[bitcoin-dev] NIST 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview

Mon Jan 29 00:40:32 UTC 2018

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January 20 2018

(I am also forwarding this message to the bitcoin mailing list just in case there
are other technological errors that could use correction in this draft paper or
anything that should be added with my comments.)

To the authors of this paper,
I am commenting on Draft NISTIR 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview located at
https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/nistir/8202/draft/documents/nistir8202-draft.pdf

Just in case that document is modified or removed I have also downloaded
it to redistribute this error ridden draft at a later point if neccesary,
and I also had the Internet Archive save a copy here for sake of archival reasons
to give context to this message.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180124170359/https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/nistir/8202/draft/documents/nistir8202-draft.pdf

There are a couple things I would like to contribute on regarding some
corrections needed in this paper. I must say, the content in this paper is
making me doubt the credibility of the NIST. I am starting to wonder if the
NIST is also incompetent with lack of credibility just like with most other
government institutions. Falsified information published as truth such as this
only expose their ignorance and incompetence and also propagate such ignorance
to other institutions and people whom rely on NIST for information or research.
The information presented in this paper is technologically invalid and contains
false information. I understand that mistakes happen, but this specific section
regarding "8.1.2 Bitcoin Cash (BCC)" is obviously written without prior research.
Even if research was done no citation is included to back these claims.
I ask you to please conduct research and validate information before publishing it,
especially when the credibility of the NIST is at stake.

I will proceed to outline some corrections.

1. Bitcoin Cash uses the ticker BCH, BCC is the ticker for BitConnectCoin

2. "When SegWit was activated, it caused a hard fork"
This is incorrect information. Segwit was not a hardfork. Rather segwit was
a softfork meaning that it is backwards compatible with unupgraded nodes and
miners. With it being a softfork it actually prevents a fork in the blockchain
by still being valid to unupgraded nodes and miners. Because segregated witness
is not a hardfork its use is optional.

3. "and all the mining nodes and users who did not want to change started
calling the original Bitcoin blockchain Bitcoin Cash (BCC)"
The original bitcoin blockchain is still called Bitcoin. Segwit did not create
any fork in the blockchain. Bitcoin Cash however was a hard fork that resulted
in a forked blockchain and new altcoin.
Bitcoin is Bitcoin,
Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin Cash.

4. "Technically, Bitcoin is a fork and Bitcoin Cash is the original
blockchain."
Technically, that statement is not truth.

Bitcoin Cash was forked from the original Bitcoin blockchain to create
the altcoin "Bitcoin Cash" (BCH) by people whom believe that the blocksize
should be large enough to accomodate all individual transactions on the main
chain. Without going into any of my personal opinions of which one is better
(bitcoin vs. "bitcoin cash") technically Bitcoin Cash was a hardfork and is
not the original chain but a forked one. It is a hardfork as the blocks
generated by BCH are incompatible with BTC nodes. Because of this lack of
backwards compatibility, and the resulting fork in blockchain is why BCH is
technically a hardfork.

This is just one section of this paper I have read thus far. It makes me
wonder how many other fallacies are throughout this paper. I also wonder how
many other NIST papers exist out of draft form that contain errors. Even
the smallest amount of research could have prevented this in the case of
this paper, unless you are intentionally pushing false information.

I hope these comments are of benefit to the improvement of this paper.

Cannon
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