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Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

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Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#141

Post by knocte »

buttershakes wrote: post #136
knocte wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if most of what you say seems to be completely false, I wouldn't even worry a tiny bit even if it was true, in the same way I don't worry by the fact that many Gnome developers are paid by Red Hat.

You are making the mistake of equating Bitcoin development with other open source projects. It's just not comparable to Gnome, Linux, or any other open source development. If I don't like the gnome developers I just don't run their code, but if I don't like the consensus driven code of Bitcoin my only choice is to sell. The stickiness of the implementation is extremely important to the overall discussion.

> but if I don't like the consensus driven code of Bitcoin my only choice is to sell

Wrong. What's the choice you have when you disagree with what the maintainers of an opensource project do? You can fork. You're welcome to fork at any time. And in fact this is what we're seeing these days: an attempt of a fork. I believe that, as with the majority of the forks in the opensource world, the fork will not succeed, because the alternative developers are less capable.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#142

Post by buttershakes »

jerguismi wrote: post #126
buttershakes wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what it means. You are right that those clients would begin rejecting blocks, but you can be sure that when customers are calling them asking why their transactions aren't being validated that they will switch. It's not economically feasible to run a business on a minority hash power chain with low transaction throughput.

"when customers are calling them asking why their transactions aren't being validated that they will switch." If majority of hashpower would start mining invalid blocks, there would still be some amount of hashpower mining the real chain. Transactions would confirm, albeit more slowly. For the miners mining the real chain the situation would be very good, because less competition from other miners -> more found block…

The taking a little while to adapt is because their is less hash power, which means it takes longer to find blocks which means the remaining hash power will have less blocks for many many weeks. This means their expected return is lower, not higher, they aren't getting a larger percentage of found blocks, and those blocks occur farther apart.

Then when the difficulty has fallen enough to make mining profitable and have a consistent 10 minute block time the larger hash power chain will be able to mine at a significantly faster rate on the lower hash power chain and that will make it susceptible to a %51 attack.

The only way to avoid that scenario will be for them to switch the proof-of-work or manage to get a lot more hash power back on their chain. Being on the minority chain in that situation is frankly dangerous, the value should be discounted appropriately.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#143

Post by stale2002 »

jerguismi wrote: post #87
buttershakes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only support it needs is hash power support. That's it. If enough of the hash power can be pulled into it, then it's game over for a minority chain. Running nodes costs almost nothing which means the network can be flooded with segwit2x supporting nodes, and companies will be motivated to switch over.

Miners can mine segwit2x blocks all they wish, but since services/exchanges are running core client, they are just mining invalid blocks from their viewpoint, and those blocks are ignored. That means miners can't sell their mined segwit2x bitcoins on exchanges. Mining blocks that services don't accept would be very, very stupid, essentially throwing good money to trash.

If the legacy chain has too little hashpower then it can be easily attacked.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#144

Post by jerguismi »

mhluongo wrote: post #131
jerguismi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That agreement seems very general, doesn't indicate that the participants will run specific code. Segwit2x client didn't even exist at that time, first release was yesterday. People are just making this bullshit up.

Not making it up, talking to real people in the space. You can also check out the SegWit2x mailing list archive [0] for companies actively testing SegWit2x. From there I've seen BitGo, Blockchain, Bloq, OB1 (Open Bazaar), Purse.. these are significant companies in the Bitcoin economy. [0] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x...

> companies actively testing SegWit2x

Testing is very different from actually running it in production. Companies test out a lot of different things. I think with consensus code companies will be very careful and if they plan to do something regarding that, they will announce it clearly, not in some half-assed wiki site or medium post.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#145

Post by iso-8859-1 »

buttershakes wrote: post #83
jerguismi wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I suspect that SegWit2x will end up taking over the network" What? They had first release like yesterday, the project has released one tarball, no packaging, no very good marketing etc. The biggest marketers seem to be the tinfoil hat opponents who fear the fork so much that they speak about it everywhere. I don't think it is at all likely that segwit2x client will gain support. Or if it will gain support, it will t…

The only support it needs is hash power support. That's it. If enough of the hash power can be pulled into it, then it's game over for a minority chain. Running nodes costs almost nothing which means the network can be flooded with segwit2x supporting nodes, and companies will be motivated to switch over.

How is it going to have value if the client people download at bitcoin.org don't support the chain with massive hashing power you speak of? Not to mention PoW change.

So, no, hashing power is not "all you need" to take over Bitcoin. For many people, Bitcoin is whatever their wallet supports.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#146

Post by buttershakes »

BenoitP wrote: post #128
buttershakes wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what it means. You are right that those clients would begin rejecting blocks, but you can be sure that when customers are calling them asking why their transactions aren't being validated that they will switch. It's not economically feasible to run a business on a minority hash power chain with low transaction throughput.

As long as one miner is still mining the core chain, the transaction will be validated. It may take a little while at first, but difficulty will adapt. It's going to be 2 legitimate currencies that are going to differ in value in exchanges. And each current BTC holder will be able to spend 2 coins (provided they take precautions against replayability; like making at first a double-spend to different wallets on the tw…

It would take years for the difficulty to adapt to a 10 minute block time if the hash power dropped that much, there is a limit per two week adjustment period. More than likely the code would have to be modified to accommodate a rapidly dropping difficulty. See my other post, but that essentially destroys the security of the minority chain.

BTC rich people are on both sides of the debate, expect to see some dumping all around as they make their positions known.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#147

Post by timq »

JonAtkinson wrote: post #42
timq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Because what I see from my point of view is a dozen of Blockstream employees pushing for segwit, with barely no support from the community nor the miners. And on the other side I see a growing majority of miners, a growing majority of the community asking for a simple block size increase, wich is a matter of 10 lines modified, compared to 5 000 lines and a great bunch of compl…

"But I'm probably wasting my time with you, looking at your comment history you seems to be a typical pro-Blockstream troll." Is there any need for this kind of incivility? Around here we don't call people with differing opinions a 'troll', we just respect the differences. This could easily have been written as "based on your posting history, I don't expect to change your mind".

The stupidity of not raising the block side and pushing for segwit and side chains (or LN) as a way of scaling has been debunked so many time that still believing in it is like believing the earth is still flat. Come on, even a newcomer seeing full blocks, skyrocketing fees, growing transactions backlog will understand how brain dead it is to not increase the block size...

I know there are still people believing in Blockstream because of the intense censure and (paid?) trolls in /r/bitcoin and bitcointalk.org. But this bullshit show is going for more than 3 years now, if you still can't see through that, I'm sorry, but you deserve to be called a "pro-Blockstream troll". If calling things the way they are is incivility, then I'm happy to be incivil!

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#148

Post by BenoitP »

I'm starting to see a bit clearer on how a fork would pan out:

Miners: Hashing power has little influence. As long as there are miners, and two chains rejecting each other transactions will be processed. At first, transactions processing might take a while, but difficulty will adapt. This will create two legitimate currencies. Now everybody in possession of 1 BTC would have 1 BTCa + 1 BTCb.

Exchanges: Little power. They will trade both BTCa and BTCb, and accept commissions.

Trader of goods, in embedded devices: They might have to modify their client to accept both currencies, but they would have to follow the market rates. Otherwise they would have to suffer income loss from people using them to profit from arbitrating the markets.

BTC-rich individuals: They have now 1 BTCa + 1 BTCb. But there is transaction replayability. If they spend 1 BTCa, their BTCb can also get spend the same way. And they lose their BTCb. Chains have a strategic advantage to replay transactions getting to the other one because: 1) they get to keep the commission, 2) they ascertain themselves as more encompassing economically (not sure on this one maybe, they want to stay neutral).

Now, if BTC-holders can wallet-emptying-double-spend them to 2 different addresses they control on the 2 chains. And, compared to the ones who got their transaction replayed, they have kept both their BTCa and BTCb.

TL;DR: IMHO, come the technical fork, some BTC-holders will be tumbling until they irrevocably acquire their BTCa + BTCb, and use them to make runs on the markets, effectively materializing the economic fork.

----

I'd love the opinion of someone who lived through the ETH-ETC split, especially about the transaction replayability part.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#149

Post by hudon »

buttershakes wrote: post #26

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

> SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team

I disagree. SegWit2x is a misguided attempt to make Bitcoin "more efficient" without realizing that it puts at risk the core value proposition of Bitcoin: censorship resistance.

At the root of this debate is a disagreement about what the blockchain is for. On one side, you have all the developers working on the Core project and activists like Amir Taaki or "crypto-economists" like Paul Sztorc (creator of the decentralized prediction market which Augur is trying to re-implement), who believe the blockchain is for financial sovereignty. Bitcoin mining is a way to decentralize transaction validation, after all, such that no central authority can tell you which transaction is valid or not. Therefore, if you cannot run a full node and validate the mined blockchain yourself, Bitcoin is basically pointless because you have lost your ability to transact with censorship resistance. Increasing the size of blocks makes full blockchain validation more difficult. The risk then is miners mining a blockchain and you are not being able to contest it. The miners can decide not to include your transaction, they can require KYC for you to submit a transaction, etc., and you will have little leverage against this because you won't be able to validate the work they are doing.

On the other side, you have businesses and corporations (BitPay, BitMain, etc.) who believe that the blockchain can replace VISA, essentially, so they will do anything to make the system more efficient. This includes sacrificing decentralization and making it more difficult for users to validate the blockchain. They believe that being a full node doesn't matter and all that matters is replacing whatever current financial institutions are running with a blockchain.

What the second side of the debate is missing, however, is that the blockchain will never be as efficient as VISA. There is a reason why when over 70 of the world's largest banks got together at R3 and assessed how Bitcoin can help them transact, they came up with a distributed database called Corda and not a blockchain: blockchains are not efficient [1]. They are inefficient but they are useful because they are decentralized and enable permissionless transactions.

[1] https://www.corda.net/2016/10/r3-corda-makes-different/

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#150

Post by woah »

BenoitP wrote: post #148

I'm starting to see a bit clearer on how a fork would pan out: Miners: Hashing power has little influence. As long as there are miners, and two chains rejecting each other transactions will be processed. At first, transactions processing might take a while, but difficulty will adapt. This will create two legitimate currencies. Now everybody in possession of 1 BTC would have 1 BTCa + 1 BTCb. Exchanges: Little power. T…

They fixed the transaction replay ability I believe. I still have all my ETC, seems like it's not going anywhere.
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