> Remember that the "hashpower required to secure bitcoin" is determined > as a percentage of total Bitcoins transacted on-chain in each block
Can you explain this statement a little better? What do you mean by that? What does the total bitcoins transacted have to do with hashpower required? On Fri, Mar 31, 2017 at 2:22 PM, Matt Corallo via bitcoin-dev <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey Sergio, > > You appear to have ignored the last two years of Bitcoin hardfork > research and understanding, recycling instead BIP 102 from 2015. There > are many proposals which have pushed the state of hard fork research > much further since then, and you may wish to read some of the posts on > this mailing list listed at https://bitcoinhardforkresearch.github.io/ > and make further edits based on what you learn. Your goal of "avoid > technical changes" appears to not have any basis outside of perceived > compromise for compromise sake, only making such a hardfork riskier > instead. > > At a minimum, in terms of pure technical changes, you should probably > consider (probably among others): > > a) Utilizing the "hard fork signaling bit" in the nVersion of the block. > b) Either limiting non-SegWit transactions in some way to fix the n**2 > sighash and FindAndDelete runtime and memory usage issues or fix them by > utilizing the new sighash type which many wallets and projects have > already implemented for SegWit in the spending of non-SegWit outputs. > c) Your really should have replay protection in any HF. The clever fix from > Spoonnet for poor scaling of optionally allowing non-SegWit outputs to > be spent with SegWit's sighash provides this all in one go. > d) You may wish to consider the possibility of tweaking the witness > discount and possibly discounting other parts of the input - SegWit went > a long ways towards making removal of elements from the UTXO set cheaper > than adding them, but didn't quite get there, you should probably finish > that job. This also provides additional tuneable parameters to allow you > to increase the block size while not having a blowup in the worst-case > block size. > e) Additional commitments at the top of the merkle root - both for > SegWit transactions and as additional space for merged mining and other > commitments which we may wish to add in the future, this should likely > be implemented an "additional header" ala Johnson Lau's Spoonnet proposal. > > Additionally, I think your parameters here pose very significant risk to > the Bitcoin ecosystem broadly. > > a) Activating a hard fork with less than 18/24 months (and even then...) > from a fully-audited and supported release of full node software to > activation date poses significant risks to many large software projects > and users. I've repeatedly received feedback from various folks that a > year or more is likely required in any hard fork to limit this risk, and > limited pushback on that given the large increase which SegWit provides > itself buying a ton of time. > > b) Having a significant discontinuity in block size increase only serves > to confuse and mislead users and businesses, forcing them to rapidly > adapt to a Bitcoin which changed overnight both by hardforking, and by > fees changing suddenly. Instead, having the hard fork activate technical > changes, and then slowly increasing the block size over the following > several years keeps things nice and continuous and also keeps us from > having to revisit ye old blocksize debate again six months after activation. > > c) You should likely consider the effect of the many technological > innovations coming down the pipe in the coming months. Technologies like > Lightning, TumbleBit, and even your own RootStock could significantly > reduce fee pressure as transactions move to much faster and more > featureful systems. > > Commitments to aggressive hard fork parameters now may leave miners > without much revenue as far out as the next halving (which current > transaction growth trends are indicating we'd just only barely reach 2MB > of transaction volume, let alone if you consider the effects of users > moving to systems which provide more features for Bitcoin transactions). > This could lead to a precipitous drop in hashrate as miners are no > longer sufficiently compensated. > > Remember that the "hashpower required to secure bitcoin" is determined > as a percentage of total Bitcoins transacted on-chain in each block, so > as subsidy goes down, miners need to be paid with fees, not just price > increases. Even if we were OK with hashpower going down compared to the > value it is securing, betting the security of Bitcoin on its price > rising exponentially to match decreasing subsidy does not strike me as a > particularly inspiring tradeoff. > > There aren't many great technical solutions to some of these issues, as > far as I'm aware, but it's something that needs to be incredibly > carefully considered before betting the continued security of Bitcoin on > exponential on-chain growth, something which we have historically never > seen. > > Matt > > > On March 31, 2017 5:09:18 PM EDT, Sergio Demian Lerner via bitcoin-dev > <[email protected]> wrote: >>Hi everyone, >> >>Segwit2Mb is the project to merge into Bitcoin a minimal patch that >>aims to >>untangle the current conflict between different political positions >>regarding segwit activation vs. an increase of the on-chain blockchain >>space through a standard block size increase. It is not a new solution, >>but >>it should be seen more as a least common denominator. >> >>Segwit2Mb combines segwit as it is today in Bitcoin 0.14+ with a 2MB >>block >>size hard-fork activated ONLY if segwit activates (95% of miners >>signaling), but at a fixed future date. >> >>The sole objective of this proposal is to re-unite the Bitcoin >>community >>and avoid a cryptocurrency split. Segwit2Mb does not aim to be best >>possible technical solution to solve Bitcoin technical limitations. >>However, this proposal does not imply a compromise to the future >>scalability or decentralization of Bitcoin, as a small increase in >>block >>size has been proven by several core and non-core developers not to >>affect >>Bitcoin value propositions. >> >>In the worst case, a 2X block size increase has much lower economic >>impact >>than the last bitcoin halving (<10%), which succeeded without problem. >> >>On the other side, Segwit2Mb primary goal is to be minimalistic: in >>this >>patch some choices have been made to reduce the number of lines >>modified in >>the current Bitcoin Core state (master branch), instead of implementing >>the >>most elegant solution. This is because I want to reduce the time it >>takes >>for core programmers and reviewers to check the correctness of the >>code, >>and to report and correct bugs. >> >>The patch was built by forking the master branch of Bitcoin Core, >>mixing a >>few lines of code from Jeff Garzik's BIP102, and defining a second >>versionbits activation bit (bit 2) for the combined activation. >> >>The combined activation of segwit and 2Mb hard-fork nVersion bit is 2 >>(DEPLOYMENT_SEGWIT_AND_2MB_BLOCKS). >> >>This means that segwit can still be activated without the 2MB hard-fork >>by >>signaling bit 1 in nVersion (DEPLOYMENT_SEGWIT). >> >>The tentative lock-in and hard-fork dates are the following: >> >>Bit 2 signaling StartTime = 1493424000; // April 29th, 2017 >> >>Bit 2 signaling Timeout = 1503964800; // August 29th, 2017 >> >>HardForkTime = 1513209600; // Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT >> >> >>The hard-fork is conditional to 95% of the hashing power has approved >>the >>segwit2mb soft-fork and the segwit soft-fork has been activated (which >>should occur 2016 blocks after its lock-in time) >> >>For more information on how soft-forks are signaled and activated, see >>https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0009.mediawiki >> >>This means that segwit would be activated before 2Mb: this is >>inevitable, >>as versionbits have been designed to have fixed activation periods and >>thresholds for all bits. Making segwit and 2Mb fork activate together >>at a >>delayed date would have required a major re-write of this code, which >>would >>contradict the premise of creating a minimalistic patch. However, once >>segwit is activated, the hard-fork is unavoidable. >> >>Although I have coded a first version of the segwit2mb patch (which >>modifies 120 lines of code, and adds 220 lines of testing code), I >>would >>prefer to wait to publish the source code until more comments have been >>received from the community. >> >>To prevent worsening block verification time because of the O(N^2) >>hashing >>problem, the simple restriction that transactions cannot be larger than >>1Mb >>has been kept. Therefore the worse-case of block verification time has >>only >>doubled. >> >>Regarding the hard-fork activation date, I want to give enough time to >>all >>active economic nodes to upgrade. As of Fri Mar 31 2017, >>https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/ reports that 6332 out of 6955 nodes (91%) >>have upgraded to post 0.12 versions. Upgrade to post 0.12 versions can >>be >>used to identify economic active nodes, because in the 0.12 release >>dynamic >>fees were introduced, and currently no Bitcoin automatic payment system >>can >>operate without automatic discovery of the current fee rate. A pre-0.12 >>would require constant manual intervention. >>Therefore I conclude that no more than 91% of the network nodes >>reported by >>bitnodes are active economic nodes. >> >>As Bitcoin Core 0.12 was released on February 2016, the time for this >>91% >>to upgrade has been around one year (under a moderate pressure of >>operational problems with unconfirmed transactions). >>Therefore we can expect a similar or lower time to upgrade for a >>hard-fork, >>after developers have discussed and approved the patch, and it has been >>reviewed and merged and 95% of the hashing power has signaled for it >>(the >>pressure not to upgrade being a complete halt of the operations). >>However I >>suggest that we discuss the hard-fork date and delay it if there is a >>real >>need to. >> >>Currently time works against the Bitcoin community, and so is delaying >>a >>compromise solution. Most of the community agree that halting the >>innovation for several years is a very bad option. >> >>After the comments collected by the community, a BIP will be written >>describing the resulting proposal details. >> >>If segwit2mb locks-in, before hard-fork occurs all bitcoin nodes should >>be >>updated to a Segwit2Mb enabled node to prevent them to be forked-away >>in a >>chain with almost no hashing-power. >> >>The proof of concept patch was made for Bitcoin Core but should be >>easily >>ported to other Bitcoin protocol implementations that already support >>versionbits. Lightweight (SPV) wallets should not be affected as they >>generally do not check the block size. >> >>I personally want to see the Lightning Network in action this year, use >>the >>non-malleability features in segwit, see the community discussing other >>exciting soft-forks in the scaling roadmap, Schnorr sigs, drivechains >>and >>MAST. >> >>I want to see miners, developers and industry side-by-side pushing >>Bitcoin >>forward, to increase the value of Bitcoin and prevent high transaction >>fees >>to put out of business use-cases that could have high positive social >>impact. >> >>I believe in the strength of a unified Bitcoin community. If you're a >>developer, please give your opinion, suggest changes, audit it, and >>take a >>stand with me to unlock the current Bitcoin deadlock. >> >>Contributions to the segwit2mb project are welcomed and awaited. The >>only >>limitation is to stick to the principle that the patch should be as >>simple >>to audit as possible. As an example, I wouldn't feel confident if the >>patch >>modified more than ~150 lines of code. >> >>Improvements unrelated to a 2 Mb increase or segwit, as beneficial as >>it >>may be to Bitcoin, should not be part of segwit2Mb. >> >>This proposal should not prevent other consensus proposals to be >>simultaneously merged: segwit2mb is a last resort solution in case we >>can >>not reach consensus on anything better. >> >>Again, the proposal is only a starting point: community feedback is >>expected and welcomed. >> >>Regards, >>Sergio Demian Lerner > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
