Quote from: gmaxwell on June 15, 2015, 12:35:55 AM

As a point of order; since this seems to be a common and oft-exploited set of misconceptions.

Quote from: Zangelbert Bingledack on June 14, 2015, 09:36:48 PM

I think Gavin should de-hitch his wagon from Mike Hearn after hearing how Mike proposed centralized checkpointing. The blacklisting thing was his one free pass at a really horrible idea. Now it just looks like he doesn't get what Bitcoin is really about.

Or the proposals to add censorship to tor that _seriously_ pissed off the tor developers? Or the coin confiscation proposal? Or the near constant, first short recourse to centralized, authoritarian solutions-- at a level of consistency that it would be a comedy if it weren't so sad?

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I can see why Gavin would utilize XT as an end-run around the political gridlock in core, and I also see that Mike Hearn has a unique perspective and background that is useful, but he should not be a core committer in my opinion. Gavin is the only person qualified to (provisionally) lead the project as far as I can see now, but I think "palling around with Mike Hearn" will be viewed with suspicion, especially if it's unnecessary. Why not just just add in the patch to Core and fork off if necessary?

Mike has never been a core committer-- he's only ever submitted a couple patches, in fact. His work has been mostly on BitcoinJ, which is whats used by android wallet and multibit hd. He's certainly knowledgeable about the Bitcoin system, so I point this out only as a correction-in-fact not a judgement statement.

Gavin does not lead the Bitcoin Core project-- the project lead is Wladimir and has been for some time (and I mean this in actual documented agreed on roles, and not just in terms of activities), and Gavin has been largely inactive for the last year (I don't say this to complain-- he was very busy with troubled times at the Bitcoin foundation).

Quote from: cypherdoc on June 15, 2015, 12:30:29 AM

hey Greg, do you even understand the concept of "financial conflict"? if 6 of the Fed Bd of Governors were to set up a for profit company that directly benefitted from the institution of a particular new rule applied to US monetary policy, what would you say to that?
btw, Spinoffs is not my project; it's PeterR's. i haven't commented in that thread for probably a year or so.

Quote from: cypherdoc on June 15, 2015, 12:24:05 AM

marcus and his character assassins like to argue that Bitcoin should be a "settlement currency".
how can it ever be a settlement currency when it's use is currently confined to a small group of users? let alone when the Blockstream plan is to shunt the vast majority of tx's to SC's or LN preventing our transition to mining paid for by tx fees?
it's a ludicrous economic plan that will cause Bitcoin itself to wither and die. but when your business model depends on SC consulting fees it will be quite lucrative; in USD.

You have some comparison a bit backwards there, there are other people lobbing for a sudden rule change to the system-- against substantial controversy and out from under the preferences of a substantial minority (e.g. your poll shows a quarter in opposition) whos interest you might want to explore.

Two of the Five people with commit access to Bitcoin core (or a half dozen out of a hundred contributors) created Blockstream to build some important tech that we the space need (and had been lamenting it's non-existence for a long time before we went and found a way to fund doing it!). As the primary technical innovators in this space (certainly if you exclude altcoin work) we can be assured good consulting incomes so long as we keep doing good, important, quality work-- regardless of what happens with SC or LN... and we have a _long_ backlog of powerful technology that we couldn't release for use in Bitcoin without it just ending up in an altcoin before the prospect of sidechains. But no matter what you protest, you cannot stop LN or SC from existing in some form or another; and they offer advantages Bitcoin by itself fundamentally cannot: e.g. LN can give _instantly_ irreversible payments-- think of all the applications that hold of on using Bitcoin for lack of that; but it's not possible in the plain Bitcoin system. Look at CT-- we can't just go and try that in Bitcoin and figure out how to advance it, prior to SC there was no avenue to adapt to new needs without picking switching from Bitcoin to a competing currency. None of these things have anything to do with block size, and-- in fact, both SC and LN _strongly_ prefer the biggest blocksize the network can handle. What they can't tolerate, however, is Bitcoin being very centralized-- and I don't think your own interests can tolerate that either (assuming you still own some Bitcoin).

I bring up spinoffs beyond it just being an honest question because it was your argument on these points-- why worry about what happens to bitcoin when we can create some altcoin that enriches the existing bitcoin holders. I don't know how much this perspective influences your position here, arguably a spinnoff perspective would strongly prefer original bitcoin would fail, it it would just transfer ownership into a new network before people notice and buy up their coins on the cheap as the developers of counterparty did. ::shrugs:: It's easy to throw rocks about conflicts of interest. But the reality is that the arguments I've presented are straightforward, coherent, extend long before any plausibly argued conflict of interest, and are shared to some degree or another by almost everyone in the technical space, including ones which no amount of fevered imagination can construct a coherent conflict of interest story.

Though back to your question, if you've given up on spinoffs as a salvation-- what do you think is going to make Bitcoin competative against the eventual altcoin that actually gets the formula right and makes significant, no compromise, technical advantages over Bitcoin--- and probably doesn't bother to cut you in on it? Keep in mind, most of the people we hope will some day use Bitcoin haven't even been born yet. Unless we fail and sully the potential for cryptocurrency in the public's mind, this is only the very beginning of a long history.

i've always said that when it comes down to federated server pegged SC's, go right ahead. it doesn't change the protocol so i don't worry. it's not a valid proxy for spvp anyways so i'm not sure why you'd claim it would be. yeah, i have a problem with spvp b/c it's a protocol change to facilitate your business model and i'd think most of the for-profit companies that have constructed themselves around op_return embedded data would be outraged at facing higher tx fees. perhaps that's why Luke has been accusing them of spam these days?

for the thousandth time, 1MB was a temporary patch to counteract DoS on the network when it was small and vulnerable. today is quite different, which goes to your pt that things have evolved for Bitcoin to easily remove that artificial limit to allow for the inevitable growth that will come in the next spike. cramping it at 1MB, which was never meant to happen, is the height of hypocrisy. many, many ppl including in the technical community that i see here and on reddit feel that the limit should be raised. everyone who works in SV understands that rapidly gaining mkt share via the Uber and AirBnB model works and is crucial to outrunning regulation. your small block theory is the epitome of centralization forcing all users off the mainchain and into offchain solutions, some more centralized and regulated than others.