Segwit discussion (split off from 'Feathercoin roadmap)

kelsey

@kelsey said in Roadmap for FTC.:

certainly good to have the original founder back.

though mention of segwit scars me, personally ltc was my main currency til it went the segwit route (won’t go into details but many pages and months of sometimes heated discussion with coblee, all in vain), please though give us plenty of headsup if ftc goes that route, so investors like me can plan exit stage left.

just being honest. and these things have a tendency to sneak in via just testing.

Can you give a short explanation what scares/bothers you with segwit? As far as I understand, it is a feature you may or may not use and we have people asking for it to be implemented.

If you think, it is worth a dedicated discussion please open a new Thread in category ‘Technical Develpoment’.

short answer…oh boy, easier said then done. now if i give you the short answer, the tech merits can be shot to pieces and i’d spend too much time explaining them, as when said in short can so easily be taken out of context.

my argument against is from the how when why and purpose (and politics) of the idea.
it was packaged to us in bitcoin and at the time extremely unpopular (the blockstream deal), now it been rebadged as the greatest thing since slice bread.

so we go from the dramas in BTC, move to LTC to avoid, it follows to there, move to FTC…hmmm

i was hoping FTC could now find its niche because of this and keep to the original idea…taking the road less traveled may surprise you where it leads…please lets not go the flavor of the month segwit road…and feathercoin on the tech side is the last coin that needs it.

wrapper

The idea is we will review each BIP as it effects FTC and implement it or not. The next major release may jump to 0.13.x in which case, when, or if, a hard fork would proceed can be decided then.

Currently FTC is already 10 times faster / 10 times max transactions than BTC, so implementing Segwit it isn’t urgent for any technical reason.

mkxjinshan

@wrapper I trust we can do more better than BTC

lclc_

@kelsey said in Roadmap for FTC.:

Currently FTC is already 10 times faster / 10 times max transactions than BTC, so implementing Segwit it isn’t urgent for any technical reason.

Segwit is a lot more than just a capacity increase. There are many technical reasons to implement segwit, see: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/

wrapper

@lclc_ said in Roadmap for FTC.:

Segwit is a lot more than just a capacity increase. There are many technical reasons to implement segwit, see: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/

The point was, are they “urgent” technical reasons?

kelsey

@lclc_ said in Roadmap for FTC.:

@kelsey said in Roadmap for FTC.:

Currently FTC is already 10 times faster / 10 times max transactions than BTC, so implementing Segwit it isn’t urgent for any technical reason.

Segwit is a lot more than just a capacity increase. There are many technical reasons to implement segwit, see: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/

yes we’ve all read 1001 segwit is the greatest thing since slice bread articles, most of the perceived benefits are a loooong stretch if you understand what segwit is (and its not that complex).

do you understand who initially pushed it though? and the reason for it?

name a single killer benefit for feathercoin?

now if everyone goes down the segwit path why not do something different, hey lets go crazy and stick with on chain transaction, ftc has the capacity and thats added security over and above any theoretical malleability fix.

AmDD

@kelsey said in Roadmap for FTC.:

@lclc_ said in Roadmap for FTC.:

@kelsey said in Roadmap for FTC.:

Currently FTC is already 10 times faster / 10 times max transactions than BTC, so implementing Segwit it isn’t urgent for any technical reason.

Segwit is a lot more than just a capacity increase. There are many technical reasons to implement segwit, see: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/

yes we’ve all read 1001 segwit is the greatest thing since slice bread articles, most of the perceived benefits are a loooong stretch if you understand what segwit is (and its not that complex).

do you understand who initially pushed it though? and the reason for it?

name a single killer benefit for feathercoin?

now if everyone goes down the segwit path why not do something different, hey lets go crazy and stick with on chain transaction, ftc has the capacity and thats added security over and above any theoretical malleability fix.

I have to say, Ive been a fan of SegWit since I first heard about it. I try very very hard to not bother with the politics of it (or politics in general). In my, possibly limited, knowledge of SegWit, it was pushed as a fix for the malleability fix but also had some additional benefits beyond that - one of which was a “block size increase”.
You bring up a good point that today, FTC can handle 10x the transactions of BTC even without SegWit. I dont pretend to fully understand how this all works in the back end but I think that with faster block times an attacker has less time to form and issue a malleability attack on FTC compared to BTC. Maybe its not as big of a concern for FTC when you consider everything?
The other hand is the idea of closely following BTC and LTC by implementing SegWit. This has some advantages such as atomic swaps or whatever its called, basically shapeshift but built in. It also gives devs an advantage because the code is so similar it makes implementing all three coins into their software much easier and quicker.

Just some quick thoughts… I think it would be worth the discussion regardless of which direction we go.

AcidD

I do think right now FTC is the only coin that has Satoshi’s true vision with the added layer of having a community instead of an initial small group.

SegWit does bring us some fun new toys - such as the lightning network and I hear there’s quite a few fun open source projects that involve lightning and it would be great to widen the community.

From what I understand of SegWit it doesn’t have to be used and anyone running Feathercoin Core on their desktop etc should just be able to continue using FTC as normal. (someone correct me if i’m wrong please)

Getting the Feathercoin Core software updated to a later version is also great news…although we don’t need to implement SegWit to get it done.

One of the things SegWit does is distribute value…or dilute it in a way…which makes me sad :(
It’s also a bit pointless for FTC in it’s current state if we are talking transaction throughput…it will only provide a small increase in transaction throughput for a lot of overhead.

The only benefit I can see is the lightning network and all the fun stuff we get…I unfortunately don’t see this as the “killer benefit” for FTC…an iOS wallet would help more.

My two pence…

Cookieboy

Here is a great little video from Jimmy Song about SegWit. It helped me understand it much better, from a higher level. https://youtu.be/M_GmiapVJAQ

AcidD

FYI - I dunno how true this is and I will be honest and say I’ve only done about 10 mins of research into this.

https://falkvinge.net/2017/05/01/blockstream-patents-segwit-makes-pieces-fall-place/

https://news.bitcoin.com/segregated-witness-patent-infringement/

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@kyle.anderson/clarification-on-blockstream-s-bitcoin-patents-a-follow-up-to-bitcoin-s-segwit-might-have-patents-by-blockstream

the above links seem interesting… If the Company BlockStream really does have patents for SegWit then this whole discussion needs to be taken much more seriously.

I have no idea how this works with “openSource” code.

lclc_

@AcidD said in Segwit discussion (split off from 'Feathercoin roadmap):

I have no idea how this works with “openSource” code.

See https://blockstream.com/about/patent_pledge/

I don’t know if they have a patent for SegWit (afaik not) but it’s also common among FOSS companies and consortiums to apply for patents so patent trolls can’t.

AcidD

@lclc_

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160330034A1/en
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160358165A1/en

They have patents pending for things that will come after SegWit has been activated. This is the “general” worry on reddit… I’m just not sure how much of it is FUD and how much of it is real…
This is the main problem with BTC these days…there’s so many lies out there.

imho…it reads like “Once SegWit is activated…all the fun stuff you get after that, the main implementations of them would be covered under patents of some sort from BlockStream”

from the blockstream.com home page you see this :
https://blockstream.com/images/D5.png
alt text

If someone with a legal background could look at the patents and then look at the image and tell me which part would fall under the pending patents…that would be amazing ;-) ha!

SegWit at the same time does several good things on it’s own…

it’s a minor scaling without a hard fork
Apparently disrupts covert asicboost (which is mostly a myth…and Doesn’t Apply to FTC)
it solves malleabillity (useful for several new projects like smart contracts, drivechains and LNs)
it makes validation cheaper on hardware devices
it adds a version string and respects it so that new features can be easier to soft fork in at a later time

lclc_

@AcidD said in Segwit discussion (split off from 'Feathercoin roadmap):

This is the main problem with BTC these days…there’s so many lies out there.

This is true. Different parties with different interests. I see it as the result of true decentralisation. All I can see is that Blockstream didn’t act in a bad way so far. However, some other parties for sure are constantly trying to split the community in several groups. The old divide and conquer concept.

I personally met Pieter Wuille (one of the co-founders of Blockstream and inventor / main developer of SegWit) many many times at the Bitcoin Meetup while he was still living in Zurich and also had him as a speaker. He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and I wholeheartedly believe he acts in good faith.
Beside the technical facts that’s one of the reasons for me personally that I believe SegWit and Blockstream are good for Bitcoin and crypto currencies in general.

If someone believes the Bitcoin Core Developers are evil (not talking about you @AcidD, but in general terms) just reach out to them via IRC or Email, ask your questions and think about the answer from a neutral, logical stand. They are very approachable and usually happy to answer questions.

AcidD

@lclc_ I dont think BlockStream are bad… The devs have gotten us this far haven’t they :-) ?

tbh - I’m not sure what to believe…truly…like Satoshi stated the 1MB blocksize limit was only temporary and should eventually be lifted… This could have happened 3 years ago… and this is what I cannot get my head around…I’ve read all the arguments but yeah… confused.com

wrapper

Yeah, and we’re still suffering from rock star programmers dropping interface changing code and leaving everyone else to maintain it, so there is more to this than technical details …

wrapper

Cryptographically concealing amounts transacted on a ledger while preserving a network’s ability to verify the transaction

Filing date : 2016-06-08
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160358165A1/en?assignee=Blockstream+Corp

Ideas expoused in this patent seem similar to ideas in Private Blockchain Address 2014, and stealth coin white papers from the same period. The “envelope method” of hidding payment details is also common.

https://github.com/wrapperband/PrivateBlockchainAddress