Quote:
Originally Posted by heltok
Imo this bug is a sign that we need to move away from bitcoin core to BU.
You must be completely delusional to actually believe this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by housenuts
The issues with BU are:
a) their code and supposed lack of skills.
b) if blocksize get too big it could lead towards mining centralization.
It's not just the lack of skill. Also the lack of proper testing and peer reviewing. This isn't a Wordpress plugin, we are talking about a $20 billion network here, it's insane to just merge commits without proper testing/reviewing. Security should be the focus.
Removing the most crucial part of the bitcoin network, the "consensus" part where we all agree on the rules of the network - is a huge security risk itself. "Emergent consensus" actually just means "
miners dictate the rules and nodes better be lucky enough to be on their fork".
Nodes setting isn't a vote, it's just a setting on which "fork" you want to end up. So if you set your EB setting to 2MB (because you would like to have 2MB blocks - which is fair!), you can end up being temporarily on the wrong fork. A single miner (even with 0.01% hashrate) can initiate a blockchain split at any moment when he decides to increase his MG setting and mine a block with it. If other miners still have their EB to 1MB, this means that only the EB2 nodes will see confirmations for these transactions. Basically if for example a gambling/poker site has 1-2 conf deposits (which is practically all gambling sites), they risk getting confirmations on transactions that can be still double spent later. While this 2MB MG miner will lose his block reward, he will be able to easily steal all the hot wallets of gambling sites (which is hundreds of coins in total.) Technically orphans happen right now too, but BU makes it a lot easier to do this maliciously.
You could say nodes better just stick with EB1 till the miners will change their blocksize, but then you risk to be on the wrong fork when they actually increase the blocksize (also this emphasize the part where nodes have no vote whatsoever - it's just miners dictating the blocksize.) It gets more tricky when the miners vote isn't even clear. By design, it has no hashrate thresholds or grace periods, which again, is just not safe. It will create multiple forks and without proper replay attack prevention (which they didn't develop), again it's obvious that there will be losses (just like Coinbase/BTC-E lost some ETC.) Personally I think most investors and businesses don't like the idea of having 2 blockchain splits "fighting it out" by speculating on the the market price of each coin. This split is much more contentions than the Ethereum split and will result in much less overall value.
Overall, as a professional security reseacher, I personally just believe the assumption that everyone will be nice and no one will attack the flaws in "emergent consensus" is very naive. It will make 1 till 12 confirmations much less secure (you will need like 13 confirmations to be secure.) And it puts bitcoin in a permanent risky mode where you constantly have to monitor miners and bitcoin splits to figure out which fork is "good".
Additionally, the problem with miners dictating the network rules isn't just miner centralization upon blocksize increase. This change itself is already more centralization. Right now the users and businesses are dictating the network rules by running full nodes. Miners have to follow us to be able to earn money. To give miners (which really is just a
handful of mining pool operators!) the power to be the dictators of network rules is insane. Sure, right now they could also change their consensus rules - but no one will follow them - they will be mining a worthless altcoin.
Miners shouldn't be able to dictate the blocksize - because it doesn't just affect them(!) The costs of a (much) higher blocksize is on the users (full nodes.) It also sets a very bad precedent. What if transactions fees will be high in 3 years after halving because the block reward isn't enough? Since miners are the new dictators of the network rules, shall we just let them remove the 21M coin limit and give them a bit more rewards? This sounds ridiculous but make some social attacks by spreading propaganda that this is really needed to "
keep the transaction fees low" and they might convince some idiots (just like what is happening now.)
Bitcoin Core's path (which is the technical majority with 100+ developers and used by practically all businesses) is more scientific. It is very clear that we cannot handle all future transactions on-chain without the loss of many nodes and therefor the loss of the most important property of bitcoin "decentralization". Both 1MB and 2MB are absolutely nothing, even 100MB blocks are not that interesting in terms of global transactions (but 100MB would destroy the decentralization of bitcoin right now.) We will need second layers to have REAL scaling, Segwit makes this much easier. The 2MB increase that comes with Segwit is just an additional advantage to have a 2x more transactions throughput - without the risk of a blockchain split that a contentions HF brings with it. Segwit is insanely well tested compared to BU with a testnet for it since 2015.
Segwit has a high 95% threshold because changes
shouldn't come easy. The Bitcoin Core developers
don't want to be the ones deciding on the network improvements as it is up to the users. Miners will only change it if they see that the community indeed thinks Segwit is good. 95% basically guarantees that there is indeed consensus among the community. IMO it is pretty clear that most
businesses and
users support Segwit, but it is okay-ish that miners still have doubt. Of course if it's just ends up Ver&Wu blocking Segwit other methods can be considered (I don't think this is the case now.)
Obviously after Segwit, we still need blocksize increases. Since Bitcoin Core is not a company but just a large group of individuals, realistically they cannot fully pledge on future improvements. The idea right now is to have Segwit activated and collect data how the bitcoin network handles the new higher blocksize. For example: if we see that all the nodes still keep running, it's safe to assume the blocksize increase wasn't that bad and a dynamic blocksize increase can be built based on that data.
Segwit and dynamic blocksize HF after that, seems the very obvious way to go. I hope more BU supporters realize this is a more safe and scientific way to improve scalability and the the FUD against Bitcoin Core is mainly based on conspiracy theories.
Last edited by NLNico; 03-15-2017 at 01:09 AM.