rob.golding at astutium.com [ARCHIVE] / is on Nostr

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🗓️ Active from 2013-08-21 to 2013-12-31
💬 Posted a total of 6 messages
📚 Participated in the following categories: Bitcoin-development
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2023-06-07 15:11:13

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📅 Original date posted:2013-12-31
📝 Original message:> But there's so much 'dry powder' out there (GPUs), I wonder if *not*
> supporting merge-mining is any better? At least the attacker has to do
> some unique PoW, so you hope it's costing them something.
With lots of people having access to 100TH+ there's not really much
'cost' to doing a 51% attack on an alt-coin beyond a short-term
diversion away from 'profitable' mining.
At least by supporting merged mining, more miners are likely to
'support' multiple coin types, thus making a 51% attack from an
individual/group less straightforward.
>> The rational decision for a non-scam altcoin, is to take advantage of
>> merged mining to get as much security as possible.
Exactly.
Rob

2023-06-07 15:08:59

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📅 Original date posted:2013-11-05
📝 Original message:> The Problem:
> Say Alice built a block, A1, from previous block 0. She doesn't let
> other miners know about it. She then works on A2 with previous block
> A1. Bob on the other hand is still working on B1 with previous block
> 0. Bob now finds a block and he broadcasts it. The assumption here is
> Alice will be the first miner to hear of this block and she will send
> her previously mined block, A1, to all other miners. By the time Bobs
> block arrives to other miners majority of them will already have
> received Block A1 and Bobs block will most likely be orphaned. Alice
> revealed her block, A1, only when Bob broadcast his block. This means
> she has been mining on block A2 with previous block A1 for longer than
> any other miner thus gaining an advantage without increasing her hash
> rate.
Unless A1 gets orphaned and B1 gets accepted, in which case all the work
done on A2 is 'wasted'.
The question is whether there is any 'real' advantage over time for A
over B.
> What We Know:
> Alice has gained an advantage with time. She mines longer on the valid
> block.
She mines longer on *a* block which *may* become the valid block, yes.
> In order for this attack to work Alice must reveal her previously
> mined block as late as possible, gaining her the most time spent
> working on the valid block. Since she has such good view of the
> Bitcoin network she can wait until a miner finds a block to release
> her previously mined block.
Then the simple 'fix' would be for the block-acceptance to take into
account either the total transactions or the total fees, and for the the
'accepted' block for mining the next block to be the one with the lowest
hash of one of those values if 2 are released to the network at the same
time
That is of of course assuming there is really a problem to fix,
currently I'm not convinced.
Rob

2023-06-07 15:07:02

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📅 Original date posted:2013-09-28
📝 Original message:> But the regulatory environment in many geographical regions in
> uncertain. Do we need to pay capital gains? Do we need to pay a
> sales taxs etc. etc.
In most regions it's not only 'simple' but trivial - BTC is just
'another currency' and accounted for exactly the same way - it doens't
matter if you sell your hose for GBP, USD, EUR, BTC or sacks of Pig
Dung, you still have a GBP tax issue ...
> So my idea is to voluntarily pre empt legislation by giving donations
> to govt (aka taxation) for bitcoin service providers.
You want to volunteer to pay tax ? I'd suggest stronger medication ...
> However, there is something of a problem with voluntary donations.
> Most people are not satisfied with the way they are spent.
80% of 'donations' end up spent on 'adminsitration' and not what they
were donated for, this is a 'greed' issue not a 'currency' issue.
> In the UK
> a recent survey said that only 18% of people thought that tax money
> was wisely spent.
Tax isn't voluntary or a donation. The 18% who think UK tax is well
spent are the 18% of the population who get the tax money, not the 82%
that pay it ;)
> Can we fix it?
First we kill all the politicians ...
> So let's say I run a business and I make 1 million euros. I wish to
> donate 10% of my profits to society. But let's say I dont want that
> money to go to wars of aggression, but rather, to the fire
> de[department.
So give it to the FD - what you do with your post-tax profits are up to
you ;)
> At this point everyone wins. The business person is happy to make a
> contribution. The govt. is happy that it gets more revenue. The
> fire dept. is happy that it has revenue to do its work. And
> everything has gone to the right place in a kind of democratic way.
Where does gov't come into this ? I think you're confusing 'tax' which
you have zero control over and 'donations' which you already have 100%
control over.
Rob

2023-06-07 15:06:41

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📅 Original date posted:2013-09-07
📝 Original message:> bitcoin protocol needs an archival system so the blockchain doesn't
> become too big to download
Some people may want it all ...
Balance at Point-In-Time summaries (say up to the penultimate
difficulty adjustment) would be one simple way.
And make new-adopters get up and running in minutes not days, which can
only be a good thing.
If going that route, then solutions to the 'consolidate
addresses/wallets' question and formal 'discard' of addresses could get
addressed.
Rob

2023-06-07 15:06:41

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📅 Original date posted:2013-09-08
📝 Original message:> (there's no way to be completely trust-free without this).
Not quite true, as I said balance-at-point-in-time would solve that
(and make the storage requirements much lower)
>> If going that route, then solutions to the 'consolidate
>> addresses/wallets'
>> question and formal 'discard' of addresses could get addressed.
>
> Not sure what you mean here. Addresses and wallets are two completely
> different things. Addresses are single-use destinations that point to
> a wallet
> (which is itself private and unknown to the network).
For bitcoin to grow beyond interesting experiment into global everyday
use a number of things would have to happen, not least of which is
taking 'average punter' into account. Whilst new ideas can filter into
the general consciousness over time,sometimes concepts have to go with
'what already works' :)
People's concept of money hasn't really changed in over 1,000 years -
it remains 'something of known value i can exchange for something else'.
No-one outside of bitcoin dev's and early adopters really gets the
one-shot concept of addresses - possibly rightly so - keeping issues of
it lowering levels of anonymity etc out of the discussion - it doesn't
fit with the mindset people have - it's difficult enough getting
merchants to setup separate addresses for each client, one per
transaction is simply a waste (of addresses, storage, blockchain size,
numnber of inputs|outputs when spending etc)
I'm sure the wife would love a new handbag everytime she gets some
money, but the real-world just isnt like that ;)
Addresses are perceived as the equivalent of a jar you stick your coins
in. You can have lots of jars. Each jar can be for a specific reason or
whatever, but the analogy is there.
Wallets are like a box you keep some of your jars in. With the added
interesting concept that a jar can be in multiple boxes at the same
time. Only the person with the right 'key' can open the jar and take the
contents.
However unlike the 3 money boxes I have behind me right now - which i
can take 1 single penny out of one and put it into another - if I want
to move bitcoins from one addresses (jar) to another *of my own* I have
to pay a fee. Worse still if the jar doesnt have much in it I'm denied
that ability.
End user will neither understand why or want to pay the fee, for
dealing with their own coins.
If a jar breaks I can just tip the contents into a new one - unless I'm
very careless, the amount in the new one = the amount in the old one -
people will want/need it to work like that.
Similarly if you do have all these addresses around, you may want (as
good housekeeping) discard some of them (after moving the cash).
So having the ability to specify address to send from is essential (and
a sadly missing feature of the QT client)
'intra-wallet' transfers with an 'also discard the sending address'
would be a way of (once confirmed) stopping any further use of that
address (denied any further transactions by miners ?) and when
balance-at-point-in-time is implemented, a way of shrinking the storage
for all other bitcoin users (who chosse not to have a full transaction
set).
If i send luke 10, and luke sends me back 3, i have 3, luke has 7.
If luke sends me 2, and i send luke 1, i have 4 and luke has 6.
To verify my ability to send jeff 4, all that is needed is to know that
I have 4, not all the transactions that led to that state - thats how
its done now, thats not necessarily efficient as bitcoin grows
If luke sends me 4 more, i now have 4 again, luke has 3
If i send 1 to each of the children, they have 1 each (*4)
Having a 'family' wallet means when on holiday they can have that
rental of quad-bikes - to send the rental company 4 the client only
needs to know that those addresses now have 1 each in them, not all the
previous transactions - if they didnt exist at the point-in-time
balance, then yes, it would need to know about the luke>rob>kids
transactions, but thats all
I moved to a new netbook recently - it took 140 *hours* to d/load and
process the blockchain (yes the wifi was that bad), I heard from one of
our clients that (although they only had the client running during
working hours) that to their desktop it was over 9 days before it had
caught up.
If all I was d/loading were the transactions since the last difficulty
change (as one example of a fixed point), and the remaining balance on
any not-discarded address as at that point it would have been much much
quicker, and not be shagging my shiny new hard drive.
There's more but it's 4.45 in the morning, and I cant think coherently
until after a few hours kip and some good coffee :)
Rob

2023-06-07 15:06:25

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📅 Original date posted:2013-08-21
📝 Original message:> It appears that we will soon be at a hashrate where all the desktop
> CPUs in the world couldn't really make a dent in it... certainly not
> desktop cpus using the slow integrated cpu miner,
I thought the integrated miner was retired a version or so ago - I
dontrecall seeing it for some time in bitcoin-qt
Now you can buy a USB stick for $20 which can be pushed to around
500MH/s, and there's no reason the manufacturers couldn't ship those
with a miner-program onboard !
Rob