Quote from: iamnotback on June 19, 2016, 10:43:05 PM

Quote from: ArticMine on June 19, 2016, 09:06:52 PM

Quote from: iamnotback on June 19, 2016, 08:50:46 PM

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Bitcoin can't validate the Counterparty invariants, thus Counterparty can't have decentralized consensus. Sorry you can't put smart contracts on the Bitcoin block chain. Rootstock is making a side-chain instead.

But the larger issue is scaling. And also of course the fact that Turing-complete scripts can blow up. To solve this, you need me. I've been working on the technological issues for 2 - 3 years.

A side chain is the proper way to do this, and it can be merged mined with the main chain. Scaling as we both know is a very serious issue so one has to start with a base coin that can scale on the main chain properly even before adding smart contracts. Then address the scaling issues of the smart contracts themselves.

Side-chains are insecure:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/side-chains-challenges-potential-1397614121
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7613520
http://www.rootstock.io/blog/sidechains-drivechains-and-rsk-2-way-peg-design

My expectation is that Blockstream (+ the Chinese mining cartel) are going to either outright break or centralize the mining/control of Bitcoin. We need to be ready with something that works correctly for when they do.

It is not that simple. Namecoin has 35% of Bitcoin's hashrate and generates only 0.063% of the miner reward revenue. 1 NMC = 0.00063 XBT. This is actually comparable to 10% of the current Bitcoin fee revenue as a percentage of the overall miner reward. Furthermore, My take is that in the case of a pegged sidechain there is actually an even lower cost to merge mine because one does not have to sell a different coin in an exchange. For many miners the hassle of exchanging the NMC for XBT is likely not worth the trouble; however in the case of a sidechain with a two way peg this exchange issue is avoided. In the case of a pegged sidechain say generating the say even as low as 0.5% of the main chain revenue one could expect and even greater proportion of the main chain's hashrate. Yes one would need 17.5 of the Bitcoin hashrate to launch a 51% attack against Namecoin; however for a Bitcoin pool such an attack has potentially a much higher downside, in the negative public relation such an attack could generate alone, than the comparably minuscule reward such an attack could produce..

This issue of double spend attacks could for example be dealt with by treating transactions between chains as coinbase transactions (120 blocks rather than 6 blocks).

I do agree that is requires a fair amount further research, but I am not prepared to simply dismiss it based on just the comments in the articles. Namecoin does provide some very compelling evidence over many years that merged mining can work even when there is a marked difference in the revenue generated by the main chain and the merged mined alt-coin or side chain.