NxtChg [ARCHIVE]

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🗓️ Active from 2015-06-27 to 2015-10-07
💬 Posted a total of 29 messages
📚 Participated in the following categories: bitcoin-dev
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2023-06-07 17:43:02

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📅 Original date posted:2015-10-07
📝 Original message:>Unfortunately, one moral imbecile keeps polluting this space.
Indeed.

2023-06-07 17:42:39

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📅 Original date posted:2015-10-05
📝 Original message:>Each implementation could have its own governance model
>and design objectives and use techniques like BIP101’s 750/1000
>signalling mechanism to activate changes that may be desirable to
>the community.
I was shushed here 3 months ago for the same suggestion :)
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-July/009294.html

2023-06-07 17:42:37

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📅 Original date posted:2015-10-05
📝 Original message:>I just think Mike Hearn has won this battle.
Unless the Core camp isn't concerned with credibility because they see XT as a disruptive attack.
So it's very easy to justify banning a single individual in the name of "restoring peace and order". We've already seen such suggestion.
Peter R was banned on /r/bitcoin, Mike was banned on IRC.
The new governance model seems to be "consensus by exclusion".

2023-06-07 17:42:17

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📅 Original date posted:2015-10-02
📝 Original message:>...obviously not for so called "ASIC-resistance" [an absurd term coined to promote some altcoins]
Yet another fallacy of "all-or-nothing" thinking, which is so abundant in the Core camp.
The fact that you can build ASIC for any kind of algorithm _in_theory_ doesn't mean you can't make it _arbitrary_hard_ in practice.
So I would tone down the arrogance a bit.

2023-06-07 17:40:38

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-20
📝 Original message:>Anyone who doesn't consider governments the proper threat model is either a shill or an idiot.
You meant to say "threat". This is what threat model is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threat_model
Nobody here discounts governments as a threat.
As to the "proper threat model", you can't construct one since your attacker is essentially unbounded.
For example, any large government could easily obtain 51% of hash power and then only accept transactions from "certified services".

2023-06-07 17:40:37

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-21
📝 Original message:>Larger user base won't necessarily protect against governments if
>we still have chokepoints they can go after.
This is the critical confusion about Bitcoin decentralization, which leads to this whole recent mess of shouting at each other.
Decentralization is _not_ a way to withstand an attack, if the government "goes after you".
Many people got this idea drilled into their heads in the previous years, that Bitcoin is a "movement" to fight governments, and decentralization is its main weapon.
They confuse Bitcoin and Anonymous.
>What we really need to grow is the number of nodes on the network
>that participate in its basic infrastructure - namely: miners, validators, etc...
Absolutely. Nobody argues that we shouldn't care about decentralization.
But who's gonna pay for all this? What are the incentives?
We need Bitcoin to get much more popular for this to happen.

2023-06-07 17:40:34

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-20
📝 Original message:>Does this conversation have to happen on-list? It seems to have wandered incredibly far off-topic.
How is this off-topic? This a fundamental decision, from which all the other development decisions follow.
And apparently it's far from settled, with one part pulling in the direction of HideCoin and the other in the direction of PopCoin.
The block limit debate is a direct consequence of this fundamental disagreement.
Until this is settled, Bitcoin has no clear direction and developers cannot make effective decisions: it's hard to get anywhere when you don't know where you're going.
Even though this disagreement probably won't be resolved on this list, it's helpful to have this discussion for people to understand what the root problem is.

2023-06-07 17:40:33

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-20
📝 Original message:>Bitcoin does not enjoy nearly the popularity that marijuana and guns do,
Marijuana is an individual activity. Precisely the problem with Bitcoin you envision, where each one of us could be easily jailed.
Guns are quite different: they have NRA and judging by how successful it is at fending _any_ sort of gun control laws, it can very effectively counter-balance the government.
If Bitcoin had it's own NBitA, it would be in a much better position to defend itself than a bunch of individual users.
>A mining network that anyone can contribute to would enable Bitcoin to stay alive in spite of this
Again. Start building an alt-coin with ASIC-resistant algorithm then, it's much more important than the small blocks in your model.
And it must also have other features to support your fight: integrated darkcoin-style anonymity, only TOR as the protocol, etc.
Trying to use Bitcoin, which is overly-exposed, for this kind of fight is a pretty dumb idea.
You won't have the benefits of a small attack surface and you won't have the benefits of strength - the most vulnerable position.
Not to mention that many people simply don't share your vision of Bitcoin as a marginalized outlawed coin somewhere in the depths of TOR.
Looking at how enthusiastically people in smallblockistan promote the most vulnerable position, I'd say they are all agents of USG.

2023-06-07 17:40:31

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-19
📝 Original message:>Your argument is that the state is not a threat to a system
>designed to deprive the state of seigniorage, because the state will see that
>system as too important?
Well, if you look at governments from the point of youtube illuminati videos, then, yeah, I guess my position would seem a bit off.
But in that case no threat model or small blocks are gonna save you. As history shows, even if you go as deep as Dread Pirate Roberts, you will eventually be caught and prosecuted.
So start building SilkRoadCoin, which only works via TOR, has ASIC-resistant algorithm and 10 Kb blocks. Then you might have a tiny chance.
Most of us subscribed to a global "electronic cash system" and we intend to continue using Bitcoin for that.

2023-06-07 17:40:31

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-19
📝 Original message:>Your vision of censorship resistance is to become such a strong
>central authority that you can resist it in direct physical confrontation.
>If you succeed at this, you are the threat.
My vision is a strong _decentralized_ system, which is:
a) too important to close,
b) able to provide adequate response to governments, like EFF or Google do.
Having a substantial attack surface and, at the same time, not having significant power is the worst fighting strategy.
It's the "Peter Todd vs 10 cops" scenario.
>The inability to see another option is the inability to understand what Satoshi created.
So your closing remark is basically, "you're too stupid to understand"?
I'll take it.

2023-06-07 17:40:30

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-19
📝 Original message:>While to many of us that sounds crazy, if you're threat model assumes
>Bitcoin is a legal/regulated service provided by a highly trusted mining
>community it's a reasonable design.
There is a large, grey area all the way to "legal/regulated service provided by a highly trusted mining community".
Painting the worst looking picture is either a defect in thinking or intentional FUD.
> Mike Hearn recently posted his threat model, which specifically argues we
> should assume governments are not a threat.
There are two ways to fight governments:
1. either you become too big to close, so political repercussions become unacceptable
2. or you become too tiny to hunt, in which case you are much better off with a specialized alt-coin, designed specifically for that purpose.

2023-06-07 17:40:30

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📅 Original date posted:2015-09-19
📝 Original message:>The state is the threat in the Bitcoin threat model. You comments below
>acknowledge it. The assumption of hostile state actors is the only
>rational starting point. That which is regulated (and regulatable)
>in Bitcoin is the attack surface.
I think, you just proved my point. If your goal is to shrink the attack surface as much as possible,
you are better off being a marginalized alt-coin.
>This threat represents the difference between Bitcoin and Fedcoin.
_This_ is the false dichotomy. There's a range of coins between DarkCoin and FedCoin.
>This is extremely naive. At a minimum, getting popular/successful (and regulated) is the formula for regulatory capture.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose you are a regular guy, say Peter Todd, and you are faced with 10 policemen in anti-riot gear.
You can fight them in two ways:
1. become stronger, so you could provide an adequate response, either by turning into Hulk or by getting another 30-50 Peter Todds.
2. lose some fat, learn a few parkour tricks and move around mostly by night behind dumpsters.
The worst you can fare is just being Peter Todd with a backpack and an expensive camera on his neck, wandering around the city in daylight.
Your vision of Bitcoin is the most vulnerable to government attacks.

2023-06-07 17:37:46

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-31
📝 Original message:>...so people posting to it will always have a venue to speak without being censored.
So is the attacker, who aims to make the place unusable.

2023-06-07 17:37:45

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-31
📝 Original message:>While this topic is very interesting, I do not see how it is
>relevant to a mailing list dedicated to technical and academic debate.
>Please can you take this discussion elsewhere.
Wow. I have Deja Vu. Where have I heard recently that discussing Bitcoin split is off topic and must be stopped?.. Hm...
This is the biggest issue with Bitcoin right now and you want us to move to some obscure place?
Where? Reddit? Where we can't be heard? Create another list with top XT people then.

2023-06-07 17:37:45

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-31
📝 Original message:>This is a technical list dedicated to technical discussions revolving around the bitcoin protocol and related technologies.
I am so sorry. I thought this was XT list :)
Apologies to everyone.

2023-06-07 17:37:44

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-31
📝 Original message:>I am creating a de-centralized forum, and I mean truly decentralized as I nor anyone else will be able to control it.
Zander is working on the same thing: https://www.reddit.com/r/AetheralResearch/
But it's actually quite difficult to make it truly censorship-resistant: both in solving the theymos factor and spam/abuse/overloading as an attack.
>There is no doubt that the centralization and censorship of the Bitcoin community is massively inhibiting the advance of Bitcoin
>and also the growth of the Bitcoin economy. We are scaring away intellectuals, businessman, and newbies that are just getting started.
We have /r/bitcoinxt and so far it has been great. But we also need a regular forum.
Roger Ver controls bitcoin.com, as I understand? https://bitcoin.com/forum/ would be nice.
And it must be a real community, not "say whatever you want because free speech". We've seen how that turned out to be.
Something like battle.net or Steam forums: heavily moderated, not for opinions, but for spam/noise/insults.
Again, this needs leadership. Anyone can install a forum software, what is needed is an "official seal of approval" and regular presence of top XT people there.
And a will to setup proper moderation. Then people will move.

2023-06-07 17:37:06

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-19
📝 Original message:>I guess every mailing list should have its own internal SNR discussions.
Number of posts, August:
72, Jorge Timón
36, Hector Chu
32, Thomas Zander
27, Pieter Wuille
24, Eric Lombrozo
23, Mark Friedenbach
18, Adam Back
18, Btc Drak
18, Peter Todd
17, jl2012
16, odinn
15, Gavin Andresen
12, Venzen Khaosan
12, Michael Naber
11, Anthony Towns
10, Tom Harding
10, Gregory Maxwell
Everybody else less than 10.

2023-06-07 17:36:14

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-18
📝 Original message:Eric,
>FWIW...
These are all good points and I agree with most of them. Yes, the block size debate is a lucky historical accident, which makes it easier for XT to pull off the split, but that's not the point.
The point is, the split _must_ happen because the centralized governance of Bitcoin became a bigger problem than the risks of a fork or larger blocks.
You cannot govern a decentralized currency with a centralized entity.
That's why we shouldn't fear hard forks - they are the new reality, and if we cannot set up a reliable process for them to happen then there _is_ no decentralized Bitcoin and we all might as well just give up and go home.
----
And that's why it would be nice to have a more complex voting mechanism in the block header (see this proposal for the new header format, for example: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151698) and other initiatives to make forking more reliable and user choice easier.
This is a better path than trying to suppress all forks by dictatorship methods of the few currently in power.

2023-06-07 17:36:11

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-17
📝 Original message:Eric,
>In the entire history of Bitcoin we've never attempted anything even closely resembling a hard fork like what's being proposed here.
These concerns are understandable. What's hard to understand is why he, he and he get to decide what is more risky - hitting the limit or forking for larger blocks?
Many people don't seem to think the upcoming hard fork is such a big risk.
---
And why there's so much fear that your side might lose to XT in a honest battle? Why is it suddenly not "let the best man win", but "we are right, they are enemies of the state, go get them!!!"?
This is the same fear dictators have of honest elections. If you know you can't win in a honest battle, you start rigging the game.
With recent "Satoshi" post even this list is not immune...
----
I don't know if everybody had a chance to appreciate this quote by theymos yet:
"If 90% of /r/Bitcoin users find these policies to be intolerable, then I want these 90% of /r/Bitcoin users to leave."
(https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/)
This is a quote worthy of Gaddafi. Fortunately, it's hard to be a dictator on the Internet, where you can't shoot people.

2023-06-07 17:36:05

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-17
📝 Original message:>We should have the highest respect for what these people are doing, and we should try to do something constructive, not waste time with anger and disrespect.
Why, exactly, should I have any respect for what these people are doing (and supposedly not have any respect for what the other side is doing)?
>From my point of view, the XT side _does_ something constructive. It's the Core side that resorts to dirty tactics and tries to sabotage community's free choice instead.
>Nobody should be forced to do anything.
Great, so how about you go tell theymos to stop censoring XT posts and banning the other side on /r/Bitcoin?
Let users decide what Bitcoin is or isn't.
>The developers are not telling you what to do, they are trying to do what they consider is best for the ecosystem given their technical abilities.
The developers & Co are doing their best to stay in power, so they could continue imposing their will on Bitcoin ecosystem. This is the real power grab, not Gavin and Hearn, who merely provided an alternative.
And the fear they show is most telling.

2023-06-07 17:36:05

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📅 Original date posted:2015-08-17
📝 Original message:>Announcing Not-BitcoinXT
>https://github.com/xtbit/notbitcoinxt#not-bitcoin-xt
> "This version can be used to protect the status quo until real technical consensus is formed about the blocksize."
> "...real technical consensus..."
You mean the bunch of self-proclaimed Bitcoin wizards, who decided they have the right to tell everybody what to do, and who never got to grow up and are now angry at the world for not listening to them anymore? That "technical consensus"?
"Bitcoin is decentralized, but you are only allowed to do what we tell you to do. It's our pet project, we wrote code for it!"
That's what it all boils down to, all these dirty games of calling XT an alt-coin and censoring its posts, pretending to be Satoshi, sabotaging XT switch, etc.: "How dare they not listen to Us The Smartest anymore?!!!"
Pathetic. The history will roll over you in a blink. The harder you try, the quicker it will go.

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📅 Original date posted:2015-07-01
📝 Original message:(sorry for the long post, I tried)
I've been thinking about how we could build an effective Bitcoin governance, but couldn't come up with anything remotely plausible.
It seems we might go a different way, though, with Core and XT continue co-existing in parallel, mostly in a compatible state, out of the need that "there can be only one".
Both having the same technical protocol, but different people, structure, processes and political standing; serving as a kind of two-party system and keeping each other in check.
Their respective power will be determined by the number of Core vs XT nodes running and people/businesses on board. They will have to negotiate any significant change at the risk of yet another full fork.
And occasionally the full forks will still happen and the minority will have to concede and change their protocol to match the winning side.
Can there be any other way? Can you really control a decentralized system with a centralized governance, like Core Devs or TBF?
----
In this view, what's happening is a step _towards_ decentralization, not away from it. It proves that Bitcoin is indeed a decentralized system and that minority cannot impose its will.
For the sides to agree now would actually be a bad thing, because that would mean kicking the governance problem down the road.
And we _need_ to go through this painful split at least once. The block size issue is perfect: controversial enough to push the split, but not controversial enough so one side couldn't win.
----
If this is where we're heading then both sides should probably start thinking of themselves as opposition parties, instead of whatever they think of themselves now.
People and businesses ultimately decide and they need a way to cast a Yes/No vote on proposed changes. Hence the two-party system.
If the split in power is, say, 60/40 and the leading party introduces an unpopular change, it can quickly lose its advantage.
We already have the "democratic party" on the left with Gavin and Mike representing the wish of the majority and the "conservative party" on the right, who would prefer things to stay the way they are.
----
Finally, I propose to improve the voting mechanism of Bitcoin to serve this new reality better.
Using the upcoming fork as an opportunity, we could add something like 8-byte votes into blocks:
* first 4 bytes: fork/party ID, like 'CORE' or 'XT'
* second 4 bytes: proposition number
(or at least add the ID somewhere so the parties wouldn't have to negotiate block version numbers).
Miners are in the business of mining coins, so they are good "sensors" of where the economic majority will be.
We will have a representative democracy, with miners serving as 'hubs', collecting all the noise and chatter and casting it into a vote.
This is not perfect, but nothing ever is.

2023-06-07 15:40:45

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-27
📝 Original message:Greg,
> But it's a strange bar to set: perfect representation of entire community. By that token, nobody can say anything is controversial if a different group is disagreeing.
Sorry, for not being clear. I am not talking definitions here, of course you can call it "controversial" when you get N-1 NACK's!
I object that it's enough evidence to deny any change (see below). For example, in case the interests of developers became misaligned with the interests of the community (you can't say it can't happen).
Wladimir,
>The *entire network* needs to agree to switch to your new software.
Why the "entire network"? So if, say, 75% of everybody involved want some change and 25% don't, the majority can't have it?
Well, I guess we're down to that philosophical question of whether majority can dictate minority or whether minority can be a roadblock to majority :)
Probably no reason to discuss it further :) A "software fork" seems like an inevitable resolution for this.

2023-06-07 15:40:44

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-27
📝 Original message:On 6/27/2015 at 3:09 PM, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" <laanwj at gmail.com> wrote:
>Not sure though. The only way to find out is to propose them and see. Maybe wait a bit until things have cooled down...
And then we are again at the mercy of a single "decider" to judge whether something is controversial or not?
It was pointed several times before that with enough loud minority you can make any change seem controversial.

2023-06-07 15:40:44

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-27
📝 Original message:On 6/27/2015 at 3:18 PM, "Greg Sanders" <gsanders87 at gmail.com> wrote:
>Can we agree n-1 dev Nacks would be a controversial hard fork?
That requires an assumption that all developers are perfectly representing the whole community.
And no shady lobbying behind the scenes too.

2023-06-07 15:40:40

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-27
📝 Original message:On 6/27/2015 at 2:04 PM, "Jorge Timón" <jtimon at jtimon.cc> wrote:
>But that option is not unknown...
It is, until it actually happens. Before that, anything is a speculation. That's why risk is attached to both "doing nothing" and "raising the limit".
For example, there's another risk that a lot of people will be disappointed in a system that can't scale (or adapt to any significant changes, for that matter).
Yes, there is the "exit" option, but that path would probably be a lot messier and unwarranted.
Various people perceive these risks differently and there is no clear mechanism currently to somehow gauge what the majority wants. So it's tempting to just give up and say: let's do nothing.
In this situation, doing a "software fork" seems like the only way to actually see how many people/interests are in favor of bigger blocks.
(Whether the majority has a moral right to dictate the minority is a tough philosophical question, which should probably be left out of this discussion :)

2023-06-07 15:40:39

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-27
📝 Original message:On 6/27/2015 at 1:04 PM, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" <laanwj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then you won't risk the other 'passengers' who don't consent to it.
But you can look at it the other way: what about risking the 'passengers' when the plane suddenly doesn't fly anymore?
Increasing block limit increases the risk of centralization, but it also keeps the current status quo of blocks not being filled, rather then risking an unknown option of hitting the limit hard.
>... and pretending is only going to cause damage by creating false expectations, or eventually even double-spending possibility because of conflicting forks.
So you personally see the risks of a hard-fork outweigh the risks of not increasing the block size.
It's a valid opinion, but you probably don't want to decide the fate of Bitcoin single-handedly by denying any change, which is not a technical emergency.
That's why there should be a mechanism where the whole community can vote. Lacking that, that's what Gavin and Mike are doing: creating their own mechanism for consensus changes.

2023-06-07 15:40:38

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-27
📝 Original message:On 6/27/2015 at 10:43 AM, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" <laanwj at gmail.com> wrote:
> It has been disappointing and scary to see political pressure tactics being used to change a distributed consensus system.
That's why some people are advocating formalizing the process. Political pressure will happen anyway, whether somebody likes it or not. It's better to deal with it in the open.
> They cannot be changed willy-nilly according to needs of some groups, much less than lower gravity can be legislated to help the airline industry.
Except the block size is not gravity. It's more like an arbitrary decision to limit planes' wingspan to the most typical hangar door of 1940.
And now we have a "controversy" that we can't have modern planes out of the fear they won't fit into some of the old hangars.
And to continue with this nice example, some people are even arguing that "the demand for flight is, essentially, limitless, so why bother making larger jets at all?"

2023-06-07 15:40:24

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📅 Original date posted:2015-06-28
📝 Original message:On 6/28/2015 at 10:05 PM, "Patrick Murck" <patrick.murck at gmail.com> wrote:
>Maintainer is empowered to make changes to "teh Bitcoin" but the reality is that the Core Maintainer role is really about cat
>herding and project management of Bitcoin Core the open-source software project and not the bitcoin network.
It's not about pushing a change, it's about refusing a change on the grounds of controversy.
This is _not_ an attack on Wladimir. His position in view of circumstances is perfectly reasonable: to take the safest option.
Even at the risk of stagnation, as he pointed out, at least your funds won't be expropriated. It's a noble position to defend the minority.
Unfortunately (or fortunately), the majority of power usually gets what it wants. Of course, "they will have it their way anyway" is not an appropriate reason to flip-flop on an ethical position, so nobody expects Wladimir to change his mind.
Thus, we are playing a variation of prisoner's dilemma here: the best solution would be an agreement on both sides, if only they could agree.
In reality, there's a good chance that Gavin's fork will win, creating precisely the problems and risks, which Wladimir tries to avoid, only more. And we will end up with lose-lose situation.
But we lack any other mechanism for a scenario where interests of some of those 7 committers become misaligned with interests of the majority (which seems to be the case).
And every time Bitcoin will face similar disagreement in the future we will go through it again...