{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1f2nvlx49er5c7sqa43src6ssyp6snd4qwvtkwm5avc2l84cs84esecrwet","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1f2nvlx49er5c7sqa43src6ssyp6snd4qwvtkwm5avc2l84cs84esecrwet","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2015-08-30\n📝 Original message:On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 1:43 AM, Peter R \u003cpeter_r at gmx.com\u003e wrote:\n\u003e Dear Greg,\n\u003e\n\u003e I am moving our conversation into public as I've recently learned that\n\u003e you've been forwarding our private email conversation verbatim without\n\u003e my permission [I received permission from dpinna to share the email\n\u003e below that proves this fact].\n\nUnfortunately, your work extensive as it was made at least two\nnon-disclosed or poorly-disclosed simplifying assumptions and a significant\nsystem understanding error which, I believe, undermined it completely.\n\nIn short these were:\n\n* You assume miners do not have the ability to change their level\ncentralization.\n\n -- In fact they do, not just in theory but in pratice have responded\n    to orphaning this way in the past; and it is one of the major\n    concerns in this space.\n\n* You assume the supply of bitcoin is infinite (that subsidy never\ndeclines)\n\n -- It declines geometrically, and must if the 21m limit is to be upheld.\n    (Though I think this is not equally important as the other concerns)\n\n* You argue, incorrectly, that amount of information which must be\ntransmitted at the moment a block is discovered is proportional to the\nblock's size.\n\n -- Instead the same information can be transmitted _in advance_, as\n has been previously proposed, and various techniques can make doing\n so arbitrarily efficient.\n\n[I would encourage anyone who is interested to read the posted off-list\ndiscussion]\n\nI contacted you in private as a courtesy in the hope that it would be\na more productive pathway to improving our collective understanding; as well\nas a courtesy to the readers of the list in consideration of traffic levels.\n\nIn one sense, this was a success: Our conversation concluded with you\nenumerating a series of corrective actions that you would take:\n\n--------\n\u003e 1.  I will make it more clear that the results of the paper hinge on\n\u003e the assumption that block solutions are propagated across channels,\n\u003e and that the quantity of pure information communicated per solution\n\u003e is proportional to the amount of information contained within the block.\n\u003e\n\u003e 2.  I will add a note [unless you ask me not to] something to the effect\n\u003e of \"Greg Maxwell challenges the claim that the coding gain cannot\n\u003e be infinite…\" followed by a summary of the scenario you described.\n\u003e I will reference \"personal communication.\"  I will also run the note\n\u003e by you before I make the next revision public.\n\u003e\n\u003e 3.  I will point out that if the coding gain can be made spectacularly\n\u003e high, that the propagation impedance in my model will become very small,\n\u003e and that although a fee market may strictly exist in the asymptotic\n\u003e sense, such a fee market may not be relevant (the phenomena in the paper\n\u003e would be negligible compared to the dynamics from some other effect).\n\u003e\n\u003e 4. [UNRELATED] I also plan to address Dave Hudson's objections in my\n\u003e next revision (the \"you don't orphan your own block\" point).\n\u003e\n\u003e Lastly, thank you for the note about what might happen when fees \u003e\n\u003e rewards.  I've have indeed been thinking about this.  I believe it is\n\u003e outside the scope of the present paper, although I am doing some work\n\u003e on the topic.  (Perhaps I'll add a bit more discussion on this topic\n\u003e to the present paper to get the reader thinking in this direction).\n--------\n\nTo the best of my knowledge, you've taken none of these corrective\nactions in the nearly month that has passed.  I certainly understand being\nbacklogged, but you've also continued to make public comments about your\nwork seemingly (to me) in contradiction with the above corrective actions.\n\nToday I discovered that another author spent their time extending your\nwork and wasn't made aware of these points.  A result was that the other\nauthor's work may require significant revisions.\n\nI complained about this to you, again privately, and your (apparent)\nresponse was to post to that thread stating that there was a\ndetails-unspecified academic disagreement with me and \"I look forward\nto a white paper demonstrating otherwise!\", in direct contradiction to\nyour remarks to me three weeks ago in private correspondence: In private\nyou said that your model may only hold in an asymptotic sense and that\n\"the phenomena in the paper (may) be negligible compared to the dynamics\nfrom some other effect\"; but in public you said /my/ position was\n\"academic\".\n\nAt this point I thought continuing to withhold this information from\nthe other author was unreasonable and no longer justified by courtesy\nto you, and I forwarded our complete discussion to the other author\nwith the comment \"I'll forward you a set of private correspondence\nthat I've had with Peter R.  I would recommend you take the time to\nread it and consider it.\".\n\nI apologize if in doing so I've breached your confidence, none of the\nmaterial we discussed was a sort that I would have ordinarily considered\nprivate, and you had already talked about making the product of our\ncommunication published as part of your corrective actions.\nI do not think it would be reasonable to demand that I spent time\nrepeating the same discussion again with the other author, or deprive\nthem of your side of it and/or the corrective actions which you had\nsaid you would take but have not yet taken.\n\n(In fact, I would argue that you were already obligated to share at least the\nsubstance of the discussion  with the other author, both as part of your\ncommitment to me as well it being necessiary for intellectual progress.)\n\nAs you say, 'we are all here trying to learn about this new amazing\nthing called Bitcoin'; and I'm not embarrassed to error towards doing\nthat and aiding others in doing so, but at the same time I am sorry\nto have done so in a way which caused you some injury.\n\nIn any case, your prior proposed corrective actions seemed sufficient to me.\n\nIt surprises me, greatly, that you are failing to see the extreme\npracticality of what I described to you, and that it does not meaningfully\ndiminish miner control of transaction selection-- but even without it your\nremark that the proportionality could be arbitrarily small (Rather than\n0, as I argue) is an adequate correction to your work, in my view.\n\nI believe my time would be better spent actually _implementing_ improved\nrelaying described (and describe what was implemented) than continue\na purely academic debate with you over the (IMO) inconsequential difference\nbetween epsilon and zero.\n\nCheers,"}