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

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

#281
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have already done this and it is quite fast! https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ek0614/current_node_im... Flowee the Hub (Bitcoin Cash full node implementation) can sync the equivalent of 4GB blocks using just a cheap quad-core VPS.

Amusingly enough ... The rates there are, in fact, significantly slower than what plain old Bitcoin developers. Bitcoin dev's probably should make the syncing status print the number of inputs per second being processed. But being able to barely keep up means that if you fall behind for even a moment (say, if your connection drops... or if miners get lucky and mine a bunch of extra blocks) then you will _never_ catch…

Sure, but OP said 2GB. A node able to process 4GB blocks would be able to sync at 2x realtime. Most people who run nodes will probably bootstrap new ones in the future anyway and most people don't need to run full nodes in the first place (the majority don't do so today and haven't since light wallets became available).

To get back to reality, I don't think any sane person has advocated for anything close to a 2GB blocksize cap at any point in the near future. Bitcoin Core uses a maximum 4MB block weight and Bitcoin Cash uses a 32MB cap currently. This cheap VPS could sync the entire Bitcoin (Core) blockchain from 2009 to present in less than 12 hours. The biggest block size cap (not full blocks, the cap) being tested seriously is 1GB. I'm sure you know all this, though.

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

#282
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The allegation of "take over" is both dishonest misinformation and a really abusive attack. The people you're accusing of taking Bitcoin over have been there essentially all along, -- long before you ever heard of it. The concerns about the trade-offs with block size have also been with Bitcoin all along: as a look into the history shows, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21977347

Sorry, the real attack was by the group led by Adam Back who himself dismissed Bitcoin initially before having a VC fund him to cater to his plan http://cashbleed.com/ Following which scare tactics ensued which broke the block size increase agreements of 8MB Hong Kong Agreement when Adam himself flew to the meeting overnight(as an individual) to attack the agreement, then when a 2MB NYA agreement was finalized and si…

> when those same people removed Gavin Andresen's commit access

It's important to tell the whole story here. Gavin stepped back as lead maintainer and appointed Wladimir. No one else.

Maintainership is the sole reason to have commit acccess. All changes to the software are made as pull requests. And commit access is only needed to merge these pull requests. Nobody commits directly on master without going through a pull request, not even maintainers.

Being the maintainer of an open source project is hard work and can be quite thankless at times. The role is one of a glorified janitor while still requiring the highest both technical and people skills.

It is not surprising people only do this for a few years, and as far as I can tell Gavin did a great job. I don't think that is in dispute. But he should not have commit access when he is no longer maintaining the software.

(It may also be of interest that Gavin stepped back from maintaining the software in order to focus on his role as "chief scientist" for something called the "Bitcoin Foundation". This foundation was comprised of a number of noteworthy people whose names keeps appearing and re-appearing in MLM schemes, "hacked" exchanges, and/or premined coins. Gavin may be the sole exception.)

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

#283
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…

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

#284
post #283

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…

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

#285
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Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#286
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Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#287
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Re: The senatorial governance of Bitcoin: making (de)centralized money

#288

I still hope that they listen to reason and increase bitcoin’s ability to scale. We are all held hostage by a tiny cabal of developers that think they know what is best and want bitcoin to have a perversely small block size and pitiful 7 transactions per second top speed.

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

#289
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never forget: The original protocol did not have the restrictions you are feeling. Letting volume be the main driver for payments to the network instead of fees (as it is today) scales much better. By that, I am stating that the hostage situation (as you describe it) has been introduced commit per commit. Well, in the end, its a battle of opinion because smaller blocks give other features to the chain, so it will be…

Every release of Bitcoin ever made has had the capacity limitations it has now, or more restrictive. It's true that Satoshi added the 1MB limit after the first release, but at that time and before then blocks were _implicitly_ limited to somewhat a bit over ~500KB-ish due to issues in the database layer. This is the reason that you cannot sync a pre-0.8 node all the way to the tip today without modifying it. 0.8 fixe…

The limitations are not just the block size. It's all the little things stripping the usability crippling the ecosystem. Amongst other elements:

- Abandoning instant payment by introducing replace-by-fee where you can "undo" a transaction not in a block yet.

- The limitation of what can be done with the scripting language by disabling OP codes needed for (even basic) math operations.

- Forcing transactions to be formatted after specific templates limiting how transactions are used.

Bonus story: As I understand it, Vitalik tried to build on bitcoin but the limitations in the script languarge and transaction format made a globally distributed computer impossible so he went off and created Etherium.

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has everything to do with block limit because its whole purpose is to make each block more valuable for the miners so that a lot of hashpower competes to mine that block. Wrong, this assumes it is the only way to make each block more valuable, it is not only not the only way, it is the most stupid way imaginable; an artificial production quota completely unhinged from underlying physical reality. > Size of minin…

>> Size of mining reward and transaction fees per given amount of kb of transactions is vital thing for miners. > Transaction fees per given data volume is less important than net profit on actual services provided, a chain that has a thousand times the capacity and a hundred times lower costs is still ten times more profitable than the competition. That's true but you it's not guaranteed that you'd get 1000 times mo…

> That's true but you it's not guaranteed that you'd get 1000 times more transactions when you increase capacity 100 times. It's a gamble and if bitcoin did that it would get unpredictable result but show miners that it is willing to gamble with their profitability.

This argument is stupid both because it justifies restricting the chain throughput even further to whatever arbitrary number you like above zero and assumes it's always an unalloyed positive because the artificial scarcity should always drive up the price, and because it is completely ignorant of the fact that failing to raise the limit as originally planned has already resulted in 50+ USD transaction fees as an actual result, followed by a mass abandonment of the BTC chain relative to the volume at the time, followed by an uptake of competitive chains.

All existing empirical evidence makes a complete mockery of it, as if it weren't enough from an economic perspective to actually be trying to justify an artificial production quota forcibly imposed from a central committee up front.

> Increasing number of seats might cause the train to be partially empty and if this one isn't the next one might be

And yet still the promotion of artificial scarcity in volume businesses is seen as idiotic, which it is. Perhaps your assumptions are wrong and capacity planning actually aims to serve estimated demand in every other field except the BTC one.

> Since people get tickets on auction then non-full trains bring no revenue because tickets for them cost zero.

This is false, tx fees on non full blocks on chains that aren't sabotaged like BTC are still not zero, and there's no arbitrary limit on what they might be. Suggestions have even been made that the tx fees should be set by a second lowest bid auction where all transactions above the second lowest fee are accepted and that is set as the net as both the most customer and revenue friendly option in BCH for example.

> When there were ton of transactions fees skyrocketed but in weeks they went back to normal and tx fees revenue for miners dropped.

Which is to say a business failed utterly to scale and was largely abandoned by its customers, with the knock on effects on the share price of that business, yes. This is not by any measure a success, and only a complete moron like Greg Maxwell would "pop champaign" (sic) over the event.

> Tx fees dropping to too low value in times where they are main income source for miners might be what kills bitcoin.

This doesn't make even theoretical sense, if the miners don't want to mine blocks at a given revenue level, it is up to the customers to raise their tx fee bids in order to ensure the flow of blocks, and it doesn't matter what the block limit is in question for that to be the case, no matter how high or low it is, it's still true.

> Same way that low traffic might kill a train line if trains are running mostly empty and tickets don't have fixed price and their are auctioned instead.

And this is even more idiotic, low traffic might indeed kill a train line, setting auctions on the tickets that exist in order to save it absent demand isn't a solution, it's a ploy of abject desperation guaranteed to fail, which is why nobody else in the history of time perhaps has ever been that stupid.

> Again. Bitcoin is built and governed for survivability first.

BTC is built and governed to be hamstrung and useless, and the post-hoc narrative after changes that implement that hamstringing will be whatever idiots suck up and accept. By and large actual usage moves on because customers don't care about unconvincing and frankly idiotic justifications for obviously stupid moves. And that's exactly what we actually see in reality on this question.

> You can do it differently with other cryptos.

And every single other crypto in existence agrees that it is in fact stupid to do it the BTC way and does indeed do it differently. Which is supposed to be "just some weird coincidence" or everyone else in the world being wrong and the core coterie being inexplicably right.

> You can even fork bitcoin. People did.

As well they should, since BTC is useless and sabotaged.

> Miners voted with their legs on which solution they prefer. It's really miners that decide everything.

Wrong, miners mine what is most profitable, not what solution they prefer, and according to the core coterie, miners decide absolutely nothing, in fact your idol gmaxwell has literally said that if miners disagree with the way that the core council runs bitcoin that they should be fired. In response, miners have demonstrated that they don't give a damn if BTC dies completely and will happily mine whatever else is more profitable than it as a result. The fact that the BTC faithful aren't concerned about this despite the slow adjustment of the BTC DAA is just another indication of just how stupid said faithful actually are, as it's an obvious existential risk to the chain.

> I don't get where you were going with federal reserve tangent. I'm just getting a vibe that you overestimate politics and underestimate economy.

This, like every other point you made, is wrong, but since you admit you don't even understand the point I'm not going to bother discussing it. What "vibe" you get from admitted ignorance on a subject isn't worth addressing.

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