The overlooked existential threat of centralization

yayayo

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Well data depends on the area truly, I am pretty sure europe has way better than the US for data and here you can get 50mb/s up and 5mb/s upload at 50$ a month with specials or 60$/m without and i can double it to 100mb/s for 75$ a month without specials forand 10mbs up a second. This is an extreme speed increase from the same provider from 3 years ago was 20mb/s same price as 50 mbs . Internet speed is definitely following suite at least here in america.

If you agree that data depends on the area, then why do you keep repeating the same invalid arguments over and over again? Or do you think that US+EU = world?

Then you say you're "pretty sure", that Europe has better connection than the US. Are you just "pretty sure" or do you know it? In fact - in contrast of what your depiction suggests - Europe consists of more than one country and connection speed varies widely among European countries.

Here's some data (which is most likely nominal upload speed, not permanent high-volume (most providers will reduce speed if certain volume thresholds are reached)): http://www.netindex.com/upload/

ya.ya.yo!

johnyj

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Beyond Imagination

Quote from: blablaace on June 12, 2015, 06:02:34 PM

bitcoin is already centralized in a sense .. consider the number of people with control over the software, which is basically a form of centralization

Indeed, political power of programmers are on the rise in almost every industry. However there are many basic properties are prohibited to change, like total number of coins, POW mining, difficulty adjust mechanism, block generation speed, reward halving scheme etc... So core devs are mostly doing performance oriented improvements. Even so they would raise the debate of block size limit to political level, that is too much

blablaace

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bitcoin is already centralized in a sense .. consider the number of people with control over the software, which is basically a form of centralization

X7

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Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

Quote from: Amph on June 12, 2015, 02:28:18 AM

Quote from: X7 on June 11, 2015, 06:49:06 PM

Quote from: unamis76 on June 11, 2015, 03:53:33 PM

It's true that we are having less nodes, and that's why nodes are incentivated and there is also dedicated hardware for nodes... But what makes you think that bigger blocks means less nodes? The only thing that would make us have less nodes is simply people feeling like shutting down theirs. There isn't really a reason to have less nodes...

Nodes aren't incentivized

they should be then, there was a proposal to give something, to who will run a full node, this should in part diminish the possibility of such scenario

Quote from: turvarya on June 12, 2015, 02:20:04 AM

There isn't any centralization for a simple reason: Most people could run a full node, if they wanted to.
Centralization means: You can't join the club.
Just because some guy in the outback of china with a crappy internet connection can't run a full node, doesn't mean anything is centralized.
Are torrents centralized, because the same guy couldn't upload a HD-movie?

What would really happen, if the number of nodes decline too much? Some companies and enthusiasts, would just make new ones. Like I said, in the beginning, it is not hard to do so. I could just buy one of this full setup full nodes, go to a friend, who has ridicilous fast internet, he doesn't need and ask him nicely to just keep it connected to the internet and buy him some beer in return. No problem there at all.

what if some companies whould start to provide services to help you setup a full node(because you have bad connection, because you are poor, because you can't trust running a full node on your machine ecc...), would this be considered centralized?

Problem becomes the exploitation of bad nodes which will pop up when people try to exploit node incentivization - the idea was the security of the network was enough incentive. Not sure what the solution is for this

BombaUcigasa

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Quote from: gustav on June 11, 2015, 01:50:52 PM

Imagine Bitcoin with less than 1000 nodes ... it wouldn't be secure at all anymore.

Correct me if i'm wrong.

You are wrong. You may stand corrected.

The only nodes that matter for Bitcoin security are the miners, of which less than 50 nodes are actually mining (maybe 100 with possible Unknown agents). There will never be mining nodes that are not reachable or reaching, otherwise they would get orphaned and forked off.

The other nodes that matter are the exchanges (so you spend some of the BTC made from mining to pay bills).

The other nodes that matter are services (like merchants, explorers, APIs, trackers, etc).

Your shitty cloud VPS node does not matter. If it's on or off, Bitcoin is unaffected. The benefits are smaller and smaller for each supplemental relay node added to the network and there are no benefits to the node.

There are altcoins with 3-5 nodes online that still function after more than one year. There are some where only one node is online (exchange). And somehow Bittrex managed to fuck up and keep a coin with 0 network nodes online, the coin still had value before delisting.

johnyj

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Beyond Imagination

Quote from: yayayo on June 12, 2015, 06:45:01 AM

Quote from: gustav on June 12, 2015, 05:56:00 AM

Quote from: turvarya on June 12, 2015, 05:46:03 AM

You obviously don't understand what XT is doing. There is no chance until a 90% consensus is reached. Inform yourself before you write BS.

Well and then people will pretend to update and switch back to core later. You'll be looking how many guns come out the woodwork after the fork to run core... prepare your anus.

Core won't die and two chains are inevitable. Gavincoin doesn't stand a chance longterm with or without "supermajority".

Supermajority does mean nothing. The waters are poisoned by Gavin and his mob. Nothing will grow from it.

Exactly. Andresen and Hearn know very well that their XT-fork would fail to get enough support. The reason they mention it is solely to put pressure the other developers to integrate their changes in Core.

I'm happy to see that (among others) Maxwell, Todd, and Garzik have so far withstood this pressure. They have far better arguments and solutions to offer and imho they are in general more competent than Andresen and esp. Hearn to work on a financial software. Andresen and Hearn have both a corporatist, pro governance world view that is largely incompatible with and dangerous for the core aspects of Bitcoin.

ya.ya.yo!

As long as people are involved, there will be politics. But I don't think bitcoin should have anything to do with politics, any kind of political practice will just make things more complicated, the XT is obviously such a movement (Gavin using XT to test his support rate)

The consensus is easy to reach when the majority of transactions are queued for at least 1 blocks, and that will happen long before the 1MB cap were reached for every blocks

Here is a good article from tradeblock researching the capacity

https://tradeblock.com/blog/bitcoin-network-capacity-analysis-part-4-simulating-practical-capacity

yayayo

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Quote from: gustav on June 12, 2015, 05:56:00 AM

Quote from: turvarya on June 12, 2015, 05:46:03 AM

You obviously don't understand what XT is doing. There is no chance until a 90% consensus is reached. Inform yourself before you write BS.

Well and then people will pretend to update and switch back to core later. You'll be looking how many guns come out the woodwork after the fork to run core... prepare your anus.

Core won't die and two chains are inevitable. Gavincoin doesn't stand a chance longterm with or without "supermajority".

Supermajority does mean nothing. The waters are poisoned by Gavin and his mob. Nothing will grow from it.

Exactly. Andresen and Hearn know very well that their XT-fork would fail to get enough support. The reason they mention it is solely to put pressure the other developers to integrate their changes in Core.

I'm happy to see that (among others) Maxwell, Todd, and Garzik have so far withstood this pressure. They have far better arguments and solutions to offer and imho they are in general more competent than Andresen and esp. Hearn to work on a financial software. Andresen and Hearn have both a corporatist, pro governance world view that is largely incompatible with and dangerous for the core aspects of Bitcoin.

ya.ya.yo!

turvarya

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Quote from: gustav on June 12, 2015, 05:56:00 AM

Quote from: turvarya on June 12, 2015, 05:46:03 AM

You obviously don't understand what XT is doing. There is no chance until a 90% consensus is reached. Inform yourself before you write BS.

Well and then people will pretend to update and switch back to core later. You'll be looking how many guns come out the woodwork after the fork to run core... prepare your anus.

Core won't die and two chains are inevitable. Gavincoin doesn't stand a chance longterm with or without "supermajority".

Supermajority does mean nothing. The waters are poisoned by Gavin and his mob. Nothing will grow from it.

Why would anybody do that? Sure, there are always idiots, who do things like that, but that is luckily not a majority, they are just the "loudest" people on the internet and therefor think they are a majority. So, yes, please kick yourself out of the system, by doing stupid things like that, I wouldn't mind a few idiots less in the Bitcoin-economy.

gustav

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Quote from: turvarya on June 12, 2015, 05:46:03 AM

You obviously don't understand what XT is doing. There is no chance until a 90% consensus is reached. Inform yourself before you write BS.

Well and then people will pretend to update and switch back to core later. You'll be looking how many guns come out the woodwork after the fork to run core... prepare your anus.

Core won't die and two chains are inevitable. Gavincoin doesn't stand a chance longterm with or without "supermajority".

Supermajority does mean nothing. The waters are poisoned by Gavin and his mob. Nothing will grow from it.

turvarya

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Quote from: johnyj on June 12, 2015, 03:53:28 AM

Quote from: Kprawn on June 12, 2015, 02:33:49 AM

Well, it seems as though this might be a valid argument. The software used to determine the total amount of nodes, was fine tuned lately, and it has been determined that there are a lot less fully functioning nodes out there, than was initially thought.

Some people will also run nodes with Bitcoin XT and others with Core.

So there will definately be less nodes... This might become a problem in the future, if things continue at the trend is going now.

If you run a node, make sure it is 100% configured for optimal performance. Sad

This is the problem I see with XT move, we should avoid politics in bitcoin, it should function like gold, no human can change the basic properties. Gavin threw out this XT version without reaching enough consensus, its intention is very unclear, bitcoin should not become a tool for people to realize their political interest

You obviously don't understand what XT is doing. There is no chance until a 90% consensus is reached. Inform yourself before you write BS.

johnyj

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Beyond Imagination

Quote from: Kprawn on June 12, 2015, 02:33:49 AM

Well, it seems as though this might be a valid argument. The software used to determine the total amount of nodes, was fine tuned lately, and it has been determined that there are a lot less fully functioning nodes out there, than was initially thought.

Some people will also run nodes with Bitcoin XT and others with Core.

So there will definately be less nodes... This might become a problem in the future, if things continue at the trend is going now.

If you run a node, make sure it is 100% configured for optimal performance. Sad

This is the problem I see with XT move, we should avoid politics in bitcoin, it should function like gold, no human can change the basic properties. Gavin threw out this XT version without reaching enough consensus, its intention is very unclear, bitcoin should not become a tool for people to realize their political interest

Lauda

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Terminated.

Quote from: johnyj on June 12, 2015, 03:36:21 AM

Maybe there are not so many people invested that much in bitcoin?

It takes time and also necessary skill. People will start to care about the network health only when they have been involved for enough long. I just setup my dedicated node last year, although I have been here since 2011. Mining is the first thing every one noticed because it is incentivized, running nodes are not. If mining always require a full node setup, then we might have millions of nodes Grin

Comparing with early days when everyone could run a full node, the number of nodes are shrinking. But the current nodes are mostly dedicated hard core nodes, they will exist as long as bitcoin exists, and hopefully the number will increase following more awareness of the network health

Why do you say that when many people clearly are today? At least their numbers are higher than the number of nodes. ,however you are correct. There is no incentive to run a node, thus only a few are doing it.
Although the individuals who are involved in Bitcoin on a daily basis will probably eventually run nodes. You're a fine example of this.

Quote from: ?? on ??

Seriously, the bitcoin network is decentralized enough to be practical. Quit splitting hairs.

Also, whenever a mining pool gets too large, the miners just point their hashing power somewhere else.

Network decentralization is one thing.
Centralized control over hard forks in another. Not that Gavin is going to try to devalue his investment on purpose. It's just that he might be a little more Woz, than Jobs.

The network is nowhere near as decentralized as it should be (or used to be). I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't want our remaining 1k (in that scenario) nodes to be located in the US.

They have no control over anything. You can fork Bitcoin now and create Bitcoin XX and try getting others aboard.

johnyj

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Beyond Imagination

Quote from: gmaxwell on June 12, 2015, 01:59:32 AM

Quote from: johnyj on June 11, 2015, 09:12:43 PM

I think anyone with significant amount of bitcoin holding (10K+ USD) will surely setup a dedicated node on high speed residential networks, the cost of such a server is very low comparing with the safety of his investment

Mining farms on the other hand will have a trend to further centralize, that is the danger, has nothing to do with block size

Why do you say that when many people clearly do not do so today?

Maybe there are not so many people invested that much in bitcoin? Roll Eyes

It takes time and also necessary skill. People will start to care about the network health only when they have been involved for enough long. I just setup my dedicated node last year, although I have been here since 2011. Mining is the first thing every one noticed because it is incentivized, running nodes are not. If mining always require a full node setup, then we might have millions of nodes Grin

And only after you have a full node setup, you can start to run P2POOL, which is the ideal form of pooled mining, a catch 22 situation

Comparing with early days when everyone could run a full node, the number of nodes are shrinking. The hash power concentration also reduced number of miners. But the current nodes are mostly dedicated hard core nodes, they will exist as long as bitcoin exists, and hopefully the number will increase following more awareness of the network health

Kprawn

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Well, it seems as though this might be a valid argument. The software used to determine the total amount of nodes, was fine tuned lately, and it has been determined that there are a lot less fully functioning nodes out there, than was initially thought.

Some people will also run nodes with Bitcoin XT and others with Core.

So there will definately be less nodes... This might become a problem in the future, if things continue at the trend is going now.

If you run a node, make sure it is 100% configured for optimal performance. Sad

Amph

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Quote from: X7 on June 11, 2015, 06:49:06 PM

Quote from: unamis76 on June 11, 2015, 03:53:33 PM

It's true that we are having less nodes, and that's why nodes are incentivated and there is also dedicated hardware for nodes... But what makes you think that bigger blocks means less nodes? The only thing that would make us have less nodes is simply people feeling like shutting down theirs. There isn't really a reason to have less nodes...

Nodes aren't incentivized

they should be then, there was a proposal to give something, to who will run a full node, this should in part diminish the possibility of such scenario

Quote from: turvarya on June 12, 2015, 02:20:04 AM

There isn't any centralization for a simple reason: Most people could run a full node, if they wanted to.
Centralization means: You can't join the club.
Just because some guy in the outback of china with a crappy internet connection can't run a full node, doesn't mean anything is centralized.
Are torrents centralized, because the same guy couldn't upload a HD-movie?

What would really happen, if the number of nodes decline too much? Some companies and enthusiasts, would just make new ones. Like I said, in the beginning, it is not hard to do so. I could just buy one of this full setup full nodes, go to a friend, who has ridicilous fast internet, he doesn't need and ask him nicely to just keep it connected to the internet and buy him some beer in return. No problem there at all.

what if some companies would start to provide services to help you setup a full node(because you have bad connection, because you are poor, because you can't trust running a full node on your machine ecc...), would this be considered centralized?

turvarya

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There isn't any centralization for a simple reason: Most people could run a full node, if they wanted to.
Centralization means: You can't join the club.
Just because some guy in the outback of china with a crappy internet connection can't run a full node, doesn't mean anything is centralized.
Are torrents centralized, because the same guy couldn't upload a HD-movie?

What would really happen, if the number of nodes decline too much? Some companies and enthusiasts, would just make new ones. Like I said, in the beginning, it is not hard to do so. I could just buy one of this full setup full nodes, go to a friend, who has ridicilous fast internet, he doesn't need and ask him nicely to just keep it connected to the internet and buy him some beer in return. No problem there at all.

Lauda

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Terminated.

Quote from: ?? on ??

think it will continue to go down as ssd's become more common and they start pushing hdd stock out.
SSD is expected to quickly outpace standard hard drives for density and expected to match on price, this would essentially kill hdd just taking over as the new standard.

I thought you were talking about current drives? I find it hard to believe that anyone is running a node on a SSD.

Quote from: achow101 on June 11, 2015, 07:16:53 PM

Why is it so difficult to download and install Bitcoin Core then just start the program and let it run? What is so hard about that. That is essentially what you are saying. It is quite easy to run a full node, albeit the wallet function of Bitcoin Core could use some UI work. There are also hardware nodes that you can just buy and works right out of the box.

For quite a good part of the population it is. You forgot port forwarding, which also most of the internet users don't know how to do. Besides, even though everyone seems very supportive (inc. this thread), I hardly think that most are running a node.

Quote from: aztecminer on June 11, 2015, 05:21:20 PM

hmmm... now that i think about it i should try to move my blockchain to another drive instead of my os ssd drive. thanks for reminding me of that. i just have to figure out how to do that now.

Simple. Uninstall Bitcoin Core; install into onto the desired drive (I've installed it to something like X:\Bitcoin), then just copy over the blockchain and wallet.

gmaxwell

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Quote from: johnyj on June 11, 2015, 09:12:43 PM

I think anyone with significant amount of bitcoin holding (10K+ USD) will surely setup a dedicated node on high speed residential networks, the cost of such a server is very low comparing with the safety of his investment

Mining farms on the other hand will have a trend to further centralize, that is the danger, has nothing to do with block size

Why do you say that when many people clearly do not do so today?

Quote from: S4VV4S on June 12, 2015, 01:57:27 AM

As others have said, the increased block size shouldn't be a concern for nodes.

Then why is startup and sync time the number one complaint about Bitcoin Core since 2013? Why have so many people and organizations told me they stopped running it because of that?

S4VV4S

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Quote from: gustav on June 11, 2015, 01:50:52 PM

Bitcoin is more and more vulnerable the less nodes it has.
The less nodes it has the more likely a ddos becomes which could have fatal consequences.
This kind of attack where an only medium size enitity (like mastercard or visa for example) could ddos 90% or more of the nodes on the network is highly overlooked and underestimated. That's also a reason a blocksize increase which would further reduce nodes is very unwise.

Imagine Bitcoin with less than 1000 nodes ... it wouldn't be secure at all anymore.

If someone really would manage to ddos almost all nodes on the network i could imagine multiple forks to occure.

Correct me if i'm wrong.

As others have said, the increased block size shouldn't be a concern for nodes.
And the block size is ofcourse dependant on the miners because I think that many of them would want to broadcast the found block as soon as it's found before someone else does.
That means that the size will depend on how fast a miner solves a block IMO.

Also, what does a DDoS attack have to do with centralization?

johnyj

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Beyond Imagination

I think anyone with significant amount of bitcoin holding (10K+ USD) will surely setup a dedicated node on high speed residential networks, the cost of such a server is very low comparing with the safety of his investment

Mining farms on the other hand will have a trend to further centralize, that is the danger, has nothing to do with block size

Topic: The overlooked existential threat of centralization (Read 1845 times)