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Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

gavinandresen.ninja

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Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#101

Post by jbmorgado »

Phlarp wrote: post #97
jbmorgado wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only rule on the /r/bitcoin Reddit is not to promote these network fork attempts. Not really. Any criticism of bitcoin or even worst, any bad news, about bitcoin are censored in /r/bitcoin For instance, when back in 2014 MtGox failed, some days before a user from /r/bitcoin posted a lengthly article that discussed the MtGox resolution citing the problems MtGox was facing, that they had lost a big part of their…

Honestly if you are paying any attention what-so-ever to bitcoin and using /r/btc or /r/bitcoin as your primary or sole source of information then you deserve every bad thing that happens to you. When two-bit-idiot or whoever it was posted that doom and gloom document regarding MtGox in 2014 you would have had to been completely out of the loop not to have seen it re-linked on twitter or any of a dozen other outlets.…

Well, the all point is that /r/bitcoin is an heavily censored forum of discussion where only pro bitcoin (and now, only pro bitcoin core) posts are accepted, unlike what the OP was trying to dismiss.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#102

Post by pdaian »

debacle wrote: post #96
gasull wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot even mention an altcoin without being shadowbanned. It happened to me. Mentioning an altcoin isn't the same as promoting it. You might want to point out that some users are flocking to Ethereum because of the fees.

Reddit mods can't shadowban people.

The r/Bitcoin moderators are running a bot that has a list of accounts whose comments or posts it automatically removes. It's essentially being shadowbanned from that subreddit alone, and the users in question are not notified of that. Want to test? Make a new account and make a comment against Bitcoin Core or pro-blocksize increase, and see what happens within a few minutes.

The mods of r/Bitcoin have also personally tried to get me banned from reddit through untrue accusations to the reddit admins (they tried to get me globally banned for "doxing" theymos, notice the timestamps: http://i.imgur.com/THhruNm.png when I called him by his first name, which he himself publicizes on his LinkedIn page as associated with his handle "theymos"). Obviously the ban had no merit so it did not stand up to admin scrutiny.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#103

Post by debacle »

pdaian wrote: post #102
debacle wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit mods can't shadowban people.

The r/Bitcoin moderators are running a bot that has a list of accounts whose comments or posts it automatically removes. It's essentially being shadowbanned from that subreddit alone, and the users in question are not notified of that. Want to test? Make a new account and make a comment against Bitcoin Core or pro-blocksize increase, and see what happens within a few minutes. The mods of r/Bitcoin have also personall…

That's called a ban, not a shadowban.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#104

Post by riprowan »

gravypod wrote: post #98
riprowan wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is correct.

From what I understand from reading many of your comments (riprowan, seems like you understand what you are talking about): - Some people don't want to increase the block size - The original whitepaper says that this is supposed to increase - People who advocate for this have some big players trying to hinder their discussion I don't know if I am getting this right. But does that sound about what is happening here?

point 1 is obviously true

To point 2 - the original white paper doesn't even mention "block size limit" because originally Bitcoin did not have a block size limit. "Honest miners" are assumed by the author to always include all profitable transactions (ie. where the fee > marginal cost to include it in a block).

The limit was added after an attack in the earliest days of Bitcoin. That attack vector is simple: a miner who mines a block includes bogus transactions to himself in order to inflate the block to gigantic proportions. Other miners, who have to validate its contents, choke on the block. Meanwhile the attacker is free to keep mining, and / or the network stops processing transactions.

The original attack, and why it's no longer relevant, is described in this blog:

http://gavinandresen.ninja/One-Dollar-Lulz

In short, the attack vector which prompted the creation of a block-size-limit consensus rule is no longer a concern, as it has been addressed in two ways:

(1) This attack surfaced in the earliest days of Bitcoin, when it cost nothing to mine and miners risked nothing if they mined a block and threw it away by attacking the network. Today, industrial miners risk $10K with every block they would lose if they tried the original attack - which by the way

(2) is preventable without even having a consensus rule, for example by running Bitcoin Unlimited, a version of Bitcoin which attempts to re-create "original" Bitcoin by allowing each miner to set his own "anti-attack" limit, instead of requiring the network to agree to share the same limit.

It is clear from the various online records that the limit was intended a non-economic anti-attack threshold, to be removed if it ever became an issue.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#105

Post by pdaian »

debacle wrote: post #103
pdaian wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The r/Bitcoin moderators are running a bot that has a list of accounts whose comments or posts it automatically removes. It's essentially being shadowbanned from that subreddit alone, and the users in question are not notified of that. Want to test? Make a new account and make a comment against Bitcoin Core or pro-blocksize increase, and see what happens within a few minutes. The mods of r/Bitcoin have also personall…

That's called a ban, not a shadowban.

There are two separate issues here:

- A bot that automatically removes users' posts and comments without actually banning them or telling them the items are being removed (this is a subreddit-specific "shadowban", though it's not a built-in feature of reddit it has the same effect)

- Moderators that eagerly attempt to ban all dissent, not only from their subreddit but from all of reddit

They are both wrong, both unforgivable, and both forms of censorship. Just ban people you don't like from your subreddit, no need to code custom bot features or try to lie to the reddit admins to accomplish political goals.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#106

Post by nullc »

bhaak wrote: post #92
maaku wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If enough miners and full nodes install a different bitcoin implementation, having combined more than 51% of the hash rate of the network, the ruleset of the new majority is valid. No, that is a misunderstanding of how bitcoin works. If the miners activate a new ruleset, and if that change is not so very carefully constructed as to make the old rules a special case of the new rules (a soft-fork), then those miners…

Bitcoin is simply decision making by CPU power. Quote Satoshi: "Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it." I didn't say that everyone follows automatically if there's a hard fork. But if there's a hard fork and an un-upgraded node finds itself on the losing side of the fork, it is lost. Whoever…

Don't mistake the ten second elevator pitch description for an engineering analysis.

No version of any Bitcoin node software previously released has worked how you describe.

The consensus selection rule is more complex: It's the longest _valid_ chain that nodes follow. Chains that violate the rules are ignored, and this is an integral part of the set of incentives that make the system work.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#107

Post by debacle »

pdaian wrote: post #105
debacle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's called a ban, not a shadowban.

There are two separate issues here: - A bot that automatically removes users' posts and comments without actually banning them or telling them the items are being removed (this is a subreddit-specific "shadowban", though it's not a built-in feature of reddit it has the same effect) - Moderators that eagerly attempt to ban all dissent, not only from their subreddit but from all of reddit They are both wrong, both unfo…

Right. Look, I don't care. Reddit is reddit. I'm just saying, neither of those things is a shadowban.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#108

Post by zaphar »

nullc wrote: post #106
bhaak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is simply decision making by CPU power. Quote Satoshi: "Proof-of-work is essentially one-CPU-one-vote. The majority decision is represented by the longest chain, which has the greatest proof-of-work effort invested in it." I didn't say that everyone follows automatically if there's a hard fork. But if there's a hard fork and an un-upgraded node finds itself on the losing side of the fork, it is lost. Whoever…

Don't mistake the ten second elevator pitch description for an engineering analysis. No version of any Bitcoin node software previously released has worked how you describe. The consensus selection rule is more complex: It's the longest _valid_ chain that nodes follow. Chains that violate the rules are ignored, and this is an integral part of the set of incentives that make the system work.

You are correct. However the rules are determined by what the majority of miners say the rules are. If the miners decide to change those rules and they have enough others who agree with them then they can do so. And the economic incentive for everyone else is to agree with that or get left on a worthless network or a greatly decreased in value network.

The economic incentive is that if you play nice with others and follow the majority ruleset then the coin that you mine will be worth something.

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#109

Post by gravypod »

riprowan wrote: post #104
gravypod wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand from reading many of your comments (riprowan, seems like you understand what you are talking about): - Some people don't want to increase the block size - The original whitepaper says that this is supposed to increase - People who advocate for this have some big players trying to hinder their discussion I don't know if I am getting this right. But does that sound about what is happening here?

point 1 is obviously true To point 2 - the original white paper doesn't even mention "block size limit" because originally Bitcoin did not have a block size limit. "Honest miners" are assumed by the author to always include all profitable transactions (ie. where the fee > marginal cost to include it in a block). The limit was added after an attack in the earliest days of Bitcoin. That attack vector is simple: a miner…

I wish you wrote a blog post about this, I'd like to see what perspective you would bring to the table.

A lot of this makes little sense to someone from the "outside" like me, but you are able to explain it in a good way.

Thanks for the help!

Re: Satoshi Roundtable Thoughts

#110

Post by aminok »

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…

>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 if a fork happened.

It's a rule that prevents anyone but developers to effect a change in the max block size value.

I'm permanently banned from /r/bitcoin, despite:

* despite not promoting any alternate client

* not being a sockpuppet

* not being trollish

* having a very popular posts

This was simply because I argued Bitcoin would be better off with a higher max block size value.

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