features.
Greg Maxwell (nullc on reddit) wrote some about how blockstream plans to make profit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2k3u97/we_are_bitcoin_sidechain_paper_authors_adam_back/clhoo7dI dont think making a profit is a bad thing - to hire developers & QA and UX designers and maintain software and design protocols and figure out how to use smart-contracts and find business partnerships to make those available to users all takes money. As those are good outcomes, and require more money, you have to have a profit to fuel it, you cant rely on investors to keep putting in more rounds!
Its quite feasible to make money without being controlling, proprietary, centralising or evil. We certainly aim to try.
Adam
reading nullc's statement on redit:
I can only conclude that Blocstream is the first for profit to propose modifications to the bitcoin protocol to extract wealth from the Bitcoin ecosystem itself without offering a business proposition to the community.
