A good currency should be inflation-free.
A fellow computer nerd, I presume?
Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 19701. (Read 26608588 times)
December 31, 2015, 09:43:38 AM
A fellow computer nerd, I presume?
December 31, 2015, 09:42:46 AM
Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.
Apparently billyjoeallen is a true visionary, unlike cripplecoiner Satoshi who put there the 1MB limit and only wanted Bitcoin's fate to be "restricted" into a much lesser role instead of wanting to include every possible dataset that can be "blockchained", into BTC's blockchain.
As an inventor, Satoshi would likely get enormous credit for creating something that could be used for 100 or 1000 stuff simultaneously instead of 1, 5 or 10. Yet he was quite open and honest about whether that would actually scale.
Satoshi showed the way: The invention of the blockchain could be used with parallel blockchains for different data sets. It was not necessary to put every single data set into the same blockchain.
But billyjoeallen knows better...
It is not clear what Satoshi thought of bitcoin in Oct/2010. At that time, the project was already giving signs of drifting away from the goal that he stated in 2009. (Who knows why he left the scene abruptly, shortly therafter; but one theory is that he was smart enough to see that the protocol would fail to achieve that goal, and lost interest in the project.)
There is no sign that he ever intended bitcoin to be a replacement to the traditional payment system (cash, credit cards, bank wires, etc.), which, as he admits in the whitepaper
Quote
works well enough for most transactions.
Surely he was sensible enough to realize that, while bitcoin could scale to VISA size in the distant future, it could not compete with it in all the comfort features that the traditional systems offer but bitcoin lacks. So, he did not intend bitcoin to be used for buying coffee or groceries, sure. But he did not intend it to be used for buying cars, houses, or space shuttles, either. Or for large-volume settlements between banks or big corporations either. Or to be a general-purpose shared database for things like BitDNS.
Bitcoin was designed to be
Quote
an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,
allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party.
It was meant to render a service, not to make anyone rich. If it had an adoption goal, it was only to be available whenever two parties needed to make an internet payment, and a trusted intermediary was not available or desirable -- and that need was strong enough to overcome the limitations and inconveniences of the system. For normal law-abiding people, such situations should be few and far between. Even today, the system would be quite capable of handling such traffic.allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party.
If we assume that he was still clinging to his original vision, that message quoted by @AlexGR does not mean what it may sound today. First, in his vision, there should be only two kinds of players: the miners (that he called "nodes"), and the simple clients that did only limited validation, followed the majority chain, and trusted the miners for the full validation. (There was no provision in the protocol for the non-mining relay nodes that are now claimed to be the Guardians of the CryptoRevolution, which in fact are the sort of middlemen that bitcoin was supposed to get rid of.)
Moreover, Satoshi did expect that, as the volume increased, mining would be limited to entities with a stake on the network's wellbeing. But he obviously assumed and hoped that there would be thousands of independent miners with comparable hashpower, scattered all over the world. That assumption was needed to exclude the risk of a "majority cartel" -- a subset of the miners holding a majority of the hashpower, who conspired or were forced to act against their immediate financial interest. Such a cartel could completely block the network, and therefore could blackmail the other miners and clients into accepting arbitrary changes to the protocol. Majority voting weighted by proof-of-work is essential for the protocol to work at all; therefore, if such a cartel forms, there is no way to protect the protocol from its abuses.
From the whitepaper:
Quote
New transaction broadcasts do not necessarily need to reach all nodes. As long as they reach
many nodes, they will get into a block before long. Block broadcasts are also tolerant of dropped
messages.
many nodes, they will get into a block before long. Block broadcasts are also tolerant of dropped
messages.
Note that he was not even assuming that the transctions would propagate through all miners.
Quoting the first version of the bitcoin.org website:
Quote
When [ the block reward ] runs out, the system can support transaction fees if needed. It's based on open market competition, and there will probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.
But it is clear that he never intended for some clique of developers to put a limit on the size of blocks to force all cients to compete for block space by raising their fees. That would not be an "open market", but a centrally-planned market reminiscent of the Soviet economy (only dumber). He clearly intended that miners would operate as any business in a free market. Namely, each miner figures out his optimum fee (the fee that maximizes his net revenue), and then processes all the transactions that he gets that pay that fee -- expanding his bandwidth and servers as needed.
To be sure, that part of his plan seems rather fuzzy. Why would miners volunteer to process an arbitrary amount of anonymous transactions for free? How would clients get to know the cutoff fees of each miner? How would the miners find their optimum fee (that depends on other miners's decisions? And so on.
Although Satoshi comes out as a competent software engineer and a fairly sensible person overall, his knowledge of economics was clearly limited, with the misconceptions and as one would expect from a computer scientist (like myself, I must confess). See for example his belief that a good currency should be inflation-free, his decision to reduce the reward by abrupt halvings intead of a gradual decay, and his failure to foresee the speculative bubbles and the inevitable concentration of mining.
December 31, 2015, 09:35:03 AM
Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.
Bitcoin and BitDNS can be used separately. Users shouldn't have to download all of both to use one or the other. BitDNS users may not want to download everything the next several unrelated networks decide to pile in either.
The networks need to have separate fates. BitDNS users might be completely liberal about adding any large data features since relatively few domain registrars are needed, while Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices.
Apparently billyjoeallen is a true visionary, unlike cripplecoiner Satoshi who put there the 1MB limit and only wanted Bitcoin's fate to be "restricted" into a much lesser role instead of wanting to include every possible dataset that can be "blockchained", into BTC's blockchain.
As an inventor, Satoshi would likely get enormous credit for creating something that could be used for 100 or 1000 stuff simultaneously instead of 1, 5 or 10. Yet he was quite open and honest about whether that would actually scale.
Satoshi showed the way: The invention of the blockchain could be used with parallel blockchains for different data sets. It was not necessary to put every single data set into the same blockchain.
But billyjoeallen knows better...
It is not clear what Satoshi thought of bitcoin in Oct/2010. At that time, the project was already giving signs of drifting away from the goal that he stated in 2009. (Who knows why he left the scene abruptly, shortly therafter; but one theory is that he was smart enough to see that the protocol would fail to achieve that goal, and lost interest in the project.)
There is no sign that he ever intended bitcoin to be a replacement to the traditional payment system (cash, credit cards, bank wires, etc.), which, as he admits in the whitepaper
Quote
works well enough for most transactions.
Surely he was sensible enough to realize that, while bitcoin could scale to VISA size in the distant future, it could not compete with it in all the comfort features that the traditional systems offer but bitcoin lacks. So, he did not intend bitcoin to be used for buying coffee or groceries, sure. But he did not intend it to be used for buying cars, houses, or space shuttles, either. Or for large-volume settlements between banks or big corporations either. Or to be a general-purpose shared database for things like BitDNS.
Bitcoin was designed to be
Quote
an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust,
allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party.
It was meant to render a service, not to make anyone rich. If it had an adoption goal, it was only to be available whenever two parties needed to make an internet payment, and a trusted intermediary was not available or desirable -- and that need was strong enough to overcome the limitations and inconveniences of the system. For normal law-abiding people, such situations should be few and far between. Even today, the system would be quite capable of handling such traffic.allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted
third party.
If we assume that he was still clinging to his original vision, that message quoted by @AlexGR does not mean what it may sound today. First, in his vision, there should be only two kinds of players: the miners (that he called "nodes"), and the simple clients that did only limited validation, followed the majority chain, and trusted the miners for the full validation. (There was no provision in the protocol for the non-mining relay nodes that are now claimed to be the Guardians of the CryptoRevolution, which in fact are the sort of middlemen that bitcoin was supposed to get rid of.)
Moreover, Satoshi did expect that, as the volume increased, mining would be limited to entities with a stake on the network's wellbeing. But he obviously assumed and hoped that there would be thousands of independent miners with comparable hashpower, scattered all over the world. That assumption was needed to exclude the risk of a "majority cartel" -- a subset of the miners holding a majority of the hashpower, who conspired or were forced to act against their immediate financial interest. Such a cartel could completely block the network, and therefore could blackmail the other miners and clients into accepting arbitrary changes to the protocol. Majority voting weighted by proof-of-work is essential for the protocol to work at all; therefore, if such a cartel forms, there is no way to protect the protocol from its abuses.
From the whitepaper:
Quote
New transaction broadcasts do not necessarily need to reach all nodes. As long as they reach
many nodes, they will get into a block before long. Block broadcasts are also tolerant of dropped
messages.
Note that he was not even assuming that the transctions would propagate through all miners. many nodes, they will get into a block before long. Block broadcasts are also tolerant of dropped
messages.
Quoting the first version of the bitcoin.org website:
Quote
When [ the block reward ] runs out, the system can support transaction fees if needed. It's based on open market competition, and there will probably always be nodes willing to process transactions for free.
But it is clear that he never intended for some clique of developers to put a limit on the size of blocks to force all cients to compete for block space by raising their fees. That would not be an "open market", but a centrally-planned market reminiscent of the Soviet economy (only dumber). He clearly intended that miners would operate as any business in a free market. Namely, each miner figures out his optimum fee (the fee that maximizes his net revenue), and then processes all the transactions that he gets that pay that fee -- expanding his bandwidth and servers as needed.To be sure, that part of his plan seems rather fuzzy. Why would miners volunteer to process an arbitrary amount of anonymous transactions for free? How would clients get to know the cutoff fees of each miner? How would the miners find their optimum fee (that depends on other miners's decisions? And so on. I don't know whether he ever clarified that part of the plan.
Although Satoshi comes out as a competent software engineer and a fairly sensible person overall, his knowledge of economics was clearly limited, with the misconceptions that one would expect from a computer scientist (like myself, I must confess). See for example his belief that a good currency should be inflation-free, his decision to reduce the reward by abrupt halvings intead of a gradual decay, and his failure to foresee the speculative bubbles and the inevitable concentration of mining.
December 31, 2015, 09:26:49 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Don't bother, this whole argument is just a sham after all...
http://qntra.net/2015/12/the-false-dilemma-of-xt-versus-blockstream/
So I read that and it has lots of words but basically says nothing. It claims some type of Alex Jones' style "false left/right paradigm", then doesn't even describe a legit pathway forward or how each side is blocking that from occurring. IMO, Bitcoin will need to scale to at least 8-10MB blocks even with a Lightning Network because the masses have to retain access to the main chain for it to function.
December 31, 2015, 09:23:34 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Don't bother, this whole argument is just a sham after all...
http://qntra.net/2015/12/the-false-dilemma-of-xt-versus-blockstream/
A bit colouful, but ok read.
December 31, 2015, 09:00:20 AM
December 31, 2015, 08:58:47 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Don't bother, this whole argument is just a sham after all...
http://qntra.net/2015/12/the-false-dilemma-of-xt-versus-blockstream/
December 31, 2015, 08:33:32 AM
Doesn't matter. You have to choose a team. There are only 2 and you can't have a different opinion.
Kinda like choosing Republican or Democrat.
Kinda like choosing Republican or Democrat.
That's not true, I could run my own implementation with 'bouncy' blocks that alternate between 512KB and 512MB. I would then be the equivalent of the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Yeah but I could run for the presidential. Wouldn't do a big difference.
December 31, 2015, 08:24:59 AM
4MB immediate hard fork is the only viable solution imo. Then segwit can be used as a bandaid to increase further in the future with or without a fork, effectively taking it to 8MB or so.
nope!
first we need to work on the fact that there are big pools that mine empty blocks
after that, maybe we can jump to 1.5mb or 2mb
IBLT is not a requirement to increase block size. This is their standard stall strategy where they introduce an endless stream of random variables that just have to be addressed before anything can be changed. IBLT can be integrated later.
The "oh no, loss of decentralization!" excuse is also ridiculous when block size would need to go pretty huge to outweigh the mining pool centralization that already exists.
I give it around 100 years max before the world is blown up from WW3. Current block size would be around 1 terabyte by the time that happened vs around 8 terabytes with 8MB blocks. This is without even having pruning involved.
December 31, 2015, 08:24:24 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
What I don't understand is: who chooses?
I mean, I could have my opinion (I don't cause I'm not technical enough to understand everything) but even if I had, what influence would that have? Who decides in the end?
Who chooses: the miners.
How to influence the choosers: by voicing your opinion, by lobbying stakeholders (Bitcoin exchanges and other Bitcoin service providers), by running a certain Bitcoin node, and ultimately by switching to a different cryptocurrency.
December 31, 2015, 08:10:05 AM
Doesn't matter. You have to choose a team. There are only 2 and you can't have a different opinion.
Kinda like choosing Republican or Democrat.
Kinda like choosing Republican or Democrat.
That's not true, I could run my own implementation with 'bouncy' blocks that alternate between 512KB and 512MB. I would then be the equivalent of the Monster Raving Loony Party.
December 31, 2015, 08:06:45 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
What I don't understand is: who chooses?
I mean, I could have my opinion (I don't cause I'm not technical enough to understand everything) but even if I had, what influence would that have? Who decides in the end?
People who run nodes decide which one they are running. If everyone stop using bitcoin core, bitcoin core is dead.
Have a look to the node list to know what software is used : https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/
Also look here: http://xtnodes.com/ (includes stats about bitcoin unlimited (see http://bitcoinunlimited.info))
December 31, 2015, 08:00:19 AM
December 31, 2015, 07:49:50 AM
Re: lets everybody panic
Adam Back's 2-4-8 proposal seems to have the central tendency of large miner support with BIP102 a close second.
Anyhow, upon further investigation, it seems this is going to get dealt with adequately, in reasonable time, although probably to no one's satisfaction. Then we can go back to your regularly scheduled gridlock.
Re: wall observation
So, 435 or 420 will fall eventually. My bet will be on momentum when that happens.
Adam Back's 2-4-8 proposal seems to have the central tendency of large miner support with BIP102 a close second.
Anyhow, upon further investigation, it seems this is going to get dealt with adequately, in reasonable time, although probably to no one's satisfaction. Then we can go back to your regularly scheduled gridlock.
Re: wall observation
So, 435 or 420 will fall eventually. My bet will be on momentum when that happens.
December 31, 2015, 07:15:25 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
What I don't understand is: who chooses?
I mean, I could have my opinion (I don't cause I'm not technical enough to understand everything) but even if I had, what influence would that have? Who decides in the end?
Doesn't matter. You have to choose a team. There are only 2 and you can't have a different opinion.
Kinda like choosing Republican or Democrat.
What about "Bitcoin Unlimited". IMO the solution to the block size drama. -> Let the free market decide.
December 31, 2015, 07:06:48 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
What I don't understand is: who chooses?
I mean, I could have my opinion (I don't cause I'm not technical enough to understand everything) but even if I had, what influence would that have? Who decides in the end?
Doesn't matter. You have to choose a team. There are only 2 and you can't have a different opinion.
Kinda like choosing Republican or Democrat.
December 31, 2015, 07:00:21 AM
December 31, 2015, 06:52:09 AM
I'm still not sure which team to support. "big blockers" or "small blockers".
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
Still waiting on the team mascots to decide which is better.
What I don't understand is: who chooses?
I mean, I could have my opinion (I don't cause I'm not technical enough to understand everything) but even if I had, what influence would that have? Who decides in the end?
People who run nodes decide which one they are running. If everyone stop using bitcoin core, bitcoin core is dead.
Have a look to the node list to know what software is used : https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/
December 31, 2015, 06:28:51 AM
4MB immediate hard fork is the only viable solution imo. Then segwit can be used as a bandaid to increase further in the future with or without a fork, effectively taking it to 8MB or so.
I don't disagree but from what I understand...for whatever reason the bitcoin core devs are gonna go with seg witness 1st...it probably is above my head and due to money by big miners...but i see deadlock with small moves to 'tweak' ie stall
December 31, 2015, 06:00:21 AM
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