

Bitcoin XT 0.11A - Andrew_Quentin
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010235.html

======
themgt
Best explanation of how this will work is on their site: "By mining with
Bitcoin XT you will produce blocks with a new version number. This indicates
to the rest of the network that you support larger blocks. When 75% of the
blocks are new-version blocks, a decision has been reached to start building
larger blocks that will be rejected by Bitcoin Core nodes. At that point a
waiting period of two weeks begins to allow news of the new consensus to
spread and allow anyone who hasn't upgraded yet to do so. During this time,
existing Bitcoin Core nodes will be printing a message notifying the operators
about the availability of an upgraded version.

If the hard fork occurs and you are still mining with Bitcoin Core, your node
will reject the first new block that is larger than one megabyte in size. At
that point there is a risk your newly mined coins will not be accepted at
major exchanges or merchants."
[https://bitcoinxt.software/](https://bitcoinxt.software/)

What I find intriguing about this in the bigger picture is it begins to answer
one of questions from the beginning - how do political decisions regarding the
blockchain get made when consensus has failed? And this shows a plausible
mechanism for using a compatible fork to let users "vote with their feet".

I wonder if down the road this sort of thing could evolve/devolve into a sort
of real block chain politics, e.g. let users incorporate one or more non-core
patches into their nodes, and once a patch reaches some majority percentage it
activates and forks the chain, perhaps even with a mechanism to allow other
nodes to "accept a fork" (i.e. activate the patch in their node) if it wins
but otherwise not proactively "vote" for it.

Interesting times.

~~~
hollerith
>let users "vote with their feet"

Let's be precise: it's the _miners_ who are being asked to vote with their
feet.

~~~
Natanael_L
They won't stick with changes that the majority rejects, because their mining
reward would otherwise become worthless

~~~
hollerith
The Bitcoin XT software was designed to "poll" miners and ignore the other
stakeholders. Mike Hearn explains why at

[http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-
dev/2015-...](http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-
dev/2015-August/010241.html)

Even though the other stakeholders will certainly be able to make their
preferences known to the miners, any effect the other stakeholders will have
on the success or failure of the fork will be _through_ the miners, which IMHO
makes my statement "it's the miners who are being asked to vote with their
feet" correct, at least for a sufficiently narrow definition of "vote".

Even when we consider the situation more broadly, none of the other
stakeholders have (as far as I can tell) as much at stake as the miners. The
miners for example might be hoping that if the 1-meg limit remains in place,
transaction fees will become a significant fraction of mining rewards, which
would increase the total income of mining (income being essentially the built-
in rewards, which are not affected by the fork plus the transaction fees).
Holders of large positions in Bitcoin on the other hand -- what is their
reason for preferring one fork or the other? Ditto merchants who accept a lot
of Bitcoin transactions.

ADDED. As far as I can tell, the designers Bitcoin XT sofware have done what
they can to minimize the distruptiveness of the fork on the lives of the other
stakeholders -- by, e.g., refraining from doing anything to affect anyone but
the miners till 2 weeks after a full 75% of miners (or 75% of hashing power --
not sure which) are running the XT software.

ADDED. Yes, I realize that any additional income gained by the miners will be
paid by Bitcoin senders (e.g., people using Bitcoin to pay for things), so in
that sense Bitcoin senders have just as much at stake as the miners do, _but_
transaction fees will always be a very small fraction of the costs (considered
collectively) of the senders of Bitcoin, so this is another instance of the
very common situation where a large number of people are affected in some very
small way by some policy decision whereas a smaller number of people are
affected in a more significant and material way, and we know (from experience
with democratic governments) that what usually happens in that situation is
that the smaller group (whose interests are "concentrated") has a much larger
influence on the decision than the larger group (whose interests are
"diffuse").

------
agorabinary
I thought gavin and most of the established bitcoin devs were in favor of
increasing the blocksize.. so why is this "lightning" system no one has heard
about suddenly the new plan for bitcoin core? Whose clout is pushing this
through? I was aware of argument about the 1MB limit but I thought the voices
in favor of increasing it far outweighed those against.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
Two developers, nullc and pieter are against increasing the blocksize at a
reasonable rate. Gavin, Jeff Garzik and Mike Hearn wish to increase it by
early next year. Following some three months of debate, an agreement could not
be reached, so Gavin and Mike are forking Bitcoin to the new Bitcoin XT. The
vast majority of users, businesses and miners support Gavin and his bigger
blocks, but blockstream, a relativley new for profit company which employs
nullc aka Gregory Maxwell and Pieter as well as some other bitcoin devs and is
developind lightning and sidechains which they offer as an alternative to
increasing the blocksize has managed to stall this process, thus leading to a
fork.

~~~
maaku
> Two developers, nullc and pieter are against increasing the blocksize at a
> reasonable rate.

Careful, what is "reasonable" is what is at issue here. There are legitimate
arguments being made on both sides.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
One side - your side specifically maaku and that of your employer blockstream
- loses complete legitimacy when they start censoring posts and spoofing
Satoshi's email address.

~~~
maaku
Neither Blockstream nor any of the core developers have affiliation with
r/bitcoin, bitcointalk, or bitcoin.org. By design, mind you, for the purpose
of ensuring decentralization. I may have the book badge on the subreddit, but
I'm as helpless about censorship as you are.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
Yet you and some of your other blockstream colleagues are cheering on the
censorship in r/bitcoin.

~~~
maaku
I am not and I don't know anyone at Blockstream who is. Care to back that up
with a link?

------
_wmd
It's been some time since Bitcoin has given me reason to break out popcorn,
the next few days should be quite fun to watch. :)

I have no particular opinion on which way this should swing, however it's
clear that XT represents far more than just a block size change (and the XT
web site even makes this explicit): it is another attempt at gaining increased
control of the project, which is also mentioned by the linked Medium article
as one of reasons Lightning isn't great for Bitcoin either.

While Mike and Gavin have long been members of the project, in good standing,
and with no obvious reasons to doubt them, it's still worth giving a few
moments thought to how the project may be impacted in the coming years should
this "change in administration" succeed.

~~~
maaku
Mike was never really involved in Bitcoin Core, and Gavin stepped down 2 years
ago.

~~~
toomim
Make coined the name "Bitcoin Core".

Gavin is still a core developer. He stepped down from his Leadership position
to become "just" a regular core developer.

(I know that Maaku knows this. Just clarifying for the crowd.)

~~~
maaku
Care to point to what Gavin has worked on in that time frame?

There are very few changes that Gavin has contributed back to Bitcoin Core
since he handed most of the day-to-day repo management over the Wladimir.

I honestly don't know what you are referring to, unless it is the small
patches here and there of similar size and importance to things we receive on
a daily basis from dozens of people. Gavin pretty much disappeared from core
development when he stepped down 2 years ago.

~~~
toomim
Sorry Maaku, but I think you are taking this thread off-topic. The number of
contributions Gavin has made since stepping down from Leadership is not
relevant to the point "Mike and Gavin have long been members of the project,
in good standing, and with no obvious reasons to doubt them."

More specifically, the number of his recent commits (or other contributions)
does not speak to (1) the length of time he has been a member of Bitcoin, (2)
whether he has been in "good standing", or (3) whether there are obvious
reasons to doubt him.

It appears, rather, that you have some ill feelings towards Gavin, and are
letting these feelings leak into your thoughts by belittling Gavin's
contributions to Bitcoin.

A better way to address this point, while still expressing your feelings,
would be to say "Gavin is not in good standing with me. I think he's an
asshole for going around our consensus process. Fuck him. I disagree that he
is in good standing, and I doubt his leadership."

~~~
maaku
Gavin does not lead bitcoin. This is a simple fact. I am simply doing fact
corrections.

~~~
toomim
Maaku, your thoughts are getting sloppy. Nobody here claimed that Gavin leads
bitcoin. Go back and read the post you were replying to, and try to find the
words that you were "correcting." They don't exist.

It was _you_ who first mentioned him leading Bitcoin when you said "Gavin
stepped down 2 years ago." Now you are just arguing with yourself. You came
into this conversation, imagined people talking about him leading Bitcoin, and
then tried to do some "corrections" to the claims that you hallucinated.

------
Andrew_Quentin
r/bitcoin is being censored right now (quite ironic), so thought maybe you
hackers can have a discussion about the upcoming bitcoin fork in regards to
the blocksize. Some suggest that bitcoin blocks should remain at 1mb, which
currently covers around 200k transactions, a limit that is close to being
reached. The vast majority seem to want an increase on this capacity for
pretty much obvious reasons. However, some relatively newcomer bitcoin
developers argue that increasing it will affect decentralisation, and everyone
should use a hubs and spoke system instead. Others argue that as the number of
users increases, the number of the blockchain applications increase, the
number of nodes and miners increases, thus decentralisation increases. In
regards to lightning it is still vapourwear, it requires hot wallets -
something which has caused many problems - the hubs are likely to be
centralised - and fundamentally users should have a choice. So yeah looks like
bitcoin will fork.

~~~
gruez
>r/bitcoin is being censored right now (quite ironic)

As in, actual censorship about all blocksize discussion, or just about XT?

~~~
jamoes
The #1 story was removed by the moderators. It was an article by Mike Hearn
about why he's moving forward with the Bitcoin XT hard fork. [1]

The justification for the removal is that Bitcoin XT is an altcoin, and
altcoin discussion is not allowed. [2]

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitcoin_forking)

[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h424p/why_is_bitcoin_forking/cu4498v)

~~~
johndevor
It's like saying Congress is not allowed to discuss or propose amendments to
the constitution.

Bitcoin is designed to be fought over and amended, it's built into it.
Software is never complete and XT is not an altcoin.

~~~
Caprinicus
and /r/bitcoin is designed to be completely stupid.

------
wmf
The XT developers could probably defend against the "decentralization"
argument by implementing IBLT to speed block propagation and ultimate
blockchain compression to reduce disk usage before increasing the block size.
But that would probably take years and they don't have years, so never mind.

~~~
maaku
IBLT is basically already implemented and deployed as part of TheBlueMatt's
relay network. Improvements to scaling isn't going to come from IBLT.

------
altcognito
I do not understand bitcoin and the blockchain. Isn't your bitcoin tied up in
the mathematics the blockchain? Will those who trade away their money on one
blockchain be able to retain it on the other blockchain? Will they synchronize
the ledger in some way?

~~~
DennisP
If the chain forks, then in theory you have the same money on both chains, and
could spend it differently in each.

In practice, this fork only happens if >75% of miners switch to the new
software, and I suspect the whole community would quickly abandon the other
fork.

------
mastermojo
Can someone explain what is means for bitcoin to be forked?

~~~
toomim
Bitcoin, like all monies, is a social protocol. We agree that a coin has value
if it follows certain rules.

Some people want to change the rules. But some other people don't want them
changed. So now we have two sets of people, the Changers (XT) and the
Don't-Changers (Core) who will be following different sets of rules.

So their softwares won't play together in places their rules disagree. This
will create a "fork" in the ledger histories. If your coins existed before the
fork, everyone will see them. But if you transact them in a way that's
incompatible with one set of rules, the transaction will only exist on one
side of the fork.

So the public will then have to choose which side of the fork to live on. They
will probably want to live on the dominant side. Then the losing side will
give up and switch!

Bitcoin-XT actually has a few built-in mechanisms to make this transition
graceful. It will only deploy the incompatible rules once it has a 75%
majority vote, and is thus confident of success.

------
Jaystone
With the Bitcoin price on a steady downward spiral into oblivion, I'd have to
say that the XT fork was a really stupid idea. Thanks for scaring all of the
investors, you bunch of retards. Smooth move, X-Lax!!!

------
wfunction
Seems like the blockchain is forking too...? What happens to everyone's
bitcoins in the meantime? Wouldn't this practically destroy the system?

------
therealidiot
Some of the messages on the mailing list started to feel a little personal

------
jsprogrammer
So...I now have double the coins, but separated onto two chains?

~~~
STRML
You have the same number of coins, and will continue to until the point that a
block is mined on the XT chain that would not be accepted by Core clients. The
absolute earliest that could possibly happen is January 25 (Jan 11 activation
date + 2 week grace period). But that 2wk grace period only actually activates
after 75% of the hashing power globally moves to XT. So at the time XT
actually forks, users will have had plenty of notice.

Coins you hold now are not at risk. You are only at risk if you spend a coin
on the Core network sometime after XT takes over 75% of the hashing power and
before Core releases an update to bring it in line with XT, and only then if
the block your tx ends up in happens to be over 1MB.

~~~
pilgrim689
I may be wrong here but assuming you're broadcasting to both networks, your
transaction is valid in both XT and Core so they'd both try to add it to a
block.

The only bitcoin that become unusable in one chain are those that come from a
post-fork coinbase transaction.

------
dang
There's also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10066746),
but it's hard to know whether that one is factual. Since the two threads are
closely related, this seems like the one to go with. (This is not based on any
opinion about the story itself.)

