The Fork Revolution! - returning BTC to Satoshi's original mission

[Windowly]

Storj is migrating from the Bitcoin blockchain to ethereum, in part because the bitcoin economic code is broken.

Rather depressing news. Hopefully we can fork and get bigger blocks before we hear much more of these kinds of stories.

[rogerver]

The exodus from Bitcoin is happening right before our eyes, but people in the Core camp are blind to it:

https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/844167479593074688

[Windowly]

Roger, that image and the one Bitcoin Unlimited make is so sobering. I wish the miners would wake up and move quickly.


Update: Bitcoin's dominance is now thelowest it has ever been -- 68%.

Update 2:Users are bailing out of bitcoin at a faster rate than before. Everyone has a frustration limit, and bitcoin and the scaling debate is hitting too many people's limits right now. Perhaps its time to minority fork?

[Ferox]

Users are bailing out of bitcoin... because of you, Rogerver, and your BTU!

[Ferox]

Perhaps its time to minority fork? Wow! At last you've come to conclusion that majority will never support you!

[Windowly]

If we do a minority fork the economic majority, and the mining pools would soon follow.

That being said, I think there's a very good chance we get quite a good majority of the hashpower in the next couple months. Bitcoin miners have an incentive to keep the flippening from happening.

[Ferox]

If we do a minority fork the economic majority, and the mining pools would soon follow.

That being said, I think there's a very good chance we get quite a good majority of the hashpower in the next couple months. Bitcoin miners have an incentive to keep the flippening from happening.

Excuse me, but I don't understand why the economic majority, and the mining pools would soon follow you... Why wouldn't they turn their backs to btc and btu altogether and become followers of ethereum for example? What is the difference? Why should they follow your BTU instead? Btu will become another altcoin if you make minority fork!

[rizzlarolla]

If we do a minority fork the economic majority, and the mining pools would soon follow.

That being said, I think there's a very good chance we get quite a good majority of the hashpower in the next couple months. Bitcoin miners have an incentive to keep the flippening from happening.

Sorry about this long boring post.

A minority (hash power) fork is always a bad idea. Doesn't anyone know how Bitcoin works anymore?

Roger has been offered a "deal" to swap many thousand of bitcoin core coins for bitcoin unlimited coins if a chain split ever happened.
Some are saying things like "i want bitcoin core coins, whatever hash rate unlimited has"
They don't understand bitcoin either.

I explained that if unlimited forked with 100% hash power, those people will lose value on their core bitcoin holding, Roger will win value on his unlimited coins. Guaranteed 100%. No hash power = no security = no value.
(now, if you work back from 100% hash power, as that is kinda unachievable in reality, what is a safe fork limit? Maybe 80% hash power? This is how Bitcoin is designed to work. Hash power is security. security has value)

With 80% hash power activation of an Unlimited fork, with an immediate (small) block size increase, there would be no loss of confirmed tx's per second on the unlimited network. No loss of network usability. Difficulty adjustment will occur within about 17 days.

If Core continue with 20% hash power, Core blocks will take 5 times longer to find, about 50 minutes each block. Still on 1mb, tx confirmation will be about 20% of now. Fees will skyrocket, many tx's will never confirm. Difficulty adjustment will occur within about two and a half months.
This is what is designed to happen in Bitcoin.

If Core then lowered difficulty it may help with tx problems, but it won't improve security. It would still be untrustable, and open to attacked by majority hash.

If unlimited launch with minority hash power, i assume they will have lowered difficulty on their chain? (so be untrustable and open to attack)
As soon as the there are two blockchain history's, they cannot converge again.

A minority fork is an attack. Everyone would fork if they could just create value that way, but there is no value there.
A minority fork is unsupportable. If Roger supports a minority fork he is an attacker.
Be clear unlimited will only fork with consensus. Work towards consensus. Wait for a majority consensus.
(is the code even "ready")

When a good majority of miners finally decide that Core are the attacker on the Bitcoin network, when they see their businesses failing, they will be forced to act. (that act maybe a fork to unlimited, or something else)

I have suggested previously that Roger turns this forum into a Bitcoin forum (unlimited supporting if he want's), but nothing happened.
If Bitcoin, and unlimited, are so important to Roger, why does he frazzle my eyes with shitty "mine etherum" ads, and not "mine Bitcoin Unlimited"
With all the crap on bitcointalk (core run and basically my research is showing to be a deep scam overseen by "theymos") this is a missed chance.
Hardly any talk of unlimited here. Hardly any talk at all. I don't post much, don't feel much appreciation here.
(roger even gives me 1 reputation point, other newbies who admit they know very little, 10 points and probably 4btc!)

I want more blockspace. I support a (good) majority fork to Unlimited or other. I would be trusting the miners not to run bad code. i trust the miners.
I think segwit is bad code, but again I trust the miners not to run bad code.

Hash power will decide.

[Parakletos]

As the per-block subsidy halves every 4 years, the miners will be relying less and less on the subsidy and more and more on the fees collected on each block. People want to have their cake and eat it too! They want near-instant confirmation, but aren't willing to pay in the neighborhood of 1% as a fee to do so. Lose your mining community, and what exactly do you think you have left?

This proposal is ass-backwards. Yes, there is a hard limit on each block. But there is no upper-limit on the price of a BTC. As the price of BTC goes up, more VALUE can be contained inside each block.

[rizzlarolla]

As the per-block subsidy halves every 4 years, the miners will be relying less and less on the subsidy and more and more on the fees collected on each block. .

That may not be correct.

If Bitcoin could accommodate more users, that itself may bring value to Bitcoin, So in 3 years Bitcoin could "potentially" be worth $10,000, or whatever.
No need for fee's then, or for the foreseeable future.

Don't you think Bitcoin price could grow, (if adoption was not stifled by high fees and lenghty comf and all the user complexity that brings)
That is what i think. I'm pretty sure that is what satoshi thought.

[Parakletos]

As the per-block subsidy halves every 4 years, the miners will be relying less and less on the subsidy and more and more on the fees collected on each block. .

That may not be correct.

It's entirely correct. As the subsidy goes down, the miners must recoup their costs more and more from the fees. And as I said above on my edit -- there is a hard limit on the block size, but there is no hard limit on the price of each BTC. As the price of a BTC goes up, more VALUE will be represented in each block.

Take away the subsidies AND the fees, and what exactly do you think will motivate people to spend $120-$150 a month on electricity costs for something like a 1500watt Antminer S9? Not to mention the $1400 for the machine itself?!!!

I VERY recently paid that for an Antminer S9 -- and the transaction was time sensitive. Using the BitcoinCore program, I could see very easily with the fee slider how the fee affects the estimated confirmation time. I had no problem spending the max amount for the fee which turned out to be about 1%. And it was confirmed in the very next block.

[rizzlarolla]

As the per-block subsidy halves every 4 years, the miners will be relying less and less on the subsidy and more and more on the fees collected on each block. .

That may not be correct.

It's entirely correct. As the subsidy goes down, the miners must recoup their costs more and more from the fees. And as I said above on my edit -- there is a hard limit on the block size, but there is no hard limit on the price of each BTC. As the price of a BTC goes up, more VALUE will be represented in each block.

Take away the subsidies AND the fees, and what exactly do you think will motivate people to spend $120-$150 a month on electricity costs for something like a 1500watt Antminer S9? Not to mention the $1400 for the machine itself?!!!

Clearly it is not entirely correct, as i just demonstrated.

If the price of Bitcoin goes up, the subsidy can come down with no loss of mining profit, regardless of blocksize.
Mining profit could even rise. No high fees needed.

Of course, price probably wont keep going up if adoption is halted by user's experience being expensive, slow and complicated.

edit - clarity

[Parakletos]

Another server in Antpool is propagating BU blocks. And Bitcoin Unlimited was able to present to Coinbase and clear up a lot of misconceptions.

The Disinfo is strong with this one...

[Parakletos]

That may not be correct.

It's entirely correct. As the subsidy goes down, the miners must recoup their costs more and more from the fees. And as I said above on my edit -- there is a hard limit on the block size, but there is no hard limit on the price of each BTC. As the price of a BTC goes up, more VALUE will be represented in each block.

Take away the subsidies AND the fees, and what exactly do you think will motivate people to spend $120-$150 a month on electricity costs for something like a 1500watt Antminer S9? Not to mention the $1400 for the machine itself?!!!

Clearly it is not entirely correct, as i just demonstrated.

If the price of Bitcoin goes up, the subsidy can come down with no loss of mining profit, regardless of blocksize.
Mining profit could even rise. No high fees needed.

Of course, price probably wont keep going up if adoption is halted by user's experience being expensive, slow and complicated.

edit - clarity

You're trying to push an alt coin off the back of the already-processed blocks in the BTC chain. That's a pipe-dream. Anyone else can come along and do the same thing the same way BTU does, copying the blockchain up to the fork point, and simply outhash and split your fork. You haven't thought this through well enough at all.

Miners are not going to go for this at all. In fact, they're the ones complaining the most because they are the ones who have the actual investment in this project unlike those who merely use BTC and provide nothing more. You pretend that the miners will get the same in fees because the price will go up, yet you ignore the fact that the actual fees in BTC will plummet as you make it far less costly to send on the network.

You're going to have far fewer hashes on this network which makes it less secure. And by drastically cutting the fees, you're going to lose even more miners as time goes by and that subsidy keeps halving every 4 years. Some of us have the foresight to see this....and clearly some of us don't.

Best of luck with your con...err....project.

[Parakletos]

The exodus from Bitcoin is happening right before our eyes, but people in the Core camp are blind to it:

https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/844167479593074688

Nonsense. That price drop is due to the Winklevoss denial as well as regulation controversy in China. If you are willing to pay around 1% fee, your transaction on the BTC network will go through in one or two blocks. If it is not time-sensitive, you can pay less and it'll get there a bit later. You're trying to screw over miners and it won't work in the long run. Watch and see.

The altcoin value increase is mostly due to ETH regaining some ground, and actually surpassing previous highs. BTC has always benefited as the gateway coin needed to buy other ALTs. You're playing a chicken-little game here.

[Windowly]

Another poignant image of bitcoin in this crippled 1mb state, being destroyed piece by piece.

[Windowly]

And a good graphic of the transaction fees going up exponentially since we hit the 1mb limit.


However, news is not 100% negative. Bitcoin.com's pool hit 100 Ph/s hashrate, and earlier today we hit all-time-high in Bitcoin Unlimited blocks.




Slowly but surely, the world is becoming a greener and more beautiful place.

[Windowly]

Rick Falkvinge has hit the ball out of the park on this one:

[Parakletos]

$10k/bitcoin means that it requires 1/10th the number of bytes to represent the same amount of value as compared to $1k/bitcoin. The scaling is done with price.

Conversely, a 20% drop in BTC price will mean it will take 20% more bytes to send the same amount of value using bitcoin. So this entire controversy -- to the degree it harmed price -- has actually caused the very congestion it was seeking to prevent. Stop thinking like a free-loader and pay the fees you need to pay if you have a time sensitive payment. Pay a little less and get included during off-peak hours. Pretty simple really.

Those people who are cheap asses and don't want to pay ~1% fees can still pay less and have their blocks confirmed during off-peak hours. And if that seems to be bad to you -- it's likely because you don't run a mining rig and pay for electricity to do so. A $1400 Antminer S9 is about 1500watts. A month of operation will run typically $120-$150ish in electricity costs in the USA. The fact is, there's a cost involved in hashing. And hashes are what secure the network. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't have a network that is as secure with far fewer hashes. And you WILL have far fewer hashes if you make it impossible for miners to recoup their electricity costs.

As the mining subsidy halves every 4 years, miners will be relying more and more on the fees rather than that subsidy to recoup their costs. By screwing them out of the mining fees (by removing competition for quick inclusion in the chain) it will make it impossible for them to recoup even their electricity fees, let alone their equip costs. And that spells disaster because it means that they will either shut down the hashing or send their hashes to a competitor coin thereby making bitcoin less secure.

As you can see from this graph, the subsidy has already mostly disappeared....and every four years, it keeps halving... That is built-into the system. It was expected that as the subsidy was removed, the miners would get paid by the fees as the network became more popular. Now you want to remove the vast majority of fees as well....not too smart AT ALL.

[Windowly]

Great comment by Roger Ver over on reddit:

It saddens me to see how many Core supporters don't seem to understand the concept of Substitute Goods in economics. Substitute goods are simply different goods that could be used for the same purpose. If the price of one good increases, then demand for the substitutes is likely to rise. This is exactly what we are seeing happening with the rise of alt-coins, but so many Core supporters spout nonsense like "$1 is totally worth it to be able to use Bitcoin". Maybe it is worth $1 for some use cases, but if you can have a similar experience for less by using a substitute, people will begin to use that substitute. That is why Bitcoin has the lowest crypto coin market share ever. People are starting to switch to those substitute goods.

And in a hundred years or so when the fees will be needed to support the network, there will be so many people using bitcoin, even if all pay a fraction of a cent to send transactions the miners will be amply rewarded.

This is a big reason why the devs can't be in total control -- a lot at least in the core group seem not to have the interest or even the most basic education in economics. Once there are multiple competing development teams, this worship-of-the-devs cult that a lot of the Core or Core-sympathizers subscribe to should disappear (hopefully).

One of the nice things about Bitcoin Unlimited governance is that the wider Bitcoin Unlimited community can actually fire their developers if they don't feel that they are coding in a way that reflects their values.

[Windowly]

Electrum has put out a good primer on how to split coins if it comes to that. (I would be rather surprised if a minority fork survives for much longer than a couple hours however.)

Rumors on reddit say we should reach 60% of hashpower by April. If so, that would be amazing and wonderful.

Update: A powerplant that went down is now back up and Bitcoin Unlimited hashpower is again on the rise, with 43.8% of the blocks mined today signaling Bitcoin Unlimited.

Sadly Bitcoin.com pool is down a bit -- at present its 98 Ph/s.

[Windowly]

And industry support for a fork at this point in time. Curious to see how these numbers change as the idea of emergent consensus becomes more well known and Bitcoin Unlimited gains more hashpower.



Update:

[rizzlarolla]

It's entirely correct. As the subsidy goes down, the miners must recoup their costs more and more from the fees. And as I said above on my edit -- there is a hard limit on the block size, but there is no hard limit on the price of each BTC. As the price of a BTC goes up, more VALUE will be represented in each block.

Take away the subsidies AND the fees, and what exactly do you think will motivate people to spend $120-$150 a month on electricity costs for something like a 1500watt Antminer S9? Not to mention the $1400 for the machine itself?!!!

Clearly it is not entirely correct, as i just demonstrated.

If the price of Bitcoin goes up, the subsidy can come down with no loss of mining profit, regardless of blocksize.
Mining profit could even rise. No high fees needed.

Of course, price probably wont keep going up if adoption is halted by user's experience being expensive, slow and complicated.

edit - clarity

You're trying to push an alt coin off the back of the already-processed blocks in the BTC chain. That's a pipe-dream. Anyone else can come along and do the same thing the same way BTU does, copying the blockchain up to the fork point, and simply outhash and split your fork. You haven't thought this through well enough at all.

Miners are not going to go for this at all. In fact, they're the ones complaining the most because they are the ones who have the actual investment in this project unlike those who merely use BTC and provide nothing more. You pretend that the miners will get the same in fees because the price will go up, yet you ignore the fact that the actual fees in BTC will plummet as you make it far less costly to send on the network.

You're going to have far fewer hashes on this network which makes it less secure. And by drastically cutting the fees, you're going to lose even more miners as time goes by and that subsidy keeps halving every 4 years. Some of us have the foresight to see this....and clearly some of us don't.

Best of luck with your con...err....project.

You clearly don't understand Bitcoin at all.

Any fork will "copy" the blockchain. Indeed anyone else could try to fork Bitcoin.
But not anyone can "simply out hash" everyone else, as you naively state. That is consensus, that is how Bitcoin can evolve.
You are the one who has not thought this through at all, probably just listened to all the BS being written all over the internet.

Miners may well go for Bitcoin unlimited, or even some other code. Miners are signalling more support for Unlimited than segwit.
If that support continues to 80% or so, that would be a strong vote for activation.
Re-read my comment about fees above. It is very simple math. I'm not ignoring anything. Also read the whitepaper.
(you probably know better than satoshi due to your few weeks in Bitcoin?)

Less hash on Core network you mean? (as "anyone" can "just out hash" anyone you said)
And if Unlimited gain somewhere around 80% hash support, that becomes bitcoin.
I would think the 80% hash will also attack any continuing Core chain, bringing a swift demise.
(unlimited should attack with such a majority, that is how bitcoin works, but a large majority is clearly the safest way. no silly 50 - 60% forks)

[rizzlarolla]

If we do a minority fork the economic majority, and the mining pools would soon follow.

A minority (hash power) fork is always a bad idea. Doesn't anyone know how Bitcoin works anymore?
Hash power will decide.

No reply?
Are you part of Unlimited "team"?

[rizzlarolla]

The exodus from Bitcoin is happening right before our eyes, but people in the Core camp are blind to it:

Are you blind too?
We have "MINE ETHERUM" ads blasted in our faces , just so you earn another couple of bucks.
(you said you would "look into it", crickets)

I don't get it.
YOUR giving mixed signals. POOR bitcoin, F*** bitcoin, MINE eth.

And all those other alts "leaving the gingerbread man" that you own?
It's f***ing horrid.

[Windowly]

The exodus from Bitcoin is happening right before our eyes, but people in the Core camp are blind to it:

Are you blind too?
We have "MINE ETHERUM" ads blasted in our faces , just so you earn another couple of bucks.
(you said you would "look into it", crickets)

I don't get it.
YOUR giving mixed signals. POOR bitcoin, F*** bitcoin, MINE eth.

And all those other alts "leaving the gingerbread man" that you own?
It's f***ing horrid.

Hey rizzlarolla, no offense but this thread is for pro-bitcoin fork people to discuss the upcoming bitcoin fork. Feel free to start another thread to discuss whether or not a fork is a good idea.

I bought ethereum a few days ago for the first time ever. I hate the centralized governance structure, lack of a coin cap and their history. But I was very impressed with how easy it was to buy and transact. It felt as cool as bitcoin did a few years ago. Hopefully this upcoming fork will put Bitcoin back on track to being the best money ever.

[Windowly]

Bitcoin Unlimited lost some ecosystem support today.

[Windowly]

Bitcoin pool is doing very well today. Hopefully this betokens a strong upward trend.

[Windowly]

More than a month has passed, and although Bitcoin Unlimited folks and others who want an emergent consensus free market solution to the block-size are in a very strong position, they haven't been able to get a majority of the blocks yet.

Meanwhile price is skyrocketing, fees are skyrocketing and lots of new money are going into altcoins.

I still have the vast majority of my assets in bitcoin. (And have had for several years.). . . I really don't want to sell or diversify much more than I already have.

[rogerver]

I still have the vast majority of my assets in bitcoin. (And have had for several years.). . . I really don't want to sell or diversify much more than I already have.

I can really relate to this a lot, but with the Core people literally saying that full blocks and high fees are good, we may have no choice.