From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 573AF4A6 for ; Sat, 13 May 2017 06:43:51 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from mail-pf0-f182.google.com (mail-pf0-f182.google.com [209.85.192.182]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 43EA6CD for ; Sat, 13 May 2017 06:43:50 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-pf0-f182.google.com with SMTP id e193so39674347pfh.0 for ; Fri, 12 May 2017 23:43:50 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=voskuil-org.20150623.gappssmtp.com; s=20150623; h=subject:to:references:cc:from:message-id:date:user-agent :mime-version:in-reply-to:content-transfer-encoding; bh=hJn3WpNwWoLAENo3f5vMOyYVig36SLsnA7UQnU6MUjw=; b=XCEJeby3A/RbhmrEz79m9bFquw2CGKpILawvgkG+70sbEV5wSVKfYoX980uRcvRCxJ eCDFMQlNY9cWvspufJ/ebs62obP6Fta626WionpyLKK0+QTiZ6kni3Loc4q7oejuZZtq kYVIvamyG4oMBXYsLGPT4QgVYUPjCfdT3HQpVL0tMJd6pWnQndvqN3aLkptOSo0CxvSh CyYzXMa1r/ntauA4oaMqbKLMpww5gEtH8peaWTGf391inmkExgI6cbj/9VSH7p6Vrq+l ckcZXy2GnuJa+td2cJoDGrghutOXl359mCAprDrzxBNW7uqt5A0O0KjbmoyBjx2HsRHF +ehw== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:subject:to:references:cc:from:message-id:date :user-agent:mime-version:in-reply-to:content-transfer-encoding; bh=hJn3WpNwWoLAENo3f5vMOyYVig36SLsnA7UQnU6MUjw=; b=Rr+YVCnpa3RoMc5Xd96Pzjro+LyuX1K6cD8nAjOefLN45cdo0+hNyg14KkiYLmr/ET xrZwQfj0f9antxTnNJ0RJrUYRB/nsGSnqaBOVpUh2DxKXec1/2QYubDw5jeObJuFeBeX sHqkTmkFq58qE5R5vozRIje3v+vaH9ACESTRyQ3/OIaHn7QVM7RKT1VkudOZAS5LnRlQ /IG05vL97B0e6zuC+8bV32acLZMTu3kLR7d7VrNCtI7xia1gbUXlMrBwJQfsb2IFDMxw Cy1W6Re9Vm1ldWI9p58jUUvLPdWn5tYHpQrWsNRf3PHFhL19UPgwiGymez0wGlyXk4kf /M6Q== X-Gm-Message-State: AODbwcAcaCrbZtgtRvdDRL6pflUZE/eWK1zY6hwW/SrwS3C5vO8iKsvV r1jch97lewj20Q== X-Received: by 10.84.232.205 with SMTP id x13mr10742690plm.7.1494657829811; Fri, 12 May 2017 23:43:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ?IPv6:2601:600:9000:d69e:61d3:178c:ac5f:3df2? ([2601:600:9000:d69e:61d3:178c:ac5f:3df2]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id l7sm11942077pgn.10.2017.05.12.23.43.48 (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Fri, 12 May 2017 23:43:48 -0700 (PDT) To: Luke Dashjr References: <201705121922.57445.luke@dashjr.org> <201705130049.33798.luke@dashjr.org> <201705130545.25398.luke@dashjr.org> From: Eric Voskuil X-Enigmail-Draft-Status: N1110 Message-ID: Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 23:43:59 -0700 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/45.5.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <201705130545.25398.luke@dashjr.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,DKIM_SIGNED, DKIM_VALID,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham version=3.3.1 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.3.1 (2010-03-16) on smtp1.linux-foundation.org X-Mailman-Approved-At: Sat, 13 May 2017 12:27:54 +0000 Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP: Block signal enforcement via tx fees X-BeenThere: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.12 Precedence: list List-Id: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 06:43:51 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 05/12/2017 10:45 PM, Luke Dashjr wrote: > On Saturday 13 May 2017 3:26:08 AM Eric Voskuil wrote: >> If people want to influence the decisions of miners, all they >> need to do is mine. > > Most people cannot mine except at a huge expense (profit is limited > to few people via monopoly and electric costs). But more > importantly, the profits from every miner you buy will go to pay > for Bitmain growing their arsenal more than enough to offset your > influence. You seem to be suggesting that in order to decentralize mining nobody should mine. I'm having a hard time making sense out of that. > Mining is simply broken at this point. So maybe you are just saying that nobody should mine because it's a zero sum game that one miner will always win and therefore we should not push up the hash rate by trying to compete because the same miner just makes more money on the hardware. Apparently it is economically impossible for anyone else to compete in hardware as well. I agree that there is a serious problem of mining centralization (and economic/validation centralization). If these problems are not solved Bitcoin will fail. It will rise again, with people a little wiser, but the disruption will be unfortunate for many. I don't want to see that, so I tend to not advocate for solutions that run counter to the security model. Many people must mine, there is no way around it. And if people want a say with respect to mining, they should mine. As a developer I would rather work toward fixing that problem than putting a band-aid over it that basically tells people that the way they get their say is by donating to the big mining personality of their choice. >> There is nothing inherently wrong with paying people to run nodes >> or signal "readiness", but there is no reason whatsoever to >> consider these ideas beneficial from a personal/economic or >> security/decentralization standpoint. > > Running a node and mining are two very different things. No, really? If it wasn't clear, I was relating two sets of proposals. One aims to find ways to fund node operation and the other aims to fund miner signaling. The former fails to understand the economics and security model of full node operation and the latter fails to understand that distributed mining is as essential to Bitcoin survival as distributed validation. >> The argument fails to recognize that mining for one's self may >> (or may not) result in a net loss, but donating to a miner in the >> hope of some action is comparatively a total loss. One is an >> expense in exchange for the intended social outcome, and the >> other is payment for representative government. >> >> And in this form of representative government that you propose, >> if we assume that miners are somehow bound to honor the payments >> (votes), ... > > First of all, this isn't donating to miners, but forbidding them > from mining your transaction (and thereby collecting your > transaction fee) unless they signal for the softfork. I assumed that people understand how markets work. Miners compete for fees. By eliminating a subset of potential sellers (currently by ~70%) the buyer raises his own price. Presumably the price is raised even further by increasing the size of the transaction. This is either a donation to the cause or a purchase of the signal, depending on how you want to describe it (all donations are purchases of a sort). So there is a cost increase that could alternatively be incurred by mining (i.e. assuming a lossy operation). If one is going to spend money on influencing mining one might as well not do it in a way that contributes to centralization while training people to rely on it. > Secondly, your argument here assumes miners are a government or > control Bitcoin in some way. This is not correct. Miners absolutely "control Bitcoin in some way" - that is their purpose. They control the ordering of transactions, and with sufficient hash power can double-spend and therefore make the network unusable. Why would you bother to make me type this? > So miners are in fact already bound to honour the wishes of the > greater economy, and their refusal to do so is an attack on the > network. Absolute nonsense, a miner incurs no obligation to the "greater economy". He is offering a service in voluntary trade. He is likely to do what it takes to spend his coinbase, assuming he wants to. This gives the economy strong economic control over his behavior. But nothing whatsoever obligates him to signal soft forks (or not optimize his operations). Double spending is an attack, on the person who has been robbed. The state enforcing a patent is an attack, on the person against whom it is enforced. These are called attacks **because they are actually theft**. You are conflating normal operation (despite disagreement with some unmeasurable "wishes") with robbery. e -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJZFqstAAoJEDzYwH8LXOFOsvsH/2aWlsfi5hB1IrnX1UBsMJl8 +R6BZE+d5C5uNkk6/yENHqwwgTv8yhOKav2Y7xYx/DedhVftX90h9CtdeKGgCS2H cYNtoNauAvF2nlEMGGGcinLkYbS0dyQm07zwOI8gwuzbkslFGxLFClngFlFgMF4S 4/YCWvtRJ0O5dkrAZuKwG/7JQ1JNopbDTxssirA/OzwTGjq7BUv7INyR8nBbOp6I xcrjq2bXja6Kxo08pr3+UrWc+0LO8fvX9z3rkm6USyin7TueS85gEUsk30h1Xng3 Al1QccJ9KKJ+iQKdGozeHD2OlTFC1zW2kZaWbhgxOewDlmf7cNwZXEUwfr4C4Hs= =j5eo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----