<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY dir=ltr>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000">
<DIV>Eric, any plans to correct your article at <A
title=https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21377/settling-block-size-debate/
href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21377/settling-block-size-debate/">https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21377/settling-block-size-debate/</A>?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
href="mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org">Mike Hearn via
bitcoin-dev</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, July 29, 2015 4:15 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=elombrozo@gmail.com
href="mailto:elombrozo@gmail.com">Eric Lombrozo</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Cc:</B> <A title=bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
href="mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org">Bitcoin Dev</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [bitcoin-dev] Why Satoshi's temporary anti-spam measure
isn'ttemporary</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style='FONT-SIZE: small; TEXT-DECORATION: none; FONT-FAMILY: "Calibri"; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; COLOR: #000000; FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline'>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV class=gmail_extra>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV>Irrelevant what term was used - and as brilliant as Satoshi might have
been at some things, he obviously got this one wrong.</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I don't think it's obvious. You may disagree, but don't pretend any of this
stuff is obvious.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Consider this: the highest Bitcoin tx fees can possibly go is perhaps
a little higher than what our competition charges. Too much higher than that,
and people will just say, you know what .... I'll make a bank transfer. It's
cheaper and not much slower, sometimes no slower at all.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And now consider that in many parts of the world bank transfers are
free.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>They aren't actually free, of course, but they <I>appear</I> to be free
because the infrastructure for doing them is cross subsidised by the fees on
other products and services, or hidden in the prices of goods sold.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So that's a market reality Bitcoin has to handle. It's already more
expensive than the competition sometimes, but luckily not much more, and anyway
Bitcoin has some features those other systems lack (and vice versa). So it can
still be competitive. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But your extremely vague notion of a "fee market" neglects to consider that
it already exists, and it's not a market of "Bitcoin users buying space in
Bitcoin blocks". It's "users paying to move money".</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>You can argue with this sort of economic logic if you like, but don't claim
this stuff is obvious.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV><SPAN>
<DIV>Nobody threatened to start mining huge blocks given how relatively
inexpensive it was to mine back then?<BR></DIV></SPAN></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Not that I recall. It wasn't a response to any actual event, I think, but
rather a growing realisation that the code was full of DoS attacks.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV>
<DIV>Guess what? SPV wallets are still not particularly widespread…and those
that are out there are notoriously terrible at detecting network forks and
making sure they are on the right one.</DIV></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The most popular mobile wallet (measured by installs) on Android is SPV. It
has between 500,000 and 1 million installs, whilst Coinbase has not yet crossed
the 500,000 mark. One of the most popular wallets on iOS is SPV. If we had SPV
wallets with better user interfaces on desktops, they'd be more popular there
too (perhaps MultiBit HD can recapture some lost ground).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So I would argue that they are in fact very widespread.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Likewise, they are not "notoriously terrible" at detecting chain forks.
That's a spurious idea that you and Patrick have been pushing lately, but they
detect them and follow reorgs across them according to the SPV algorithm, which
is based on most work done. This is exactly what they are designed to do. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Contrast this with other lightweight wallets which either don't examine the
block chain or implement the algorithm incorrectly, and I fail to see how this
can be described as "notoriously terrible".</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV>
<DIV>I understand that initially it was desirable that transactions be
free…but surely even Satoshi understood this couldn’t be perpetually
self-sustaining…and that the ability to bid for inclusion in blocks would
eventually become a crucial component of the network. Or were fees just added
for decoration?<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Fees were added as a way to get money to miners in a fair and decentralised
way.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Attaching fees directly to all transactions is certainly one way to use
that, but it's not the only way. As noted above, our competitors prefer a
combination of price-hiding and cross subsidisation. Both of these can be
implemented with tx fees, but not necessarily by trying to artificially limit
supply, which is economically nonsensical.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV>We’re already more than six years into this. When were these mechanisms
going to be developed and tested? After 10 years? 20? Perhaps after 1024
years?(<A
href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki"
target=_blank>https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0042.mediawiki</A>)<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Maybe when there is a need? I already discussed this topic of need
here:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A
href="https://medium.com/@octskyward/hashing-7d04a887acc8">https://medium.com/@octskyward/hashing-7d04a887acc8</A><BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV><SPAN>
<DIV>Right. Turns out the ledger structure is terrible for constructing the
kinds of proofs that are most important to validators - i.e. whether an output
exists, what its script and amounts are, whether it’s been spent,
etc…<BR></DIV></SPAN></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Validators don't require proofs. That's why they are validators.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think you're trying to say the block chain doesn't provide the kinds of
proofs that are most important to lightweight wallets. But I would disagree.
Even with UTXO commitments, there can still be double spends out there in the
networks memory pools you are unaware of. Merely being presented with a
correctly signed transaction doesn't tell you a whole lot ..... if you wait for
a block, you get the same level of proof regardless of whether there are UTXO
commitments or not. If you don't then you still have to have some trust in your
peers that you are seeing an accurate and full view of network traffic.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So whilst there are ways to make the protocol incrementally better, when
you work through the use cases for these sorts of data structures and ask "how
will this impact the user experience", the primary candidates so far don't seem
to make much difference.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Remote attestation from secure hardware would make a big difference though.
Then you could get rid of the waiting times entirely because you know the
sending wallet won't double spend.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV><SPAN>
<DIV></DIV></SPAN>
<DIV>Yes, let’s wait until things are about to break before even beginning to
address the issue…because we can “easily create” anything we haven’t invented
yet at the last minute.<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>bitcoinj already has a micropayment channel implementation in it. There's a
bit of work required to glue everything together, but it's not a massive project
to start using this to pay nodes for their services.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>But it's not needed right now: serving these clients is so darn
cheap. And there is plenty of room for optimising things still further!</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">
<DIV style="WORD-WRAP: break-word">
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>I’m one of the very few developers in this space that has actually tried
*hard* to make your BIP37 work. Amongst the desktop wallets listed on <A
href="http://bitcoin.org" target=_blank>bitcoin.org</A>, there are only two
that have always supported SPV (or at least I think MultiBit has always
supported it, perhaps I’m wrong). One is MultiBit, the other one is mine. I
give you credit for your work…perhaps you could be generous enough to extend
me some credit too?</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra>MultiBit has always supported it. I apologise for
implying you have not built a wallet. I think yours is mSIGNA, right? Did it
used to be called something else? I recognise the website design but must admit,
I have not heard of mSIGNA before.</DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra> </DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra>Regardless, as a fellow implementor, I would appreciate
it more if you designed and implemented upgrades, rather than just trashing the
work done so far as "notoriously terrible", Satoshi as "not a systems architect"
and so on.</DIV>
<DIV class=gmail_extra> </DIV></DIV>
<P>
<HR>
_______________________________________________<BR>bitcoin-dev mailing
list<BR>bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org<BR>https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev<BR></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>