Quote from: THX 1138 on June 11, 2019, 09:25:07 AM

Shelby has asked me to pass on his response:

Thanks, THX. How's LUH? Fine, I hope.

I've taken the liberty to unroll a quote level.

First, calm down. For someone so hasty to dish out negative classifications, you sure do have a thin skin. There was no character assassination in my post. This is not the first time you've run off the handle after some merely-imagined slight. I apologize for any offense. None was meant.

Quote from: Shelby

Quote from: jbreher on June 09, 2019, 05:53:20 PM

How many parties make up 51% of BTC hashpower? Four. Already.

In my haste, I failed to respond to this specific claim of yours. Youre ostensibly referring to pools. There are available protocols for pools that can even enable individual miners in the pool to dictate what goes in the block which they find the winning solution for. Miners can switch from pools at any time.

If youre instead referring to ASIC vendors, contrary to my expectations more and more fabs are available for ASIC vendors, such as Samsung and Fujitsu recently. And the number of ASIC vendors are also increasing with greater competition. And recently solar power has been as cheap as 1.5 cents per kwh. China has banned Bitcoin mining and an industry insider claims 90% of it has left China. It actually seems that Bitcoin mining is becoming more decentralized, which was surprising.

My _explicit_ point was that BCH, BTC, 0.5.3, and all other public PoW blockchains suffer this same tendency for mining centralization. I made no claim that BSV was somehow immune from this force. How about you actually address this point, instead of some straw man invention of your own?

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Quote from: jbreher on June 10, 2019, 05:57:05 AM

No, you still have not addressed how the network was not so damaged through the eras of the 250K and 500K soft caps.

Work that puzzle out, then tell me how those episodes were somehow exempt from your so-called fatal flaw.

I will explain below AFAICS theres no puzzle.

Yes, there is the puzzle of how -- as you claim -- any blockchain without an immutable block size cap is doomed to certain failure (that is your claim, right?), that Bitcoin survived through the era of the successively abandoned lesser soft block size caps. And I would not have worded the preceding so forcefully, had you not previously indicated to me that you would study these events -- of which you admitted your ignorance -- and provide a suitable explanation of how your theory is congruent with these facts.

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How about you tell us what puzzle you think you have worked out?

I'm not claiming to have worked out any puzzle. I am just saying that the previously-existing soft block caps are puzzling, as they seem to provide direct counter evidence of your theory.

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Explain it to us or link us to some document which explains it.

Here's a place to start: http://hashingit.com/analysis/39-the-myth-of-the-megabyte-bitcoin-block , complete with handy pointers to further evidence. Let me know if you need more.

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AFAICS, the key point is a hard fork would only have occurred if miners had chosen sizes greater than the 1 MB hard limit that Satoshi had put in immutable v0.1.

So AFAICS theres no puzzle. The miners could make any size block they wanted to up to 1 MB and the Satoshi protocol would accept it with no hard fork. Any consensus around which soft limit to use was always overhead limited by the 1 MB hard cap limit dictated by Satoshis immutable protocol. Immutable because there was no Schelling point to hard fork the protocol. Hard forks are always worthless compared to (worth less than) the original, immutable Satoshi protocol, because otherwise it would require a Schelling point wherein the majority of wealth decides to sell the original and buy the new. But the problem is what new block size value do we agree on? We will never agree on one value. Thus the choice is between selling the original and buying innumerable competing forks, and thus the unforgeable costliness can never be transferred to hard forks. That is the game theory of proof-of-work. Learn it. Drill it into your mind. It will never change.

See, here's the kicker, Shelby. Let's set aside the issue that -- given enough time and incentive -- the difference between hard and soft forks are merely academic. Set aside the issue that further increases to the max block size are impossible due to immutability. The fact is that the original protocol (i.e., satoshi's 0.1 protocol) -- which you refer to as immutable -- had no 1 MB max block size cap.

At 0.1 there was no block size limit in the protocol. The code (not the protocol) was limited in that no provision had yet been coded to allow a block to span multiple TCP segments. But even that limitation was well in excess of 1MB.

So what you claim to be an "immutable" protocol has already undergone a change in the exact dimension you claim it cannot.

Now I am not arguing against your claim of centralization pressure. But as pointed out above, the exact same pressures are being felt on all public PoW blockchains. Not only BSV, but BCH, BTC, 0.5.3, whatever. You seem to believe this is fatal. I do not. All experience hath shewn that, absent outside regulatory force, detrimental natural monopolies are unstable.

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Quote from: jbreher on June 10, 2019, 06:13:17 PM

OK, I'll now respond to point 1. Your characterization of BSV as having no options for privacy is just false. While it is true that all data on the blockchain is publicly visible is true, this is also true of all other public blockchains. So no, you cannot so castigate BSV for this 'sin' without so castigating BTC, BCH, 0.5.3, etc.

Please provide a link to those privacy options on BSV which are not a hard fork of Bitcoins protocol (aka Satoshis Vision)?

Again with the straw man. In direct conflict with what I posted so clearly only one paragraph previously. I am not claiming any hard fork which absolves BSV of the privacy sins of BTC, et al. I am explicitly claiming that they all sit in the same bucket in this regard.

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Quote from: jbreher on June 10, 2019, 06:13:17 PM

But more germane, a characteristic shared by public blockchains is that the data wrapped in a tx (negligible in possible size on some blockchains, capacious in others) can be wrapped in encryption before being wrapped in a tx. Such encryption being in complete control of whichever party creates the tx.

What part ofencryption has as much to do with anonymity

What's with the 'anonymity'? Did you see me employ that term in my arguments above? No. The discussion is not anonymity. It is privacy. Different animals. If you want to discuss anonymity, that's fine, but that's a separate issue. But frankly, my discussion here is merely to compare and contrast BSV with the other Bitcoin forks (to include 0.5.3, which one could argue is either a fork or not a fork).

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Quote from: jbreher on June 10, 2019, 06:13:17 PM

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Quote from: jbreher on June 09, 2019, 05:53:20 PM

I guess the only thing I want to reply to is point 2 about centralization. Yes, megagigaterapetablocks will likely result in fewer fully-validating, non-mining entities. It will also likely result in fewer full-stack mining entities. So what?

Because I already provided a link upthread several times which explains in detail why automatically (e.g. via miner consensus) adaptive block size does not function correct decentralized.

No. As stated earlier (maybe our async communication is just crossing?), you cannot make this claim until you explain how the system persevered through the eras of the soft block size caps.

Done. In this post above.

Not done. You have provided no explanation which I can discern which explains away the events of the block size soft caps not resulting in the armageddon you foretell for lack of immutable block size caps. Perhaps with the info leading to comprehensive links I provided above, you will be able to work these into your theory.

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Quote from: jbreher on June 10, 2019, 06:13:17 PM

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Quote from: jbreher on June 09, 2019, 05:53:20 PM

People keep talking about decentralization as if it is an end in itself. Why? AFAIC, as long as there are no structural barriers to entry by new participants, the network is as decentralized as it need be. If there is no discernible marginal benefit from adding one more participant to the network, then by definition further decentralization is of no benefit.

You ostensibly just do not see holes in his inept designs which will cause them to crash and burn eventually. Centralization is an entire waste of time. Not trustless, not permissionless. Just use Facebook coin then.

Do I understand you to be claiming some difference in centralization force between BSV and BTC or even 0.5.3? If so, you need to explain to me how it is any different. In lieu such explanation, I will simply respond 'bullshit'.

Real, immutable, one-and-only Satoshi v0.5.3 (aka v0.1) Bitcoin has an immutable block size. Thus no centralization possible around block size changes. BSV and BCH are and will always be centralized (by politics and eventually even mining if not already) because of not keeping the immutable block size.

For someone so forceful in application of the power law, your willingness to ignore it completely as a force for mining centralization is aggravating. If you can quantify the centralization forces due to your so-called (ad argumento) 'lack of block size cap Schelling point' and due to the power law distribution of resources and capabilities, and then show how the latter is insignificant as compared to the former, then you will have made a point. Otherwise, no.

And again, the original v0.1 protocol did not and does not have a 1MB block size cap.

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Quote from: jbreher on June 10, 2019, 06:13:17 PM

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BSV advocates idolizing governance and law in general, as if some competition amongst nations will rectify human nature in political collectives.

I refer you to my point above. Rhetoric is merely rhetoric. The protocol is what it is. I'm surprised I need to point out the difference to you.

I am not surprised that I have to point out to people that if their premises are flawed, then their dependent character assassination drivel is flawed. Touché.

There was no character assassination expressed or implied. You seem to have been so aggravated by the imagined slight such that you walked right over my point. To wit: It matters not what the rhetoric surrounding a coin is, as long as is does not affect the protocol. And the reality is that the loudest voices in 'state loving' within BSV are the very same voices advocating protocol stability.

Until such time as you see significant credible call for modifying BSV's protocol to further serve the state, appeals to base emotion based upon suspicion of the state are invalid in technical argument.

Touche' indeed.