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Last Notes

2023-06-07 18:29:54 UTC

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2021-03-03
📝 Original message:I must remind everyone of Mike Hearn's proposal not many years ago, which
ought to be on everyone's mind right now. "Every soft fork should be a hard
fork, and that soft forks are inherently dangerous because old nodes are
tricked to not know what the new nodes are doing" (paraphrased). Whether
taproot is dangerous is not the issue; whether old nodes should or should
not ignore new rules, is.
Flag day activation of a soft fork is basically proposing a hard fork, but
without saying or doing it at full commitment. May as well just do a flag
day hard fork.
Bitcoin Cash/Bcash has already tested for you how a market driven hard fork
should work. Bitcoin didn't die. We should be learning from the mistakes
made in those early hard forks to not repeat them when Bitcoin hard forks -
like having replay protection written before deployment.
If it's not evident within the first 6-12 blocks which fork is winning,
then the market will trade it out. Just like what happened with Bitcoin
Cash/Bcash.
Not only that, it stops the drama of Bitcoin Core devs from "being in
control" of consensus. The market will choose, you just create the safest
way for users to participate. The market is consensus. Rough consensus is
just the conversation starter.
On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, 1:39 am Chris Belcher via bitcoin-dev, <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> The bitcoin world is close to total gridlock on the question of how to
> activate taproot. There's no agreement on activation[1][2], and if an
> agreement isn't reached then nothing happens. That would be really
> terrible because we'd miss out on the benefits of taproot and
> potentially other future soft forks.
>
> A major problem with BIP8 is that it would result to a situation where
> different parts of the bitcoin ecosystem run different consensus rules.
> Some people will run LOT=true and others LOT=false. Worst of all, it
> becomes vulnerable to a twitter/reddit/social media blitz which could
> attempt to move the date of miner activation around.
>
> Twitter and reddit drama provide a perfect cover for social attacks on
> bitcoin.
>
> Forced signalling leads to brinksmanship. Where two or more sides
> (backed up by social media drama) enter into a game of chicken with
> deployed nodes. If one of them doesn't concede then we get a damaging
> chain split. And the $1 trillion in value that the bitcoin network
> protects is put at risk. From the point of view of a miner or big
> exchange stuck in the middle, if they look at the ecosystem of twitter
> and reddit (especially if you think about all the problems with bots and
> sockpuppets) they have no idea which consensus rules they should
> actually follow and exactly what date they take effect. Miners,
> exchanges, merchants and the rest of the ecosystem exist to serve their
> customers and users, and trouble happens when they don't know what their
> customers really want. Social media attacks are not just a theoretical
> concern; back during the block size drama, the bitcoin reddits were
> targetted by bots, sockpuppets and brigading[3].
>
> Enter flag day activation. With a flag day there can be no
> brinksmanship. A social media blitz cant do anything except have its own
> followers fork away. Crucially, miner signalling cant be used to change
> the activation date for nodes that didn't choose to and just passively
> follow signalling. Changing the activation date requires all those users
> to actually run different node software.
>
> Flag day activation works simply: we choose a block height and after
> that block height the new taproot rules become enforced.
>
>
> Supporters of the permissionless, "users rule" approach of LOT=true
> should be happy because it completely takes miners out of activation.
>
> Supporters of the safe, conservative approach of LOT=false can be made
> happy with a few ways of derisking:
>
> * Getting mining pools, businesses and users to look at the code and ask
> if they (a) think its either neutral or good for their business or use
> case and (b) they believe others view it similarly and that the
> consensus changes proposed have a good social consensus around them.
>
> * Setting the flag day far in the future (18 months or 2 years in the
> original proposal[3]).
>
>
> == What if flag day activation is used maliciously? ==
>
> What if one day the Core developer team is co-opted and uses the flag
> day method to do something bad? For example, a soft fork where sending
> to certain blacklisted addresses is not allowed. The bitcoin user
> community who wants to resist this can create their own
> counter-soft-fork full node, where the first block after the flag day
> MUST pay to one of those addresses on the blacklist. This forces a chain
> split between the censorship rules and the no-censorship rules, and its
> pretty obvious that the real bitcoin which most people follow will be
> the chain without censorship.
>
> For example, if a group of users didn't agree with taproot then they
> could create their own counter-flag-day-activation which requires that a
> transaction is included that does an invalid-spend from a taproot output
> in the first block after the flag day height.
>
> This is always possible with any user activated soft fork. In BIP8
> LOT=true it could be done by rejecting block headers with certain
> version bits signalled.
>
>
> == But it will take so long! ==
>
> We seem to be at a deadlock now. This will take less time than any other
> method, because other methods might never happen. BIP8 is dead and from
> what I see there's no other credible plan.
>
> We've already waited years for taproot. I remember listening to talks
> about bitcoin from 2015 of people discussing Schnorr signatures. And
> given how slow segwit and p2sh adoption were its pretty likely that
> we'll waiting a while for taproot to be actually adopted.
>
>
> == A social media blitz could still try to activate it early ==
>
> The brinksmanship only works because miner signalling can make many
> other nodes activate early, even if those other nodes didn't do
> anything. There can't be a game of chicken that puts the bitcoin network
> at risk.
>
> If a group of people did adopt alternative node software which has a
> shorter flag day, they actually have a risk of slow blocks. Because they
> cant trick or force any other nodes to come along with them, they are
> likely to only have a small economy and therefore would lose a lot of
> hashrate. Imagine trading bitcoins for cash in person and instead of
> waiting 10 minutes for a confirmation you have to wait 3 hours because
> the blocks are slow.
>
> Also, the argument for downloading and running a different software only
> to speed up activation is pretty weak. Taproot would activate in ~18
> months, so why are you so impatient that you need it in 6 months? And
> risk slow blocks for you while doing so? The big difference with BIP148
> the segwit UASF, is that people *had to* run some other software
> otherwise they would get *no soft fork at all*.
>
>
> == Without miner signalling how do we know the new rules are even
> activated? ==
>
> When did you see miners signalling their support for the inflation
> schedule?
>
> Bitcoin's rules are enforced by wallets backed by full nodes. You'll
> always know if your own full node is enforcing the new rules. The thing
> that matters isnt miner signalling but your own full node, and the nodes
> of those you trade with.
>
> Flag day activation is quite similar to the way block reward halvenings
> work. At and after block height 630000 miners are only allowed to create
> 6.25 BTC rather than 12.5 BTC. Everyone knows that if miners continued
> to create 12.5 BTC or more they would be unable to sell or spend those
> coins anywhere.
>
> In 2017 when segwit was being activated people created a huge list of
> various bitcoin companies, merchants and wallets:
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20171228111943/https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/
> Looking at that list, you would know that if someone stole coins from a
> segwit address they would be unable to deposit them in many exchanges
> and merchants: Bitrefill, Bitstamp, Kraken, Localbitcoins, Paxful,
> Vaultoro, HitBTC, etc.
>
> Then what happened is only a month after S2X was beaten this guy moved
> 40000 BTC to a segwit address, confident about the power of the network
> to protect his coins.
>
> https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7tcmi4/bitcointalks_famous_user_loaded_moved_his_40k_btc/
>
> If there's ever any doubt about flag day activation we can always draw
> up a similar list, although if there's broad consensus about it then
> there's no reason why bitcoin businesses wouldn't upgrade to the latest
> Core, like they did with every other previous soft fork.
>
>
> == This gives the impression that Core developers control the protocol ==
>
> This objection has a mirror image argument: BIP8 with LOT=false gives
> the impression that miners control the protocol(!)
>
> Eventually some group has to make a decision. We will ask the bitcoin
> economy and users what they think of flag day activation. It's pretty
> clear that nobody seriously objects to taproot, and as described above
> if Core developers did something evil the community could resist it with
> a counter-flag-day-activation.
>
>
>
> == TL;DR ==
>
> I believe flag day activation is the way forward. It should answer all
> the objections and risks which make other methods too controversial.
> Let's go ahead and bring taproot to bitcoin!
>
>
>
> == References ==
>
> [1] -
>
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-February/018498.html
> luke-jr posts saying LOT=false in his view reintroduces a bug, he
> compares it to introducing an inflation bug and just hoping that miners
> will not exploit it.
>
> [2] -
>
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-February/018425.html
> This whole thread has many people disagreeing with LOT=true
>
> [3] -
>
> https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4biob5/research_into_instantaneous_vote_behavior_in/
>
>
> https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3v04pd/can_we_please_have_a_civil_discussion_about/cxjnz1d/?context=1
>
>
> https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/41ykkt/members_trying_to_destroy_bitcoin_on_this_thread/cz6ccka/?context=3
>
> [4] -
>
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-February/018495.html
> Matt Corallo's flag day activation proposal
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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2023-06-07 17:46:12 UTC

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2015-12-12
📝 Original message:Dormant threshold is way too low. There's many news articles about people
forgetting that they used to mine bitcoins and then suddenly remembered.
This will continue to happen for much longer than 8 years as people
rediscover bitcoin when it goes further mainstream. You can't expect them
to have run a node/kept their utxo before they were aware of this change
and then realise miners have discarded their utxo. Oops?
Since we can't predict when mainstream will happen, you instead need a
threshold where the key holder is likely dead. That should be like 80 years
or 120 years, so 4.2m to 6.3m confirmations.
Next paragraph is off topic:
IMO it would be even better for these dormant & dead key holder's utxos to
also re-enter the economy as miner fees; let 1 dormant utxo to be mined per
block. It would need a hard fork. But then maybe people would stop being so
stupid with burning bitcoins/sending it to 1BitcoinEater, or mining a
million bitcoins from day 1 and leaving it, if they know it'll eventually
go into another miner's pockets. This could be used to fund cheap
transactions forever, and miners would be incentivised to hold copies of
these dormant utxos since it could become theirs one day. But this would be
even more controversial than just expiring them as we are in no short
supply of people who believe in Bitcoin's deflationary, fossil fuel
(burnable) economy, rather than a cyclical economy that better resembles
how we treat lost gold today...
On Dec 13, 2015 10:29 AM, "gb via bitcoin-dev" <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> The general concept has merit and the basic outline here seems sound
> enough. I have harboured a notion for having "archived UTXO" for some
> time, this is essentially it. The retrieval from archive cost is on the
> UTXO holder not the entire storage network, which is then only bearing
> full 'instant' retrieval costs for N blocks.
>
> On Sat, 2015-12-12 at 15:09 -0500, jl2012--- via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > It is a common practice in commercial banks that a dormant account might
> > be confiscated. Confiscating or deleting dormant UTXOs might be too
> > controversial, but allowing the UTXOs set growing without any limit
> > might not be a sustainable option. People lose their private keys.
> > People do stupid things like sending bitcoin to 1BitcoinEater. We
> > shouldn’t be obliged to store everything permanently. This is my
> > proposal:
> >
> > Dormant UTXOs are those UTXOs with 420000 confirmations. In every block
> > X after 420000, it will commit to a hash for all UTXOs generated in
> > block X-420000. The UTXOs are first serialized into the form:
> > txid|index|value|scriptPubKey, then a sorted Merkle hash is calculated.
> > After some confirmations, nodes may safely delete the UTXO records of
> > block X permanently.
> >
> > If a user is trying to redeem a dormant UTXO, in addition the signature,
> > they have to provide the scriptPubKey, height (X), and UTXO value as
> > part of the witness. They also need to provide the Merkle path to the
> > dormant UTXO commitment.
> >
> > To confirm this tx, the miner will calculate a new Merkle hash for the
> > block X, with the hash of the spent UTXO replaced by 1, and commit the
> > hash to the current block. All full nodes will keep an index of latest
> > dormant UTXO commitments so double spending is not possible. (a
> > "meta-UTXO set")
> >
> > If all dormant UTXOs under a Merkle branch are spent, hash of the branch
> > will become 1. If all dormant UTXOs in a block are spent, the record for
> > this block could be forgotten. Full nodes do not need to remember which
> > particular UTXO is spent or not, since any person trying to redeem a
> > dormant UTXO has to provide such information.
> >
> > It becomes the responsibility of dormant coin holders to scan the
> > blockchain for the current status of the UTXO commitment for their coin.
> > They may also need to pay extra fee for the increased tx size.
> >
> > This is a softfork if there is no hash collision but this is a
> > fundamental assumption in Bitcoin anyway. The proposal also works
> > without segregated witness, just by replacing "witness" with "scriptSig"
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > bitcoin-dev mailing list
> > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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2023-06-07 17:40:58 UTC

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2015-09-18
📝 Original message:This way lets us protect from 51% overwrites for a whole year:
1. Hash utxo set as is today, H1, and store it in a block.
2. At the same time, store a copy of the utxo set for H1 on disk, D1
3. After 1 year, create D2, then wait for H2 (if a fork happens then
recreate D2 and see which wins)
4. The block with H2 must hash on top of H1
4. Blocks before H1 can be safely pruned by the network, only keeping D1
for reference/validation, plus blocks the node wants to keep (data/colored
coins)
5. After 1 year, repeat for H3.
7. D1 can also be dropped after a few days once D3 is up, since the H1
securing D1 would have been pruned with H3's usage of D2 by then.
This reduces the security model from 'always secure' to 'secure, as of last
year'. An attacker will need to have hidden hashing power to overwrite a
years worth of blocks. Which I think would be hard enough.
The attacker can also try to undo a freshly built Hn, but because we can
build Dn first and wait for Hn, the nodes should be expecting the same
hash. They also serve as automated checkpoints to prevent them from
overwriting all of it.
On Sep 19, 2015 6:38 AM, "Jorge Timón" <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> s/move the genesis block forward/move your genesis checkpoint forward/
> On Sep 18, 2015 4:37 PM, "Jorge Timón" <jtimon at jtimon.cc> wrote:
>
>> Well, with utxo commitments at some point maybe is enough to validate the
>> full headers history but only the last 5 years of ttansaction history
>> (assuming utxo commitments are buried 5 years worth of blocks in the past).
>> This scales much better than validating the full history and if we get a 5
>> year reorg something is going really wrong anyway...
>> Maybe after validating the last 5 years you also want to validate the
>> rest of the history backards to get the "fully-full node" security.
>> Of course 5 years it's just an arbitrary number: 2 or maybe even 1 would
>> probably be secure enough for most people. I've referred to this idea as
>> "hard checkpoints" or "moving the genesis block forward" in the past.
>> On Sep 18, 2015 4:18 PM, "Rune Kjær Svendsen" <
>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>
>>> There are a couple of points I’d like to address.
>>>
>>> Firstly, yes, >50% attacks are a problem for Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not
>>> function if the majority of mining power is dishonest. There is no way
>>> around that. It’s how proof-of-work functions. And if we lose
>>> proof-of-work, we lose Bitcoin.
>>>
>>> Secondly, I’m not suggesting that UTXO set hashes *replace* block
>>> hashes, or even that it should be in the block header (probably in the
>>> coinbase somewhere). I suggest it as an *addition* to the existing
>>> consensus rules. Full nodes can still verify the chain with the added step
>>> of hashing the UTXO set for every block. Of course, this can easily be
>>> deferred to after proof-of-work has been verified already, such that no
>>> work is wasted. Unless a 51% attack is in effect. But I argue that this is
>>> a moot point, since Bitcoin is useless anyway under such circumstances.
>>>
>>> Lastly, I’m not suggesting miners discard the blockchain history. A
>>> miner has an incentive to be absolutely sure that the chain he’s building
>>> on is the right one. If he’s wrong, he loses money/income. There’s simply
>>> no reason for a professional miner *not* to do the full initial sync, which
>>> only needs to be done once. Non-miners, who just want to check the balance
>>> of their wallet, however, really don’t need to retrieve information about
>>> Hal Finney sending bitcoins to Satoshi in 2010. In any case, this practice
>>> isn’t sustainable.
>>>
>>> In the end, it isn’t possible to control whether a miner verifies the
>>> entire blockchain anyway (anyone can send the UTXO set over the wire). Not
>>> letting the proof-of-work cover the UTXO hash doesn’t solve this problem,
>>> it only makes it impossible to know whether a given UTXO set is the one
>>> that the majority is mining on without retrieving the entire blockchain,
>>> and doing the verification yourself. People can choose to skip that
>>> regardless of what we do.
>>>
>>> Furthermore, all nodes have the option of deciding which level of
>>> security they want. We’re not lessening security of the protocol, we’re
>>> strengthening the security of something that’s already possible to do
>>> (build on top of an unverified blockchain), but we’d rather want that
>>> people not do.
>>>
>>> /Rune
>>>
>>>
>>> > On 18 Sep 2015, at 21:43, Patrick Strateman via bitcoin-dev <
>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Full nodes using UTXO set commitments is a change to the bitcoin
>>> > security model.
>>> >
>>> > Currently an attacker with >50% of the network hashrate can rewrite
>>> history.
>>> >
>>> > If full nodes rely on UTXO set commitments such an attacker could
>>> create
>>> > an infinite number of bitcoins (as in many times more than the current
>>> > 21 million bitcoin limit).
>>> >
>>> > Before we consider mechanisms for UTXO set commitments, we should
>>> > seriously discuss whether the security model reduction is reasonable.
>>> >
>>> > On 09/18/2015 12:05 PM, Rune Kjær Svendsen via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>>> >> Currently, when a new node wants to join the network, it needs to
>>> retrieve the entire blockchain history, starting from January 2009 and up
>>> until now, in order to derive a UTXO set that it can verify new
>>> blocks/transactions against. With a blockchain size of 40GB and a UTXO size
>>> of around 1GB, the extra bandwidth required is significant, and will keep
>>> increasing indefinitely. If a newly mined block were to include the UTXO
>>> set hash of the chain up until the previous block — the hash of the UTXO
>>> set on top of which this block builds — then new nodes, who want to know
>>> whether a transaction is valid, would be able to acquire the UTXO set in a
>>> trustless manner, by only verifying proof-of-work headers, and knowing that
>>> a block with an invalid UTXO set hash would be rejected.
>>> >>
>>> >> I’m not talking about calculating a complicated tree structure from
>>> the UTXO set, which would put further burden on already burdened Bitcoin
>>> Core nodes. We simply include the hash of the current UTXO set in a newly
>>> created block, such that the transactions in the new block build *on top*
>>> of the UTXO set whose hash is specified. This actually alleviates Bitcoin
>>> Core nodes, as it will now become possible for nodes without the entire
>>> blockchain to answer SPV queries (by retrieving the UTXO set trustlessly
>>> and using this to answer queries). It also saves bandwidth for Bitcore Core
>>> nodes, who only need to send roughly 1GB of data, in order to synchronise a
>>> node, rather than 40GB+. I will continue to run a full Bitcoin Core node,
>>> saving the entire blockchain history, but it shouldn’t be a requirement to
>>> hold the entire transaction history in order to start verifying new
>>> transactions.
>>> >>
>>> >> As far as I can see, this also forces miners to actually maintain an
>>> UTXO set, rather than just build on top of the chain with the most
>>> proof-of-work. Producing a UTXO set and verifying a block against a chain
>>> is the same thing, so by including the hash of the UTXO set we force miners
>>> to verify the block that they want to build on top of.
>>> >>
>>> >> Am I missing something obvious, because as far as I can see, this
>>> solves the problem of quadratic time complexity for initial sync:
>>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&t=2h02m12s
>>> >>
>>> >> The only added step to verifying a block is to hash the UTXO set. So
>>> it does require additional computation, but most modern CPUs have a SHA256
>>> throughput of around 500 MB/s, which means it takes only two seconds to
>>> hash the UTXO set. And this can be improved further (GPUs can do 2-3 GB/s).
>>> A small sacrifice for the added ease of initial syncing, in my opinion.
>>> >>
>>> >> /Rune
>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>> >> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>>> >> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>>> >> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > _______________________________________________
>>> > bitcoin-dev mailing list
>>> > bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>>> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>>
>>
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