Topic: The Barry Silbert segwit2x agreement with >80% miner support. - page 29. (Read 120014 times)

Still not a bad thing to go the 2 MB blocks even if currently 1 MB would be sufficient.

In a couple of years it will not be and then we have double the headroom.

OMFG learn to read, already.  Where did I say that was the only way it could play out?  I said if it happens, it's not a change of governance.  If or whether it happens with 99% support or 51% support, longest chain wins if it has sufficient nodes and tx.  How is that simple concept so hard for you to wrap your head around?  I even said you don't have to follow along, so I can't understand why you're repeating my same point back to me like some brain damaged parrot.



Since analogies only seem to cause you to get even more lost on what the point actually is, I won't bother in future.  I'm not saying all forks are consensual, again, learn to read.  I'm saying that in the ideal event of a consensual fork, there's no shift in the balance of power or the consensus mechanism.  I'm also saying that in the event of a contentious fork, that could cause an imbalance and you might actually have a valid point (yay for you).  Because if some of the users securing the chain choose to fork away, that might well have a bearing on subsequent forks being easier to achieve if there are less voices of dissent.

So if you're quite finished grabbing the wrong end of the stick and then trying to stab me with it, I suggest we just agree to disagree.

What growth? Look at the mempool, most of the time it's far from full. Transactions are cheap. It's only when the mempool gets spammed out of nowhere that people cry about bitcoin. Ver and co spam the network to get the big block narrative going and confuse noobs into thinking increase the blocksize is a must now or else we'll die. Bollocks.

I doubt that any kind of analogy of bitcoin value to water in buckets is fitting to crypto, financial, political and/or social competition and/or cooperation concepts.

Also, you have now asserted that forking is consensual.

Sure there are not going to be very many issues if a change is consensual, so if you assume some matter is consensual then you are changing the parameters of reality by assuming the very thing that it is in contention -- namely how is consensual is defined and at what threshold levels.

In other words, a contentious hardfork is problematic, and a consensual hardfork is not problematic, and if you assume the hardfork to be consensual, then of course it is not problematic and you win. 

It seems to me that you are assuming facts that are not yet in evidence because we still don't know what miners and nodes are going to do because some software is still being developed and they don't have the software to run to show what they are doing in order to verify whether a matter is contentious or not and what consensus levels are being reached for the various options that are going to be available.




Sure, it is easier to win a battle if you make up the grounds of the battle and then declare your own victory.


I have no problem with change; however, if there is a rule that is already in place that says, we change the rules upon reaching y level of consensus, and then you come in and try to change the rule with x level of consensus (and x is less than y), then you have attempted to change the rule without reaching an adequate level of consensus.  It does not mean that you are wrong, you just have not reached an adequate level in accordance with the existing rules in order to change the rules.  Once you reach the adequate level, then I am more than happy to live with the new rules whatever they might be.




There is not only ONE way that things can turn out, so get off of your lecturing about how bitcoin works high horse.    Do you really know what is going to happen?

You are correct that people can do whatever the fuck they want and to see whether others follow them, and they can do that with 10% or 50% or 80% ... Of course.  I can also chose whether or not to follow.  I am not locked in. There are a lot of people who can chose what to do.  Do you know what they are going to do?  I doubt it.  All we have are buckets of probabilities and we can attempt to make approximations of outcomes based on what we perceive to be the various options and how we believe various actors will act.

2MB may prove to be a very short-term solution. Looking at the growth in the number of users, I have to say that within the next 12 months, the increased 2MB block size will also prove to be inadequate.

Obviously participation levels change over time as a natural ebb and flow, but we're talking about what happens during a fork.  The point is, a consensual fork in and of itself doesn't necessarily change the level of participation.  Or to put it another way, a bucket can hold more or less water depending on how far you decide to fill it up, but if you tip all that water into a second bucket, the act of moving the water from one bucket to another doesn't change the amount of water you had in it (unless it gets messy like a contentious fork might).  So again, a fork doesn't necessarily make it easier to fork again in future, unless some of the people securing the network decide they don't want to participate anymore because they don't approve of the new fork.  And precedence or not, it doesn't mean Bitcoin will start forking for shits and giggles whenever a new idea gets proposed.  It will only happen if and when consensus decides so.  Which is how it has always been.  And if that's how it has always been, it clearly isn't a change in governance.

All said, it sounds as though you want to make the argument that just because you don't think the rules should change, that no one can change them, but can't quite bring yourself to say it.



It's entirely up to those who choose to run the code what level of support they're willing to accept before taking the plunge.  Nothin' you can do to stop 'em, but you don't have to join 'em.  And still not a change in governance if they can form the longest chain and have sufficient node support and economic activity to propagate that chain.  Again, that's just how Bitcoin works.  

Part of the argument is that there is no reason for the change, and change should be easier to make.. . but there was no real technical justification.. besides the desire to make change easier.




Sounds like you missed the point.


I am thinking about it.  There is a dynamic called precedence, which works in a lot of practices.  Once a pattern or practice is established that becomes the standard for the future.



What the fuck are you talking about?  There is no such thing as everyone staying the same.  Stakeholds and participants are constantly changing in the real world, and power is partly distributed by participation and effort.  So if a standard is established in which a change is made because of this much hash power is accumulated, for example, then that would be a guideline for future decisions for change.  I don't know why you are trying to personalize this question regarding consensus.

I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding and the fundamental contradiction in "crypto currency development".

But first, one should make a distinction between the protocol and the code.
The rules of bitcoin, the protocol, is a contract between all users.  It is "the law of bitcoin".
The implementation of these rules is the code.  It "runs bitcoin".

Of course, the code is free to evolve, to become more efficient, there can be many code implementations.... as long as it respects "the law".   This is similar to having several e-mail clients and servers, while they all talk SMTP.  There can be very efficient implementations, and there can be much simpler implementations that are not so efficient.  It doesn't matter.  Everyone can write in principle his bitcoin node or bitcoin miner software, as long as it sticks to the protocol, there's no problem.

However, a change in the protocol is something entirely different.  This is not "evolution of code", it is "modification of the law", or "modification of the contract".   This is the DEFINITION of politics: the power to change the law, the rules, the contract.  Given that bitcoin handles real-world economic value, any such change in rule will make winners and losers.  The losers will not agree (but may be overwhelmed by the power of the political decision, lobbied by the winners).

The entire invention of a decentralized system was to have NO POLITICAL POWER, and hence, essentially, to have immutability of the rules.  The only solution to having no political power, is to have no possible change of the rules.

The true problem is that bitcoin's rules are badly set up.  They didn't solve certain issues, they put in artificial limitations, but one has no solution to this problem in bitcoin's economic model.

It is absolutely possible to have a system with a LAW that is immutable and doesn't need to evolve.  But then, that law should have been conceived to be, indeed, immutable.  Bitcoin's law wasn't, because at its conception, these notions weren't fully understood.  Changing bitcoin's law into something more workable will need (centralized) political power, which will bring economic advantage to those being able to exert that power (like in all modifiable law systems, where an aristocracy can modify the law, and in doing so, serve its own advantages, and comforting their position).

I like the fact that bitcoin has no governance. That is how you keep it decentralized.

This way, no government can pull the plug.

However, as we are all interested in bitcoin for whatever our reasons are, we want it to be able to develop.

By simple rules of nature: if you can not evolve, you will not survive.

Hence, we need to have some way of creating consensus.

I really hope that we can talk to each other to understand why people suggest certain things, without making this a political governance issue.

In the end: if any group feels they are owning bitcoin governance, bitcoin will fail.

We all own it. We all have our say. But we cannot reject proposals, even if they come from a group that threatens bitcoin with a fork.

Decred is a scam project (and before some ignorant idiot starts defending shitcoins, not long ago they claimed that Core developers were leaving Bitcoin to join it). Decred has majority capital vote which is horrible. Bitcoin does not work like that.

Upping the limit or even removing it isn't a fix of any kind. Doing either one has severe negative side effects.

SegWit2x code is way too rushed. The original Segwit code is the most superior one (albeit using BIP9 with corrupt miners was a mistake).

With the small caveat that it doesn't always have to be a single group of developers, I'd go with that, yes.  There's an equilibrium to maintain.  The direction can't be entirely dictated by nodes, miners or developers, so each have an important role to play.



I only recall people saying that the code shouldn't ossify completely to the point where no change can ever be made.  The notion that consensus should be easier to change was a smallblockist strawman and a baseless accusation from what I remember seeing.  Maybe I just missed that particular argument, I don't know.

Plus, consensus changing once doesn't necessarily mean it's easier to change again, unless those who decided they couldn't follow along volunteered to fork away, meaning their voice would hold no weight in future forks.  Think about it.  If everyone who is involved in securing the network now remains part of the network after a fork, it's no easier or harder for consensus to change again in future because every participant still has the same power they always had.  There's still no change in the consensus mechanism.  It's still not a change in governance.  You're still wide of the mark.

whatever it is, bitcoin is looking set to get segwit activated through soft fork.
the hard fork to 2MB looks very not convincing, not only the code is not properly reviewed, and a bit rush.  But with such a huge network, without backward compatibility is always a bad idea, unless it is absolutely needed, and definitely need a more careful detailed plan than segwit2x is currently doing.  But segwit 2x is definitely a good way to resolve current tension between different parties.

I hope this is not start of bad era. Is it going to increase the credibility of our bitcoin or just gonna make it worse? I am feeling that big whales are coming into effect with this amendment are trying to do something beneficial for themselves. Isn’t it?

And most who have the capacity don't have the desire.

Thanks for your perspective, yet I am not going to concede that I am talking about this matter incorrectly...

Maybe we are getting caught up on semantics, yet the main framework of my contention should be obvious.

The fact of the matter has been that since XT, Classic and BU there have been various whiny attempts to complain that bitcoin is too stagnant and bitcoin needs to be able to change more easily and bitcoin was designed to be able to change easily... blah blah blah.. therefore hardfork and hardfork frequently in order that bitcoin can adjust to changing markets and become more competitive with modern payment systems blah blah blah.. bitcoin is broken the way it is and therefore it should be easier to change.

Those are attempts at changes in governance because they attempt to make bitcoin easier to change based on false premises and by assertions that there are technical problems and that bitcoin is broke and bitcoin should be x, y or z and it is not achieving.. blah blah blah.. Arguing that there is an emergency in order to deceive and trick into lowering consensus levels and consensus mechanisms.

So whether you disagree with my understanding or not or my use of the term 'governance", my point remains valid that there are ongoing complaints about the system that is in place (concededly evolving with the passage of time as you mentioned examples of possible ways to evolve) in order to attempt to lower various consensus thresholds and to make bitcoin more moldable, and even if some of those changes do occur over time, as you mentioned with your examples, it does not mean that there is not going to be resistance to various more extreme attempts, such as attempts to hardfork at lower consensus levels.

Not all who have the desire to learn have the capacity to learn....

If we are posting in a thread like this or watching it, we have some desire to learn technical aspects of bitcoin and the current situation.  Furthermore there are various kinds knowledge that are at issue in our current situation, and those areas of knowledge are not purely tech, for sure. 

There is technical aspects in running a miner or a node, but the technical aspects become less complicated and central when there are discussions about changing consensus levels and changing the means in which various combinations of thresholds might add up and further various game theory that might be involved when some companies or individuals are asserting that they are going to engage in a certain behavior, but their actual actions seem to differ from their proclamations.

That's just what we discussed in the German forum ... they have a more formal model for governance with stronger incentives to follow "the will of the majority" via PoS votes.

Although I largely agree, it's unfortunate that you chose the term "governors", which can also mean a device that limits performance (for example, limiting rpms on an engine). In this case, "governors" does apply to the Core devs  , as they have chosen to limit the Bitcoin network's capacity, and no one has been able to convince people to overcome the limit.

Also, "Bitcoin governance" is somewhat of an ambiguous term, given that Bitcoin is essentially a computer virus that has "propagated" all over the world and runs practically without any intervention. It's unclear how this will turn out, because nothing like this has ever happened before!

A couple dozen "GTX 1080 Ti"s, perhaps?