Quote from: dinofelis on February 03, 2018, 04:43:59 AM

Nodes are "vote by IP number", which is what Satoshi wanted to nullify by vote by PoW. Third page of his paper. There's no link between the number of IP numbers you control and your market stake. The last is not called "vote by full node" but proof of stake (which IS a sensible way to do things). Read the bloody Satoshi paper !

Who said anything about IP numbers? I dont even expose one; Im onion only.

Who said anything about votes? Bitcoin is not a democracy. There is no vote by PoW; thats nonsense, and shows a total lack of understanding of what POW is and how it is used to achieve BFT transaction ordering. There is no vote at all.

Quote from: dinofelis on February 03, 2018, 04:43:59 AM

So of course, given that this is so obviously evident that "vote by IP number" cannot be considered of any importance in a system that was from the start, designed to avoid it, there must be another reason. People very knowledgeable of that system cannot ignore the basic design principles of that system, can they ? So there must be a deceptive reason for telling this, given that it is objectively wrong.

Quoted for craziness. You forgot to add that the CIA designed Bitcoin, and gives all these very knowledgeable people their mendacious talking points about nonexistent decentralization. I admit, I work for the CIA, too.

Quote from: dinofelis on February 03, 2018, 04:43:59 AM

What is amazing in this, however, is how elementary and fundamentally wrong it is. It denies the very design of bitcoin !

The design of Bitcoin is a subject about which you demonstrate worse than zero understanding, insofar as misconceptions must be unlearned. You really ought to go study up on how Bitcoin actually works before you spout off. You dont even grasp the basics. You talk as if you learned all you know by reading /r/btc.

Posted whilst I typed up the foregoing:

Quote from: dinofelis on February 03, 2018, 05:10:41 AM

Quote from: nullius on February 03, 2018, 04:15:29 AM

dinofelis speaks of a PoW oligarchy, which demonstrates how little he understands about how Bitcoin works. (Hint: Miners have one, only one, exactly one very important jobByzantine agreement for transaction orderingwhereas all else is done by nodes.)

I hope you understand that "Byzantine agreement" is all there is to bitcoin.
You are perfectly right that "all else" (that is to say, nothing of importance) is done by nodes.

Redoubling my point: You have evidently never heard of consensus rules and validation. Among other things. These are not set by the Byzantine agreement which miners produce for transaction ordering, and only that. You really know less than nothing about Bitcoin.

(Did you just go look up Byzantine agreement on Wikipedia between your posts? Though Im curious, I only ask rhetorically; dont bother answering.)

Now, this is an offtopic thread hijack of a good and important Lightning Network thread. I desire to avoid that. I will not take this as an opportunity to explain Bitcoin design fundamentals, much less argue about them with somebody who shows belligerent ignorance and an unscholarly attitude.

Edit: While I was writing the above addendum, dinofelis edited and completely changed the post to which the addendum replied. The above quote is as I first saw it. From its much longer replacement, I wish to make one point crystal clear for the benefit of other readers who come across this thread:

Quote from: dinofelis on February 03, 2018, 05:10:41 AM

In as much as it is true, bitcoin is now entirely open to a Sybil attack by nodes. ...nodes can easily be sybilled...

No, the design of Bitcoin is not amenable to a Sybil attack; and indeed, Core developers tend to have a dim view of systems which are. Bitcoins general Sybil resistance rises from the fact that there almost is no voting whatsoever in Bitcoin. The only exceptions have been when votes of sorts have happened (or been attempted), via various signalling bits. I know of instances when XT advocates tried to Sybil the network; it sort of wound up being a sick joke.

You could spin up a million of your own Sybil nodes on a million different IP addresses, and the integrity of the Bitcoin network would be unaffected. (I here ignore DoS, since that is not a Sybil issue.)