Topic: "Miners can MASF, or users will UASF. either way, Segwit activated early August" - page 2. (Read 1861 times)

Well, I have a different opinion on that.  After all, miners are not imposing any change, and their "job" was to keep respect of the rules.  Anything that deviates from the rules is in principle "illegal" in bitcoin land, so in fact, miners are doing exactly what they were supposed to do.  The inconsistency in the bitcoin system was to want to build a decentralized system with central developer control: that is, there's supposed to be ONE bitcoin piece of software, edited by a very restraint  club of people (the Core devs in this case), who determine the rules, and modify the rules (called "development").  On the other hand, the consensus which is defined by proof of work was supposed to stick faithfully to "the rules" and anyone deviating from this in majority was called an "attacker".

Bitcoin's imaginary power model was hence totally inconsistent: the "honest consensus protocol" is to be defined by proof of work, and is supposed to remain "honest" (that is, never get a 51% majority that deviates from the rules).  But on the other hand, there was supposed to be a small group of developers who would write the unique bitcoin software, and that would modify the rules sometimes.
On one hand, it was claimed that the competition between proof of work providers would allow, provided never 51% of them "colluded", to keep immutability and "honesty" (that is, sticking to the existing rules) ; on the other hand, there was to be a small permissioned club that is the central authority on the rules. 

This is one of the several inconsistencies in the projected working of the system, and it is no wonder that we get a conflict between the "guardians of the protocol" on one hand, and the "modifiers of the protocol" on the other hand.  In the past, the modifiers of the protocol were the central authority in bitcoin, but now they lost that potentially, and bitcoin became decentralized.   But, by its very functioning, it should remain immutable in that case.

I think the inconsistency came from the fact that on one hand, bitcoin's value resided in its highly publicised "immutability of the rules by mathematics" (in fact, by lines of code) ; but this implied also that no "evolution" and no "development" could ever occur, which would pinpoint a general failure of the system, because no system that pretends to be a technological advancement can at the same time show that it cannot evolve.   So the fundamental conflict between "flexible technological evolution" which needs central authority on one hand, and the publicised "immutability, by mathematics" on the other hand, had to be denied/put away/ talked away.  The rhetorical concept that was used to cover up this fundamental conflict was the notion of "consensus", which has a normal meaning of people agreeing, but which had a special meaning in bitcoin: the mechanism that established immutability and honesty as long as no 51% collusion happened.

In a way, the conflict is the following:
A) in order to guarantee the good workings of the system, never ever, 51% of the consensus power (that is, mining power) should collude (agree on anything else but the "honest rules").
B) in order to have evolution, regularly, a very high majority of the consensus power (that is, mining power) should collude. over the change to be applied.

This can only happen if an *external* authority can define what are the "honest modifications of the honest rules", which is a select permissioned club.

In any case, there needs to be a minority of miners that decides to split off, and make a pure-segwit prong forking off.  If they don't, your UASF node will not find a "pure segwit" chain, and will just stop.  So, as a user, starting up a UASF node BEFORE a minority of miners decided to fork off on a pure segwit prong, leaving the main chain behind them, serves no purpose, because your node will simply *not find any valid chain out there*.

The error in thinking is maybe that such a node will only pick the segwit-signaling blocks on the main chain.  But that cannot be the case, because that would mean that that node does accept intermediate "invalid" blocks, as the segwit-signaling blocks are not consecutive.  As such, an UASF node that would accept, but not "interpret" non-segwit blocks would just forfeit all transactions in those non-segwit blocks.   If I pay you with a non-segwit transaction, you would never see my coins arrive.

As I said, this is going to be a very entertaining spectacle.
Probably the best thing to do is not to touch one's bitcoins during the whole time of settlement (if ever it settles) ; or simply to exchange them for exchange IOU on an exchange you trust, but not keep them on the funnily dancing block chain and certainly not on one prong or another.

OK I am a very normal user of Bitcoin. How will this decision affect people like me? How will we know what to do or which decision to take (if we are allowed to make a choice)? Are we supposed to do anything?

The main point of UASF is to begin SegWit before it gains a significant majority of miners.  If, when it occurs, SegWit has a minority of hashrate, there will be a split.

It could get very complicated if BU or neutral miners are particularly determined to stick with their chain.  Therefore, it's absolutely essential that a UASF has extremely strong community and business support, otherwise miners could stay on the majority chain.

I agree there are multiple scenarios and some are risky in worse case scenario UASF will fork away and if problems will rise higher it will change POW.
For safety transition we need 51%+ miners on board but even without it i am so tired of no solution that I would go for it.
That whole mining centralization is way to strong and can not deny development no more.

What non-mining nodes do with a UASF doesn't matter of course.  As long as the miners continue mining one chain, UASF nodes will stop, because they will find, on the only chain out there, blocks that are not valid (non-segwit signalling blocks).   So as long as miners are making a chain like they do today, the only thing you obtain with a UASF non-mining node is one that stops.  You could just as well switch it off.

However, if a minority of miners is actually eager to split off with segwit, then they could take this as a signal to start making a minority chain.  Note that they could do so already.  The only thing that is needed is that users wanting to use this fork of the chain, should connect their wallets ONLY to these mining pools, that keep the short segwit chain ; if ever they also connect to another node, their wallet would find a longer chain (the non-segwit chain), and discard the shorter segwit chain.  But if

1) you configure your wallet / full node to ONLY connect to segwit signalling mining pools
2) segwit signalling mining pools have decided to fork off with a minority chain <--- this is essential

then you get the same effect as using, as a user, a UASF node or wallet.  The only thing that a UASF wallet or full node does, is to reject non-segwit blocks, and hence, it would automatically refuse the majority chain ; you wouldn't need to force the connecting partners, it would refuse all other nodes unless they have a copy of the segwit-only minority chain out there.

Note that as long as miners don't decide to make a fork, and go on a segwit-only minority chain, next to the majority chain, nothing will happen, and UASF nodes will simply stop.

BUT, but:

This is a very risky situation, for both forks.  If both coins are now listed in the market, on exchanges, that is: BTC-original and BTC-segwit, then we are in a kind of similar situation as with the ETC/ETH split, but this time, the BTC-segwit fork may very well win in the market.  Miners will follow the relative market caps.

==> if now, the segwit minority chain becomes majority, it will become the longest chain.  And because segwit is a SOFT fork, it would now simply ORPHAN the non-segwit chain which was initially majority.  This is the difference with the ETC/ETH split, which was a hard fork.

For this to happen:
1) exchanges need to list the two bitcoins
2) users in the market need to prefer the segwit bitcoin over the original bitcoin and vote with their money, selling their original bitcoins, and buying segwit bitcoins in majority

Miners will follow with their hash rate.

Whenever the segwit chain overtakes the original chain, the original fork becomes orphaned (can be a month later) and all the transactions on it disappear in a puff.

==> However, it can also be that the segwit minority fork doesn't get traction.  With the slow difficulty adjustment in bitcoin, the segwit chain will make blocks at a much smaller rate (minority) than the non-segwit chain.  If, say, segwit has 30% of miner hash rate, it will make only a block every 1/2 hour.   This will make it very difficult to transact on it.  It may very well be that transacting on it is such a pain, that people prefer to stay on the old chain, simply because they cannot transact on the new chain, it is too slow.  You may say that segwit will have 4 MB of transaction volume, but that is not true.  It has only 1 MB of transaction volume for "old style" bitcoins.  It is only when you did an old transaction to a new segwit address, that you may, AFTERWARDS, transact in the 4 MB volume.

So if ever the segwit minority chain remains minority and/or dies off, then all segwit transaction coins disappear in the same kind of puff.  After all, with the slow bitcoin adjustment times (2000 blocks), if you have a 30% hash rate split off, you will only get your next difficulty adjustment after 6 weeks, so during six weeks, you make blocks at a half-an-hour rate.

For miners, it is in any case risky to fork off separately, if both coins are listed on exchanges, and the market cap splits.   The reason is that during the time until next adjustment, you have to mine at the same rate as before, to get only the reward (in $) of one of the branches.  For instance, if BTC is, say $3000 at the moment of forking, and in the market, the market cap splits 50-50, so that a segwit bitcoin is $1500 and an original bitcoin is $1500, you will mine as many coins as before on your choice of fork, but they will bring in only $1500 instead of $3000 if you sell them.

For users, it is maybe unwise to sell one of their type of coins in the market, because of the fact that it is a soft fork, their branch may disappear and they may lose everything.   The segwit forkers may abandon if they stay minority ; the original chain may be orphaned after a month or so if it becomes minority.  

This would lead to a kind of permanent market split in ratios of about 50% - 50% if users want to keep the two options, doing everything in parallel on both forks.

Note that I only considered the segwit fork to be minority. If segwit is majority from the start, there is NO NEED FOR UASF. The segwit splitters can impose their majority hash rate on the original chain directly.  Whoever is still minority hash rate on the original protocol, will get orphaned all the time.  So if ever segwit becomes majority (50%), they can fork off, and force the whole chain.... if they stay majority !
However, if ever they lose majority, the original chain will go on, and we get a clusterfuck of mixed segwit blocks and non-segwit blocks.

So in any case this will be an adventure full of suspense, in which the users starting UASF don't matter much apart from the psychological effects.  It will be the miners that have to decide to fork off, and the market that will decide in a risky game.

You seem to be just repeating things you've heard without understanding it.

It can definitely cause a split, and the soft fork label is misleading.

It is technically a soft fork because non upgrading nodes can ignore the segwit transaction formats and treat the ouputs as valid.  However, because they cannot see the witness data (a fancy word for digital signatures), they have to simply always assume they are true ("anyone can spend").  That's fine if all of the miners are playing along and enforce that the segwit outputs can only be spent by the sender according to the witness data, but if some don't play along (even a minority), then the chains will diverge because those "anyone can spend" outputs will be spent (by anyone), and the UTXO set will be different.  Hope that makes sense.

You don't have a clue. UASF won't split it's a softfork. Some stupid miners like jihad and BTU bovine can ragequit and create their altcoin BTU, but it will be just alt like LTC, no more

Even if UASF will create altcoin then be it. I am tired of constant complains and doing nothing, people just jump here , on youtube and talk use:
-LTC
-ETH
-another favorite alt
So if I will have to use clean fast chain with many fixes LN and malleability fix then be it altcoin fork BTC UASF no more BS about miners in charge market will decide which chain is better with segwit or without segwit. If BTC have to be overtaken by alt then be it BTC () UASF  than any altcoin.
I am tired of that constant debate where to go and no solution for 2 years if that have to be done by alt UASF then be it.
I will use BTC as store of value and UASF to play casinos, pay for stuff. Same time let original BTC be original BTC.

I just think if UASF will be splitting the chain of bitcoin like what will be done by Bitcoin Unlimited.

it will have forced the chain.

I don't like that.
UASF = Bad way.

I'll never be supporting this way. 

You can only lose BTC if you use one of the new segwit addresses.   

I do not know that how many people using Bitcoin know how to activate UASF in their wallet. In technically, it requires some skill in the blockchain field and moreover, more than 50% of bitcoin users still do not know some simple command with the bitcoin core

That is why many people like Roger and Jihan don't want today BTC to scale they want maximum reward from altcoins juce today.
BTC is too big to be pumped easy as LTC/ETH/NEM were before bubble. Now after those coins made average more than 10x they will sell and back to BTC but who really knows what is in their minds. People should start running UASF nodes to blow up that whole scalling.
In worst scenario if UASF will fail and even swith POW that will be my best alt to transact with : ) not LTC or ETH.

But litecoin didn't double, it hexatrupled its price after segwit. (4$ > 24$)

Also keepin mind, litecoin took its juice both from USD and BTC. If BTC activates segwit, that means LTC will lose its juice (along with the other altcoins) back to the king. (means back to sub 10$)

I don't expect the same performance from btc as it happened with ltc because btc has a much more complex market depth than what litecoin has and it's also way more well distributed than ltc. LTC  can go from 4$ to 20$ in 2 days and thats x5 gain, but btc can only do %20 max in a day. Look how many days it took for us to get to 2k$ from 1k$. Sure btc is going a lot faster than gold but that's my point. Btc looks like gold compared to ltc. It moves more slowly because it is safer. People know they can get rekt if they get in to ltc from 24$, but they know they'll always be safe with btc.

After run 1500-1900 no one was giving shit to CHina volumes anymore.
China have problems with their shadowbanking and other stuff they want cut off BTC as hard they can.
I hope that UASF will be successful.

I hope Bitcoin will react similar to Litecoin and the price will double after Segwit. I looked at the charts and people are starting to throw everything back into Bitcoin and it all started this week. I thought it was because the Chinese ban was lifted but it could be this news.

News graphics on Luke-Jr ressources.

i hope all that energy goes towards something properly constructive like inventing cold fusion.

After SegWit activates, I wonder what jonald will move on to shilling against?

Maybe SegWit will put him out of a job, one can hope 

Oh look, more baseless FUD form the same shill spamming everywhere.