"Developers Battle over Bitcoin Block Chain" (from Coindesk)

http://www.coindesk.com/developers-battle-bitcoin-block-chain/

Synopsis: A change to Bitcoin v0.9 to reduce the OP_RETURN data storage amount, from 80 bytes to 40 bytes, has been met with calls from the Mastercoin and Counterparty developers to revert to the original amount – Bitcoin Core devs disagree.

Interesting stuff, because if this doesn’t get resolved adequately, it could be a major advantage of the Peershares implementation (which, unless we’ve changed it recently and I didn’t notice, is still allowing up to 80 bytes of data).

@SigMike, @JordanLee, @FuzzyBear – does the Bitcoin Core team bring up any valid concerns that we should consider? Based on my understanding, it appears that it has to do with attempting to reduce block chain bloating, rather than because they do not agree that having 80 bytes of storage is preferable. I can see the point, but I also see the challenges that the Mastercoin and Counterparty devs are running up against.

I’ve been following the thread. In summary: at least 2 btc core devs think embedded consensus data on btc transaction is bad, and putting data on a side chain or somewhere out side btc chain and put the hash of data on OP_RETURN is the right way to implement high level protocol over btc. The change from 80 to 40 was to put pressure on Counterparty team to do as they say. The crowd uproars calling this as nazi move.

Getting hot, someone realized that blockchain is a limited resource :wink:
Meanwhile Peercoin users are also terrified, their blockchain doens’t fit on Mini CD anymore :’(
Edit: actually… it fits w/o index 8)

The change from 80 to 40 on btc blockchain is being pushed for imo as the blockchain for btc is a limited resource and the whole blockchain is just too big and unwieldy for users to run on old machines.

This is not an issue for peercoin atm as it has sensible code and block spacing to ensure the blockchain does not become bloated as so many others have.

How this affects peershares … well my understanding that peershares runs it own blockchain that just uses the code base with 80 bytes free to distribute shares. All the btc protocol changes will do OS affect those services currently running on top of the btc protocol like mastercoin, and if they can’t run what they need to off half the space of before they will have issues and most likely I would think they would in this situation be forced to move mastercoin onto a different coin that still had the free bytes necessary to run their protocol.

A few assumptions I have made in this post and my understanding exactly how the bytes free is used by mastercoin might not be correct so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong or misleading.

Going forward, peercoin would be a good case for use of the 80 bytes free if btc did reduce it, but as a community we should watch closely who develops in this space as it could lead to someone spamming and bloating our lovely sized blockchain

Fuzzybear

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

Back in October I said the following in this forum about coloured coins:

"Bitcoin miners have different interests that may be at odds with interests of holders of specific types of coloured coin holders. "

The same applies to Mastercoin and Counterparty. All these additional protocols placed on top of the Bitcoin protocol are vulnerable to the fact the interests of the layered protocol may be quite different from the interests of Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin miners will control the network to suit their interests. We are seeing this important vulnerability of coloured coins, Counterparty and Mastercoin poignantly displayed here.

In regard to the question of what size OP_RETURN transaction to permit in Peershares, each implementation can choose what serves its needs best, illustrating a strength of Peershares. The network exists for and is controlled exclusively by the shareholders, so you can be sure shareholder interests will be served and not sacrificed for the interests of some other group, such as Bitcoin miners.

[quote=“Jordan Lee, post:5, topic:2092”]Back in October I said the following in this forum about coloured coins:

"Bitcoin miners have different interests that may be at odds with interests of holders of specific types of coloured coin holders. "[/quote]

Yes, this was a good hypothesis that turned out to be true. This officially makes you another proven visionary in the industry. :slight_smile:

Keep up the great work Jordan!

I think Jeff Garzik made a good argument for reducing the OP_RETURN to 40bytes. The guys at mastercoin and counterparty are storing data in the blockchain that isn’t being used by the large majority of bitcoin users running the client, so why have it there at all ? Especially since the bitcoin blockchain is only going to get bigger over time.

The Bitcoin blockchain is already unsustainable. No worth trying to use paper towels to clean up a gulf oil split. I’m sure we will transition to a new block technology with time.

[quote=“Jordan Lee, post:5, topic:2092”]Back in October I said the following in this forum about coloured coins:

"Bitcoin miners have different interests that may be at odds with interests of holders of specific types of coloured coin holders. "

The same applies to Mastercoin and Counterparty. All these additional protocols placed on top of the Bitcoin protocol are vulnerable to the fact the interests of the layered protocol may be quite different from the interests of Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin miners will control the network to suit their interests. We are seeing this important vulnerability of coloured coins, Counterparty and Mastercoin poignantly displayed here.

In regard to the question of what size OP_RETURN transaction to permit in Peershares, each implementation can choose what serves its needs best, illustrating a strength of Peershares. The network exists for and is controlled exclusively by the shareholders, so you can be sure shareholder interests will be served and not sacrificed for the interests of some other group, such as Bitcoin miners.[/quote]

The good part
Cudos to you. Peershares is the reason I sold 30% of my Bitcoin to buy Peercoin. Well, actually no. The design of Peershare is. It proved to me that there are people in the peer-space that understand not only programming but also economics. What you wrote is just so true.

Me btchng and moaning rant. Feel free to skip it.
This whole thing about Bitcoin being “free” and the tragedy of the commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons) issues. Now we got this meta frameworks that not only increases the degree of dependencies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complexity_theory) but also introduces questions such as: “What happens if the coin created with counterparty is so cheap that the transaction in the Bitcoin protocol is multitudes more expensive?”. Just like we have compiler error and runtime errors, I think we will discover that in crypto finance we might get “economical bugs”. I don’t get it that people just don’t get it when its so obvious.

Just to prove a point. KnC ASIC TITAN was the reason I sold 90% of my Litecoins and bought Peercoins for all of it. Litecoin is even worse then Bitcoin, because it is just like Bitcoin but even more expensive to run (and ASIC pools will ensure that it doesn’t contribute to the integrity of the network anyway).

Then we have this things with frameworks. Most programmers that I have respect for, understands how bad frameworks are. What we love is tools, utils, libs and stuff that is modularized. Extending something with something else to fit ones needs is just plain silly.

Sorry for the rant, but this is really bugging me and I see a lot of smart people with influence that simple does not get it. What I hope for, is intellectual vindication when all those coins and clones and what not, starts to degrade. Then, I hope, Peercoin will shine even more brightly and by then, it will also have stood the test of the time. My only hope is that all the crap that I see happening, won’t spill over but if happens to early, I just might.

Wow pillow, I enjoyed reading your rant.

The first thought that came to mind reading what you wrote, is that I wanted to say:

“The smart people are already invested in Peercoin, and we’re just waiting for the rest of the world to play catchup”.

However, like yourself, I also see some smart people, with influence that do not get it yet either. We’re really still going through babysteps at this point.

I have a feeling it won’t be until 2015 before crypto prices start surging huge again. Right now we have too many people trying to build too many things, and none of them seem to be a solution.

A least Peercoin’s network is stable, and Peershares shows how building on top of a stable network like Peercoin is completely possible.

Go Jordan! …and thank you pillow for “getting it” early too, like me. :slight_smile: Welcome to the club.

I have a discussion on reddit going on with “vbuterin” at reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/21b4pm/developers_battle_over_bitcoin_block_chain/cgbmhil

First he was quite refusing.
That changed a little bit.

I don’t know how open-minded he is (taking into consideration his efforts in Ethereum…).
I don’t know if he’s really interested in Peershares.
I don’t even know if it’s “Vitalik Buterin”.

…but if he is, it could be good if he wrote an article about Peershares one day…