\[Proposal\] Cryptocoin Policy Virtual Conference
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[quote name=“zerodrama” post=“34412” timestamp=“1384565404”]
1. I am working to make it possible for all cryptos to stop having to reinvent. That’s why I chose XUL.
[/quote]Ambitious! More power to you. I’d love to review your plan and see how it differs from BitcoinJS.
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2. That discussion has no business being behind the scenes. You can’t claim working policy process and remove people from the process.
[/quote]Of course it does. Members can discuss whatever the fuck they want among themselves. That’s one of the privileges of membership. There’s no reason to invite outside discussion until the policy process has begun. This is NOT the policy process, this is an internal discussion among foundation members. Policy process looks VERY different with the Bitcoin foundation, and is a very open process that looks VERY different than Mike asking for an open discussion on an internal mailing list. Specifically it looks like the BIP. You’ve confused the internal mailing list for a BIP. This isn’t a BIP. It’s an internal discussion.
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3. The notion of unwashed masses is the attitude that makes me want to make participation easier.
[/quote]Good! I hope the anger fuels your fire and you reenact the story Prometheus bringing said fire to the people, and meritocracies be damned!
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4. Bitcoin dominance is protected by the mess of code that only early users are familiar with.
[/quote]No it isn’t, it’s protected by the adoption of the protocol. The client is irrelevant, and many exist in many languages. BitcoinJ, for instance, is REALLY well constructed and follows a great number of best practices. I found it REALLY easy to pull it apart and repurpose. If the QT wallet code were to be lost forever tomorrow, Bitcoin would still be equally protected.
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Would you tell a surgeon, “You just have no experience with compilers, you really shouldn’t comment on how well they follow your intentions.”?
[/quote]You bet I would, especially if myself and another developer were discussing the finer points of Just-In-Time evaluation, and he kept trying demand that my compiler should be able to draw blood from a vein.
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Merry Ad Hoc Cracies will not be merry for long. -> https://wikileaks.org/tpp/#QQC12
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If someone wants to play God?
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[quote name=“lizhi” post=“34422” timestamp=“1384574894”]
If someone wants to play God?
[/quote]I really like you lizhi. You are obviously very intelligent. :)
I’d argue that the developers are not playing invisible wizard in the sky. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and incomprehensible. The developers are fallible, mortal, biased, and dare I point it out… human. They are entirely bound by the conventions of the community that they have created. If people choose to fork the code, and remove a feature they implement, everyone will vote with their admin rights: Either they will install the “official” client, or they will install the forked client with the removed feature. This will set the stage for a forked blockchain, and the miners will decide which one is valid. If the miners can override any decision they make, then this isn’t a theocracy, it’s a plutocracy, and the developers are just charitable people in an entirely uncharitable and ultimately selfish world. Satoshi understood this, and wrote about it in his whitepaper. The system will continue to work just as he envisioned it no matter what the Bitcoin Foundation does.
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Alright, so… I say enough of this talk of problems. Let’s talk solutions.
Here, I’ve got a few.
Solution #1: Use a different address every time.
Solution #2: Use a different address every time.
Solution #3: Use a different address every time.There. That’s 3 completely viable solutions.
Want a better one? Change the protocol to enforce one of the three above solutions. Pick one. I don’t care which one.
It’s trivial. Is the address already in the blockchain? Yes? The transaction is invalid.
BOOM. Problem solved.
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[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“34427” timestamp=“1384577412”]
Alright, so… I say enough of this talk of problems. Let’s talk solutions.Here, I’ve got a few.
Solution #1: Use a different address every time.
Solution #2: Use a different address every time.
Solution #3: Use a different address every time.There. That’s 3 completely viable solutions.
Want a better one? Change the protocol to enforce one of the three above solutions. Pick one. I don’t care which one.
It’s trivial. Is the address already in the blockchain? Yes? The transaction is invalid.
BOOM. Problem solved.
[/quote]We’re sorry but you may only use an address generated by this address seed. Right. OOPS. – See I can be even more evil than they could. They wouldn’t even need to taint at this point. The police could run as many sting ops as they wanted at a click of a button. Hell, they could use metaseeds.
METASEED
Step 1: select a private key
Step 2: generate a private seed
Step 3: generate a series of public seeds
Step 4: allow/track only addresses generated by public seeds corresponding to the private seedOne simple degree of separation and you can’t tell if address seeds are marked or not.
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[quote name=“zerodrama” post=“34433” timestamp=“1384581093”]
We’re sorry but you may only use an address generated by this address seed. Right. OOPS. – See I can be even more evil than they could. They wouldn’t even need to taint at this point. The police could run as many sting ops as they wanted at a click of a button. Hell, they could use metaseeds.METASEED
Step 1: select a private key
Step 2: generate a private seed
Step 3: generate a series of public seeds
Step 4: allow/track only addresses generated by public seeds corresponding to the private seedOne simple degree of separation and you can’t tell if address seeds are marked or not.
[/quote]That’s a fairly Orwellian view of the future. I’m more of a Bradbury futurist myself.
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[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“34437” timestamp=“1384588346”]
[quote author=zerodrama link=topic=4429.msg34433#msg34433 date=1384581093]
We’re sorry but you may only use an address generated by this address seed. Right. OOPS. – See I can be even more evil than they could. They wouldn’t even need to taint at this point. The police could run as many sting ops as they wanted at a click of a button. Hell, they could use metaseeds.METASEED
Step 1: select a private key
Step 2: generate a private seed
Step 3: generate a series of public seeds
Step 4: allow/track only addresses generated by public seeds corresponding to the private seedOne simple degree of separation and you can’t tell if address seeds are marked or not.
[/quote]That’s a fairly Orwellian view of the future. I’m more of a Bradbury futurist myself.
[/quote]Huxley, Orwell, Kafka, Bradbury. The four hearsemen of the apocalypse.
It remains: Coins can be blacklisted without checking Santa’s list. You and I have very different ideas about how to manage these risks.
In any case, complexity is my personal target. This sort of thing should have been open, where the proposal couldn’t be sanitized and massaged. -
I just read this: [url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/]http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/[/url]
So, although unrelated to the foundation, these guys are basically proposing a forced soft fork of the protocol if their “idea” is implemented. Or at least that’s what it looks like to me. It’s actually a genius solution to taking control - from a government/powers-that-be point of view. No need for the huge amount of power/money it would take to fork the blockchain by force, it will be done slowly, but surely.
Bitcoin faces three major hurdles right now in order to truly become a mainstream financial force: wide adoption and use on a simple consumer/user level, the secure ability to convert to and from fiat [at least for the foreseeable future], and it needs to navigate the various legal avenues of doing both [there’s tax issues, financial regulatory bullshit etc].
If the CoinValidation system becomes the government supported defacto means of using Bitcoin, businesses and exchanges will be forced to adopt it to survive. Any legitimate business will need to in fact, in order to maintain their legal business status within the US [it’ll be ratified within some bill about animal cruelty]. Even if this only occurs in the US, the economic effects will be felt worldwide. Now businesses in other countries will be forced to follow suit in order not to be excluded for the growing number of users who are [whether intentionally or not, with or without knowledge of the details] using the CoinValidation system.
A new 51% attack occurs at some point. It’s the point where having “dirty” Bitcoin as a user will prove to be more of a burden than worth the effort - and that’s just for the early adopters and those that actually get it.
Take Joe Schmoe for example. He doesn’t know what Bitcoin is today. But two years from now, his younger nephew gives him his first 100 Satoshis. He’s gonna go on amazon.com, and buy himself the entire Friends series on Blu-Ray [Rachel’s hot!]. Gee whiz, that’s great! He won’t even know that amazon.com utilizes the CoinValidation API/system - heck, his online wallet [probably called BitLet or something stupid like that] also uses it. The news will sometimes talk about “dirty” Bitcoin and people getting arrested for buying childporn and drugs with it, so he’ll figure out that in order to keep his clean, he’ll have to only use it on the sites with the CoinValidation logo. Heck, why would he want to break the law?
Oh, but wait - Visa and Mastercard have entered the race as well. They now offer Bitcoin credit cards. Guaranteed clean. And the best part is that their fees are the fucking same as before.
Yeah, I guess I’m on the Orwellian side. Mike Hearn made the mistake of asking for opinions about something behind closed doors [it’s inherently undemocratic]. Before anything was implemented. But it didn’t take much to get the imaginations of Bitcoin users to go haywire. It was so perfectly timed after all, with the CoinValidation and the Congress hearing and all…
Mike Hearn, and all the devs are [in my opinion] the weakest link. Those who have access. Those who we as users trust. They can be tricked/forced or even paid into doing something. And it won’t be something that happens overnight - it’ll be the Patriot act, slowly chipping away at the Bitcoin constitution. With each tiny little release. Each tiny change to the code explained away.
I need sleep. Anyway…
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[quote name=“mnstrcck” post=“34448” timestamp=“1384596957”]
Oh, but wait - Visa and Mastercard have entered the race as well. They now offer Bitcoin credit cards. Guaranteed clean. And the best part is that their fees are the fucking same as before.
[/quote]Hahaha. God this might actually come true. It will be like Facebook all over again.
