Topic: What is theymos's updated stance on XT? (Read 3799 times)

Theymos,

Regardless of whether or not I or anyone agrees with you as to whether or not XT should be called, as you put it, an "economic redefinition," it is clearly not a style of achieving consensus and has nothing to do with consensus.  No-one should support XT, and it seems to have actually no chance of success (see for example, http://bitcoinstats.com/network/votes/ and also see https://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/block_size_votes/7d?c=block_size_votes&r=hour&t=bar for visualizations of blocksize vote) but nonetheless, as more people do more things like XT, it erodes the viability of what bitcoin originally was, thus making it especially important that people educate themselves about why decentralization is important (as well as the importance of consensus-based management of a decentralized and distributed system).  With that said, within bitcoin, the BIP process is a reasonable path (if it's followed per the readme at https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/README.mediawiki) to propose changes that can be found acceptable to all, and outside of bitcoin, since there are several hundred cryptocurrency systems in existence, as anyone can see, their existence is an example that anyone is free to do what they want in the world of crypto, and these systems compete, various cryptocurrency units are traded with one another, and they coexist. And this will continue to be the case.

Edit (Jan. 13, 2016) ~ see also my remarks on this thing from a while back, here:
 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12190910

Hmmm, I am having difficulty finding that specific quote (maybe my memory is not properly serving me on this). I was able to find several quotes in which you mentioned the bitcoin economy (and not the core devs and "experts" ) as who gets to have their options considered when determining consensus.  (here, here, here - the economy was discussed but not the devs/experts -).

I would disagree with a Bitcoin Core committer ("core devs") or a few Bitcoin experts having this kind of veto power, especially regarding the core devs having individual veto power. I think this makes the decision making regarding Bitcoin even more centralized then that of a bank. If I were to walk into Bank of America tomorrow and tried to have some change applied to my account and was denied, then I would have the option of escalating the issue to the person who denied my request's manager (and can continue to escalate up the chain of command). However with your definition of consensus, if any one core dev were to disagree with a proposed change then it automatically does not happen.

This brings me to the point of potential conflict of interest. It is argued that some of the core devs (and some of the Bitcoin experts) have a conflict of interest because of their relationship with Blockstream (either because they are employed by block stream or otherwise derive some of their income from Blockstream). You argue that the core devs that are employed by Blockstream have been making the same argument for some time prior to their relationship with Blockstream. I think we can agree to disagree on this (I disagree because I believe their relationship with Blockstream gives them an incentive to not try to compromise, and does not give them an incentive to change their minds when presented with additional facts that potential discredit their believes).

Even if we were to assume there is no current conflict of interest, I can say with near certainty that there will be in the future if core devs are given veto power then they will be targeted by entities that would potentially profit when certain Bitcoin related decisions are made. With several millions (and potentially billions, or more) of dollars on the line, profit seeking entities will have great incentives to try to financially influence the core devs, and this will be made easier if it only takes one core dev to stop a proposal from having consensus.
I think that 99.9% is probably too high of a threshold. I think that if say 80% of the economy supports a "new" Bitcoin, and utilizes it when it does not utilize the "old" Bitcoin, then the other say 20% will naturally start to use the "new" Bitcoin as the old Bitcoin would likely lose greater then 80% of it's value.

I think that to an extent that miners to matter, and their agreement (to an extent) is necessary to reach consensus. For example if only 1% of the miners are in favor of a proposed change then there would be no one to keep the network secure that the entire bitcoin economy supports. I think that over time, the "medium to large" economic players (and the miners) will be the ones who will run a node (more on this later).

I argue that in order to have consensus, some kind of supermajority of both the miners and the bitcoin economy must agree to a change. I am not sure what would represent a super majority though. I think that 50% would be too low (50% agreement may not even be accurate due to variance). I would say that 99.9% would probably be too high because it would be nearly impossible to achieve this all at one time. I think a 75% support level would be close to an appropriate amount of agreement, although something like 85% would probably be better. I think that anything above ~85% initial agreement will be nearly impossible in almost every circumstance because of the diverse economic goals and incentives that various stakeholders have (for example Western Union may get involved in Bitcoin in the future, but they would probably oppose any initiate that would allow it to scale because doing so would hurt them overall).

I think the core devs and the Bitcoin experts can (and should) give advise to the various economic players and the miners, however I don't think they should make decisions for them. I don't think it is the core dev's position to prevent major stake holders from making a poor decision (this is similar to how a financial advisor would tell someone who is unemployed with only 3 weeks of unemployment insurance left, little savings and a job offer they will need to pass up because they are going on vacation that it is a bad idea to pass up the job offer and take the vacation, however they will not call Expedia to cancel the reservations).

I think that verbal support is necessary for major stakeholders to be able to make decisions on if they should support any particular proposal. Giving verbal support is part of the negotiating and decision making process. If 95% of the bitcoin economy and the miners were to support a particular proposal then it should be fairly obvious that it is advisable for the last 5% of the stakeholders to support such proposal unless they can make an additional significant argument against it.


There is litecoin that could have replaced bitcoin, although the debate regarding block time was won by Bitcoin, and it turns out that script can be used by ASICs just like SHA256 can. Even litecoin has an extremely low adoption rate and a large amount of litecoin trade is with bitcoin (people are trading LTC for BTC).

There are a few other alt coins that use Coin Join (or CJ-like) transactions for every transaction in every block, however their blockchain security is virtually zero and their potential economic uses is equally worthless. Other then that, pretty much every other altcoin is, in every way significantly inferior to Bitcoin (at least IMO) to an extent that they are only good for speculation as to when the other speculators will enter and exit positions of those alt coins.


This is fair enough. Although I think it is very unlikely that BIP 101 (or any other BIP that increases the block size) will be included in Bitcoin Core, at least not by default.

I was not aware of this. We should sponsor more of these types of events, and maybe even hose these types of events. I cannot see anything other then positive things from coming from this event (although it is possible that this results in nothing). Maybe we could decrease the threshold to donate for any donator perks to encourage additional donators.
I very much agree that the kind of hostile hard fork that was originally proposed in XT is very bad. Major stakeholders should not be coerced into accepting something the way that XT proposes they accept it. Although if enough support can be gathered prior to the hostility (when the network will fork without consensus) then maybe it is not so bad. Maybe if XT forces conversations to be had about what needs to happen with the network, then it might not be so bad (and maybe these conversations can lead to consensus prior to the "hostile date"). Maybe if XT forces major stakeholders to consider a single proposal to increase the block size (instead of each supporting, in smaller numbers, the 4-5 proposals), then maybe it is not so bad.

I think right now it would still be very cheap to run a full node. I think my full node can handle consistent 8 MB blocks (I only pay ~$20/month for it). Moores Law would imply that it will cost roughly the same to double capacity every 2 (or maybe, more recently 2.5) years. I don't think however that it will necessary be a bad thing if the cost to run a full node will increase over time.

In theory, over time, the people who will be running full nodes will be the people who are trusted enough for others to send money to them first. For example if I (as an average user) were to send fiat to Coinbase first then there would be little reason why I would need a full node to validate a transaction that coinbase sends me with a full node over a SPV client (if they were going to scam me then they might as well not send the transaction in the first place). Likewise, if I were to turn around and spend those bitcoin that I purchased from Coinbase at a website/company that utilizes BitPay to process their payments, then I could just give BitPay the signed transaction for them to worry about propagating throughout the network, and getting it confirmed. If I were acting as some kind of escrow service, then I would want to ensure that payments sent to me are confirmed quickly and that when I think they are confirmed they really are, so I would want to run a full node to validate this. Ideally, a greater number of economic players will join the bitcoin economy which will result in a diverse ownership of full nodes.

The cost of running a full node (or multiple full nodes) will be added to the cost of doing business while accepting bitcoin. This is similar to how accepting credit cards cost ~2.9% + $0.30, the cost of accepting bitcoin would be 0.0001BTC + some amount to run the full node(s), and ideally the total cost of accepting bitcoin will be greater then the total cost of accepting credit cards (and other fiat).

That's really disappointing to hear you don't care about immediate/near future success of Bitcoin. I'm personally in the same boat as you on one thing- I think long term success should be one of the biggest goals for the Bitcoin community to achieve. However, I don't see how you could expect such a feet to take place without success on a smaller scale prior to whatever your version of long term success is. For me, mass adoption is the ultimate goal, and that can't take place until Bitcoin continues to improve. The roadtrip isn't point A to point B, we have a lot of landmarks to hit before this long term success can be achieved, and it needs to take place in the near future.

Anyways, it's clear you have a concrete set of views, but there are a lot of people out there with views that oppose you. Even if you run the major Bitcoin community outlets, I personally don't believe you should have the audacity to fully censor certain points of view from your forums.


https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_uncensored/comments/3hh0ln/theymos_in_trouble_with_ftc_now_ftc_just/

No, I support making a certain class of change (hard fork changes) very difficult. This the only correct position. If hard fork changes are not very difficult, then the hard, "mathematical" guarantees that we have about Bitcoin such as coin ownership and limited supply are pretty much worthless.

(Did you know that it's possible to increase the max block size with a soft fork using a proposal called extension blocks? This proposal isn't very popular because it's considered inelegant, but if consensus is impossible and you think that Bitcoin cannot survive without more transaction volume, then extension blocks would be better than splitting the economy up with a hostile hard fork. You don't need the same level of consensus for soft forks.)

My main motivation is for Bitcoin to succeed long-term (for ideological reasons). I have less potential conflict of interest than most people here, since I am self-employed.

Things I don't particularly care about:
- The value of bitcointalk.org, /r/Bitcoin, and bitcoin.org
- The short & medium-term market value of BTC
- My personal fame/power/reputation/wealth
- What random people who I don't know or respect think about what I'm doing

Things I do care about:
- Bitcoin's long-term decentralization
- The long-term ability of Bitcoin to provide anonymity
- The long-term price/usefulness of BTC
- Rational technical/economic arguments

To a large extent, the above is why have I have so much power in the community. I didn't create any of the important things that I now have some amount of control over -- in all cases I was given control by other people who trusted that I would do the right thing with them. Here's what /r/Bitcoin's creator recently said: "Theymos doesn't kneel, he doesn't sacrifice and is willing to stand up for what HE believes to be true, rather than some external authority."


No.


Right. I don't like BIP 100 or 101 because they are too fast, but maybe I could accept them if almost all of the other experts disagreed with me (since I might be wrong), and I'm personally open to a wide variety of block size increase proposals. Unlike some in the "conservative camp", I don't believe that it's necessary to artificially restrict block space. I even think that there's a fairly easy way that the global max block size could reasonably be entirely removed (each full node would have its own max block size calculated in a certain special way), though I think that a global max is better.

Not any change. He said he is opposed to XT not block size increase or whatsoever. Could you please "rought histories" of theymos here?

I suppose that's true, but Theymos' propositions are still incredibly harsh on any change whatsoever. Blockstream alone wouldn't be able to stop any progress, but several companies with the same intentions as Blockstream could (and there are several companies with the same intentions).

Theymos obviously has some sort of self interest in the whole debate, or he wouldn't be so god damn opposed to any change at all (I mean just look at his statements on the reddit). He has a rough history (wasn't he just uncovered to be laundering money through some donation?) and I really wish he didn't have so much power in the community.

Actually they can't. Blockstream doesn't even offer a service yet, so they aren't considered a large company or exchange. They would count as a smaller but still economically important company. If they were the only ones who opposed a block size increase, then they do not count as several companies (just one company) so they would be disregarded provided that everyone else in that list agrees with the change.

Yes, absolutely, I agree completely. if we want a truly consensus and decentralized Bitcoin, we must give lone third parties the absolute power to veto any and all changes. Yes! This is the answer Bitcoin needs! /s

By this logic, Blockstream could maintain a 1MB block limit and force Bitcoin users worldwide to use their service.

My perception is all I have. All I have done is point out holes and what it looks like to me. Hard to call that spreading falsehoods.
Why get angry about this? Still think it odd for these companies to sign this letter if we do not matter. Why go through the trouble, right?
Have got pissy at times with those that are making multiple threads on XT and question why the need.

Like you say I dont matter, so I can walk away but if thats the case for me, imagine how easy it is for those not following this drama.
I do not support XT because of the ip tracking and because this attack was stepping on anyone that supports core. They went about this wrong and for that alone I will not support it. Thats my stance, it means little.Far from speaking falsehoods imo.

I don't think I said that.

There are two ways of doing a hardfork. The proper way is consensus:

• Create a proposal that has no significant opposition. A proposal has significant opposition if it is strongly opposed by any of: one Bitcoin Core committer, one large exchange or company (Coinbase, etc.), a few generally-recognized Bitcoin experts, several smaller but still economically-important companies, or a large group of ordinary users who have reasonable arguments and are willing and able to exert some real economic force. (The underlined groups are the ones with clearly-significant opposition as I currently see things.) This means that it's very difficult to do controversial hardforks. That's the point. You need to get consensus -- that is, make a hardfork non-controversial -- in order to do it.
• Put the change in the code set to take effect at some exact time 6-12 months in the future.
• Since the "flag day" is so far in the future, almost all of the economy will just naturally upgrade without any special effort. Since the change is non-controversial, no one of any economic significance will have reason to refuse to upgrade. The network will not split, since everyone will still have the same understanding of what Bitcoin is.

The way XT is attempting to push through a hard fork might be called "economic redefinition" (which is not consensus). For me to recognize an economic redefinition, both of these must be true:

• An absolutely overwhelming majority of the Bitcoin economy (99.9%, say) actively engages in the redefinition (ie. they actually exist only on the new network/currency). Verbal support is insufficient. Miners and nodes are irrelevant. Individual users have much less weight than big companies with more economic weight.
• The new currency must not break Bitcoin's absolute core principles. For example, it cannot create more bitcoins than are allowed. I currently believe that 8 MB blocks do not violate Bitcoin's absolute core principles.

(The above list where I even say "verbal support is insufficient" is a slightly modified version of this comment which I wrote 14 days ago. I am not being inconsistent about this.)


That was one hypothetical situation. I wasn't saying anything about other situations.


Agreed, but that doesn't make it Bitcoin. Many other altcoins could reach this point if they tried.

There are some important differences between XT and something like Litecoin, so it might be reasonable to call it something other than "altcoin". But it breaks Bitcoin's core rules without consensus, so it's not Bitcoin unless the economy overwhelmingly redefines Bitcoin to equal XT.

If we get into the habit of shattering the Bitcoin economy in order to adopt changes that most experts believe to be terrible, then Bitcoin will not survive long-term. The community needs to get used to fighting against this sort of thing very strongly.

Discussion of BIP 101 itself is on-topic, it definitely should happen, and can go in the main sections. But I will consider XT to be an altcoin (or "not-Bitcoin") for at least the foreseeable future.


Consensus about how to deal with the max block size going forward is necessary, though we're not as pressed for time as many people think. Blocks are only about 40% full on average right now, and this isn't growing very quickly, so we probably have at least a couple of years before this becomes any kind of pressing concern. Maybe/hopefully there will be a clear technical consensus as a result of the research/discussion at the Scaling Bitcoin Conferences (sponsored by bitcointalk.org!), which would help move things along.

Even if XT's change to the max block size was 100% objectively perfect, this sort of hostile hardfork is just amazingly, incredibly bad. Due to this, I condemn XT as strongly as possible.

These companies are not coming out to sway the public. They don't need to.mthey represent the economic majority of big businesses in the Bitcoin space.

Perhaps it is you who is posting falsehoods with no facts just opinion.

Do not like these companies coming into the fold and attempting to sway the public. A companies main purpose is to create profit and believe they are looking at things in a shortsighted nature.
Was against Theymos at first but watching bitcointalk lately I can totally see why it had to be done on reddit.

Some people you can not reach and refuse to enter discussion in a rational way. The more fud I read the more I dislike XT.
I have personal reasons for not liking XT and one is my tinfoil hat says something is not right with the backdoor being written in.

Quickseller, you're missing a vital piece of information related to Bitpay.
supporting BIP101 =/= supporting XT.

There is 25% miner support for BIP100 right now, so essentially nothing has changed (everyone is still split up).

The bitcoin community is large, and even that 26 people who voted in that poll wouldn't be enough to at least create a tiny a ripple on the water. If large businesses and major players go for XT, so be it. Economy decides which is which in bitcoin, because bitcoin heavily relies on it. Without those miners who spend much in equipment, businesses who facilitate bitcoin transactions and services and whatnot, bitcoin would not hold any value at all; bitcoin will remain an idea if no economy is behind it.

Seeing those signatures just convinces me even more to avoid XT like the plague - I agree with Theymos.

For what it's worth, the consensus so far:



Also:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12212691

Go make another forum/reddit section for your altcoin if you believe in it so much.

For me it's Bitcoin all the way.

You previously mentioned a 90% threshold for "consensus" (on reddit), and have mentioned a number of times that economic players.
If I wanted to spend my bitcoin, then chances are I would need to spent it at one of the companies that signed this letter. The same is true if I wanted to buy/sell bitcoin (although not to as large of an extent).

You said to get a consensus of the major economic players of Bitcoin, and the major economic players of Bitcoin formed a consensus. If you don't think this is a cosensus then which economic player(s) are you waiting for to agree to BIP101?

Sure there are some core devs that are opposed to BIP101, although all that a core dev is, that they have git hub commit access to bitcoin core. There are also allegations that the devs/experts that are opposed to BIP101 have conflicts of interest, and regardless of merit, this should be taken into consideration (provided the claim is not absolution without merit).

It should be noted that even with the support of these economic players, at least 75% of the miners also need to support BIP101 in order for it to be implemented.


This is where I strongly disagree with you. It is my understanding that there are no plans for BitcoinXT to continue to be supported if a (forced) consensus is not reached. If the network is forked and XT is not ultimately adopted as the next/new Bitcoin, then it will not be supported by it's devs and miners will have strong economic incentives to start mining on the "real" Bitcoin blockchain. This is very different from litecoin, or DASH, or name coin (or any other scam/alt coin) because none of them intended, nor had any realistic chance to replace Bitcoin.

The fact is that BitcoinXT has a non-zero chance of replacing Bitcoin upon implementation. Some people could put the chances at 1%, others might put it at 10%, others at 50%, others at 85%, although you apparently do not think it's chances are >90%. No other altcoin matches this criteria.

As you have argued, there is no consensus on if BIP101 should be implemented or not (I think there is an economic consensus with the Bitcoin related companies agreeing to support it). I do think that the current moderation policy is only going to make it more difficult to get consensus one way or another. I also think the current moderation policy is making people more polarized in the BIP101/no BIP101 debate and that each side is having more difficultly in listening to the other side's arguments.

I will say that I started off being strongly opposed to XT but in favor of a max block size increase. I will also say that I always have been and always will be opposed to any change in protocol that is without consensus.

I do believe that in order to reach a consensus, there needs to be a debate out in the open and that both sides need to be able to present their arguments. I do believe that the current moderation policy is preventing a constructive debate from taking place regarding BIP101.

I think that without consensus on the max block size debate, Bitcoin will fail. I believe that without consensus that major economic players will stop accepting Bitcoin altogether until it is more clear which of Bitcoin or BitcoinXT will succeed. I think that now more then ever that Bitcoin needs a leader to neutrally guide major stakeholders of Bitcoin to make a decision on what to support.

I ask you theymos to please get us consensus regarding the max block size debate. I ask you to do so as neutrally as possible. Please bring the community together to reach an agreement as to what is going to be best for Bitcoin over the long term

Bitcoin was also designed to allow freedom and remove censorship (aka centralization of power).

It is your forum and you are a mod on reddit but do you not see how it could be viewed (your actions) as censorship/dictator by not allowing discussion of XT on reddit?

There are points on both sides of this debate. But I do not think it is reasonable to disallow discussion of the very topic that has to do with bitcoin's growth (or bitcoin's eventual growth as Satoshi obviously intended).

For now I'm trying to see both sides and weigh pros and cons.

Eventually it is in the best interest of bitcoin and its users to allow bitcoin's block size to increase. Not sure how disallowing discussion of a modified client that does this is reasonable.

Consensus in this case = no economically-significant opposition, not majority support or whatever. There is still significant opposition, so there is no consensus. (BIP 101 is very strongly opposed by many experts, so if consensus on BIP 101 is possible at all, it won't happen with any speed.)

As I've mentioned previously, Bitcoin would need to be redefined to equal XT before XT would be allowed on /r/Bitcoin, bitcointalk.org, and bitcoin.org. Without preexisting consensus, this'd require that some big chunk of the economy actually diverge from Bitcoin and that their altcoin succeed in overtaking the vast majority of the economy. Those companies are significant (and I am very disappointed that they are acting so irresponsibly), but their "votes" right now are not especially meaningful -- none of them are going to actually move to an altcoin that few of their customers and partners support, no matter what they say now. If I was sure that they would stick strongly to the XT "suicide pact" (perhaps due to a legally-binding agreement), or if they started pushing XT to their customers, then I would classify these companies as altcoin companies and treat them as such.

In other words, without consensus, XT needs to utterly defeat "old" Bitcoin (including bitcointalk.org, etc.) on the market before I could recognize it as Bitcoin. This is messy, but it's the only reasonable approach as far as I can tell. It's not reasonable to go along with what a handful of what are essentially banks say we should do -- that's the sort of thing that Bitcoin was designed to stop.

good question

Sometime yesterday (August 24, 2015), several major bitcoin economic stakeholders signed a document supporting BIP101 which is used by BitcoinXT and is not used currently in Bitcoin core. This would imply that there would be a high chance of consensus in the eve that BIP101 were to be implemented. It is my understanding that theymos's concern about BitcoinXT is that he does not believe it would have a consensus if it were to be implemented.

My question is, does the below document cause any kind of change to the forum's stance on the status of BitcoinXT?

http://blog.blockchain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Industry-Block-Size-letter-All-Signed.pdf