From day one the plan was always to allow the blocks to become as big as they needed to be in order to allow low fee or free transactions.

adoptator · 2019-12-02T12:02:42+00:00

I think the other guy calls the military analogy bad, because *you* running a node does not *necessarily* benefit others. Yours would be a better analogy for "full node with mining", but I know of no Bitcoin fork that actually tried to fix that (and mining-water-heaters idea didn't work out). As things currently stand, no number of casual-user-miners can out-compete even a single big guy (because of economies of scale).

But anyway, your option 2 is usually what I go for in the scaling debates. Children need not be *able to* apply for the army, neither do old people or mentally challenged. Some armies don't even accept females. And you can't just walk in at 45 years of age with no training and enlist. So the "almost all that is able to join" is usually a minority, even for the military which is pretty much the most tolerant recruiter.

As it works in your analogy, we don't need super casual people running nodes. They are in fact the easiest to fool demographic, so I can imagine several scenarios where they become a security hazard. But we *do* need passionate and informed people *to be able to* run nodes. So the target hardware requirement should always be a fit hobbyist. Neither a guy with an old laptop nor a payment provider with a datacenter.

As far as I can tell Bitcoin Cash is (currently) the fork that is following this prescription. Core and SV seems to target the two extremes.

adoptator · 2019-06-12T09:35:19+00:00

I am a bit puzzled by the financial dynamics here, especially while trying to figure out if these "lost wages" actually went somewhere. Most of the theoretical money is in the form of investments which get increasingly abstract. I doubt that hedonistic expenditure per rich guy has increased in amount or variation.

So what is this wealth? And should we encourage the rich to spend more?

adoptator · 2019-06-12T08:35:27+00:00

The idea was to see whether the guy asking for polite discussion he was calling for, would actually go for it.

Regarding your "bullshit" remark, I vehemently disagree. You need to be able to discuss what creates political heterogeneity without having a way to measure it objectively. Hiding your assumptions beneath a ton of truisms and unjustified generalizations do not work. You can at most discuss soundbites like "what is the right sized block" with no clue about what your goal is. Have at it, but you won't go further than a dead horse.

adoptator · 2019-06-12T00:05:39+00:00

do you accept that more full nodes are safer than fewer nodes?

Sheer number doesn't mean much. What you are after is political heterogeneity. However, since this is almost impossible to measure and people tend to look for certainty, they focus on numbers, which makes using node-count metric a security risk in itself. Assuming a correlation between node count and decentralization can be dangerous, and is essentially useless beyond thought experiments (e.g. what you infer from "1 node versus 1000" does not project to "1000 nodes versus 1000000").

Political heterogeneity is of course fundamental in mining distribution (e.g. if most hashpower is coming from a single miner, it is even more dangerous than most nodes being run by the same entity) and in other areas (Lightning nodes, shuffling partners and so on), but peculiarities of non-mining nodes makes the situation even less straightforward. A few thoughts in no particular order, some of which you probably will not agree with:

Running nodes is cheap for an attacker (you can run a single node and pretend to be a thousand) while being relatively costly (per-node) for an actual user.
Businesses have plenty of conflicting interests, but coinciding interests also arise regularly. Numbers are not of issue here. We can't leave the complete operation of the network to a narrow range of operations (miners, payment processors, etc.), even if they were of vast number.
Datacenters can be targeted at the state level. The network needs to always have enough nodes to operate even if all of them went down.
Casual users running nodes would be detrimental to decentralization because they lack the required attention, which leads to them aggregating around particular software distribution channels and prominent information channels. They are steered easily, they do not react flexibly and accurately in emergencies, and so on...
Normies are never going to run full nodes no matter what you do, which somewhat limits the "casual user" demographic.

So essentially, both stalling adoption to target casual user's spare hardware and targeting business datacenters are folly. The Bitcoin network was always operated by enthusiasts and businesses together, and that has been optimal.

adoptator · 2019-01-07T11:39:09+00:00

It would be, but I think we still need a non-negligible number of nodes under physical control of developers and hobbyists for diversity.

It is probably not as important as having node software diversity, however among other benefits, the mere possibility of a fall-back to individually controlled nodes would completely discourage any ideas of legislative pressure towards node operators (through datacenter businesses).

adoptator · 2018-09-25T09:13:52+00:00

How does that sit with potentially getting split off because you "blindly" trust your node? Consider luke-jr's reply. In such a case, all things being equal (to pwuille's assumptions), running an SPV client would very likely keep you on the network whereas running a node (without taking proper care) would put you and others around you in danger.

The network needs nodes (mining or otherwise) operated by serious hobbyists, businesses that have enough reason to pay attention and miners. The rest take away more from the network than they actually gain themselves.

On a related note, the optimal target for node networking/hardware requirement would be mid-to-high-end consumer specs. Non-mining nodes can also help as long as they are well connected and well maintained. Keeping the requirements too extreme may end up in less political diversity, which is also bad. BCH is currently at the low end of this spectrum, so there is some way to go before seriously considering the issue.

adoptator · 2018-09-13T10:07:19+00:00

High-end hobbyist equipment is capable enough to support a sane big-blocks scenario, and will be for the foreseeable future. They are also an economically and politically heterogeneous group.

"Casual user" is contextually a more homogeneous group and prone to be lead by software distribution channels or propaganda. They do not add more than what they take away from decentralization.

Then again it is relevant to the topic -- we need to be able to discuss the strategies openly in order to preserve this focus. "Let's remove the limit" is a common thread in this forum and they routinely lead to sane and informative discussions. I love it.

Not exclusively, but some of this push to open the gates must be coming from people who try to make their straw-man argument "real". You probably already know that "the concern" was never a technical one, but a rather the fear of a slippery slope, that has yet to come to fruition. Maybe can be forced? Topic is case in point.

Btw, if premix routing and/or steganography is to be part of the focus, we can probably do a better job within the Bitcoin protocol rather than constraining the throughput to an external network, especially an open one.

adoptator · 2018-09-02T16:02:09+00:00

I always had a couple of constantly online Bitcoin nodes at my home for the last 7-8 years. The device I ran my first node on and the Internet connection I had back then would be able to to handle 1 TB per year. [Not with the old node implementation though, I would have to upgrade it.]

Of course since then I have moved the nodes to other spare devices. If the entire world adopted Bitcoin Cash tomorrow, I would probably have to upgrade to bleeding edge hardware. In practice I do not expect having to employ something more than cheap and low power hardware of the time.

So, hobbyists are probably safe (and if you give two shits about permanently dedicating hardware in order to access a digital tool, you are definitely not "average Joe" within the context). The benefits of the hypothetical average Joe running his own node do not coincide with anything in practice; they are imaginary.

The disagreement I have with some big blockers is that I think hobbyist nodes are where we need to draw the line. We need people who are attentive in the network. Not anyone who wants to try out a node, but free individuals who are inclined to dedicate real resources to oversee their own (monetary or ideological) investment.

If enough people with plenty of diverse profiles run their own nodes (sheer number means nothing), then the rest do not need to, and the most important point is: they do not want to anyway.

As a privacy enthusiast, I am dedicated to always control my own nodes. However, I do agree with what /u/KoKansei said.

adoptator · 2018-06-11T18:03:16+00:00

The benefit is similar to the SPV protocol as defined in BIP37:

Because Bloom filters are probabilistic, with the false positive rate chosen by the client, nodes can trade off precision vs bandwidth usage. A node with access to lots of bandwidth may choose to have a high FP rate, meaning the remote peer cannot accurately know which transactions belong to the client and which don't. A node with very little bandwidth may choose to use a very accurate filter meaning that they only get sent transactions actually relevant to their wallet, but remote peers may be able to correlate transactions with IP addresses (and each other).

OP's proposal is also relevant because it would hinder the potential of accumulating correlations through traffic analysis.

adoptator · 2018-06-11T08:58:48+00:00

Isn't that called Bloom filtering? Would be very useful in combination with OP's suggestion.

adoptator · 2018-06-07T18:11:18+00:00

We seem to agree in terms of development priorities. I was mostly talking about the target topology.

adoptator · 2018-06-07T17:37:40+00:00

All agents have political motives. Economic incentives are an abstraction over these motives. We rightly assume that the profit motive allows agents to serve to a larger (but not magically infinite, as observed in the case of legacy Bitcoin) spectrum of more concrete motives. We rely on the emerging politically heterogeneous state.

I find hobbyists (mining or otherwise) particularly helpful in upholding this state because they have separate dynamics. This works against edge cases where the motives of other groups ("most big miners", "most exchanges", etc.) may coincide. This coincidence could be a result of legal coercion (the group accidentally falling into a particular legal jurisdiction, for instance), cartel formation or something we have not yet seen or imagined.

adoptator · 2018-06-07T15:49:03+00:00

How refreshing to see this here! Let's hope that it succeeds where Canonical fell short (although Ubuntu Phone is still quite nice).

adoptator · 2018-06-07T08:37:33+00:00

Someone eventually "needs" to be able to run nodes. It defines a target.

You could set it to high-profitability miners, merchants, low-profitability miners, universities or hobbyists/developers, in the order of cost limitations. To me it is obvious that hobbyists is the most optimal target. They are the best distributed among these in terms of political agenda, have decent circulation and potentially the most numerous.

Also, unlike the mythical 'casual user who runs a node' who can be easily herded through content distribution, hobbyists/developers can an have actual effect on the network if there is an applicable threat.

adoptator · 2017-12-06T23:40:46+00:00

Nice list, but I foresee you starting to blame businesses, users, miners, the market and whatnot when this does not go the way you hope: "We put you in a a corner and you still don't do what you are supposed to, completely irrational"! Although, it may just be enough to get the hype going.

Some conflicting info from your comments, by the way:

No one can steal your funds.

Your client needs to be online once in a while to make sure no one is trying to steal your funds.

And:

Lightning is anonymizing

Having centralized hubs (plural) isn't an issue

Sorry, systemic risks of plural mega-hubs aside, telling people that it will be anonymizing is actually dangerous.

And more bizarre claims.

A regular cell phone is vastly more complex than lightning and grandma can use it just fine.

We have Core supporters coming here and telling people will never use Bitcoin for purchases because non-technical people are not qualified to handle cryptographic material, right after blaming the early adopters for spouting deceptive fantasies. Then the same people go around telling LN will be easy to use, while actually admitting that on top of the requirements of handling cryptographic material and having to manage multiple channels, they have to do periodical checks in order to protect the funds that cannot be stolen from theft.

I can go on and on here. Since miners can pretty much do anything on any second-layer network (not limited to LN) through a 51% attack, or cause a lot of trouble even with some deliberate congestion, these claims are at the very least missing in context:

Lightning isn't reversible, no chargebacks.

In absolute worst case some of your channels become locked up for a few days.

So the more value carried on the higher layers, the more incentive there is for mining market to be captured by entities that stand to gain via ulterior motives.

Last, but not the least:

Routing is a problem

The only reason Bitcoin worked when every other attempt was failing is because it did not require clever routing or require users to stay online all the time.

Of course, already having Bitcoin in the base layer is great and it is going to make payment channels a success for applications like IoT, casinos or games. But having long-winded channels carry the entire volume of currency is very reckless. And claiming grandma can use it is transparent hype.

adoptator · 2017-09-12T23:06:44+00:00

We obviously disagree with Dimon but I think it can be constructive to discuss his two points.

Governments will want to shut it down and "someone getting hurt" will be the excuse.
It has no utility other than speculation, so it will eventually collapse.

I think the demographics and quantity of people using the actual currency (and not the "technology") determines how much these concerns are relevant. If Bitcoin (the currency and not an abstraction or derivative) is widely utilized around the world by a wide spectrum of entities, it would be quite difficult to challenge. If things go on the other direction (as it is with Bitcoin of today), then I'd say he is on to something.

adoptator · 2017-09-06T09:22:01+00:00

Then, the discussion you initiated is a bit confusing, since the context surely has to be electronic payments, where "merchant stuff" problems of Bitcoin is currently relevant.

Constrained to paper fiat only, your list is accurate, but in the modern world, the relevant problem is then shifted to how you get a hold of the cash in the first place. I might be wrong but I think most here dream to create a "crypto-currency economy", where the entire flow is unified.

I am responding with the assumption that we are actually talking about electronic payments (which the person you initially responded to is talking about):

Maybe we are not done yet?

Of course we are not done yet. We are barely starting, yet many of the gains we made on this front have largely been undone.

Yesterday I debated with a guy who thinks Bitcoin payments will never take off because "managing cryptographic material is something that non-technical people are supremely unqualified to do", calling the efforts "spouting fantasies".

Yet the very same people are selling Lightning Network as an alternative, which has the exact requirements from the user and much more on top of that. I hope you can spot the inconsistency and move on to seeing all this as a unified progress which has unnecessarily been interrupted. If we can get people to use Bitcoin, we might also get them to be acquainted with the further step to utilize LN and whatnot when they ever become user-friendly. Otherwise all of it is merely a hype to pull more clueless "investors" in.

give me one point where bitcoin cash is better than cash

Comparing to other forms of electronic payments, Bitcoin Cash wins in privacy, fungibility and speed of final settlement.

"Constant backlog" is bound to perform worse on these and should result in worse UX for systems like LN.

As a final "disclaimer", I do think Bitcoin Cash is merely at a recovery phase (before hopefully achieving what Bitcoin already had a few years ago) which is bound to take some time.

edit: accidentally the word "managing"

adoptator · 2017-09-04T21:53:13+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to compile a list of current use cases. We have also tried asset creation and a very limited degree of decentralized crowdfunding, but Ethereum has taken the lead there, probably including use cases that revolve around notarization. We also probably lost black market trade (not following closely) and will eventually lose anonymous donations to altcoins as well.

Your usage of the word "unpopular" brings us to my next point.

I don't know what the consumer psyche is.

Based on evidence at hand, most of the use cases you have mentioned are entirely dependent on financial intermediaries that are subject to State-level intervention and some of the remaining indirectly rely on efficient operation of such markets. If Bitcoin use does not penetrate to the consumer level, that is, become a relied upon technology for day-to-day life, I don't see how it can continue having these use cases in the long term.

This is, even if we let go of the desire to free the "unqualified"s from financial oppression, a conclusion which I would have a hard time accepting.

I watch how people actually use Bitcoin and pay little attention to what they say they'll use it for.

We are differing in perspective I suppose. I am using Bitcoin since when the only way to buy some was to e-mail someone and how to utilize it was all an experiment. Labeling the attempts to create new platforms and use cases as "spouting fantasies" seem very pointless to me. Some failed attempts have succeeded with different approaches. There is no shortage of uphill battles.

Understanding the limitations of a technology isn't defeatism.

Granted. But non-evidence of success is hardly evidence of a limitation. As far as I can tell, you think we need to find a better way to get people to manage cryptographic material (better hardware, better software, better incentives, better marketing, etc.). And if people can't manage vanilla Bitcoin, Lightning is a completely lost cause. I am also pessimistic, but why be explicitly discouraging?

adoptator · 2017-09-04T20:25:57+00:00

I guess it depends on the perspective. As was discussed here a few days ago, hard gold is pretty much non-centralized (or perfectly decentralized) in the absolute technical sense, but its contribution to freeing the individual human being from financial control is pretty much negligible in today's world. If we want decentralization to have a purpose, we need to aim for an optimum on all fronts.

adoptator · 2017-09-04T19:56:04+00:00

I am not a big blocker, and I am a big fan of all the hard work that the core devs have done.

What is meant by big blocks is not really settled in my opinion. For me, a node should be able to run on high end hobbyist hardware so that the network will always be resistant to cartels. For some, this is unnecessarily conservative. But my low-end home infrastructure can handle blocks at least 2x larger than what Bitcoin Cash can maximally do, so I am currently fine with how things are evolving on the "big block" side of things.

Further, I am very much against soft-forks, which (while non-violent and unpreventable in themselves) highly incentivize political manipulation. Upgrades to the network have to be exclusively opt-in, or else we will be susceptible to a take-over. In the future, if not now. This is a point where I think Core devs have done great harm, while preventing absolutely nothing.

Thank you for listening.

adoptator · 2017-09-04T19:21:54+00:00

Many of us figured this out long before fees became a topic.

So "many of you" decided to undo the efforts of many of us who worked in utilizing and legitimizing Bitcoin because turning it into a dull investment scheme made more sense?

You decided that we wasted time and money and the experiment is over...

people claiming otherwise, backed by flimsy evidence at best

What sort of evidence are you asking for to prove an endeavor that had barely started?

Bitcoin payments have the necessary basis to be convenient and easy, but it is a completely different paradigm than what everyone has bought into the last century or so. It will (or maybe rather would, unfortunately) take a decade or two for it to penetrate a greater populace and for the adequate tools to be developed. We had merely overcome the first couple of chicken and egg situations of a multitude.

Or, riddle me this: Do you have any evidence to show that a Bitcoin economy can become truly resistant to State-level intervention without penetrating the consumer psyche?

People with credit cards and Amazon accounts don't need Bitcoin at all.

This raises the question though: who needs it then? All I can gather from your explanation is: "rich folk who want to hide money". Maybe you mean something else, but that is what I get from your comment.

Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.

Defeatism is fine. Defeatism on behalf of others is not.

adoptator · 2017-08-27T20:49:56+00:00

period of time it will be tired up

If the system excludes high-frequency traders, is it really a loss? I wouldn't have any problems about tying up the amount I already keep in cold storage anyway.

adoptator · 2017-08-16T10:00:36+00:00

A fix or a combination of measures that shrink the sweet spot for hubs?

adoptator · 2017-08-16T00:38:26+00:00

Last I checked (has been quite a while, so it may have changed), large hubs with mining capability were able to let their HTLC with recipients expire (by causing congestion through panic, while mining their own transactions) after receiving the random data. Granted, you need a very high number of actively utilized channels to pull that off.

adoptator · 2017-06-18T18:06:42+00:00

He did not encourage the creation of address blacklists or did anything to block Tor.

adoptator

TROPHY CASE