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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#111

Post by rothbardrand »

rnhmjoj wrote: post #106
zby wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well - increasing the block size is not costless - it is not just pushing the gas pedal a little more like in your example.

What's the cost? It was 36MB originally and it has been reduced to 1MB as a temporary measure to limit spam.

The cost is that larger blocks have difficulty crossing the great firewall of china and mining is already centralized there.

I have seen this myself with a production blockchain and blocks that were less than 1mb. Increasing the size increases this effect and gives Chinese miners and artificial advantage.

Plus there's no congestion on the network right now. There's not a scaling problem. It was spam.

Further, segwit increases block size and efficiency so there's no reason to not activate it.

This whole issue isn't about scale, core is still ahead of the curve on what's needed to scale, it's about control, and disabling ASICBOOST and keeping transaction fees high.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#112

Post by _nalply »

Taek wrote: post #91
azm1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of power has the user base on the blockchain?

Coins only have value if people accept them as valuable. The userbase ultimately decides whether or not they would accept payment via a certain coin. If the userbase is not interested in a coin, it will not matter how much hashrate is behind the coin, or how many figureheads try to prop it up. That coin will not have value.

I imagine an user who gets some coins and he will say fuck it, I keep them. Aaaand the coins have value.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#113

Post by shp0ngle »

brownbat wrote: post #108
jpatokal wrote: post #20

Well, that's a remarkably uninformative announcement. Here's an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur. Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees. Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being "increase the block size" and "muddle through by discarding less useful data" (aka Segregated Witness/SegWit). Ho…

As a BTC amateur, trying to approach it from an ordinary user's perspective, all I know is I used to be able to set whatever fee I wanted and wait a few hours and things would get through, and now I have to play some sort of game of chicken with the network, guessing whether my transaction will ever be processed unless I pay as large a fee as possible. I've used the fee prediction engines to try to avoid low fees and…

> maybe implement the solutions from both sides at once

HERETIC

No really, this is exactly what Segwit2x is doing, but it is still heresy for the UASF camp.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#114

Post by lawn »

runeks wrote: post #25
6nf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called User Activated Soft Fork or UASF for short. It could end up being nothing but it's worth noting the date. There are currently two main ideas on how to scale Bitcoin. One camp is the called Bitcoin Unlimited and it's a proposal that allows the miners to adjust the block size as needed. The other idea is called Segregated Witness or Segwit. This is a change in the way bitcoin transactions are counted toward…

> Some people in the Segwit camp are tired of waiting so they are attempting to force the issue without the support of most miners. The date they picked is Aug 1. I don't understand why the bitcoin.org page sounds so alarmist. If the miners are not in on it why would some special Bitcoin blockchain (with alternative rules) matter, since miners could easily DoS this chain, if they wanted to, in case they don't support…

> Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF?

Yes.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#115

Post by jageen »

ktta wrote: post #105
jageen wrote: post #60

It will surely affect on ransomware collectors.

Maybe they'll also move to ETH. A great way to get a good % of the population away from BTC to ETH

It is good time for investors :). Or it is already passed, I did not see the rate of both but there might be major change.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#116

Post by rothbardrand »

lawn wrote: post #110
rothbardrand wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the key issue. Mining is largely centralized under the control of Bitmain, both via pools and indirectly via miners they have sold (which in the past have had backdoors). They profit from using an exploit called ASICBOOST. Segwit will disable ASICBOOST as a side effect of improving the protocol. Therefore, BitMain has been launching FUD campaigns and numerous attempts to propose alternative softwar…

This is the main narrative being pushed by Blockstream and Core who are afraid of loosing control over the main Bitcoin reference client, beware. > I think you missed the key issue. Mining is largely centralized under the control of Bitmain, both via pools and indirectly via miners they have sold False, bitcoin mining has never been as decentralized as it is now: https://coin.dance/blocks > Segwit2X is a compromise--…

This is not a narrative, this is the technical facts. You're pushing a narrative.

Bitcoin mining has never been as centralized as it is right now with one man controlling over %70 of the hash rate via multiple pools. Many of those pools are just the same player operating under different names.

Segwit2X is in fact a compromise, and I linked to a blog post where Bitmain complains about it. They want to "activate segwit" but what they call segwit is not really segwit. The UAHF article I linked to is not Segwit2X it is a new hard fork they propose because they don't like Segwit2X. If they actually supported it they could just let it activate.

They back a solution that gives them more control over the network and higher fees, not lower fees. You think they will give lower fees but you're uninformed about the current fee situation.

Blockstream doesn't have control. You're pushing an uninformed narrative that makes Blockstream out as some sort of evil corporation--- the reality is block stream employees are a minority of core, core development is done in the public eye (unlike even Segwit2X and certainly any of Bitmains's hacks, like BU which was closed source for awhile before people just gave up on it.)

You keep talking as if the miners are supposed to be in control, as if that's right. It's not. Bitcoin was designed to be a balance, and the only error satoshi made was not realizing that his PoW was vulnerable to ASICs, which have resulted in centralization. You act as if there are a lot of miners and they are the bitcoin community, they are not, they are the minority. Alas they have spent a lot of money to dupe people like you into thinking they are the good guys.

Your articles are non-technical nonsense full of FUD written by people who do not understand the bitcoin code.

Here's the real threat to bitcoin-- people who are not developers are easily mislead by conspiracy theories backed up by thousands of shills posting this kind of crap narrative.

Thanks for the down vote, too bad you didn't have a technical argument.

The great firewall of china is not going away. The centralization threat is real. Segwit is the most tested code put out by core... and a whole lot better than the shitshow of alternatives we've seen put out by those who are trying to take over bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#117

Post by shp0ngle »

lawn wrote: post #110
rothbardrand wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the key issue. Mining is largely centralized under the control of Bitmain, both via pools and indirectly via miners they have sold (which in the past have had backdoors). They profit from using an exploit called ASICBOOST. Segwit will disable ASICBOOST as a side effect of improving the protocol. Therefore, BitMain has been launching FUD campaigns and numerous attempts to propose alternative softwar…

This is the main narrative being pushed by Blockstream and Core who are afraid of loosing control over the main Bitcoin reference client, beware. > I think you missed the key issue. Mining is largely centralized under the control of Bitmain, both via pools and indirectly via miners they have sold False, bitcoin mining has never been as decentralized as it is now: https://coin.dance/blocks > Segwit2X is a compromise--…

FlexTrans are far more crappy and far far less tested than segwit. It introduces its own weird format that nobody uses, that's sort-of-XML-but-binary (I mean, the authors said to themselves "I like XML so much I want it in a binary protocol") - and problems with types of formats is exactly where the various maleability problems come from! Which was reason for the segwit in the first place!

I am not for UASF and I think it's moronic (since it will lead to chainsplit and user confusion); segwit is fine though and FlexTrans are not a serious contender

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#118

Post by rothbardrand »

shp0ngle wrote: post #113
brownbat wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a BTC amateur, trying to approach it from an ordinary user's perspective, all I know is I used to be able to set whatever fee I wanted and wait a few hours and things would get through, and now I have to play some sort of game of chicken with the network, guessing whether my transaction will ever be processed unless I pay as large a fee as possible. I've used the fee prediction engines to try to avoid low fees and…

> maybe implement the solutions from both sides at once HERETIC No really, this is exactly what Segwit2x is doing, but it is still heresy for the UASF camp.

Not at all. Segwit2x is a compromise that's fine by me. Activate segwit then increase block size. It will result in some increase of miner centralization, but not to the extent that 32MB blocks like Bitmain wants would.

Answer me this-- if it's opposition is UASF, why did bitmain, after Segwit2X got so much support, announce they were going to hard fork anyway?

https://blog.bitmain.com/en/uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...

The Bip148 crowd is happy with Segwit2X because it effectively activates the UASF represented by Bip-148. We don't really care which of the BIP mechanisms is used to activate segwit if segwit is (And I think they are changing 148 to activate along with Segwit2x so there's no split in the support between the two.)

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#119

Post by rothbardrand »

jpatokal wrote: post #70
Taek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A neutral response would probably not use the phrasing 'muddle through' with regards to the solution endorsed by most of the technical experts in the Bitcoin space. ---- Right now there are 3 implementations of Bitcoin in the wild, and each of the 3 will react differently to different network events. The network is essentially splitting apart, with each fragment driven by a different faction. If you don't know what t…

My view is that SegWit is a bandaid, not a cure: while it would give Bitcoin some breathing room, it doesn't fix the underlying constraints and is not alone going to solve scaling, hence "muddle through".

That's a not very informed view. Segwit involves segwit, but a very large number of previously pending enhancements that needed a soft fork to activate (core is conservative about any kind of fork) It has dramatic scaling capability due to segwit, it allows lightening network and other solutions to be built on BTC, and in fact, in my opinion will be the last scaling solution BTC ever needs because it will enable unlimited scaling via off chain and side chain transactions.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#120

Post by lawn »

shp0ngle wrote: post #117
lawn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the main narrative being pushed by Blockstream and Core who are afraid of loosing control over the main Bitcoin reference client, beware. > I think you missed the key issue. Mining is largely centralized under the control of Bitmain, both via pools and indirectly via miners they have sold False, bitcoin mining has never been as decentralized as it is now: https://coin.dance/blocks > Segwit2X is a compromise--…

FlexTrans are far more crappy and far far less tested than segwit. It introduces its own weird format that nobody uses, that's sort-of-XML-but-binary (I mean, the authors said to themselves "I like XML so much I want it in a binary protocol") - and problems with types of formats is exactly where the various maleability problems come from! Which was reason for the segwit in the first place! I am not for UASF and I thi…

> and problems with types of formats is exactly where the various maleability problems come from! Which was reason for the segwit in the first place!

You obviously have no idea what the maleability problem is and you didn't read and understand the linked articles.

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