The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money • Hacker News Board

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#221

Post by 6510 » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

once_inc wrote: post #188

6510 wrote: post #25

The proof of work isn't actual work.

no, it is merely the proof of having done that work. Hence, the name.

"activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result."

I get it, I have to work to make money while others mine virtual coins. It's a great deal for them is it not? It's just a power grab. I'm sure the people who use to have the exclusive right to print the money are very upset. Centralization of mining and decision making is just another power grab.

I get it, I should shut up and get back to work.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#222

Post by DennisP » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

mikekchar wrote: post #183

ac29 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is an additional layer of complexity an improvement? Why not make bitcoin blocks 10x larger and 10x more frequent? The argument that "only large entities will be able to keep up with that" doesn't really hold - thats the status quo already.

I can answer part of that question. You can't make it much more frequent because the amount of time for the difficulty has to be balanced against propagation time for blocks or else you will have lots of forks. Probably you can make it work, but there are a fair number of assumptions in the Bitcoin protocol about this and it would probably be better to start a new coin if you want to do that. The 10 minute update was…

> You can't make it much more frequent because the amount of time for the difficulty has to be balanced against propagation time for blocks or else you will have lots of forks.

The same problem also limits block size, since large blocks take longer to propagate.

But that's why Ethereum went with GHOST, which was originally proposed for Bitcoin. Instead of choosing the block with the most hashpower behind it, you choose the block with the most hashpower in the entire tree after it, so that forks contribute to a block's security. The original paper calculated that this allowed both faster blocks and higher throughput, and it's the reason Ethereum has 15-second blocks.

Here are a couple papers:

https://eprint.iacr.org/2013/881.pdf

https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/545.pdf

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#223

Post by eordano » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:06 PM UTC

The article is fairly low-quality. It's more focused on fear-mongering around the perils of machine-judges and trying to make a headline around "if there's someone with commit power then in the end, it's not a decentralized system".

It makes a number of errors, most notably, calling the hashing power spent on securing the network "donations" (quotation marks sic).

Bitcoin has one job: securing the network of transactions.

Bitcoin is a mechanism to aggregate hashing power in order to make it possible to semi-objectively measure the risk of a block being reverted, in fact, this is the only formula in bitcoin's white-paper.

The paper examines a system of economic incentives, and somehow dismiss its key activity as an altruistic "donation". The article goes downhill from this statement onwards, and I couldn't feel like it makes a huge (yet ineffective) effort of deconstructing Bitcoin's governance model.

Some quotes that reinforce the superficial understanding of the Author:

> There are times, however, when two miners can find the correct nonce for a new block within a few seconds of each other and both broadcast their valid block of transactions (nigh on) simultaneously to the network. This causes a split, or fork, where miners go ‘rushing off’ to mine on top of two competing blocks. Because this form of divergence is endemic to the blockchain’s mechanics it is referred to here as a systematic fork; the discrepancy should be quickly resolved by network mechanisms (this happens, on average, two or three times a week). Systematic forks are temporary glitches...

These forks are essential to maintaining decentralization as a mechanism to make the network secure: trust the info, not the people that delivered the data, trust the signing mechanism (hash power spent), not the people running the machines.

> Furthermore, the political strategy of a user activated soft fork still requires code developers to create a client that reflects the political will of the market and thus demands the obligatory passage point of a Lead Developer found in version control systems.

Not true -- the UASF measures were not merged into the Bitcoin Core branch. Some code was merged to protect users from potentially problematic interactions with Bitcoin Cash fork.

Modeling Bitcoin's governance system is a daunting task. The author essentially confuses the power developers have with regards to miners: developers know there are things that would never fly with miners, and miners are way more powerful than what is described in the paper.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#224

Post by trevelyan » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #146

lawn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article you're linking is an extremely dishonest anonymous hit piece that distorts history to manipulate the audience. That's rich coming from you. It's easy for anyone reading this to search for what nullc has said and done. > The design of Bitcoin where security is supported by fees to get into blocks is established in the Bitcoin whitepaper and has been in the software since day one. Many transactions paying…

> That's rich coming from you. It's easy for anyone reading this to search for what nullc has said and done. How so? I'm fairly proud of my actions, and I'd be happy to discuss any of them with you. > The blocksize limit was only meant as a temporary spam protection, not to enforce higher fees. There is nothing that actually supports that the claim that it was spam protection, thats just blind unsubstantiated asserti…

> I don't think it's an accident that analysis supporting unlimited block sizes assumes perpetual inflation instead of limited supply.

Agree, although this assumes that the free market cannot be trusted to regulate the size of the blockchain which seems possible with automatic transaction rebroadcasting. Are you familiar with the technique? Thoughts on it?

https://youtu.be/agppUdX9YvI?t=105

I'd be curious what you think about the approach. The basic idea is that forcing new and old transactions to compete for space on-chain pushes the blockchain into an equilibrium where data-in equals data-out. On either side of the equilibrium point block producers can increase their profits (and reduce costs) by moving towards equilibrium. So no need for a hardcap and no need for perpetual inflation.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#225

Post by adiabat » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

kain_niak wrote: post #129

sunshinerag wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lightning protocol addresses that. You can make millions of transactions per second [1]. Quite a lot of crypto sites are already supporting it and wallet support is increasing too [2]. [1] - https://lightning.network [2] - https://blog.bitrefill.com/top-11-lightning-network-wallets-...

Hardly, because building LN on the 1MB base layer is like building a pyramid upside down, it's unstable and creates more problems than it was meant to solve. Lightning was supposed to make tx fees low right? Well it technically has, but it also introduced the following problems that Bitcoin never had: - LN requires that both sender and receiver be online at the same time to transact. This never existed on Bitcoin. -…

> - Both creators of Lightning Drya and Poon have publically stated LN was never meant to be a scaling solution for Bitcoin [citation needed] The initial presentation of the paper was titled "SF Bitcoin Devs Seminar: Scaling Bitcoin to Billions of Transactions Per Day". If we didn't mean it to help scaling, what was it meant to be? [note: am one of the authors]

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#226

Post by lngnmn1 » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

DrCraigWright wrote: post #154

nullc wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In one of his last messages in 2010 before going publically inactive, Bitcoin's creator wrote: > Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices. ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289... ) Hal Finney, one of the main developers of PGP and Bitcoin's first user wrote in 2010: > I believe this will be the ultim…

Don't worry Greg, we will get to you in due time. It's always interesting how you love to cherry pick and take things out of context. Then this was always your motive. The reference you like to quote about my wanting to limit the size of the blockchain is of course completely out of context. The creation of overlay networks allows bitcoin to act as a single reference source while also having different quorum systems…

Oh, come on, lmao.

The original bitcoin paper has been written by a high IQ MIT-grade math-loving autistic geek.

This steam of bullshit and hand-waving is what such kind of person is physically incapable to produce, because it goes against the deep rooted principles of rigor and precise language usage that we (autists) naturally value and cling to.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#227

Post by onesatoshi » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #177

askmike wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you come to HN claiming to be Satoshi, better bring some technical proof that will actually convince the techies here.

You might be asking a bit much of him, this technology stuff isn't super easy for everyone. In two easy steps: $ ./bitcoin-cli signmessage 1GMaxweLLbo8mdXvnnC19Wt2wigiYUKgEB "Digital signatures are to scammers as garlic is to vampires. I am hn user nullc, but you are not Bitcoin's creator." $ ./bitcoin-cli verifymessage 1GMaxweLLbo8mdXvnnC19Wt2wigiYUKgEB "HJ0VgbIY9BAud6MiZ4Qh0KSwhmA7gwkFm07tjPJeHsYNcj5oIAVlVR2JnKTF7E…

Is that what you call privacy?

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#228

Post by onesatoshi » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

askmike wrote: post #158

DrCraigWright wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry Greg, we will get to you in due time. It's always interesting how you love to cherry pick and take things out of context. Then this was always your motive. The reference you like to quote about my wanting to limit the size of the blockchain is of course completely out of context. The creation of overlay networks allows bitcoin to act as a single reference source while also having different quorum systems…

If you come to HN claiming to be Satoshi, better bring some technical proof that will actually convince the techies here.

Some 'techies' around here actually understand that keys don't represent identities.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#229

Post by uncletammy » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:45 PM UTC

polyomino wrote: post #105

wbazant wrote: post #70

Exchanges trade both in Bitcoin and BitcoinCash, and I've just learned from the paper that they form a tree with a common origin. Does it mean that if I owned Bitcoin before the Bitcoin-BitcoinCash split, I can now spend it on both chains?

yes, but be aware, bcash is plagued with scammers, so as a precaution you should move your coins on bitcoin to another wallet before attempting to use a bcash wallet which could steal your bitcoin private keys.

This is idiotic fear mongering from one of the many parasitic BTC investors who lost all interest in building sovereign money the second their pockets started filling up with fiat.

They perceive BCH to be a threat to their pocketbook and they should. If BCH succeeds at building p2p electronic cash, there will be no need for BTC to exist.

Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#230

Post by etherael » Tue, Jan 07, 2020, 2:49 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #217

etherael wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because no nic vendor was ever retarded enough to purposely cripple their product by restricting throughput to thousandths of actual potential theoretical physical capacity at the driver level like you and your toxic coterie did. In fact nobody has ever been this stupid in the entire industry period that I can think of except that coterie. Good thing for you it's in the interests of extremely rich and powerful…

I don't get your argument. Block size is limited so fees can go up to pay the miners so they have incentive to mine. If fees are a barrier to you, you can make your transfer of value using any other traded cryptocurrency (or lightning whatever it is). Aim of bitcoin is not to be the fastest cryptocurrency but the most mined one (thus safest?).

> I don't get your argument. Block size is limited so fees can go up to pay the miners so they have incentive to mine.

Probably because that point has nothing to do with anything, as basically every single blockchain in existence has fees that go to miners. BTC isn't the slightest bit unique in that.

> Aim of bitcoin is not to be the fastest cryptocurrency but the most mined one (thus safest?).

Which once again has nothing to do with the artificial useless block limit. The cryptocurrency that is most mined is the one in which mining is most profitable, the US federal reserve could launch a competitor tomorrow with a goal directly opposed to every other cryptocurrency in existence and if they paid more per SHA256 hash rate unit they would become the most mined cryptocurrency.