Upgrading bitcoin

[Rune]

Our greatest accomplishment so far is vitalik telling me "if you bribe existing miners with some quantity of BTC that definitely will work too."

Source?

Sorry I didn't even notice this earlier. It's from a PM discussion on reddit, and obviously taken out of context, but he does seem to think it will work and even did an ethereum talk in the past about a similar theoretical concept (assembling a 51% attack by paying external rewards for blocks)

[gamey]

What will happen is pool operators will patch their code to remove the signature.  Miners don't deal with transactions, thats what pools do.  So they patch the 4  pools to detect these transactions and remove them.  You're going to need to run your own pool for these miners...  Then what happens? You're giving rewards on this 2nd chain in the belief that the chain that was used to bribe/destroy btc will be used by BTCers in the future?

There are other countermeasures etc.  This has big fail written on it, but good luck.  All the VC money  being poured into BTC will just make them code around you.  They'll implement difficulty in terms of transaction latency or something (no longer having 10 minute blocks).  Then your whole idea is thrown out the window like that.

edit - although it'd be ugly to code around you.  Blocks would no longer have the same rewards etc if they did difficulty based on transaction latency.  Maybe they wouldn't do that, but they'd find something to nullify the effectiveness of this.  This would be a better sell to start at the next halving... or other points in the future when the blockreward is smaller.

Honestly i think you should go for it.  It will gather attention for DPOS at least.

If a miner wishes to claim the vested coins they will move to whatever pool supports it. We can even bribe a pool to joining us early by giving the first large pool that commits to making only ERB's an extra vested stake to distribute, pitting all large pools against each other in a game of prisoners dilemma to see who will take the instant reward at the cost of the collectives future mining profits.

Once a pool does that they'll draw a line in the sand and the majority of miners will migrate to/away from that pool.  It is hard to imagine you ever 51%ing the network.  You might be a thorn in their side for awhile then again maybe you could get 51%.

So you leave blocks alone and don't mess with transactions  and have 1 pool that pays out the ERBs or whatever.  It might be harder to code a countermeasure for it than I thought.  lol POW.  I suppose you could grow to 51%.  This type of 51% attack will have to be sustained indefinitely too.  You can't let up on it for some time or BTC network springs back.  erbs, erbs, and more erbs.

It almost seems possible to use an user issued asset if you get 1 pool to do it.  The pool will have to pay out ERBs like they would regular block rewards.  What a cluster ****.

[monsterer]

You can read the full strategy to get the details. The money will simply be inflated at the time of the upgrade and be included in the migration block.

I agree its about 2M BTC, give or take, per year. But you can't simply print the money all at once and expect the chain to be worth anything. It has to be worth something before that point, or the dilution will dilute the value in exact proportion and you'll be back where you started.

In order for the chain to be worth 2M BTC, you'll need 2M BTC investment from outside the ecosystem.

[Rune]

I want to read your marketing materials on the coin itself.  The coin that people will have to destroy BTC on hopes of future value.

You might be able to swing it as a environmental crusade.

Yeah, the message is going to be everything. I agree, the anti-waste angle is definitely important as the uncontrolled electricity consumption bitcoin is currently is just insane. I think what is most important is the security, though. If this upgrade and associated attack can be done, it means bitcoin in its current form isn't safe. Opponents either have to claim that the upgrade is impossible (inviting us to try to do it), or admit that bitcoin isn't secure and that the upgrade is required for long term viability.

[Rune]

What will happen is pool operators will patch their code to remove the signature.  Miners don't deal with transactions, thats what pools do.  So they patch the 4  pools to detect these transactions and remove them.  You're going to need to run your own pool for these miners...  Then what happens? You're giving rewards on this 2nd chain in the belief that the chain that was used to bribe/destroy btc will be used by BTCers in the future?

There are other countermeasures etc.  This has big fail written on it, but good luck.  All the VC money  being poured into BTC will just make them code around you.  They'll implement difficulty in terms of transaction latency or something (no longer having 10 minute blocks).  Then your whole idea is thrown out the window like that.

edit - although it'd be ugly to code around you.  Blocks would no longer have the same rewards etc if they did difficulty based on transaction latency.  Maybe they wouldn't do that, but they'd find something to nullify the effectiveness of this.  This would be a better sell to start at the next halving... or other points in the future when the blockreward is smaller.

Honestly i think you should go for it.  It will gather attention for DPOS at least.

If a miner wishes to claim the vested coins they will move to whatever pool supports it. We can even bribe a pool to joining us early by giving the first large pool that commits to making only ERB's an extra vested stake to distribute, pitting all large pools against each other in a game of prisoners dilemma to see who will take the instant reward at the cost of the collectives future mining profits.

[gamey]

I want to read your marketing materials on the coin itself.  The coin that people will have to destroy BTC on hopes of future value.

You might be able to swing it as a environmental crusade.

[Rune]

This also how majority support for soft forks is achieved, I think they simply include the message in the nonce.

Ok, so assuming, for arguments sake that you manage to get them to mine these blocks and therefore they have access to this side chain - how do you propose to raise more than 1,312,500 BTC mined each year + their investment in mining hardware which is probably equal to that sum again in order to make the transition profitable?

And your investors, aren't they taking a massive risk investing such a large sum into something which is likely to fail?

You can read the full strategy to get the details. The money will simply be inflated at the time of the upgrade and be included in the migration block. It's impossible to tell exactly how much money buying miners out will cost, but since only the 51% most efficient of them have to gain more than their expected return, it will be a lot cheaper than bitcoin is otherwise looking to pay in future mining rewards. I'm guessing the entire thing can be done by inflating around 2 million BTC. People who invest in the upgradecoin will not actually have to risk anything up front, since the external rewards will be paid out of everyones pocket after the upgrade.

[gamey]

What will happen is pool operators will patch their code to remove the signature.  Miners don't deal with transactions, thats what pools do.  So they patch the 4  pools to detect these transactions and remove them.  You're going to need to run your own pool for these miners...  Then what happens? You're giving rewards on this 2nd chain in the belief that the chain that was used to bribe/destroy btc will be used by BTCers in the future?

There are other countermeasures etc.  This has big fail written on it, but good luck.  All the VC money  being poured into BTC will just make them code around you.  They'll implement difficulty in terms of transaction latency or something (no longer having 10 minute blocks).  Then your whole idea is thrown out the window like that.

edit - although it'd be ugly to code around you.  Blocks would no longer have the same rewards etc if they did difficulty based on transaction latency.  Maybe they wouldn't do that, but they'd find something to nullify the effectiveness of this.  This would be a better sell to start at the next halving... or other points in the future when the blockreward is smaller.

Honestly i think you should go for it.  It will gather attention for DPOS at least.

[monsterer]

One can start and offer an interest on the vested BTC on the 'sidechain' .. thus however gets to mine those blocks first can get interest on the vested stakes in BTC2

Where does this interest come from?

[monsterer]

Are we talking Pool operators or pool miners? because the miners most certainly don't even see the transactions included as they mine on the merkle tree and guess the nonce .. they have no idea how the merkle tree was spanned .. afaik .. so the only thing the miners see is a hash to mine on .. not the transactions ..
the pool operators construct the merkle tree from the set of transactions they include ..

I'm using the term 'miners' quite broadly because honestly I don't know where the decision about what types of transactions to consider in blocks is made. I just know that it is, and this stops things like atomic-cross-chain from being possible currently because the miners wont pick up the non-standard scripts in the transactions, which is required to make it possible.

[xeroc]

This also how majority support for soft forks is achieved, I think they simply include the message in the nonce.

Ok, so assuming, for arguments sake that you manage to get them to mine these blocks and therefore they have access to this side chain - how do you propose to raise more than 1,312,500 BTC mined each year + their investment in mining hardware which is probably equal to that sum again in order to make the transition profitable?

And your investors, aren't they taking a massive risk investing such a large sum into something which is likely to fail?

One can start and offer an interest on the vested BTC on the 'sidechain' .. thus however gets to mine those blocks first can get interest on the vested stakes in BTC2

[xeroc]

since when do miners 'care' about the block they mine?

I don't think they 'care' in the traditional sense. More likely due to them using non-standard builds of the client, suited to their needs.

Are we talking Pool operators or pool miners? because the miners most certainly don't even see the transactions included as they mine on the merkle tree and guess the nonce .. they have no idea how the merkle tree was spanned .. afaik .. so the only thing the miners see is a hash to mine on .. not the transactions ..
the pool operators construct the merkle tree from the set of transactions they include ..

[monsterer]

This also how majority support for soft forks is achieved, I think they simply include the message in the nonce.

Ok, so assuming, for arguments sake that you manage to get them to mine these blocks and therefore they have access to this side chain - how do you propose to raise more than 1,312,500 BTC mined each year + their investment in mining hardware which is probably equal to that sum again in order to make the transition profitable?

And your investors, aren't they taking a massive risk investing such a large sum into something which is likely to fail?

[monsterer]

since when do miners 'care' about the block they mine?

I don't think they 'care' in the traditional sense. More likely due to them using non-standard builds of the client, suited to their needs.

[Rune]

and all they have to do to get these vested coins are to mine blocks with a simple message that supports the upgrade.

Still got the same problem. Miners don't even mine non-standard transaction scripts, so they certainly aren't going to mine some amount of arbitrary non transaction data baked into a transaction.

This also how majority support for soft forks is achieved, I think they simply include the message in the nonce.