4 ms·

Can someone give me some context on what is causing this?

blockmeamadeus 9y ago
A change in the protocol that requires the majority of miners to accept the change. There is no central authority, so they can not simply say "protocol x will be in place from August 1st". As in any community, not everybody agreed on the best course of action, so the outcome is not certain.
6nf 9y ago
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 towards the 1MB per block limit. It will allow slightly more transactions per block but also adds functionality that could allow other types of transactions. Those will be useful in some situations, e.g. paying the same entitiy many times over the course of the relationship. 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. Since very few miners support this move, it's not likely to succeed in my opinion, but nobody knows for sure.
- runeks 9y ago
  > 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 it? Anyone can create their own chain with non-agreed-upon-rules (e.g. testnet3 or regtest), but that's just not Bitcoin precisely because it's practically ignored by miners (like a UASF). Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF?
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Kinda, they could DoS the UASF chain, but then the UASF chain could respond by doing a proof of work hard fork. If the community is behind it, then a POW change would render the 10s/hundreds of millions of dollars in mining equipment worthless. So the real question is whether or not the UASF side has the support of the community or economic majority.
    - Cakez0r 9y ago
      You mean proof of stake? Is there a working implementation of proof of stake yet? I thought it was mostly theoretical and academic at the moment.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - stale2002 9y ago
        No, I meant proof of work. You change the proof of work algorithm so that the existing miners can't use their fancy Bitcoin miners, and it becomes profitable to mine with GPUs instead.
      - peercoin 9y ago
        algorand is academic at this point with evaluation on ec2. Though the paper is available and an implementation will be following. Peercoin is one of the first working proof of stake implementations that has been running for close to 5 years now.
      - 6nf 9y ago
        There are a few altcoins using Proof of Stake already
  - lawn 9y ago
    > Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF? Yes.
mhluongo 9y ago
There's been a debate (the "scaling debate") raging in the Bitcoin community for years. It's been especially bad the past two. I'll skip the details, but essentially two different visions for Bitcoin's growth have emerged. Both sides have proposed ways forward, only to be rejected by the community. A large number of companies and miners in the space came together recently in New York to agree on a compromise. The New York Agreement (NYA) was to combine two of the proposals- Segregated Witness, a soft-fork that provides some new features and a modest capacity increase, and a 2-MB hardfork. In response, extremists on the "small-blocker" side have declared that they'll likely force a chain-split on August 1st via a so-called "use-activated soft-fork". Now it's time to see what the market thinks :)
Maxious 9y ago
There are 2 competing proposals on how to scale up bitcoin/blockchain and this is the day that the community/miners have to decide what side they will continue using: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/countdown-segwit-these-are-dates-keep-eye/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/countdown-segwit-these-...
- runeks 9y ago
  I still don't get it. As long as a reasonable majority of hashing power stays on one chain, there shouldn't be any symptoms except increased confirmation times. The bitcoin.org page says: > Do not trust any payments you receive after Tue Aug 01 2017 02:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST) until the situation is resolved. No matter how many confirmations the new payment says it has, it can disappear from your wallet at any point up until the situation is resolved. Which I don't understand, unless miners are actively trying to make this happen (by mining on two different chains with roughly the same hashing power). According to the paper[1], as long as at least 20% of the hashing power is honest, 11 confirmations should be final (in 99.9% of cases) [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (page 8)
  - stale2002 9y ago
    The doomsday scenario is that Bitcoin forks for a long period of time, but then one fork down the road, crashes in value to worthlessness. There is nothing that prevents 2 forks from existing for an indefinite amount of time, just look at ethereum and ethereum classic. The question of the year is whether one side will suddenly crash down to a price of 0.
    - Taek 9y ago
      No, that's not correct. In the case of the UASF, something very frightening is possible. If the UASF has majority economic support (unlikely) and also the miners do not support it, initially the UASF side will be behind, and there will be multiple chains. There will be the UASF chain and the normal chain. But since the UASF has more support, it'll have more block reward, and eventually it'll have more hashrate behind it. It'll eventually catch up to the other chain, pass the other chain, and then... The other chain completely implodes, and stops existing. Yes, that's actually what happens, and why if you are a miner, you should be afraid of the UASF. You lose basically everything if the UASF ends up with more hashrate, and the UASF is eventually guaranteed to have more hashrate if it has a higher coin price. ---- Basically, your doomsday scenario dramatically understates the worst-case scenario.

A change in the protocol that requires the majority of miners to accept the change. There is no central authority, so they can not simply say "protocol x will be in place from August 1st". As in any community, not everybody agreed on the best course of action, so the outcome is not certain.

6nf 9y ago

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 towards the 1MB per block limit. It will allow slightly more transactions per block but also adds functionality that could allow other types of transactions. Those will be useful in some situations, e.g. paying the same entitiy many times over the course of the relationship. 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. Since very few miners support this move, it's not likely to succeed in my opinion, but nobody knows for sure.

runeks 9y ago
> 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 it? Anyone can create their own chain with non-agreed-upon-rules (e.g. testnet3 or regtest), but that's just not Bitcoin precisely because it's practically ignored by miners (like a UASF). Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF?
- stale2002 9y ago
  Kinda, they could DoS the UASF chain, but then the UASF chain could respond by doing a proof of work hard fork. If the community is behind it, then a POW change would render the 10s/hundreds of millions of dollars in mining equipment worthless. So the real question is whether or not the UASF side has the support of the community or economic majority.
  - Cakez0r 9y ago
    You mean proof of stake? Is there a working implementation of proof of stake yet? I thought it was mostly theoretical and academic at the moment.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - stale2002 9y ago
      No, I meant proof of work. You change the proof of work algorithm so that the existing miners can't use their fancy Bitcoin miners, and it becomes profitable to mine with GPUs instead.
    - peercoin 9y ago
      algorand is academic at this point with evaluation on ec2. Though the paper is available and an implementation will be following. Peercoin is one of the first working proof of stake implementations that has been running for close to 5 years now.
    - 6nf 9y ago
      There are a few altcoins using Proof of Stake already
- lawn 9y ago
  > Are bitcoin.org, themselves, supporters of this UASF? Yes.

mhluongo 9y ago

There's been a debate (the "scaling debate") raging in the Bitcoin community for years. It's been especially bad the past two. I'll skip the details, but essentially two different visions for Bitcoin's growth have emerged. Both sides have proposed ways forward, only to be rejected by the community. A large number of companies and miners in the space came together recently in New York to agree on a compromise. The New York Agreement (NYA) was to combine two of the proposals- Segregated Witness, a soft-fork that provides some new features and a modest capacity increase, and a 2-MB hardfork. In response, extremists on the "small-blocker" side have declared that they'll likely force a chain-split on August 1st via a so-called "use-activated soft-fork". Now it's time to see what the market thinks :)

Maxious 9y ago

There are 2 competing proposals on how to scale up bitcoin/blockchain and this is the day that the community/miners have to decide what side they will continue using: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/countdown-segwit-these-are-dates-keep-eye/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/countdown-segwit-these-...

runeks 9y ago
I still don't get it. As long as a reasonable majority of hashing power stays on one chain, there shouldn't be any symptoms except increased confirmation times. The bitcoin.org page says: > Do not trust any payments you receive after Tue Aug 01 2017 02:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST) until the situation is resolved. No matter how many confirmations the new payment says it has, it can disappear from your wallet at any point up until the situation is resolved. Which I don't understand, unless miners are actively trying to make this happen (by mining on two different chains with roughly the same hashing power). According to the paper[1], as long as at least 20% of the hashing power is honest, 11 confirmations should be final (in 99.9% of cases) [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf (page 8)
- stale2002 9y ago
  The doomsday scenario is that Bitcoin forks for a long period of time, but then one fork down the road, crashes in value to worthlessness. There is nothing that prevents 2 forks from existing for an indefinite amount of time, just look at ethereum and ethereum classic. The question of the year is whether one side will suddenly crash down to a price of 0.
  - Taek 9y ago
    No, that's not correct. In the case of the UASF, something very frightening is possible. If the UASF has majority economic support (unlikely) and also the miners do not support it, initially the UASF side will be behind, and there will be multiple chains. There will be the UASF chain and the normal chain. But since the UASF has more support, it'll have more block reward, and eventually it'll have more hashrate behind it. It'll eventually catch up to the other chain, pass the other chain, and then... The other chain completely implodes, and stops existing. Yes, that's actually what happens, and why if you are a miner, you should be afraid of the UASF. You lose basically everything if the UASF ends up with more hashrate, and the UASF is eventually guaranteed to have more hashrate if it has a higher coin price. ---- Basically, your doomsday scenario dramatically understates the worst-case scenario.