Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts • Hacker News Board

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#31

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:52 AM UTC

rsi_oww wrote: post #21

Taek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been an enormous and coordinated effort to disrupt the Bitcoin community, and many of the actions have been far from subtle. /r/bitcoin has been subject to spam attacks, sockpuppets, brigade voting, and a huge number of manipulations. The moderator team tried to control it, honest people became victim to heavy handed moderation, and a lot of damage was done. The grandparent comment really does not seem genu…

The group that is promoting the network fork is extremely good at social media. A clue that it is not genuine, is simply that nobody cares this much about a small technical change to a protocol. Yet these constant, daily, aggressive attacks against the developers have been going on for at least 10 months now. All anyone has to do is read the pro-fork subreddit, /r/btc, and see how toxic and hostile they seem. It does…

> small technical change to a protocol

Given the fuss that Bitcoin Core itself makes about this change not being possible, it is surely not a trifling matter.

This is disingenuous, anyhow. The limit on how many transactions the Bitcoin network can handle is fundamental to growth, of course it would be a big issue.

> All anyone has to do is read the pro-fork subreddit, /r/btc, and see how toxic and hostile they seem. It does not seem genuine and I cannot imagine anyone spending so much time writing the same things over and over for nearly a year.

This is what happens when a group is cast out from the main community (in this case by moderation policy).

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#32

Post by rsi_oww » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:53 AM UTC

aedron wrote: post #20

Why should there be One True Bitcoin implementation? What should be worked on is creating an official protocol specification, which would allow competing implementations, that miners could freely choose from. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Everyone needs to follow the One True Ledger, or you can't know if Bob really sent you $100 of Bitcoins that will be accepted by Joe.

There are already competing implementations like btcd written in Go. That's not the issue.

This post is from a developer who is part of a small group in the bitcoin world, who want to change the rules of the protocol. Anyone that did not follow those rule changes would see a different ledger.

That's not something that should be done in bitcoin - changes this big should be very hard to pull off, and require consensus of all parties. Most are strongly against these changes because it does not really do much, makes the network more centralized, and mainly because there are much better options to reach the same goal (that are being worked on right now).

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#33

Post by newjersey » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:56 AM UTC

rsi_oww wrote: post #26

threeseed wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non Bitcoin user it does seem very strange that /r/bitcoin would take a position not to allow discussion over a particular issue relevant to the community. And not just any issue but the biggest issue that is critical to its future direction.

You can discuss it all you want. You can't promote it just as you can't promote Litecoin or any other different protocol and ledger. Basically the only thing you see on /r/bitcoin for the last 10 months is discussion on this issue, constantly. Yeah, people who say "Developer Joe blow is a fraud, download the superior Bitcoin classic" get their posts removed. That's moderation. (And it is moderation that actually didn…

I completely agree with this moderation. I am ashamed at the spin coinbase is putting on this making the core team sound like they have no communication skills. Shame on them.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#34

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:56 AM UTC

aedron wrote: post #20

Why should there be One True Bitcoin implementation? What should be worked on is creating an official protocol specification, which would allow competing implementations, that miners could freely choose from. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

That would make sense, but sadly hasn't happened. Bitcoin has become defined by Satoshi's original C++ implementation.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#35

Post by rsi_oww » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:56 AM UTC

roarkjs wrote: post #29

rsi_oww wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. This is not just alternative software, it is software that follows DIFFERENT rules from the main bitcoin software and would follow a different ledger history i…

/r/bitcoin is also censoring mentions of Ethereum - it's main rival right now. https://twitter.com/DiginomicsNews/status/705258811192438784

That is true, because /r/bitcoin is about bitcoin.

If you want to promote Ethereum, you can do so on /r/ethereum/.

I am sure promoting dog ownership over cats is frowned upon by /r/cats readers, too.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#36

Post by jhildings » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 9:59 AM UTC

rsi_oww wrote: post #13

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

So this is #3 of the Satoshi Roundtable notes and opinions that have made it to HN, as far as I can tell (I was initially confused and thought this was a re-submission of Brian Armstrong's notes https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-... ). As someone who has dabbled into the bitcoin and block chain area but never seriously, all of these reports and the constant reporting of the serious issues fa…

There is near complete consensus, see: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con... Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this. The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus".…

But still, the thing is that regardless of who is right there is a bias in the most comments, including yours. This is the conflict that is bad it itself

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#37

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 10:02 AM UTC

rsi_oww wrote: post #18

Vozze wrote: post #9

There is a revolution going on in Bitcoin land. Very similar to how dictatorship gets overthrown in the real world. In the real world, dictators fight with censorship and violent force. In Bitcoin land these are social media censorship and DDoS attacks. The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. People who run alt…

> The main Bitcoin forum on Reddit is censored heavy handed. No criticism allowed, mentions of alternative software or forums get deleted right away. This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. This is not just alternative software, it is software that follows DIFFERENT rules from the main bitcoin software and would follow a different ledger history i…

> This is simply not true. The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts.

A meaningful discussion cannot be had if you are only allowed to speak negatively of a subject.

> The majority of the fork software run on freebie Amazon AWS servers

> Where do you get this claim that "whole districts of cities" are being cut off the internet?

You do realise that some people do still run full Bitcoin nodes on their home computers, yes? Home Internet connections are more susceptible to DDoS attacks. The poster is most likely referring to a specific case where someone's Internet connection was cut off due to the attacks. I can't remember who it was, but I've certainly heard of it before.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#38

Post by Vespasian » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 10:09 AM UTC

rsi_oww wrote: post #13

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #5

So this is #3 of the Satoshi Roundtable notes and opinions that have made it to HN, as far as I can tell (I was initially confused and thought this was a re-submission of Brian Armstrong's notes https://medium.com/@barmstrong/what-happened-at-the-satoshi-... ). As someone who has dabbled into the bitcoin and block chain area but never seriously, all of these reports and the constant reporting of the serious issues fa…

There is near complete consensus, see: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con... Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this. The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus".…

Your reply is demonstrating the parents issues with the discussion perfectly.

Anyone not closely following the situtation(such as myself) just sees a enormously heated up discussion (I was reminded of [1]). Every party involved is accusing the others of spreading lies,misrepresenting the situation and trying to take control over the blockchain/bitcoin/protocol.

Based on that, I have difficulties understanding and evaluating the potential technical and political challenges.

Bitcoin (and similar crypto currencies) seem to be a huge risk at the moment: Everything might collapse tomorrow (or not). The market could be split into incompatible segments(or not). One entity could become strong enough to take control of the network and enact unfavourable policies(or not).

Right now,I do not see why somenone would decide to start investing (time and money) into bitcoin while there are generally accepted, scaled up and working solutions for the underlying problem of getting money from A to B (Banks Credit cards, etc). These work fine for most people/companies and their cost and risks can be estimated fairly well in advance.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#39

Post by rsi_oww » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 10:09 AM UTC

girvo wrote: post #27

rsi_oww wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The group that is promoting the network fork is extremely good at social media. A clue that it is not genuine, is simply that nobody cares this much about a small technical change to a protocol. Yet these constant, daily, aggressive attacks against the developers have been going on for at least 10 months now. All anyone has to do is read the pro-fork subreddit, /r/btc, and see how toxic and hostile they seem. It does…

> small technical change to a protocol I have no horse in this race, but isn't that understating the impact a bit?

Yes, the pro-fork group say they simply want to change the limit of megabytes per block from 1MB to 2MB. Somehow this is worth forking the network over.

This may not sound like much, but also keep in mind eight months ago it was 20MB, with an eventual jump into the GB range, that they were pushing for. Also, recently they are talking about removing any limit altogether.

This change seems small but the consequences would not be, since it limits who can run a full client and centralizes control to those who can (companies, not individuals).

There are better ways to achieve the same goal and keep the decentralization, but they are not so simple, and need to be fully tested before rolling out. One exciting thing in the pipeline, is a caching layer that sits on top of bitcoin, which allows instant, true microtransactions. In the short term there's "segwit" which also brings all sorts of other advantages.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#40

Post by rsi_oww » Mon, Mar 07, 2016, 10:31 AM UTC

Vespasian wrote: post #38

rsi_oww wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is near complete consensus, see: https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con... Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this. The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus".…

Your reply is demonstrating the parents issues with the discussion perfectly. Anyone not closely following the situtation(such as myself) just sees a enormously heated up discussion (I was reminded of [1]). Every party involved is accusing the others of spreading lies,misrepresenting the situation and trying to take control over the blockchain/bitcoin/protocol. Based on that, I have difficulties understanding and eva…

"The reports of Bitcoin's problems are greatly exaggerated".

There is a small group who seem really good at spreading a message of "Bitcoin is about to collapse". They are doing this either because they control a lot of competing currency (Ethereum), or because they think it will help adoption of their Bitcoin fork.

The reality is, 95% of Bitcoiners are very happy with the team working on the protocol, and the market seems happy too (the price has gone up +68% over the last 6 months.)

But you absolutely should not take some random internet person's word for it. You'll have to invest large amounts of time reading bitcointalk, reddit and the like to make a sound decision. Luckily it's pretty fascinating reading. In time when Bitcoin's future is clearer, it will either be worth much more, or nearly nothing. But I think you can get great insight into where it is going by following it closely today.