Re: [Bitcoin-development] Roadmap to getting users onto SPV clients

[Alan Reiner <etotheipi@gmail.com>]

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This discussion sounds to be veering slightly off track.  I think we should
be focusing on how we will ease the transition for new users to get on the
network and use it.  Talking about the necessity and costs of running full
nodes in the future is important, but irrelevant here:  unless we don't
want users who aren't willing to run full nodes, we need to accommodate
users who want to simply "use" the network, not necessarily "support" it.  *I'm
making an assumption here that we want new users whether they use a full
node or not*.  Greg's point looks like it's veering towards "we don't want
to grow the network unless we're going to get more full nodes out of it."
  I'm of the opinion, like Mike Hearn, that the number of full nodes needed
for a healthy network is *not* O(N) in the number of users of the network.
 I expect it to be something more like O(sqrt(N))... or perhaps there's
even an upper limit above which the network gets no benefit, even if all 7
billion humans were using it.  (the bottleneck would be size of blocks and
CPU processing power at that point, not a shortage of full nodes).  Would
we rather have a system that is "full-node-or-nothing" and drive away users
that won't support the network, or accommodate those users with various
gradations of participation?

I believe my proposal for an address-based meta-chain (or something like
it) is *exactly* what is needed in the long run.  It could almost obsolete
this entire discussion.  However, as Greg pointed out there is a long,
treacherous path between the theory I presented, and a working&robust
implementation that can serve as the backbone for future SPV nodes.  I have
every intention to help pioneer that when Armory has other major features
completed (such as multi-sig), but it's not something that we can even
consider in the near- or medium-term as a solution to rely on.  I'd be
surprised if any such solution existed in the next 6-12 months.

I think it is very much in everyone's interest here to encourage new users
to start "using" Bitcoin, even if they don't "support" it.  As long as
there is a convenient channel for interested users to get more information
about the system, the benefits of spending the effort to run a full node,
and the features available in more-advanced clients that they might benefit
from, then I'm not personally concerned about a shortage of full nodes, and
we should carry forward with the idea of promoting SPV nodes for the
really-new users.

-Alan




On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 4:41 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:
> >> It sounds to me that you're insisting that you're asking people who
> >> oppose degrading our recommendations to commit to a costly rushed
> >> development timeline. I think this is a false choice.
> >
> > Hardly. I don't have any particular timeline in mind. But I disagree
> > we have "forever". New ideas have a certain time window to take off
> > and become credible.
>
> Marketing initiatives have limited windows.  This matters, perhaps,
> when you're some VC pumping cash into a startup with the hopes of
> being the next stockmarket pump and dump darling.  Outside of that
> people use whatever they use because it works for them.
>
> And by the numbers Linux desktops are more common than they've ever
> been— and certainly Linux kernel _systems_ half the people I know have
> one in their pocket and its hard to go more than a few hours without
> touching one.  To some extent the "Year of the Linux desktop" is a bit
> like the "Year of being able to turn lead into gold" ... we can turn
> lead into gold now, but the particle accelerators, atomic power, and
> atomic weapons enabled by the same technology are far more interesting
> due to the particle realities of this. So we didn't get the ubiquitous
> Linux desktop: We got the ubiquitious Linux server, the ubiquitous
> Linux-kernel smart phone, the ubiquitous Linux television, media
> player, HVAC controller, etc. instead.
>
> Desktops— well, that didn't meet people's hopes though I think not for
> the lack of marketing on the part of Linux, but because Apple stepped
> up and produced middle ground products that attracted a larger
> audience. Especially as MSFT dropped the ball. They did some things
> better, had a running start, and had a non open source software
> business model which made reaping rewards easier.
>
> But I don't see how any of this has anything to do with Bitcoin...
> Except for the point that if Bitcoin doesn't become the money system
> everyone uses and instead becomes the money system infrastructure all
> the systems people use depend on— just as Linux has with the desktop,
> where it might not be on the desktop but its in router firmware, cloud
> servers, and just about everything else— I wouldn't consider that much
> of a loss.
>
> > time window, eventually people just give up and move on. Does anyone
> > take desktop Linux seriously anymore? No. "The year of desktop Linux"
> > is a joke. People took it seriously in 2001 but despite great progress
> > since, the excitement and attention has gone. There were steady
> > improvements over the last 10 years but nobody is creating desktop
> > Linux startups anymore
>
> Bitcoin already missed its first— and perhaps only— fad window in any
> case. Today people say "Bitcoin? Thats still around? I thought it got
> hacked". ... thanks to compromised centralized services.
>
> > It's unclear we need to have every man and his dog run a full node.
>
> Every man and his dog? Perhaps not.  But as many as can— probably so.
>
> If we depend on the organic need for full nodes to overcome cost and
> effort to run one there will always be major incentives to let someone
> else do that, and the system would have its equilibrium right on the
> brink of insecurity. Perhaps worse, since insecurity is most obvious
> retrospectively. Security doesn't make for a good market force.
>
> > Tor is a successful P2P network where the number of users vastly
> > outstrips the number of nodes, and exit nodes in particular are a
> > scarce resource run by people who know what they're doing and commit
> > to it.
>
> Tor is a distributed but controlled, by a small number of directory
> authority operators, system.
>
> It is a good system. But it has a trust model which is categorically
> weaker than the one in Bitcoin.  If you want something where a
> majority of a dozen signing keys— hopefully in the hands of trusted
> parties— can decide the state of the system you can produce someting
> far superior to Bitcoin— something that gives near instant
> non-reversable transactions, something that gives good client security
> without the complexity of a SPV node, etc.
>
> But that isn't Bitcoin.
>
> > Even with no incentives, they were able to obtain
> > the resources they need.
>
> And yet every tor user— if the have the bandwidth available can be a
> full internal relay and the software nags them to do it (and also nags
> them to act as invisible bridges for blocking avoidance), and every
> user is technically able to run an exit (though they don't bludgeon
> users to do that, because of the legal/political/technical issues
> involved).  To do any of this doesn't require a user to switch to
> different software, and the tor project has previously opposed client
> only software.
>
> > So why should Bitcoin be different?
>
> It's less different than you make it out to be— but it _is_ different.
>   Bitcoin is a distributed currency. The value of bitcoin comes from
> the soundness of its properties and from the persistence of its
> security. If the integrity of the distributed ledger is disrupted the
> damage produced, both in funds stolen and in undermining the
> confidence of the system, can be irreversible. Because Bitcoin's value
> comes from confidence in Bitcoin and not from the specific
> functionality of Bitcoins (they're random numbers that sit on your
> disk) even if the ledger isn't actually compromised but people
> reasonably believe it could be compromised that undermines the value.
>  Tor, on the other hand, is a functioning system whos value depends on
> its current usefulness, and not the past or future security.
>
> Compare in your mind— Say everyone just found out that at block
> 420,000 Bitcoin would stop enforcing signature correctness or block
> subsidy values (and this wasn't going to be fixed), and you also found
> out that one year from now Tor would hand over their sites, source
> code repositories, and directory authority keys to Iran (and you have
> no suspicion that they already had done so).   How fast would you stop
> using Tor vs how fast would to sell whatever coins you could?
>
> > We can easily send a clear and consistent "this is important, please
> > help" message without complicated auto-upgrade/downgrade schemes that
> > risk annoying users.
>
> I don't think we really can send such a message.  Thanks just the same
> as asking for donations, not completely unsuccessful but not easy to
> make successful either.  You're arguing for people running distinct
> software which has no capability to be a full node, and changing what
> they're doing in order to support the network. This maximizes the
> cost, because in addition to the real cost the user must take a
> switching cost too, and deemphasizes investing in keeping the full
> node software as usable because 'oh just run a lite node if the full
> is too slow'.
>
>
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