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Bitcoin Under Political Attack – Contentious Fork Segwit2x on 16th November

39 points by funyug 9y ago

sschueller 9y ago
This is getting very messy. Already a mess trying to deal with just Bitcoin and BitcoinCash.
- funyug 9y ago
  Yeah but it is better as everyone will have a clear direction after it
- 127 9y ago
  The good thing about these Bitcoin forks is that you don't really have to do anything if you don't want to. You can just forget about it and hold. You will own the same amount of Bitcoin for every fork out there.
  - sschueller 9y ago
    Unless the whole things implodes. Then I would have liked to convert something to fiat before it's all over.
  - funyug 9y ago
    Not in this particular hard fork. If you spend coins on the other fork, it can get replayed on the original bitcoin chain and you may lose your coins. Read my article about replay protection linked in the article.
    - Beejeepa 9y ago
      You still own coins on both forks, but add a step to split them to another address you control on the second fork.
- ytch 9y ago
  It's just like FOSS philosophy: Everyone can fork it. For example: SSLeay, OpenSSL and LibreSSL. Or SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0. The one with most people use will win, why we need to afraid of diversity?
  - funyug 9y ago
    Because they dont involve money but bitcoin does.
    - x1798DE 9y ago
      Almost the entire payment infrastructure of the internet relies on one of the libraries / standards mentioned in the post above, so it would be a stretch to say they don't involve money.
      - lightbyte 9y ago
        That's a terrible comparison, my money doesn't get locked into a specific SSL library when I use one for the first time.
      - funyug 9y ago
        I understand but they are not directly involved in the process. They provide value to other systems rather than carrying the value themselves.
mads 9y ago
Its like watching a religion unfold in accelerated time. Heretics separating themselves into sects with different practices and beliefs from the orthodox groups. Is Bitcoin turning into a social experiment instead of an economical one? :)
- 127 9y ago
  It's also a good microcosm to learn about real politics. The facades are much more transparent as it's mostly amateurs.
- funyug 9y ago
  Great analogy. Since bitcoin has no true leader it makes it open to people to chose their leader themselves. It makes it open to huge amount of manipulation too like in religious groups :P
- cisanti 9y ago
  I like reading about bitcoin for that reason. It's like real-time and faster version how our societies and monetary systems evolved and the problems they solved. They are reinventing the wheel a lot, but it seems everything new is old...
- dec0dedab0de 9y ago
  I think economics is inherently social, and quite possibly the other way around if you really think about it.
- Kinnard 9y ago
  It always was a social experiment.
  - mads 9y ago
    Yes, I suppose. If I had only known back in the days, when I started mining back in 2009 with my shiny dual Xeon workstation. Are you Satoshi? ;)
- JulianMorrison 9y ago
zaarn 9y ago
I don't think any of these bitcoin forks are particularly helpful to the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. Additionally, the cult of bitcoin and the various sub-cults make it hard to actually be interested in bitcoin as a technology without being forced to invest ideologically by thousands of fanboys claiming all other sub-cults to be evil. Personally, I've moved my assets into other cryptocoins and I hope I can weather the storm of bitcoin's inevitable and eventual collapse there. Hopefully.
- Rmilb 9y ago
  What do you see as the core value bitcoin provides? Outside of wild speculation?
  - zaarn 9y ago
    It's main value lies in a mostly irreversible ledger of transactions, which in my opinion, has the potential to disrupt atleast some parts of global economics (online shops maybe). For international transfers, bitcoin is ahead of the current banking system (though banks are catching up in terms of fees and speed... or is bitcoin getting worse?) On the other hand, bitcoin is also an interesting exercise in distributed consensus (though blockchain/PoW consensus is largely overhyped) Other cryptocoins have improved on all these concepts or plan to develop them. Bitcoin might be remembered in the same way modern computer scientists remember the Turing Machine or the Zuse Z1.
thisisit 9y ago
I have so many questions here: a. I was under the impression it was Satoshi who had put in the 1 MB size limit. This is the first attempt to increase the size. But then the article says: "Until now, Bitcoin has been operating by simply increasing the block size whenever bitcoin needs to scale. This allows more transactions to process in a single block." These size increases were under which BIPs? b. "....to firing current bitcoin developers and taking over bitcoin development" My understanding is the decentralized nature of bitcoin and the consensus mechanism meant no one can actually be fired. The worst case scenario is that I am stopped from accessing the bitcoin-core code repo but I can still rally people to take up my changes and vote (consensus) on it. d. "Inspite of this, Segwit2x people kept pushing the hard fork on the community just to fulfill their agreement as they have the mining power support." Wasn't that the whole point of bitcoin? Miners are needed to do most of the heavy lifting which means they have a say in what direction bitcoin goes. Additionally, what is the mechanism to show the non-mining support for any of the changes? c. Any links which show there is support for the current chain?
- funyug 9y ago
  a. The limit has been changed quite a few times in the past. It has both been decreased and increased when required. I think they were soft limits which didnt require a hard fork. I dont have links right now. Will post them as soon as i find any. b. You are right but their is still a maintainer of the repo that merges the code in the repository and do releases. Core developers don't believe in capability of segwit2x developer i.e. just Jeff Garzik to handle this task. c. There are two pools slushpool and f2pool that are currently supporting the original chain. Other than this several twitter polls have been done and several meetup groups have posted articles on medium denouncing their support for segwit2x. I am not good with saving links but I am sure you will find several polls with a simple google search. d. Miners are not a part of bitcoin consensus mechanism. They are a way of safely executing the chosen decision. All issues must be raised before merging code in the bitcoin repo. By blocking the activation of segwit for over an year, miners lost the confidence from the community. Also around 40% of mining power is currently controlled by Bitmain and the rest is also dependent on them as they are the only mining hardware manufacturer.
tmlee 9y ago
In light of the hard fork in Bitcoin world. This graphic https://imgur.com/y4D0XEC https://imgur.com/y4D0XEC should get you up to speed with all you need to know about the state of Bitcoin forks.
- Rmilb 9y ago
  This graphic is useful but misses the context of past failed hardforks/attacks such as BitcoinXT and BitcoinUnlimited.
  - tmlee 9y ago
    Good to hear that. Yeah, I think we can revisit a new version of infographic covering those forks too someday.
Expez 9y ago
Here's a quote from the conclusion of the whitepaper in which Nakamoto laid out Bitcoin: They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism. This is Bitcoin's consensus mechanism and it's called Nakamoto consensus. In turn, this means that 'Bitcoin' is whatever chain has the most cumulative work done to secure it. Nothing is 'contentious' about this. It either has the most cumulative PoW, or it doesn't. If the minority chain has some value it might survive. If it does, that's fine. You'll have coins on both chains and you can choose to care or not.
- funyug 9y ago
  But satoshi's vision was that every computer can run the software to vote for the chain they want. Majority of hashrate today is controlled by a single company Bitmain. Also Segwit2x are trying to kill the current bitcoin chain. I wont have a problem with them if they had a replay protection but putting users in danger is contentious.
  - Expez 9y ago
    Every single sentence you wrote contains a factual error. /thread
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Sure, but if the winning fork turns out to be unmaintained or suffer some devastating replay attack, Bitcoin as a whole suffers. It's possible for the consensus mechanism to be used towards an objectively bad system. And sure, that's part of how the consensus mechanic was always meant to fuction. DAO contracts were meant to be irreversible too, but that didn't stop people from being sad and seeking a change when they were robbed.
- Rmilb 9y ago
  Longest PoW being the main chain was not described in the context of contentious changes to consensus code. By that definition, a 51% attack that censors transactions would be the longest PoW and be defined as 'Bitcoin'. The great thing about Bitcoin is that the users are able to each make their own decision on what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin needs to be anti fragile and will constantly be under these attacks, because if it fails, we need something better. This is all new territory and the appeal to authority by citing the white paper is less helpful than most people believe.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
linuxps2 9y ago
>Several polls were done and it was made clear that segwit2x had no support from the community. That has to be the most laughable part of the article. "Hey guys, I posted this poll on a pro-core forum and what do you know, not a single person supported S2X...". It's like the polls posted in /r/btc about Bitcoin Cash - everyone in the bitcoin world lives in their own bubble and use those around them to validate their opinions.
- funyug 9y ago
  Here is a poll by Ryan X charles who is core opposer and a signee of the NY agreement https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/927568458849533952 https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/927568458849533952
  - linuxps2 9y ago
    That poll has nothing to do with support for S2X though (or more generally, doubling the block size irrespective of the particular implementation)... rather just which chain would get the name 'bitcoin'
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
funyug 9y ago
Segwit2x has been cancelled.

39 points by funyug 9y ago

sschueller 9y ago

This is getting very messy. Already a mess trying to deal with just Bitcoin and BitcoinCash.

funyug 9y ago
Yeah but it is better as everyone will have a clear direction after it
127 9y ago
The good thing about these Bitcoin forks is that you don't really have to do anything if you don't want to. You can just forget about it and hold. You will own the same amount of Bitcoin for every fork out there.
- sschueller 9y ago
  Unless the whole things implodes. Then I would have liked to convert something to fiat before it's all over.
- funyug 9y ago
  Not in this particular hard fork. If you spend coins on the other fork, it can get replayed on the original bitcoin chain and you may lose your coins. Read my article about replay protection linked in the article.
  - Beejeepa 9y ago
    You still own coins on both forks, but add a step to split them to another address you control on the second fork.
ytch 9y ago
It's just like FOSS philosophy: Everyone can fork it. For example: SSLeay, OpenSSL and LibreSSL. Or SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0. The one with most people use will win, why we need to afraid of diversity?
- funyug 9y ago
  Because they dont involve money but bitcoin does.
  - x1798DE 9y ago
    Almost the entire payment infrastructure of the internet relies on one of the libraries / standards mentioned in the post above, so it would be a stretch to say they don't involve money.
    - lightbyte 9y ago
      That's a terrible comparison, my money doesn't get locked into a specific SSL library when I use one for the first time.
    - funyug 9y ago
      I understand but they are not directly involved in the process. They provide value to other systems rather than carrying the value themselves.

mads 9y ago

Its like watching a religion unfold in accelerated time. Heretics separating themselves into sects with different practices and beliefs from the orthodox groups. Is Bitcoin turning into a social experiment instead of an economical one? :)

127 9y ago
It's also a good microcosm to learn about real politics. The facades are much more transparent as it's mostly amateurs.
funyug 9y ago
Great analogy. Since bitcoin has no true leader it makes it open to people to chose their leader themselves. It makes it open to huge amount of manipulation too like in religious groups :P
cisanti 9y ago
I like reading about bitcoin for that reason. It's like real-time and faster version how our societies and monetary systems evolved and the problems they solved. They are reinventing the wheel a lot, but it seems everything new is old...
dec0dedab0de 9y ago
I think economics is inherently social, and quite possibly the other way around if you really think about it.
Kinnard 9y ago
It always was a social experiment.
- mads 9y ago
  Yes, I suppose. If I had only known back in the days, when I started mining back in 2009 with my shiny dual Xeon workstation. Are you Satoshi? ;)
JulianMorrison 9y ago

zaarn 9y ago

I don't think any of these bitcoin forks are particularly helpful to the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem. Additionally, the cult of bitcoin and the various sub-cults make it hard to actually be interested in bitcoin as a technology without being forced to invest ideologically by thousands of fanboys claiming all other sub-cults to be evil. Personally, I've moved my assets into other cryptocoins and I hope I can weather the storm of bitcoin's inevitable and eventual collapse there. Hopefully.

Rmilb 9y ago
What do you see as the core value bitcoin provides? Outside of wild speculation?
- zaarn 9y ago
  It's main value lies in a mostly irreversible ledger of transactions, which in my opinion, has the potential to disrupt atleast some parts of global economics (online shops maybe). For international transfers, bitcoin is ahead of the current banking system (though banks are catching up in terms of fees and speed... or is bitcoin getting worse?) On the other hand, bitcoin is also an interesting exercise in distributed consensus (though blockchain/PoW consensus is largely overhyped) Other cryptocoins have improved on all these concepts or plan to develop them. Bitcoin might be remembered in the same way modern computer scientists remember the Turing Machine or the Zuse Z1.

thisisit 9y ago

I have so many questions here: a. I was under the impression it was Satoshi who had put in the 1 MB size limit. This is the first attempt to increase the size. But then the article says: "Until now, Bitcoin has been operating by simply increasing the block size whenever bitcoin needs to scale. This allows more transactions to process in a single block." These size increases were under which BIPs? b. "....to firing current bitcoin developers and taking over bitcoin development" My understanding is the decentralized nature of bitcoin and the consensus mechanism meant no one can actually be fired. The worst case scenario is that I am stopped from accessing the bitcoin-core code repo but I can still rally people to take up my changes and vote (consensus) on it. d. "Inspite of this, Segwit2x people kept pushing the hard fork on the community just to fulfill their agreement as they have the mining power support." Wasn't that the whole point of bitcoin? Miners are needed to do most of the heavy lifting which means they have a say in what direction bitcoin goes. Additionally, what is the mechanism to show the non-mining support for any of the changes? c. Any links which show there is support for the current chain?

funyug 9y ago
a. The limit has been changed quite a few times in the past. It has both been decreased and increased when required. I think they were soft limits which didnt require a hard fork. I dont have links right now. Will post them as soon as i find any. b. You are right but their is still a maintainer of the repo that merges the code in the repository and do releases. Core developers don't believe in capability of segwit2x developer i.e. just Jeff Garzik to handle this task. c. There are two pools slushpool and f2pool that are currently supporting the original chain. Other than this several twitter polls have been done and several meetup groups have posted articles on medium denouncing their support for segwit2x. I am not good with saving links but I am sure you will find several polls with a simple google search. d. Miners are not a part of bitcoin consensus mechanism. They are a way of safely executing the chosen decision. All issues must be raised before merging code in the bitcoin repo. By blocking the activation of segwit for over an year, miners lost the confidence from the community. Also around 40% of mining power is currently controlled by Bitmain and the rest is also dependent on them as they are the only mining hardware manufacturer.

tmlee 9y ago

In light of the hard fork in Bitcoin world. This graphic https://imgur.com/y4D0XEC https://imgur.com/y4D0XEC should get you up to speed with all you need to know about the state of Bitcoin forks.

Rmilb 9y ago
This graphic is useful but misses the context of past failed hardforks/attacks such as BitcoinXT and BitcoinUnlimited.
- tmlee 9y ago
  Good to hear that. Yeah, I think we can revisit a new version of infographic covering those forks too someday.

Expez 9y ago

Here's a quote from the conclusion of the whitepaper in which Nakamoto laid out Bitcoin: They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism. This is Bitcoin's consensus mechanism and it's called Nakamoto consensus. In turn, this means that 'Bitcoin' is whatever chain has the most cumulative work done to secure it. Nothing is 'contentious' about this. It either has the most cumulative PoW, or it doesn't. If the minority chain has some value it might survive. If it does, that's fine. You'll have coins on both chains and you can choose to care or not.

funyug 9y ago
But satoshi's vision was that every computer can run the software to vote for the chain they want. Majority of hashrate today is controlled by a single company Bitmain. Also Segwit2x are trying to kill the current bitcoin chain. I wont have a problem with them if they had a replay protection but putting users in danger is contentious.
- Expez 9y ago
  Every single sentence you wrote contains a factual error. /thread
Bartweiss 9y ago
Sure, but if the winning fork turns out to be unmaintained or suffer some devastating replay attack, Bitcoin as a whole suffers. It's possible for the consensus mechanism to be used towards an objectively bad system. And sure, that's part of how the consensus mechanic was always meant to fuction. DAO contracts were meant to be irreversible too, but that didn't stop people from being sad and seeking a change when they were robbed.
Rmilb 9y ago
Longest PoW being the main chain was not described in the context of contentious changes to consensus code. By that definition, a 51% attack that censors transactions would be the longest PoW and be defined as 'Bitcoin'. The great thing about Bitcoin is that the users are able to each make their own decision on what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin needs to be anti fragile and will constantly be under these attacks, because if it fails, we need something better. This is all new territory and the appeal to authority by citing the white paper is less helpful than most people believe.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

linuxps2 9y ago

>Several polls were done and it was made clear that segwit2x had no support from the community. That has to be the most laughable part of the article. "Hey guys, I posted this poll on a pro-core forum and what do you know, not a single person supported S2X...". It's like the polls posted in /r/btc about Bitcoin Cash - everyone in the bitcoin world lives in their own bubble and use those around them to validate their opinions.

funyug 9y ago
Here is a poll by Ryan X charles who is core opposer and a signee of the NY agreement https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/927568458849533952 https://twitter.com/ryanxcharles/status/927568458849533952
- linuxps2 9y ago
  That poll has nothing to do with support for S2X though (or more generally, doubling the block size irrespective of the particular implementation)... rather just which chain would get the name 'bitcoin'

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

funyug 9y ago

Segwit2x has been cancelled.