{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2015-07-29\n📝 Original message:\u003e\n\u003e Irrelevant what term was used - and as brilliant as Satoshi might have\n\u003e been at some things, he obviously got this one wrong.\n\u003e\n\nI don't think it's obvious. You may disagree, but don't pretend any of this\nstuff is obvious.\n\nConsider this:  the highest Bitcoin tx fees can possibly go is perhaps a\nlittle higher than what our competition charges. Too much higher than that,\nand people will just say, you know what .... I'll make a bank transfer.\nIt's cheaper and not much slower, sometimes no slower at all.\n\nAnd now consider that in many parts of the world bank transfers are free.\n\nThey aren't actually free, of course, but they *appear* to be free because\nthe infrastructure for doing them is cross subsidised by the fees on other\nproducts and services, or hidden in the prices of goods sold.\n\nSo that's a market reality Bitcoin has to handle. It's already more\nexpensive than the competition sometimes, but luckily not much more, and\nanyway Bitcoin has some features those other systems lack (and vice versa).\nSo it can still be competitive.\n\nBut your extremely vague notion of a \"fee market\" neglects to consider that\nit already exists, and it's not a market of \"Bitcoin users buying space in\nBitcoin blocks\". It's \"users paying to move money\".\n\nYou can argue with this sort of economic logic if you like, but don't claim\nthis stuff is obvious.\n\nNobody threatened to start mining huge blocks given how relatively\n\u003e inexpensive it was to mine back then?\n\u003e\n\nNot that I recall. It wasn't a response to any actual event, I think, but\nrather a growing realisation that the code was full of DoS attacks.\n\n\n\n\u003e Guess what? SPV wallets are still not particularly widespread…and those\n\u003e that are out there are notoriously terrible at detecting network forks and\n\u003e making sure they are on the right one.\n\u003e\n\nThe most popular mobile wallet (measured by installs) on Android is SPV. It\nhas between 500,000 and 1 million installs, whilst Coinbase has not yet\ncrossed the 500,000 mark. One of the most popular wallets on iOS is SPV. If\nwe had SPV wallets with better user interfaces on desktops, they'd be more\npopular there too (perhaps MultiBit HD can recapture some lost ground).\n\nSo I would argue that they are in fact very widespread.\n\nLikewise, they are not \"notoriously terrible\" at detecting chain forks.\nThat's a spurious idea that you and Patrick have been pushing lately, but\nthey detect them and follow reorgs across them according to the SPV\nalgorithm, which is based on most work done. This is exactly what they are\ndesigned to do.\n\nContrast this with other lightweight wallets which either don't examine the\nblock chain or implement the algorithm incorrectly, and I fail to see how\nthis can be described as \"notoriously terrible\".\n\n\n\n\u003e I understand that initially it was desirable that transactions be free…but\n\u003e surely even Satoshi understood this couldn’t be perpetually\n\u003e self-sustaining…and that the ability to bid for inclusion in blocks would\n\u003e eventually become a crucial component of the network. Or were fees just\n\u003e added for decoration?\n\u003e\n\nFees were added as a way to get money to miners in a fair and decentralised\nway.\n\nAttaching fees directly to all transactions is certainly one way to use\nthat, but it's not the only way. As noted above, our competitors prefer a\ncombination of price-hiding and cross subsidisation. Both of these can be\nimplemented with tx fees, but not necessarily by trying to artificially\nlimit supply, which is economically nonsensical.\n\n\n\n\u003e We’re already more than six years into this. When were these mechanisms\n\u003e going to be developed and tested? After 10 years? 20? Perhaps after 1024\n\u003e years?(https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki)\n\u003e\n\nMaybe when there is a need? I already discussed this topic of need here:\n\nhttps://medium.com/@octskyward/hashing-7d04a887acc8\n\nRight. Turns out the ledger structure is terrible for constructing the\n\u003e kinds of proofs that are most important to validators - i.e. whether an\n\u003e output exists, what its script and amounts are, whether it’s been spent,\n\u003e etc…\n\u003e\n\nValidators don't require proofs. That's why they are validators.\n\nI think you're trying to say the block chain doesn't provide the kinds of\nproofs that are most important to lightweight wallets. But I would\ndisagree. Even with UTXO commitments, there can still be double spends out\nthere in the networks memory pools you are unaware of. Merely being\npresented with a correctly signed transaction doesn't tell you a whole lot\n..... if you wait for a block, you get the same level of proof regardless\nof whether there are UTXO commitments or not. If you don't then you still\nhave to have some trust in your peers that you are seeing an accurate and\nfull view of network traffic.\n\nSo whilst there are ways to make the protocol incrementally better, when\nyou work through the use cases for these sorts of data structures and ask\n\"how will this impact the user experience\", the primary candidates so far\ndon't seem to make much difference.\n\nRemote attestation from secure hardware would make a big difference though.\nThen you could get rid of the waiting times entirely because you know the\nsending wallet won't double spend.\n\n\nYes, let’s wait until things are about to break before even beginning to\n\u003e address the issue…because we can “easily create” anything we haven’t\n\u003e invented yet at the last minute.\n\u003e\n\nbitcoinj already has a micropayment channel implementation in it. There's a\nbit of work required to glue everything together, but it's not a massive\nproject to start using this to pay nodes for their services.\n\nBut it's not needed right now:  serving these clients is so darn cheap. And\nthere is plenty of room for optimising things still further!\n\n\n\n\u003e I’m one of the very few developers in this space that has actually tried\n\u003e *hard* to make your BIP37 work. Amongst the desktop wallets listed on\n\u003e bitcoin.org, there are only two that have always supported SPV (or at\n\u003e least I think MultiBit has always supported it, perhaps I’m wrong). One is\n\u003e MultiBit, the other one is mine. I give you credit for your work…perhaps\n\u003e you could be generous enough to extend me some credit too?\n\u003e\n\nMultiBit has always supported it. I apologise for implying you have not\nbuilt a wallet. I think yours is mSIGNA, right? Did it used to be called\nsomething else? I recognise the website design but must admit, I have not\nheard of mSIGNA before.\n\nRegardless, as a fellow implementor, I would appreciate it more if you\ndesigned and implemented upgrades, rather than just trashing the work done\nso far as \"notoriously terrible\", Satoshi as \"not a systems architect\" and\nso on.\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150729/29ef9231/attachment-0001.html\u003e"}