Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 86 posts

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#71

Post by apeace »

petertodd wrote: post #17
apeace wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the past two years, the Bitcoin community has been embroiled in a debate about how to scale the network to handle more transactions. The debate has at times become less technical, rhetoric about "centralization" and the values of the community has become introduced, etc. Recently the debates have come to a head, and some have referred to it as a "Civil War"[0]. For technical background, I recommend these two post…

Both of Hearn's articles contain a number of factually incorrect points. For example, his article on forks states that: > In a soft fork, a protocol change is carefully constructed to essentially trick old nodes into believing that something is valid when it actually might not be. The soft-fork protocols used for upgrades are specifically designed to ensure nodes are not tricked into believing something is valid when…

Thanks for your reply. I'm a fan of your work and consider myself to be a neutral observer in these debates.

Regarding your first contestation, I think as another commenter said, you are cherry-picking. He explains soft forks well and isn't attempting to mislead. That's why I refer folks to the article.

> This is why at present, Bitcoin Core nodes/wallets loudly warn you that unknown rules may be in effect...

Hearn mentions this mechanism three times in the article. He even discusses the tradeoffs of ignoring this versus rejecting the block. Hardly misleading.

> The soft-fork protocols used for upgrades are specifically designed to ensure nodes are not tricked into believing something is valid when it might actually not be...

He said "essentially tricked", and I think his explanation is clear.

Using segwit as an example, if my understanding is correct, there is an edge case where non-upgraded nodes may try to mine an invalid block, which will consequently be rejected by the majority of the network (assuming the majority is using segwit).

Since segwit transactions look like an "anyone can spend" output, a non-segwit miner could be sent a transaction that spends the output to somewhere it's not supposed to go, and that would be considered invalid by segwit-supporting nodes. Therefore I think it's fair to say non-upgraded nodes are "essentially tricked", and it's a good way to explain the distinction between hard and soft forks.

I don't know as much about replace-by-fee so won't attempt to counter you.

But I will just add that this type of cherry-picking behavior has consistently been coming out of the "Core side", and I have rarely seen strong, clear counter-arguments from that side. Combine that with the very silly censorship stuff on Reddit, and one can understand why Hearn and others have become so frustrated.

Again, I am a fan and a neutral observer. But unless I am looking in the wrong places, the only side being "widely condemned" is the Core side. Perhaps you could point me to the strong, clear counter-arguments from Core? I'll start with the link you posted and check out the rest of your site!

---

EDIT: Corrected "reply-by-fee" to "replace-by-fee"

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#72

Post by hendzen »

omarchowdhury wrote: post #70
hendzen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fixed supply doesn't really make sense if you want BTC to function as a unit of exchange (rather than a commodity). I won't go in to the reasons why since they have been elaborated on by many other people. However, the fixed supply does incentivize holders (ahem hodlers ) to increase the value of the coin - whether that is by starting companies that use BTC, spamming HN with BTC/Reddit related posts, etc. It's an…

But you do know that a Bitcoin is divisible? A satoshi is one hundred millionth of a single Bitcoin. Why would there need to be an increase in supply to make Bitcoin a unit of exchange if its that divisible? Other than for psychological reasons?

I do, in fact, know a Bitcoin is divisible.

That however, is irrelevant to its lack of utility as a unit of exchange. In particular, if Bitcoin is "going to the moon" - i.e. expected to always increase in purchasing power superlinearly, why is it ever rational to spend a Bitcoin (or a Satoshi)? This is the problem with hyperdeflation.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#73

Post by omarchowdhury »

hendzen wrote: post #72
omarchowdhury wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you do know that a Bitcoin is divisible? A satoshi is one hundred millionth of a single Bitcoin. Why would there need to be an increase in supply to make Bitcoin a unit of exchange if its that divisible? Other than for psychological reasons?

I do, in fact, know a Bitcoin is divisible. That however, is irrelevant to its lack of utility as a unit of exchange. In particular, if Bitcoin is "going to the moon" - i.e. expected to always increase in purchasing power superlinearly, why is it ever rational to spend a Bitcoin (or a Satoshi)? This is the problem with hyperdeflation.

I'm in agreement with you there, there is no rationale to spend BTC in commerce with its current properties.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#74

Post by omarchowdhury »

twblalock wrote: post #18
wmf wrote: post #15

This "fire Core" situation reminds me of Uber. You can be killing it 24/7 and still get fired if you cause enough non-technical damage.

Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency, so there are many non-technical aspects of it that need to be properly handled. If the people working on the code take it upon themselves to make the non-technical decisions too, they need to be held responsible for the outcome. This really gets at the heart of my dislike for cryptocurrency -- most proponents believe it's supposed to be decentralized and free from the control of…

Fiat currencies are not under democratic governance. Central banks control them, and you cannot cast a ballot on what your central bank should do.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#75

Post by omarchowdhury »

beaner wrote: post #54
twblalock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just seems like part of an evolutionary process. Very rarely is software released where version 1.0 is perfect. Maybe if government currencies allowed for these things, they would also be better by now. Let's use the US dollar as an example. In what ways do you think it could be improved if people could fork it?

As one example, maybe we would have an alternative to ACH, which would allow money to be settled in seconds, instead of several business days. Maybe we could have this at the protocol level (banks) instead of having to use private 3rd party software (Venmo) which emulates this feature but reduces our privacy.

https://www.zellepay.com/ https://www.zellepay.com/participating-banks-and-credit-unio...

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#76

Post by snissn »

lclarkmichalek wrote: post #32
the-dude wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to changes of traditional currencies, two years is incredibly fast.

What? Central banks can change fundamental properties about a currency overnight. i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_franc#2011.E2.80.932014:...

Moving is a knob is a lot different than building a knob.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#77

Post by zo1 »

mikeash wrote: post #50
elmar wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have replied to a similar thread on HN recently here is the link. Inflation the Hidden Tax https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14828655

I don't understand what the big deal is there. I can understand it in a hyperinflation situation, but when inflation is ~2%, surely this hidden tax is insignificant compared to the more visible, explicit taxes?

That 2% may seem little compared to your yearly income-tax. However, it's a tax on all your capital that you own, and it gets applied every year. So it's a tax on all amassed wealth, not earnings. It implies that you can't just keep what you've earned, and that if you were to put it away for your children/grandchildren, it'll magically get eaten away slowly until it is practically nothing.

In addition to that, it makes it painfully obvious that someone out there, is through some means, conjuring money out of thin air. The thing each of us sweats and toils every day to earn? Someone gets the privilege of printing it and injecting it into the economy. I simplify it a bit, but that's essentially the gist of the criticism.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#78

Post by mikeash »

zo1 wrote: post #77
mikeash wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what the big deal is there. I can understand it in a hyperinflation situation, but when inflation is ~2%, surely this hidden tax is insignificant compared to the more visible, explicit taxes?

That 2% may seem little compared to your yearly income-tax. However, it's a tax on all your capital that you own, and it gets applied every year. So it's a tax on all amassed wealth, not earnings. It implies that you can't just keep what you've earned, and that if you were to put it away for your children/grandchildren, it'll magically get eaten away slowly until it is practically nothing. In addition to that, it mak…

It's a tax on all your cash that you own. There are lots of other places to keep wealth. For example, a lot of people own a mortgaged house, and inflation makes them wealthier every year because it increases the value of their house without increasing the associated debt.

That last part sounds like an appeal to emotion. Being able to do things the rest of us aren't allowed to do is pretty much the whole point of having a government. They get to create money, levy taxes, imprison people, wage war, etc. Looking at all the special privileges the government has, the privilege to create new money doesn't seem particularly special.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#79

Post by petertodd »

apeace wrote: post #71
petertodd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of Hearn's articles contain a number of factually incorrect points. For example, his article on forks states that: > In a soft fork, a protocol change is carefully constructed to essentially trick old nodes into believing that something is valid when it actually might not be. The soft-fork protocols used for upgrades are specifically designed to ensure nodes are not tricked into believing something is valid when…

Thanks for your reply. I'm a fan of your work and consider myself to be a neutral observer in these debates. Regarding your first contestation, I think as another commenter said, you are cherry-picking. He explains soft forks well and isn't attempting to mislead. That's why I refer folks to the article. > This is why at present, Bitcoin Core nodes/wallets loudly warn you that unknown rules may be in effect... Hearn m…

> Hearn mentions this mechanism three times in the article. He even discusses the tradeoffs of ignoring this versus rejecting the block. Hardly misleading.

Hearn mentions the nVersion mechanism? Specifically in https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-consensus-and-forks-c6a050... ?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any mention of the word "version"

> He said "essentially tricked", and I think his explanation is clear.

I think you're misunderstanding my point: everything you raised above is negated by the fact that the soft-fork mechanisms we use are designed to give warnings to users and miners who are not running the new(1) protocol. For example, in addition to the nVersion mechanism I mentioned, segwit transactions are intentionally designed to be not standard transactions, and thus non-segwit miners will reject them. This is an important feature to ensure that those miners don't unintentionally create invalid blocks.

1) I say "new" rather than "upgraded" to avoid making the claim that soft-forks are necessarily an upgrade.

Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?

#80

Post by SkyMarshal »

wcummings wrote: post #16
SkyMarshal wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A meme has developed among some in Bitcoin - "Fire Core", aka fire the core dev team who have contributed most of the code to the canonical Bitcoin repo ( http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin ) and stewarded Bitcoin for the last few years ( https://bitcoincore.org ). The argument is that they've moved too slow on important things like scalability, blocked a simple blocksize increase hard fork that would have added capac…

>as a result Ethereum is catching up and on the verge of overtaking Bitcoin Ironically, scaling ethereum seems a lot dicier than scaling BTC.

Oh it is, Ethereum is considerably more complex and ambitious, and is starting to hit its scaling limits as well (like any time a popular ICO happens the network bogs down). And their solution, transition to Proof-of-Stake + Sharding, is also complex. That's going to be interesting. If there's a first flipping, there could later be counter-flippenings. But Vitalik is an excellent community manager and has so far managed to prevent a major schism like in Bitcoin.
Post reply on HN