Newbs might not know this, but bitcoin recently came out of an intense internal drama. Between July 2015 and August 2017 bitcoin was attacked by external forces who were hoping to destroy the very properties that made bitcoin valuable in the first place. This culminated in the creation of segwit and the UASF (user activated soft fork) movement. The UASF was successful, segwit was added to bitcoin and with that the anti-decentralization side left bitcoin altogether and created their own altcoin called bcash. Bitcoin's price was $2500, soon after segwit was activated the price doubled to $5000 and continued rising until here we are today at $15000.
During this drama, I took time away from writing open source code to help educate and argue on reddit, twitter and other social media. I came up with a reading list for quickly copypasting things. It may be interesting today for newbs or anyone who wants a history lesson on what exactly happened during those two years when bitcoin's very existence as a decentralized low-trust currency was questioned. Now the fight has essentially been won, I try not to comment on reddit that much anymore. There's nothing left to do except wait for Lightning and similar tech to become mature (or better yet, help code it and test it)
In this thread you can learn about block sizes, latency, decentralization, segwit, ASICBOOST, lightning network and all the other issues that were debated endlessly for over two years. So when someone tries to get you to invest in bcash, remind them of the time they supported Bitcoin Unlimited :P
Summary / The fundamental tradeoff
A trip to the moon requires a rocket with multiple stages by gmaxwell (must read) http://bit.ly/2mcXaLo
Bram Cohen, creator of bittorrent, argues against a hard fork to a larger block size http://bit.ly/2l8dpaL
gmaxwell's summary of the debate http://bit.ly/1PWdiEF
Core devs please explain your vision (see luke's post which also argues that blocks are already too big) http://bit.ly/2lce6Qb
Mod of r/btc speaking against a hard fork http://bit.ly/2li3e2H
It's becoming clear to me that a lot of people don't understand how fragile bitcoin is http://bit.ly/2vbXzyF
Blockchain space must be costly, it can never be free http://bit.ly/2lj2ABL
Charlie Lee with a nice analogy about the fundamental tradeoff http://bit.ly/2laFWfB
gmaxwell on the tradeoffs http://bit.ly/28TJdsM
jratcliff on the layering http://bit.ly/2lbrWCv
Scaling on-chain will destroy bitcoin's decentralization
Peter Todd: How a floating blocksize limit inevitably leads towards centralization [Feb 2013] http://bit.ly/1EDZj1i mailing list http://bit.ly/2BZr5PU with discussion on reddit in Aug 2015 http://bit.ly/2ljuEFo
Nick Szabo's blog post on what makes bitcoin so special http://bit.ly/2lb7zWd
There is academic research showing that even small (2MB) increases to the blocksize results in drastic node dropoff counts due to the non-linear increase of RAM needed. http://bit.ly/2lgGzDM
Reddit summary of above link. In this table, you can see it estimates a 40% drop immediately in node count with a 2MB upgrade and a 50% over 6 months. At 4mb, it becomes 75% immediately and 80% over 6 months. At 8, it becomes 90% and 95%. http://bit.ly/2l9RuQw
Larger block sizes make centralization pressures worse (mathematical) http://bit.ly/2alUZ1m
Talk at scalingbitcoin montreal, initial blockchain synchronization puts serious constraints on any increase in the block size https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&t=2h02m06s with transcript http://bit.ly/2lbrYdB
Bitcoin's P2P Network: The Soft Underbelly of Bitcoin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6kibPzbrIc someone's notes: http://bit.ly/2zEi3la reddit discussion http://bit.ly/2ljuFJs
In adversarial environments blockchains dont scale http://bit.ly/2la3CRr
Why miners will not voluntarily individually produce smaller blocks http://bit.ly/2ll4LVE
Hal Finney: bitcoin's blockchain can only be a settlement layer (mostly interesting because it's hal finney and its in 2010) http://bit.ly/2laR4cv
petertodd's 2013 video explaining this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZp7UGgBR0I
luke-jr's summary http://bit.ly/2liRzR0
Another jratcliff thread http://bit.ly/2laJRZS
Full blocks are not a disaster
Blocks must be always full, there must always be a backlog http://bit.ly/2llEO8z
Same as above, the mining gap means there must always be a backlog talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2453&v=iKDC2DpzNbw transcript: http://bit.ly/2l9bjrd
Backlogs arent that bad http://bit.ly/2lmvMIq
Examples where scarce block space causes people to use precious resources more efficiently http://bit.ly/2lbrYu7
Full blocks are fine http://bit.ly/2lkoIvA
High miner fees imply a sustainable future for bitcoin http://bit.ly/2lahV8x
gmaxwell on why full blocks are good http://bit.ly/2lmvLnQ
The whole idea of the mempool being "filled" is wrong headed. The mempool doesn't "clog" or get stuck, or anything like that. http://bit.ly/2laJTRu
Segwit
What is segwit
luke-jr's longer summary http://bit.ly/2lmvNfs
Charlie Shrem's on upgrading to segwit https://twitter.com/CharlieShrem/status/842711238853513220
Original segwit talk at scalingbitcoin hong kong + transcript https://youtu.be/zchzn7aPQjI?t=110
Segwit is not too complex http://bit.ly/2lj2Ctn
Segwit does not make it possible for miners to steal coins, contrary to what some people say http://bit.ly/2latpcq
Segwit is required for a useful lightning network It's now known that without a malleability fix useful indefinite channels are not really possible.
Clearing up SegWit Lies and Myths: http://bit.ly/2liWMs8
Segwit is bigger blocks http://bit.ly/2la82Ym
Typical usage results in segwit allowing capacity equivalent to 2mb blocks http://bit.ly/2ll6uKB
Why is segwit being blocked
Jihan Wu (head of largest bitcoin mining group) is blocking segwit because of perceived loss of income http://bit.ly/2l9JLBS
Witness discount creates aligned incentives http://bit.ly/2C1bLC2 http://bit.ly/2ljz1jK
or because he wants his mining enterprise to have control over bitcoin http://bit.ly/2ldhMBx
Segwit is being blocked because it breaks ASICBOOST, a patented optimization used by bitmain ASIC manufacturer
Details and discovery by gmaxwell http://bit.ly/2nLOfOd
Reddit thread with discussion http://bit.ly/2laJVsA
Simplified explaination by jonny1000 http://bit.ly/2ll4MsG
Evidence http://bit.ly/2lmhzea
Bitmain admits their chips have asicboost but they say they never used it on the network (haha a likely story) http://bit.ly/2nIOhpA
Worth $100m per year to them (also in gmaxwell's original email) https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/849798529929424898
Other calculations show less http://bit.ly/2liRAV4
This also blocks all these other cool updates, not just segwit http://bit.ly/2la3GRb
Summary of bad consequences of asicboost http://bit.ly/2lj0zpv
Luke's summary of the entire situation http://bit.ly/2la712x
Prices goes up because now segwit looks more likely https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester/status/849846845425799168
Asicboost discovery made the price rise https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester/status/851520094677200901
A pool was caught red handed doing asicboost, by this time it seemed fairly certain that segwit would get activated so it didnt produce as much interest as earlier http://bit.ly/2C1nrFa and http://bit.ly/2zD12YK and https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/889475196322811904
This r/btc user is outraged at the entire forum because they support Bitmain and ASICBOOST http://bit.ly/2liSjpi
Antbleed, turns out Bitmain can shut down all its ASICs by remote control: http://bit.ly/2q7wlHA
What if segwit never activates
What if segwit never activates? http://bit.ly/2BZGLSX with http://bit.ly/2zDipbX and http://bit.ly/2lkfGip
Lightning
bitcoinmagazine's series on what lightning is and how it works http://bit.ly/2zDVHjB http://bit.ly/2BZY5r7 http://bit.ly/2l9o8BK
The Lightning Network ELIDHDICACS (Explain Like I Don’t Have Degrees in Cryptography and Computer Science) http://bit.ly/1QcQu9D
Ligtning will increases fees for miners, not lower them http://bit.ly/2l9bkeL
Cost-benefit analysis of lightning from the point of view of miners http://bit.ly/2li3qir
Routing blog post by rusty http://bit.ly/1P3t94J and reddit comments http://bit.ly/2laR6B9
Lightning protocol rfc http://bit.ly/2li3i2r
Blog post with screenshots of ln being used on testnet http://bit.ly/2BYAerM video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxGiMu4V7ns
Video of sending and receiving ln on testnet https://twitter.com/alexbosworth/status/844030573131706368
Lightning tradeoffs http://bit.ly/24vkvWq
Beer sold for testnet lightning http://bit.ly/2BZY6eF and https://twitter.com/MrHodl/status/848265171269283845
Lightning will result in far fewer coins being stored on third parties because it supports instant transactions http://bit.ly/2llrrov
jgarzik argues strongly against LN, he owns a coin tracking startup https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/860826532650123264 https://twitter.com/Beautyon_/status/886128801926795264
luke's great debunking / answer of some misinformation questions http://bit.ly/2lbgiaN
Lightning centralization doesnt happen http://bit.ly/2ljIqrt
roasbeef on hubs and charging fees https://twitter.com/roasbeef/status/930209165728825344 and https://twitter.com/roasbeef/status/930210145790976000
Immutability / Being a swiss bank in your pocket / Why doing a hard fork (especially without consensus) is damaging
A downside of hard forks is damaging bitcoin's immutability http://bit.ly/2lbIZUU
Interesting analysis of miners incentives and how failure is possible, don't trust the miners for long term http://bit.ly/2li3uyH
waxwing on the meaning of cash and settlement http://bit.ly/2l9bm6n
maaku on the cash question http://bit.ly/2li3vmf
Digital gold funamentalists gain nothing from supporting a hard fork to larger block sizes http://bit.ly/2larG6G
Those asking for a compromise don't understand the underlying political forces http://bit.ly/2li3xdR
Nobody wants a contentious hard fork actually, anti-core people got emotionally manipulated http://bit.ly/2k71F4U
The hard work of the core developers has kept bitcoin scalable http://bit.ly/2li3xun
Recent PRs to improve bitcoin scaleability ignored by the debate https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/883001356168167425
gmaxwell against hard forks since 2013 http://bit.ly/2l9EjPA
maaku: hard forks are really bad http://bit.ly/2ll6ytP
Some metrics on what the market thinks of decentralization and hostile hard forks
The price history shows that the exchange rate drops every time a hard fork threatens: http://bit.ly/2l8dtav
and this example from 2017 https://twitter.com/WhalePanda/status/845562763820912642
http://bit.ly/2llESVR r/btc users lose money
price supporting theymos' moderation http://bit.ly/2ldhM4v
old version http://bit.ly/2lj2GJD
older version http://bit.ly/2lbxfSi
about 50% of nodes updated to the soft fork node quite quickly http://bit.ly/2lj0BO9
Bitcoin Unlimited / Emergent Consensus is badly designed, changes the game theory of bitcoin
Bitcoin Unlimited was a proposed hard fork client, it was made with the intention to stop segwit from activating
A Future Led by Bitcoin Unlimited is a Centralized Future http://bit.ly/2latrB4
Flexible transactions are bugged http://bit.ly/2llrrVx
Bugged BU software mines an invalid block, wasting 13 bitcoins or $12k
bitcoin.com employees are moderators of r/btc http://bit.ly/2l9ElHc
miners don't control stuff like the block size http://bit.ly/1RagVN8
even gavin agreed that economic majority controls things http://bit.ly/2lahYkJ
fork clients are trying to steal bitcoin's brand and network effect, theyre no different from altcoins http://bit.ly/2liWPnO
BU being active makes it easier to reverse payments, increases wasted work making the network less secure and giving an advantage to bigger miners http://bit.ly/2laR7oH
bitcoin unlimited takes power away from users and gives it to miners http://bit.ly/2lj0AK5
bitcoin unlimited's accepted depth https://twitter.com/tdryja/status/804770009272696832
BU's lying propaganda poster http://bit.ly/2l8dtr1
BU is bugged, poorly-reviewed and crashes
bitcoin unlimited allegedly funded by kraken stolen coins
Other funding stuff
A serious bug in BU http://bit.ly/2laldJ4
A summary of what's wrong with BU: http://bit.ly/2lk8zXd
Bitcoin Unlimited Remote Exploit Crash 14/3/2017
http://bit.ly/2mp5OCp http://bit.ly/2llES8j http://bit.ly/2lcebTZ
BU devs calling it as disaster https://twitter.com/SooMartindale/status/841758265188966401 also r/btc deleted a thread about the exploit http://bit.ly/2ljsPbj
Summary of incident http://bit.ly/2l9Ryje
More than 20 exchanges will list BTU as an altcoin
Again a few days later http://bit.ly/2l8dtHx
User Activated Soft Fork (UASF)
site for it, including list of businesses supporting it http://www.uasf.co/
luke's view
threat of UASF makes the miner fall into line in litecoin
UASF delivers the goods for vertcoin
UASF coin is more valuable http://bit.ly/2l9bmTV
All the links together in one place http://bit.ly/2li3FtR
p2sh was a uasf http://bit.ly/2la73aF
jgarzik annoyed at the strict timeline that segwit2x has to follow because of bip148 https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/886605836902162432
Committed intolerant minority http://bit.ly/2llESoP
alp on the game theory of the intolerant minority http://bit.ly/2lbxi0q
The risk of UASF is less than the cost of doing nothing http://bit.ly/2lmvPnA
uasf delivered the goods for bitcoin, it forced antpool and others to signal (May 2016) http://bit.ly/2lcecHx "When asked specifically whether Antpool would run SegWit code without a hard fork increase in the block size also included in a release of Bitcoin Core, Wu responded: “No. It is acceptable that the hard fork code is not activated, but it needs to be included in a ‘release’ of Bitcoin Core. I have made it clear about the definition of ‘release,’ which is not ‘public.’”"
Screenshot of peter rizun capitulating https://twitter.com/chris_belcher_/status/905231603991007232
Fighting off 2x HF
https://twitter.com/MrHodl/status/895089909723049984
b2x is most of all about firing core https://twitter.com/WhalePanda/status/912664487135760384
Misinformation / sockpuppets
three year old account, only started posting today http://bit.ly/2ljIrM3
Why we should not hard fork after the UASF worked: http://bit.ly/2l8cA1A
History
Good article that covers virtually all the important history http://bit.ly/2llESFl
Interesting post with some history pre-2015 http://bit.ly/2la3IbL
The core scalabality roadmap + my summary from 3/2017 http://bit.ly/1OBBpbG my summary http://bit.ly/2l9obNW
History from summer 2015 http://bit.ly/2llrv7J
Brief reminders of the ETC situation http://bit.ly/2lcecY3
Longer writeup of ethereum's TheDAO bailout fraud http://bit.ly/2ll6Alr
Point that the bigblocker side is only blocking segwit as a hostage http://bit.ly/2la72U9
jonny1000's recall of the history of r/bitcoin http://bit.ly/2ljb9gc
Misc (mostly memes)
libbitcoin's Understanding Bitcoin series (another must read) http://bit.ly/2ldhPxd
github commit where satoshi added the block size limit http://bit.ly/2lmvQYG
hard fork proposals from some core devs http://bit.ly/2nVJpB8
blockstream hasnt taken over the entire bitcoin core project http://bit.ly/2lkoQey
blockstream is one of the good guys http://bit.ly/2lb7FNz
Forkers, we're not raising a single byte! Song lyrics by belcher http://bit.ly/2lmhCXo
Some stuff here along with that cool photoshopped poster http://bit.ly/2larJiS
Nice graphic https://twitter.com/RNR_0/status/871070843698380800
gmaxwell saying how he is probably responsible for the most privacy tech in bitcoin, while mike hearn screwed up privacy http://bit.ly/2lkoQv4
Fairly cool propaganda poster https://twitter.com/urbanarson/status/880476631583924225
btc tankman http://bit.ly/2sf7XUU https://twitter.com/DanDarkPill/status/853653168151986177
asicboost discovery meme https://twitter.com/allenscottoshi/status/849888189124947971
https://twitter.com/urbanarson/status/882020516521013250
gavin wanted to kill the bitcoin chain https://twitter.com/allenscottoshi/status/849888189124947971
stuff that r/btc believes http://bit.ly/2ljiUm9
after segwit2x NYA got agreed all the fee pressure disappeared, laurenmt found they were artificial spam https://twitter.com/i/moments/885827802775396352
theymos saying why victory isnt inevitable http://bit.ly/2lcedez
with ignorant enemies like these its no wonder we won http://bit.ly/2lgGIXQ ""So, once segwit2x activates, from that moment on it will require a coordinated fork to avoid the up coming "baked in" HF. ""
a positive effect of bcash, it made blockchain utxo spammers move away from bitcoin http://bit.ly/2l8dv27
summary of craig wright, jihan wu and roger ver's positions http://bit.ly/2vSK2Aj
Why is bitcoin so strong against attack?!?! (because we're motivated and awesome) http://bit.ly/2latv3M
what happened to #oldjeffgarzik http://bit.ly/2liWQIo
big blockers fully deserve to lose every last bitcoin they ever had and more http://bit.ly/2l9bnXZ
gavinandresen brainstorming how to kill bitcoin with a 51% in a nasty way https://twitter.com/btcdrak/status/843914877542567937
Roger Ver as bitcoin Judas http://bit.ly/2lkoRiC
A bunch of tweets and memes celebrating UASF
https://twitter.com/shaolinfry/status/842457019286188032 | https://twitter.com/SatoshiLite/status/888335092560441345 | https://twitter.com/btcArtGallery/status/887485162925285377 | https://twitter.com/Beautyon_/status/888109901611802624 | https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/889211512966873088 | https://twitter.com/lopp/status/888200452197801984 | https://twitter.com/AlpacaSW/status/886988980524396544 | https://twitter.com/BashCo_/status/877253729531162624 | https://twitter.com/tdryja/status/865212300361379840 | https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/871179040157179904 | https://twitter.com/TraceMayer/status/849856343074902016 | https://twitter.com/TraceMayer/status/841855022640033792 | http://bit.ly/2larMv4
Submitted December 28, 2017 at 03:38AM by belcher_ http://bit.ly/2lmhCGS
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