
Bitcore Core v0.9.0 release overview - hendzen
http://garzikrants.blogspot.com/2014/03/bitcore-core-v090-release-overview.html?m=1
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mriou
All great changes, especially BIP 70 and the fixes on transaction malleability
and relaying. I'm unconvinced the efforts to make bitcoind (now Bitcoin Core
Server) a "border router" are well-spent however. Software that's optimized
for server deployment and larger clusters is fundamentally different from what
you would run on your desktop. I personally think that Bitcoin Core should
focus on the protocol and extensions to be a good reference implementation,
easy to deploy in all environments.

But regardless, great job guys.

~~~
hendzen
The router functionality is very important, because bitcoin-core is the only
bitcoin implementation capable of verifying transactions & blocks. The reason
for this is that the bitcoin protocol, in practice, is whatever bitcoin-core
implements, including any and all bugs. All attempts to fully implement
bitcoin-core have all had chain splitting bugs (btcd, bitcoinj experimental
full verification mode) so they are not yet trusted in production.

Unfortunately the wallet handling capabilities of bitcoin-core don't scale to
high numbers of wallets. Thus as an org running a service handling many
wallets, it is useful to program against a lightweight client API such as
bitcoinj, and then have your client peer with "trusted" bitcoin-core nodes.

~~~
mriou
I've heard that argument many times and all it does is reinforce the idea that
no other implementation can work. And how you end-up with an implementation
mono-culture. Forks of a single block happen regularly, it can be dealt with.
A production system can detect a fork and check the reference implementation's
behavior, preventing any longer fork.

The *coin ecosystem need more than one implementation, a single codebase can't
cater to all uses. I should know, I'm an Apache member.

~~~
hendzen
Forks of a single block ("orphans") are expected due to block propagation
taking a nonzero amount of time.

That's very different than the case where say 50% of the network is running
bitcoind, and the other 50% is running btcd, and some transaction triggers an
edge case in either implementation that causes one implementation to accept
the transaction and another to reject it.

I think multiple compatible implementations would be great to have, but we
don't have them at the moment, and in the meantime companies handling huge
numbers of bitcoin transactions need a solution that works today. So I applaud
the bitcoin-core team for catering to the increasingly common use case of
using bitcoind only for consensus.

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mriou
And it happened even only with bitcoin-core. Anyhow the 50/50% scenario across
implementations is unlikely to happen if everyone seeing a new one cries
forking wolf.

I do empathize with the need of solutions for today though. I was just
thinking about tomorrow.

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kristianp
Fix the title please. s/Bitcore/Bitcoin/

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swswsw
Good eyes. The author fixed the title.

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kristianp
I meant for a moderator to fix the hacker news headline!

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sillysaurus3
Any luck on delivering a feature to prevent exchanges like Coinbase from
stealing my money, or ability to retrieve my money once it's been stolen?
There seems to be no way not to use exchanges when using Bitcoin, so this is a
real problem.

Or I suppose it could be that Mt. Gox was the problem, and now the problem has
gone away.

Still, I predict that when the economy crashes again as it did in 2008, we
will see many more exchanges die off, and they'll take everyone's money with
them. This may harm mass adoption of Bitcoin by reducing confidence.

This seems a step in the right direction:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277865](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277865)
Anyone know if any exchanges have started doing this yet?

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maaku
What you link to is the answer, and no, no one implements it. The exchanges
don't want to, and feel no incentive to :(

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M4v3R
More and more services are starting to use an even better solution that
includes proof of storage. Please see my comment above.

~~~
maaku
Are you talking about multisig? That doesn't have adequate properties for use
in an exchange. I assume that you are requiring that the user sign off on any
transfer of their coins, because otherwise the chance of theft would still
exist. If so, then (1) you are requiring that all transfers hit the block
chain (immediate non-starter simply due to scaling issues), (2) the exchange
is not effective as people can DoS by dropping out and refusing to sign if the
market moves or they otherwise have second thoughts, and (3) you're ignoring
the fiat side of the exchange.

Trustless exchanges can work, but they generally need much more infrastructure
and possible changes to bitcoin (or a side chain).

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M4v3R
Points 2) and 3) can be solved, an exchange that accepts fiat and signs a
transfer immediately after placing an offer is entirely possible. At Bitalo we
chose not to accept fiat, but it's not a limitation of multisig scheme.

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felipelalli
The title is wrong. Actually is Bitcoin Core. Bitcore is another project of
Bitpay.

