Quote from: R2D221 on February 05, 2015, 03:10:45 PM

Quote from: homo homini lupus on February 05, 2015, 03:07:33 PM

Quote from: R2D221 on February 05, 2015, 03:06:28 PM

When people propose other chains for small transactions, I still have the doubt, what IS a small transaction? Who decides that?

the free market decides that

OK, so even if we have two chains, I can still decide to make my microtransactions in the Bitcoin chain.

People (like me) who want a small and hardened blockchain which cannot be censored don't generally have a need for fast confirmations. We've got plenty of a buffer in mainstream fiat so we won't run out of Top Ramen any time soon. Most transactions on Bitcoin are part of a long-term plan so that if it takes a few days to be fairly confident that a spend is locked good that is mostly just a nuisance that one can plan for, and of a magnitude that there is little difference between a $0.01 and $10.00 transaction fee.

What this means where the rubber meets the road is that we have a lot of flexibility in terms of how to thwart superior resource attacks. Bitcoin has been sold to the plebs as some sort of an exchange currency which is 'better than cash/debit card/whatever.' The latency inherent in the batch-mode system has been papered over, and most of the target audience is not really smart enough to even conceptualize it anyway. The upshot here is that a superior resources attack is considered a terminal event for 'gavincoin' while the flexibility to deal with it in 'mpcoin' is much greater.

The only reason I don't want to see a fork and a lot of hassles is that a solid reserve core upon which various tuned end-user solutions rest is the best solution for the masses, and internecine warfare would set this back. I'm a humanist I suppose. In point of fact, a giant war would:

- promote a wide range of developments which would harden 'bitcoin-legacy' significantly in a number of important ways,

- be a way to capitalize on the ignorance and pigheadedness of the plebs and take advantage of the large entities who will be spending money to attempt to exploit these masses.

As a hodler, I will absolutely be dumping my 'gavincoin' and preserving my 'mpcoin'. This will be quite trivial. Just send BTC to myself when the block size is higher that 1MB. Now I can spend my 'gavincoin' at will (provided that 'gavincoin' doesn't crash and burn right away...and that is where I expect the VC's who see the bigger picture to come to the rescue.) My 'mpcoin' remain safe and sound and supported by a core of talented and autonomous entities who have the skillz needed to deal with whatever attacks come along.

I should mention also that in times of war, casualties are expected. If I lose some value due to a partially successful 51% attack (which only threatens double-spends for transactions in play during a time segment), so be it. Most other reasonably skilled crypto-currency enthusiasts will have a similar understanding which vastly strengthens us 'mpcoiners'.

Once 'gavincoin' has been vanquished the next war would be to get sidechains going for the benefit of humanity. I've never got a sense from the Popescu crowd that the have any interest in doing something decent for the 99% and don't know what drives them. Maybe simply pure greed. Fine. Having leverage in a system which is generally useful and empowering to the masses be a net win from a pure profit perspective as well.