blog.bitmain.com

BITMAIN

Page 12 of 15

UAHF: un plan de contingencia en contra de UASF (BIP148)

June 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

(This is a translated version of Bitmain’s original blog post, which is in English)

Definiciones

UASF: bifurcación blanda activada por el usuario. Los desarrolladores añaden un juego de reglas obligatorio para cambiar el software del nodo, invalidando ciertos tipos de bloques previamente válidos después de un flag day. Este método no requiere una mayoría de mineros que apoyen o activen la división de la cadena. La propuesta de UASF pretende hacer un ataque de 51% contra la cadena de bloques que tenga la mayoría de la actividad económica y este ataque se llama “Desaparición”.

UAHF: bifurcación dura activada por el usuario. Los desarrolladores añaden un juego de reglas obligatorio para cambiar el nodo de software. Estos cambios hacen que bloques no válidos previamente se vuelvan válidos después de un flag day, lo que no requiere una mayoría de potencia de hash para que se ejecute. Los nodos con los cambios en el juego de reglas seguirán esta cadena independientemente de su tasa de hash. La propuesta de la UAHF es una desviación pacífica y voluntaria de diversos miembros de la comunidad que tienen opiniones o visiones diferentes y no se pretende atacar otras cadenas de bloques, incluso aunque la cadena UAHF tenga la tasa de hash más alta.

 

Nodo BIP148: un nodo de Bitcoin que ha implementado los cambios de la regla de consenso BIP148.

Cadena BIP148: una cadena de bloques que es válida según los cambios de la regla del consenso BIP14. BIP148 es un tipo de UASF.

Cadena original: la cadena de bloques que usa las mismas reglas de consenso utilizadas en la actualidad (26 de mayo de 2017).

Desaparición: si la cadena UASF está activada y gana la mayoría de tasa de hash, entonces los nodos que siguen a la cadena original se reorganizarán y empezarán a seguir a la cadena UASF. Si esto se produce, un número significativo de registros de transacciones financieras desaparecerá. Es un riesgo que los nodos UASF imponen a los nodos que intentan seguir a la cadena original. Por el contrario, UAHF no amenaza a los nodos que siguen un juego de reglas diferente que tienen este mismo riesgo.

Bit 1: el bit de versión BIP9 en la cabecera de un bloque usado para indicar una activación de SegWit.

Riesgo de estancamiento: una cadena de bloques sin el apoyo de la minería puede dejar de extenderse de repente porque el incentivo económico para los mineros es bajo. Una bifurcación minoritaria como UASF está bajo serio riesgo de un estancamiento permanente.

 

Antecedentes

El 24 de mayo de 2017, una mayoría económica significativa, de más del 80% de toda la potencia de hash y el 80% del software o servicio de la fuente de las transacciones de la industria del Bitcoin, llegaron a un acuerdo en Nueva York (Acuerdo de Nueva York) sobre los pasos tangibles para escalar el Bitcoin en el futuro próximo. Los representantes de Bitcoin Core rechazaron la invitación para asistir a este encuentro. Este acuerdo es el trabajo duro de aquellos que creen sinceramente en el Bitcoin y empresarios o inversores que tienen un gran interés financiero en escalar el Bitcoin de un modo rápido y unido. Bitmain apoya el acuerdo. Apoyamos el acuerdo y queremos que se haga realidad lo antes posible.

El proyecto de software btc1, que está abordando el acuerdo de Nueva York, ha estado en desarrollo activo y probablemente entregará un plan de cambio de regla de consenso llamado SegWit2x. El testnet5 para SegWit2x ya está listo. La versión Alpha del software saldrá el 16 de junio y todo va sin retraso.

Sigue el github aquí:

https://github.com/btc1

Lee una discusión de reddit sobre él aquí:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6h1wpr/segwit2x_a_summary/

Suscríbete a la lista de correos:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-ml

A pesar de este acuerdo, el movimiento de astroturfing de la UASF (BIP148) sigue recibiendo mucha atención en foros censurados, muchos de los cuales están controlados por individuos anónimos. Muchos de los desarrolladores de software que trabajan en un proyecto de software llamado “Bitcoin Core” también lo apoyan. BIP148 supone un riesgo significativo para el ecosistema Bitcoin, así que estamos preparando un plan de contingencia para proteger la actividad económica de la cadena de bloques de Bitcoin de esta amenaza.

El acuerdo de Nueva York está siendo saboteado de manera continua e intencional por un grupo de desarrolladores de software que trabajan en Bitcoin Core. También debemos estar preparados para el riesgo destructivo que la activación de la UASF traerá a la red de Bitcoin. El acuerdo de Nueva York es muy conservador y está dirigido a traer la paz a la comunidad del Bitcoin en un problema de escalabilidad simple pero artificialmente ampliado. Si, de algún modo, el acuerdo de Nueva York no puede impedir la división de la cadena, debemos estar preparados.

El propósito de esta publicación de blog es anunciar nuestro plan de contingencia UAHF para la UASF/BIP148.

 

Por qué necesitamos un plan de contingencia en contra del BIP148

Según el BIP148, cuando la MTP de la cadena esté en o más allá del jueves, 1 de agosto de 2017 a las 12:00:00 GMT (hora epoch 1501545600), los nodos BIP148 empezarán a abandonar los bloques de Bitcoin que no señalen a Bit 1 como su punto de bifurcación UASF. Este cambio en la regla de consenso hace el juego de reglas más pequeño que la cadena original antes de la activación de BIP148. Los nodos BIP148 seguirán la nueva cadena BIP148 si hay una potencia de hash mayor que cero apoyándola; si la potencia de hash que apoya la cadena es 0, los nodos BIP148 encontrarán que su cadena no puede extenderse.

Si hay potencia de hash apoyando la cadena BIP148, no hace falta que sea una mayoría de potencia de hash la que permita que la cadena se extienda. Incluso si hay solo una persona resolviendo hashes a mano, con el tiempo suficiente la cadena BIP148 puede ser extendida por otro bloque. Según la distribución de tasa de hash existente, algunos operadores de pools de minería bien conocidos han afirmado que apoyarán la UASF al permitir a los mineros elegir, aunque su potencia de hash total no sea suficiente para asegurar una mayoría. Una empresa que contrata muchos desarrolladores de protocolos de Bitcoin cruciales controla ya parte de su propia pequeña tasa de hash, según su director ejecutivo. Por tanto, la red de Bitcoin tiene un alto riesgo de dividirse el 1 de agosto de 2017.

BIP148 es muy peligroso para las transacciones y otros negocios. No hay indicios de apoyo económico significativo tras el BIP148 y cuando cobre vida como cadena de bloques, el apoyo económico estará probablemente basado en la especulación. La actividad de minería tras una cadena UASF podría pararse sin avisar y los inversores que compraron gracias a la propaganda del BIP148 podrían perder toda su inversión. Todas las transacciones que decidan apoyar un identificador UASF tras el punto de bifurcación deben considerar el riesgo de estancamiento asociado.

No hay protección ante la repetición en una cadena BIP148. Las transacciones se transmitirán a ambas cadenas y los usuarios no podrán impedir que se confirmen en ambas. Los agentes de compra-venta deben detener las retiradas y depósitos en el punto de bifurcación durante un tiempo y desplegar sus propios métodos de división de monedas. Si deseas más información, lee la sección de Referencias de esta publicación: Mitigating Bitcoin Forking Risk during Network Upgrade.

La cadena UASF representa un riesgo de que la cadena desaparezca. Si no hay un plan de contingencia, toda la actividad económica que se produzca en la cadena original después del punto de bifurcación UASF se enfrentará al riesgo de ser eliminada. Esto tiene unas consecuencias desastrosas para todo el ecosistema Bitcoin. UASF es un ataque contra los usuarios y las empresas que no están de acuerdo en activar SegWit ahora mismo sin un aumento del tamaño de los bloques, que es una cláusula muy importante del acuerdo de Hong Kong hecho por la comunidad global de Bitcoin en febrero de 2016. El riesgo de reorganización de la cadena es más significativo de lo que se imagina, tal y como lo analiza Peter R. en  BUIP055,

Fundamentos para la protección ante la reorganización

La probabilidad (P) de que la cadena de bloques grandes se reorganice para volver a ser una cadena de bloques pequeños viene dada por

P = (q/p)^2

Donde p es la fracción de la potencia de hash que mina la cadena de bloques grandes y q es la fracción de la potencia de hash que queda en la cadena de bloques pequeños [2]. Con el 75% de la potencia de hash apoyando  bloques más grandes, la probabilidad de una reorganización es del 11%.

Plan de protección

Este plan es para una bifurcación dura activada por el usuario o UAHF. Puedes encontrar especificaciones técnicas aquí:

https://github.com/bitcoin-UAHF/spec/

La hora de activación puede configurarse. Haremos la bifurcación dura 12 horas y 20 minutos más tarde que la UASF. La hora epoch será 1501590000.

Existirá una regla“debe ser grande” en el bloque de la bifurcación. El tamaño del bloque de la bifurcación debe ser mayor que 1.000.000 byte. El bloque de la bifurcación es el primer bloque que adopte el cambio de la regla de consenso.

Aceptará el bloque cuyo tamaño sea menor de 8 MB y nosotros, los mineros, limitaremos de forma blanda el tamaño del bloque a menos de 2 MB.

Se añadirá una regla de bifurcación blanda al protocolo para limitar las SigOps por transacción a 20 K.

El tamaño del bloque no será parte de la regla de consenso de código duro en el futuro después de la bifurcación del bloque. Los mineros que generen boques grandes serán castigados en los incentivos económicos pero no con la limitación del tamaño del bloque.

Habrá una protección para el ataque de repetición disponible para los agentes de compra-venta y los desarrolladores de carteras. Puedes encontrar las especificaciones aquí:

https://github.com/Bitcoin-UAHF/spec/blob/master/replay-protected-sighash.md

Bitmain usará parte de su propia tasa de hash y trabajará con la comunidad de desarrolladores para tener un plan de contingencia basado en UAHF. Desarrollaremos opciones para que los mineros se nos unan voluntariamente.

Bitmain minará la cadena durante un mínimo de 72 horas después del punto de bifurcación BIP148 con un cierto porcentaje de potencia de hash suministrado por nuestras propias operaciones de minería.

Bitmain, probablemente, no liberará de inmediato los bloques minados a la red pública a no ser que las circunstancias lo exijan, lo que significa que Bitmain minará esa cadena de forma privada primero. Pretendemos liberar los bloques minados en las siguientes situaciones (no es una lita exhaustiva):

  1. La cadena BIP148 se ha activado y posteriormente obtiene un apoyo significativo de la industria minera; es decir, después de que el BIP148 haya dividido con éxito la cadena.
  2. Haya unfuerte deseo del mercado de una bifurcación dura de bloques grandes y fundamentos económicos que nos lleven a minarla; por ejemplo, el tipo de cambio está a favor de un Bitcoin de bloques grandes.
  3. Si ya hay una cantidad significativa de mineros que estén minando una cadena de bloques grandes públicamente y decidimos que es lógico que minemos encima de esa cadena. En ese caso, también tendremos en cuenta unirnos a esa cadena y abandonar nuestra cadena minada en privado para que la cadena pública UAHF no corra el riesgo de ser reorganizada.

Una vez que Bitmain empiece a minar una cadena UAHF públicamente, la minaremos de forma persistente e ignoraremos los incentivos económicos a corto plazo. Creemos que una hoja de ruta que incluya la opción de ajustar el tamaño del bloque será más útil a los usuarios, así que esperamos que atraiga un precio de mercado más alto a largo plazo. La red económica se expandirá más rápido y las probabilidades de ganar serán más altas en un mercado de criptomonedas altamente competitivo.

Compartimos la idea de los primeros bitcoiners de que la descentralización significa que más de 1000 millones de personas en 200 países están usando el Bitcoin como moneda de ahorro y red de pago y que abarca cientos de miles de servicios, comerciantes, transacciones y software de Bitcoin. No creemos que la descentralización signifique poner un límite de 1 MB en el tamaño de los bloques o la responsabilidad de reducir el tamaño del bloque para que un Raspberry Pi pueda ejecutar todo un nodo y que la tarifa por transacción de Bitcoin sea más alta que el ingreso diario en la mayor parte de los países en desarrollo. Creemos que el Bitcoin debe ofrecer a la gente la posibilidad de prosperar sin depender de poderosas autoridades que cobren comisiones que puedan ser de hasta 100 $ por transacción.

 

Desarrollo de software

En la actualidad, hay al menos tres equipos de desarrollo de cliente trabajando en el código de la especificación. Todos desean estar en silencio y alejados de la propaganda y del ejército de troles de ciertas empresas. Se darán a conocer cuando estén preparados. Los usuarios podrán instalar el software y decidir si se unen al UAHF.

Se espera que el software esté listo antes del 1 de julio y estará funcionando en testnet para entonces.

 

Hoja de ruta futura

Si se activa el acuerdo de Nueva York

Deseamos que el acuerdo de Nueva York se desarrolle y se lleve a cabo correctamente. Es la última esperanza para escalar el Bitcoin de manera unida de cara a la amenaza del BIP148. Haremos lo que podamos para desplegarlo y activarlo lo antes posible.

Si BIP148 se activa

En ese caso, UAHF se activará el mismo día. La cadena UAHF protegerá las transacciones económicas que corren riesgo de reorganizarse debido al UASF.

Después, apoyaremos la activación del SegWit en la cadena UAHF si no hay un riesgo patente asociado al SegWit y si la tasa de descuento arbitraria del segmento de datos de testigos se elimina. El parámetro de peso, que está diseñado para las tasas artificiales, tendrá que ser eliminado y tendremos que ser francos y directos en el código del software sobre las distintas limitaciones en diferentes tipos de bloques y otros parámetros. Un SegWit sin la tasa de descuento artificial tratará el tipo de transacción heredado de manera justa y no dará a las transacciones SegWit una ventaja injusta. También ayudará a aumentar la capacidad de SegWit de manera más significativa que con la tasa de descuento. Además impulsaremos y fomentaremos cambios en el código, en el bloque principal o en los bloques de extensión que harán que Lightning Network funcione de modo más seguro y fiable que la actual versión de SegWit de Core.

Los bloques de extensión se desarrollarán como marco para animar a diversos equipos de desarrollo de protocolos a aportar innovaciones y capacidades al protocolo Bitcoin. Algunas innovaciones importantes aunque agresivas pueden introducirse sin afectar a todos los usuarios o empresas de Bitcoin del mundo. Esto acelerará la innovación del protocolo Bitcoin. Las cadenas laterales (sidechains) también se fomentarán cuando la comunidad técnica haya revisado los problemas de seguridad asociados. Los mineros se ven sinceramente impulsados por la esperanza de que el Bitcoin sea un éxito.

Fomentaremos y ayudaremos a que se produzcan diversas soluciones multicapa. Siendo uno de los primeros inversores de RootStock, identificamos el potencial de otra importante criptomoneda competidora. Ya estamos trabajando en estrecha colaboración con autores de otras soluciones multicapa.

Debería promoverse un nuevo servicio de seguridad SPV de nodos completos, así como una mayor investigación y bibliotecas compatibles con el modelo SPV entre los desarrolladores de carteras.

Si Bitcoin puede combinar Bitcoin NG, de Emin, y Lumino, de Sergio, entonces puede alcanzarse con facilidad un aumento del rendimiento de la actual red de Bitcoin hasta 100 veces más con un tamaño de bloques de unos 100 KB pero con una frecuencia de generación de bloques más alta. La propuesta original Bitcoin NG es de bifurcación dura pero podemos hacerla blanda en el protocolo con el marco del bloque de extensión. Al mismo tiempo, RootStock, cofundado por el inventor de Lumino, también está intentando implementar Lumino en RootStock. Lumino funcionará perfectamente con Lightning Network. Será interesante ver qué implementación producirá Lumino en primer lugar y de qué modo.

La firma Schnorr está también en la revisión de su última etapa.

Deberá promoverse la diversificación del desarrollo del cliente. El concepto de consenso defensivo se está desarrollando y ayudará a la industria minera. El consenso defensivo ayudará a la red de Bitcoin a funcionar de manera segura mientras múltiples implementaciones funcionan a la vez.

Hay y habrá otras buenas innovaciones en la comunidad de Bitcoin que no se han fomentado adecuadamente por diversos motivos. Esperamos trabajar activamente en esas innovaciones.

BUIP056 se desarrollará para gestionar el problema del tamaño del bloque antes de que se acepte ampliamente un modelo de gestión del tamaño del bloque totalmente automático y matemático. Como se ha visto en los últimos años de debate, los mineros han demostrado ser muy conservadores y dispuestos a trabajar con la comunidad económica más amplia. A continuación se encuentra la hoja de ruta del aumento del tamaño del bloque para los próximos años.

 

Fecha Tamaño del bloque, Byte
Ahora 1.000.000
Agosto, 2017 2.000.000
Sept., 2017 4.194.304
Abril, 2018 5.931.641
Agosto, 2018 8.388.608
Abril, 2019 11.863.283
Agosto, 2019 16.777.216
Después de agosto, 2019 Depende de la investigación futura

Deberán desarrollarse y desplegarse bloques más débiles antes de que el tamaño del bloque alcance los 8 MB.

 

Referencias

Para conocer otros grupos del ecosistema, recomendamos una investigación detallada sobre los efectos del UASF. Todos los negocios basados en Bitcoin deberán estar preparados ese día para mitigar o eliminar el riesgo que trae consigo el UASF.

Mitigating Bitcoin Forking Risk during Network Upgrade, https://github.com/digitsu/splitting-bitcoin

Si deseas saber más sobre bifurcaciones minoritarias, lee la presentación de Meni Rosenfeld:

How I learned to stop worrying and love the fork

 https://fieryspinningsword.com/2015/08/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-fork/

A Fork in the Road: Must we Choose a Path?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkJHOpuvQo0&feature=youtu.be

Esta es una carta para ayudaros a entender la historia y el cuadro completo del gran debate de la escalabilidad del Bitcoin incluso si no sois mineros:

An Open Letter to Miners

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6befxw/an_open_letter_to_bitcoin_miners_jonald_fyookball/

Este es otro blog para ayudarte a entender lo que pasará con la bifurcación BIP148:

https://medium.com/@jimmysong/uasf-bip148-scenarios-and-game-theory-9530336d953e

 

(This is a translated version of Bitmain’s original blog post, which is in English)

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin

UAHF: Ein Notfallplan gegen UASF (BIP148)

June 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

(This is a translated version of Bitmain’s original blog post, which is in English)

Definitionen

UASF:  User Aktivierte Softfork. Entwickler fügen einen verbindlichen Regelsatz hinzu, um die Node-Software zu ändern, was bestimmte Arten zuvor gültiger Blöcke nach einem Flagday ungültig macht. Diese Methode macht keine Mining-Mehrheit erforderlich, um einen Chain Split zu unterstützen oder zu aktivieren. Das UASF-Angebot hat zum Ziel, eine 51%-Attacke gegen die Blockchain vorzunehmen, die die Mehrheit der wirtschaftlichen Aktivität hat, und diese Attacke wird als „Wipe Out“ bezeichnet.

UAHF: User Aktivierte Hardfork. Entwickler fügen einen verbindlichen Regelsatz hinzu, um die Node-Software zu ändern. Diese Änderungen führen dazu, das zuvor ungültige Blöcke nach einem Flagday gültig werden, was nicht erforderlich macht, dass eine Mehrheit der Hash Power ausgeführt wird. Nodes mit den Regelsatzänderungen folgen dieser Chain, unabhängig von deren Hash-Rate. Das UAHF-Angebot ist ein friedlicher und freiwilliger Aufbruch verschiedener Community-Mitglieder, die verschiedene Meinungen und Visionen haben, und es zielt nicht darauf ab, andere Blockchains anzugreifen, selbst wenn die UAHF-Chain eine höhere Hash-Rate hat.

BIP148-Node: ein Bitcoin-Node, das die BIP148-Konsensregel-Änderungen implementiert hat.

BIP148-Chain: eine Blockchain, die laut der BIP148-Konsensregel-Änderungen gültig ist. BIP148 ist eine Art von UASF.

Original-Chain: Die Blockchain, die die gleichen Konsensregeln verwendet, die heute genutzt werden. (26. Mai 2017)

Wipe-Out: Falls die UASF-Chain aktiviert ist und die UASF-Chain die Mehrheits-Hash-Rate erhält, werden die Nodes, die der Original-Chain folgen, sich neu organisieren und damit anfangen, der UASF-Chain zu folgen. In einem solchen Fall wird eine deutliche Zahl der Aufzeichnungen zu finanziellen Transaktionen verschwinden. Dies ist ein Risiko, welches die UASF-Nodes jenen Nodes auferlegen, die der Original-Chain folgen. Im Gegensatz hierzu bedroht ein UAHF die Nodes, die einen anderen Regelsatz befolgen, nicht mit demselben Risiko.

Bit 1: Das BIP9-Versions-Bit in einem Block-Header, der als Signal für die SegWit-Aktivierung genutzt wird.

Stagnationsrisiko: Eine Blockchain ohne Mining-Support kann plötzlich damit aufhören, erweitert zu werden, da der wirtschaftliche Anreiz für Miner gering ist. Ein Minderheits-Fork wie UASF unterliegt einem ernsthaften Risiko permanenter Stagnation.

 

Hintergrund

Am 24. Mai 2017, traf eine bedeutende wirtschaftliche Mehrheit – mehr als 80% der gesamten Hashing-Power- und 80% der Transaktions-Source-Software – der Bitcoin-Branche eine Vereinbarung in New York (New York Vereinbarung) bezüglich konkreter Schritte, Bitcoin in der nahen Zukunft zu skalieren. Vertreter von Bitcoin Core lehnten die Einladung zu diesem Meeting ab. Diese Vereinbarung ist die harte Arbeit jener, die ehrlich an Bitcoin glauben sowie jener Unternehmer oder Investoren, die ein starkes finanzielles Interesse an der schnellen und gemeinsamen Skalierung von Bitcoin haben. Bitmain ist ein Unterstützer der Vereinbarung. Wir unterstützen die Vereinbarung und möchten, dass diese so schnell wie möglich durchgeführt wird.

Ein Software-Projekt, btc1, welches die New-York-Vereinbarung thematisiert, befand sich in aktiver Entwicklung und wird wahrscheinlich einen Konsensregel-Änderungsplan liefern, der SegWit2x genannt wird. Der testnet5 für SegWit2x ist bereits am Leben. Die Alpha-Version der Software wird am 16. Juni veröffentlicht, und alles ist noch immer pünktlich.

Folgen Sie dem github hier:

https://github.com/btc1

Lesen Sie eine Reddit-Diskussion darüber hier:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6h1wpr/segwit2x_a_summary/

Abonnieren Sie die Mailingliste:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-ml

Trotz dieser Vereinbarung bekommt die UASF (BIP148) Astroturfing-Bewegung weiterhin viel Sendezeit auf zensierten Foren, von denen viele von einzelnen anonymen Individuen kontrolliert werden. Viele der Softwareentwickler, die an einem Softwareprojekt namens  “Bitcoin Core” arbeiten, unterstützen dies auch. BIP148 stellt ein bedeutendes Risiko für das Bitcoin-Ökosystem dar. Daher bereiten wir einen Notfallplan vor, um die wirtschaftliche Aktivität auf der Bitcoin-Blockchain vor dieser Bedrohung zu schützen.

Die New-York-Vereinbarung wird auch kontinuierlich und vorsätzlich von einer Gruppe von Softwareentwicklern sabotiert, die an Bitcoin Core arbeiten.

Wir müssen außerdem auf das zerstörerische Risiko vorbereitet sein, das eine UASF-Aktivierung dem Bitcoin-Netzwerk bescheren wird. Die New-York-Vereinbarung ist sehr konservativ und zielt darauf ab, innerhalb der Bitcoin-Community bezüglich einer einfachen aber künstlich eskalierten Skalierungsproblematik Frieden zu schaffen. Falls die New-York-Vereinbarung einen Chain-Split irgendwie nicht verhindern kann, müssen wir vorbereitet sein.

Der Zweck dieses Blog-Posts besteht darin, unseren UAHF-Notfallplan für UASF/BIP148 anzukündigen.

 

Warum wir einen Notfallplan gegen BIP148 benötigen

Gemäß BIP148 gilt, dass wenn der Chain MTP bei oder nach Dienstag, den 1. August 2017 0:00 Uhr GMT (Epochenzeit 1501545600) liegt, die BIP148-Nodes damit anfangen, Bitcoin-Blocks verwaisen zu lassen, die Bit 1 an ihrem UASF-Forking-Point nicht signalisieren. Die Konsensregel-Änderung verkleinert den Regelsatz gegenüber der Original-Chain vor der BIP148-Aktivierung. BIP148-Nodes folgen der neuen BIP148-Chain, falls mehr als null Hashing-Power vorhanden ist, um es zu unterstützen. Falls die Hash-Rate, die die Chain unterstützt, 0 ist, werden BIP148-Nodes entdecken, dass ihre Chain nicht erweiterungsfähig ist.

Falls Hash-Power vorhanden ist, die die BIP148-Chain unterstützt, muss es sich nicht um eine Hash-Rate-Mehrheit handeln, um eine Erweiterung der Chain zu ermöglichen. Selbst wenn nur eine Person vorhanden ist, die Hashes per Hand löst, kann die BIP148-Chain durch einen weiteren Block erweitert werden, solange genügend Zeit vorhanden ist. Laut der bestehenden Hash-Rate-Distribution haben ein paar bekannte Mining-Pool-Betreiber ausgesagt, dass sie den UASF unterstützen werden, indem Sie Minern Wahlfreiheit lassen, obwohl deren Gesamt-Hash-Rate nicht ausreicht, um eine Mehrheit sicherzustellen. Ein Unternehmen, das viele entscheidende Bitcoin-Protokoll-Entwickler einstellt, kontrolliert nun gemäß seines CEO einen Teil seiner eigenen kleinen Hash-Rate. Es besteht also für das Bitcoin-Netzwerk ein hohes Risiko, dass dieses am 1. August 2017 gespalten wird.

BIP148 ist für Exchanges und andere Geschäfte sehr gefährlich. Es gibt keine Anzeichen für eine bedeutende wirtschaftliche Unterstützung hinter BIP148, und wenn es als Blockchain am Leben ist, würde die wirtschaftliche Unterstützung höchstwahrscheinlich auf Spekulation basieren. Die Mining-Aktivität hinter einer UASF-Chain könnte ohne Vorankündigung stoppen, und Investoren, die der BIP148-Propaganda Glauben schenken, könnten ihre gesamten Investitionen verlieren. Jegliche Exchanges, die entscheiden, ein UASF-Token nach dem Forking-Point zu unterstützen, müssen das Stagnationsrisiko berücksichtigen, das damit einher geht.

Es besteht kein Replay-Schutz auf einer BIP148-Chain. Transaktionen werden auf beiden Chains übertragen und User können nicht verhindern, dass diese auf beiden bestätigt werden. Exchanges müssen Abhebungen und Einzahlungen am Forking-Point für eine gewisse Zeit stoppen, und ihre eigenen Coin-Splitting-Methoden einsetzen. Falls Sie mehr dazu erfahren möchten, lesen Sie bitte im Abschnitt Referenzen dieses Posts: Minderndes Bitcoin-Forking-Risiko während Netzwerk-Upgrade.

Die UASF-Chain beinhaltet das Risiko, dass die Original-Chain vernichtet wird. Falls kein Notfallplan besteht, ist für alle wirtschaftlichen Aktivitäten, die auf der Original-Chain nach dem UASF-Forking-Point auftreten, das Risiko vorhanden, vernichtet zu werden. Dies hat verheerende Konsequenzen für das gesamte Bitcoin-Ökosystem. UASF ist eine Attacke gegen User und Unternehmen, die im Augenblick mit der Aktivierung von SegWit ohne Blocksize-Erhöhung nicht einverstanden ist. Dies ist zudem eine wichtige Klausel in der Hong Kong Vereinbarung, die von der globalen Bitcoin-Community im Februar 2016 getroffen wurde. Das Chain-Reorg-Risiko ist bedeutender als man sich vorstellen konnte, wie Peter R. in  BUIP055 analysiert:

Gründe für einen Reorg-Schutz

Die Wahrscheinlichkeit (P), dass die Groß-Block-Chain sich in einer Klein-Block-Chain reorganisiert, ist gegeben durch

P = (q/p)^2

wobei p der Bruchteil der Hash-Power ist, der die große Blockchain abbaut, und q der Bruchteil der Hash Power ist, der auf der kleinen Blockchain verbleibt [2]. Wenn 75% der Hash Power größere Blöcke unterstützt, beträgt die Reorg-Wahrscheinlichkeit 11%.

 

Plan zum Schutz

Dieser Plan gilt für eine User Aktivierte Hardfork, oder UAHF. Sie finden im folgenden die technischen Spezifikationen:

https://github.com/bitcoin-UAHF/spec/

Die Aktivierungszeit lässt sich konfigurieren. Wir setzen die Hardfork bei 12 Stunden und 20 Minuten später als UASF an. Der Epochenzeit-Stempel ist dann 1501590000.

Es gibt die „muss groß sein“-Regel bezüglich des Fork-Blocks. Die Blocksize des Fork-Block muss größer sein als 1.000.000 Byte. Fork-Block bedeutet der erste Block, der die Konsensregel-Änderung annimmt.

Er akzeptiert einen Block, dessen Größe unter 8 MB liegt, und wir Miner legen ein Soft-Limit der Blocksize bei weniger als 2 MB fest.

Dem Protokoll wird eine Softfork-Regel hinzugefügt, um die SigOps per Transaktion innerhalb von 20K zu begrenzen.

Die Blocksize wird für uns in Zukunft nach dem Fork-Block nicht Bestandteil der fest eingebauten Konsensregel sein. Miner, die große Blöcke generieren, werden durch wirtschaftliche Anreize bestraft, aber nicht durch Begrenzung der Blocksize.

Es wird einen Replay-Angriffschutz geben, der für Exchanges und Wallet-Entwickler zur Verfügung steht. Hier finden Sie Spezifikationen:

https://github.com/Bitcoin-UAHF/spec/blob/master/replay-protected-sighash.md

Bitmain wird einen Teil seiner eigenen Hash-Rate nutzen und mit der Entwickler-Community zusammenarbeiten, um einen Notfallplan zu haben, der auf UAHF basiert. Wir werden Optionen für Miner entwickeln, die freiwillig zu uns stoßen.

Bitmain wird die Chain für mindestens 72 Stunden nach dem BIP148 Forking-Point mit einem bestimmten Prozentsatz der Hash-Rate abbauen, die von unserem eigenen Mining-Betrieb geliefert wird.

Bitmain wird die abgebauten Blöcke wahrscheinlich nicht sofort ans öffentliche Netzwerk freigeben, es sei denn, die Umstände machen dies erforderlich, was bedeutet, dass Bitmain eine solche Chain zuerst privat abbauen wird. Wir beabsichtigen, die abgebauten Blöcke in den folgenden Situationen an die Öffentlichkeit freizugeben (unvollständige Liste):

  1. Die BIP148-Chain ist aktiviert und erhält anschließend bedeutenden Support von der Mining-Branche; d.h. nachdem BIP148 die Chain bereits erfolgreich gespalten hat;
  2. Die Marktstimmung für einen Groß-Block-Hardfork ist stark, und wirtschaftliche Gründe bringen uns dazu, es zum Beispiel abzubauen, und die Exchange-Rate begünstigt den Groß-Block-Bitcoin;
  3. Falls bereits ein bedeutender Anteil anderer Miner eine Groß-Block-Chain öffentlich abbaut und wir beschließen, dass es rational für uns ist, auf dieser Chain ein Mining durchzuführen. In einem solchen Fall werden wir außerdem in Erwägung ziehen, dieser Chain hinzuzustoßen und unsere privat abgebaute Chain aufzugeben, so dass die öffentliche UAHF-Chain nicht dem Risiko unterliegt, reorganisiert zu werden.

Sobald Bitmain damit anfängt, eine UAHF-Chain öffentlich abzubauen, werden wir hartnäckig weiter abbauen und kurzfristige wirtschaftliche Anreize ignorieren. Wir glauben, dass eine Roadmap einschließlich der Option, die Blocksize anzupassen, Usern besser gerecht werden wird, so dass wir erwarten, dass dies langfristig einen höheren Marktpreis mit sich bringen wird. Das wirtschaftliche Netzwerk wird schneller expandieren, und die Gewinnchancen werden in einem höchst wettbewerbsfähigen Kryptowährungsmarkt höher liegen.

Wir teilen die Meinung einiger früher Bitcoiner, dass Dezentralisierung bedeutet, dass mehr als eine Milliarde Menschen in 200 Ländern Bitcoin als Spar-Währung und Zahlungsnetzwerk nutzen, und dass dies Hunderttausende von Bitcoin-Diensten, Händlern, Exchanges und Software umfasst. Wir glauben nicht, dass Dezentralisierung ein 1-MB-Blocksize-Limit oder eine Verantwortung, die Blocksize zu beschränken, bedeutet, so dass ein Raspberry Pi einen vollen Node laufen lassen kann, während die Gebühr pro Bitcoin-Transaktion höher ist als das tägliche Einkommen in den meisten Entwicklungsländern. Wir glauben, dass Bitcoin den Leuten eine Alternative für den geschäftlichen Erfolg bietet, ohne von mächtigen Behörden abhängig zu sein, die Gebühren berechnen können, welche in der Höhe von 100 USD pro Transaktion liegen können.

 

Softwareentwicklung

Derzeit arbeiten mindestens 3 Client-Entwicklungsteams am Code der Spezifikation. Jedes von ihnen möchte sich bedeckt halten und der Propaganda und Troll-Armee bestimmter Unternehmen fern bleiben. Sie werden sich ankündigen, wenn sie dazu bereit sind. User werden in der Lage sein, die Software zu installieren und zu entscheiden, ob sie der UAHF hinzustoßen.

Die Softwares werden voraussichtlich vor dem 1. Juli bereit stehen und bis dahin live auf testnet sein.

 

Zukünftige Roadmap

Falls die New-York-Vereinbarung aktiviert wird

Wir hoffen, dass die New-York-Vereinbarung auf gute Weise entwickelt und umgesetzt wird. Dies ist für Bitcoin die letzte Hoffnung, um gemeinsam angesichts der BIP148-Bedrohung zu skalieren. Wir werden unser Bestes versuchen, um es so schnell wie möglich einzusetzen und zu aktivieren.

Falls BIP148 aktiviert wird

Dann wird UAHF am gleichen Tag am Leben sein. Die UAHF-Chain wird die wirtschaftlichen Transaktionen schützen, die aufgrund von UASF dem Risiko der Reorganisation unterliegen.

Später werden wir die Aktivierung von SegWit auf der UAHF-Chain unterstützen, falls im Zusammenhang mit SegWit kein Patentrisikobesteht und die beliebige Diskontrate des Witness-Datensegments entfernt wird. Der Gewichtsparameter, der für künstliche Raten gestaltet ist, muss eventuell gelöscht werden, und wir müssen im Software-Code bezüglich verschiedener Limitationen auf verschiedenen Arten von Blöcken und anderen Parametern offen und unkompliziert sein.  Ein SegWit ohne eine künstliche Diskontrate wird Transaktionen der vorgelagerten Art fair behandeln und SegWit-Transaktionen keinen unfairen Vorteil verschaffen. Es wird außerdem den kapazitätssteigernden Effekt von SegWit stärker unterstützen als mit der Diskontrate. Wir werden zudem Änderungen im Code, im Haupt-Block oder im Erweiterungs-Block vorantreiben und fördern, was das Lightning-Netzwerk sicherer und zuverlässiger laufen lassen wird, als Cores derzeitige Version von SegWit dies tut.

Erweiterungsblöcke werden als ein Rahmenwerk entwickelt, um Multiprotokoll-Entwicklungsteams dabei zu unterstützen, Innovationen und Kapazitäten ins Bitcoin-Protokoll einzubringen. Manche wichtigen aber aggressiven Innovationen können eingeführt werden, ohne einen Einfluss auf alle Bitcoin-User oder Unternehmen weltweit zu haben. Dies wird die Innovation des Bitcoin-Protokolls beschleunigen. Sidechains werden auch gefördert, nachdem die damit zusammenhängenden Sicherheitsprobleme von der technischen Community überprüft wurden. Miner werden wahrhaftig von der Hoffnung angetrieben, dass Bitcoin ein Erfolg sein wird.

Wir werden dafür sorgen und es unterstützen, dass diverse Multi-Layer-Lösungen produziert werden. Als sehr früher Investor von RootStock haben wir das Potential einer weiteren wichtigen Wettbewerbs-Kryptowährung identifiziert. Wir arbeiten bereits eng mit den Autoren anderer Multilayer-Lösungen zusammen.

Ein neuer SPV-Sicherheitsservice nach vollen Nodes sollte gefördert werden, und weitere Forschung und Bibliotheken, die mit dem SPV-Modell kompatibel sind, sollten unter Wallet-Entwicklern ebenso gefördert werden.

Falls Bitcoin es schafft, Bitcoin NC von Emin und Lumino von Sergio zu kombinieren, lässt sich eine Durchlauf-Erhöhung des derzeitigen Bitcoin-Netzwerks auf das bis zu 100fache einfacher mit einer Blocksize von ca. 100 KB erreichen – jedoch mit einer höheren Block-Generierungs-Frequenz. Der ursprüngliche Bitcoin NG ist ein Hardfork-Angebot; wir können dies jedoch in das Protokoll als Softfork einarbeiten – mit dem Erweiterungsblock-Rahmenwerk. Zur gleichen Zeit versucht auch RootStock, das vom Erfinder von Lumino mitbegründet wurde, Lumino auf RootStock zu implementieren. Lumino wird perfekt mit dem Lightning Netzwerk funktionieren. Es wird interessant sein zu sehen, welche Implementierung Lumino zuerst produzieren wird, und auf welche Weise dies geschehen wird.

Die Schnorr-Signatur befindet sich auch im letzten Stadium der Bewertung.

Die Diversifizierung der Client-Entwicklung wird gefördert werden. Das Defensive Consensus Konzept ist in der Entwicklungsphase und wird in der Mining-Branche hilfreich sein. Defensive Consensus wird dem Bitcoin-Netzwerk dabei helfen, auf sichere Weise zu funktionieren, während mehrere Implementierungen zusammenarbeiten.

Es gibt und wird andere gute Innovationen in der Bitcoin-Community geben, die aus verschiedenen Gründen nicht gut gefördert wurden. Wir haben zum Ziel, aktiv mit diesen Innovationen zu arbeiten.

BUIP056 wird entwickelt, um das Blocksize-Problem zu managen, bevor ein vollautomatisches und mathematisches Blocksize-Governance-Modell weitgehend Anerkennung gefunden haben wird. Wie sich in der Debatte der vergangenen Jahre zeigt, sind Miner sehr konservativ und dazu bereit, mit der breiteren wirtschaftlichen Community zusammenzuarbeiten. Die grobe Roadmap der Blocksize-Erhöhung für die nächsten paar Jahre ist unten aufgeführt.

 

Zeit Blocksize, Byte
Jetzt 1.000.000
August 2017 2.000.000
September 2017 4.194.304
April 2018 5.931.641
August 2018 8.388.608
April 2019 11.863.283
August 2019 16.777.216
Nach August 2019 Hängt von weiterer Forschung ab

Schwache Blöcke müssen entwickelt und eingesetzt werden, bevor die Blocksize-Erhöhung 8 MB erreicht.

 

Referenzen

Für andere Parteien im Ökosystem empfehlen wir die detaillierte Recherche bezüglich der Auswirkungen auf die UASF. Alle Bitcoin-Unternehmen müssen an jenem Tag darauf vorbereitet sein, die Risiken, die UASF trägt, zu mindern oder zu eliminieren.

Minderung des Bitcoin-Forking-Risikos während Netzwerk-Upgrade,https://github.com/digitsu/splitting-bitcoin

Falls Sie mehr über Minderheits-Forks erfahren möchten, schauen Sie sich bitte die Präsentation von Meni Rosenfeld an:

How I learned to stop worrying and love the fork (Wie ich gelernt habe, mir keine Sorgen mehr zu machen und die Fork zu lieben) https://fieryspinningsword.com/2015/08/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-fork/

A Fork in the Road (Eine Fork im Weg): Must we Choose a Path?  (Müssen wir einen Weg wählen?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkJHOpuvQo0&feature=youtu.be

Hier ist ein Brief, der Ihnen dabei hilft, die Historie zu verstehen und bezüglich der großen Debatte zur Bitcoin-Skalierung voll im Bilde zu sein:

Ein offener Brief an Miner

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6befxw/an_open_letter_to_bitcoin_miners_jonald_fyookball/

Hier ist ein weiterer Blog, der Ihnen dabei helfen kann, zu verstehen, was auf der BIP148-Fork passieren wird:

https://medium.com/@jimmysong/uasf-bip148-scenarios-and-game-theory-9530336d953e

 

(This is a translated version of Bitmain’s original blog post, which is in English)

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin

UAHF: A contingency plan against UASF (BIP148)

June 14, 2017 / / 1 Comment

(We have also published the translated versions of this blog post in Deutsche, עִברִית, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, русский and Español )

Definitions

UASF: User Activated Soft Fork. Developers add a mandatory rule set to change the node’ software, invalidating certain kinds of previously valid blocks after a flag day. This method requires no mining majority to support or activate a chain-split. The UASF proposal intends to make a 51% attack against the blockchain that has the majority of economic activity, and this attack is called a “Wipe Out”.

UAHF: User Activated Hard Fork. Developers add a mandatory rule set to change the node software. These changes make previously invalid blocks become valid after a flag day, which do not require a majority of hash power to be enforced. Nodes with the rule set changes will follow this chain irrespective of its hash rate. The UAHF proposal is a peaceful and voluntary departure of different community members who have different opinions or visions, and it is not intended to make an attack against other blockchain(s), even if the UAHF chain has the higher hash rate.

BIP148 node: a Bitcoin node that has implemented BIP148 consensus rule changes.

BIP148 chain: a blockchain that is valid according to the BIP148 consensus rule changes. BIP148 is a kind of UASF.

Original chain: The blockchain that uses the same consensus rules in use today. (May 26th, 2017)

Wipe Out: If the UASF chain is activated and if the UASF chain gains the majority hash rate, then the nodes following the original chain will reorganize and begin to follow the UASF chain. In such an event, a significant number of financial transaction records will disappear. This is a risk that UASF nodes impose on nodes intending to follow the original chain. In contrast, a UAHF does not threaten the nodes following a different rule set with this same risk.

Bit 1: The BIP9 version bit in a block header used to signal for SegWit activation.

Stagnation risk: A blockchain without mining support may suddenly stop being extended, because the economic incentive for miners is low. A minority fork like UASF is under serious risk of permanent stagnation.

 

Background

On May 24th, 2017, a significant economic majority, more than 80% of the entire hashing power and 80% of transactions’ source software or service, of the Bitcoin industry came to an agreement in New York (New York Agreement) on tangible steps to scale Bitcoin in the near future. Representatives of Bitcoin Core declined the invite to attend this meeting. This agreement is the hard work of those who sincerely believe in Bitcoin and those entrepreneurs or investors who have strong financial interest in scaling Bitcoin quickly and unitedly. Bitmain is a supporter of the agreement. We support the agreement and we want to make it happen as soon as possible.

A software project, btc1, which is addressing the New York Agreement, has been under active development and will likely deliver a consensus rule change plan called SegWit2x. The testnet5 for SegWit2x is already alive. Alpha version of the software will be released on June 16th and everything is still on time.

Follow the github here:

https://github.com/btc1

Read a reddit discussion about it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6h1wpr/segwit2x_a_summary/

Subscribe the mailing list:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-ml

Despite this agreement, the UASF (BIP148) astroturfing movement continues to get lots of airtime on censored forums, many of which are controlled by single anonymous individuals. Many of the software developers who work in a software project called “Bitcoin Core” are also supporting it. BIP148 poses a significant risk for the Bitcoin ecosystem, so we are preparing a contingency plan to protect the economic activity on the Bitcoin blockchain from this threat.

The New York agreement is also continuously and intentionally sabotaged by a group of software developers working on Bitcoin Core.

We must also be prepared for the disruptive risk that UASF activation will bring to the Bitcoin network. The New York agreement is very conservative and aimed at bringing peace within the Bitcoin community on a simple but artificially escalated scaling issue. If somehow the New York agreement cannot prevent a chain split, we will have to be prepared.

The purpose of this blog post is to announce our UAHF contingency plan for UASF/BIP148.

 

Why we need a contingency plan against BIP148

According to BIP148, when the chain MTP is at or beyond Tuesday August 1st, 2017 12:00:00 AM GMT (epoch time 1501545600), BIP148 nodes will begin to orphan Bitcoin blocks not signaling Bit 1 at its UASF forking point. This consensus rule change makes the rule set smaller than original chain before BIP148 activation. BIP148 nodes will follow the new BIP148 chain if there is any more than zero hashing power supporting it; if the hash rate backing the chain is 0, BIP148 nodes will find their chain unable to be extended.

If there is hash power supporting the BIP148 chain, it does not need to be a hash rate majority to allow the chain to be extended. Even if there is only one person solving hashes by hands, given enough time the BIP148 chain can be extended by another block. According to the existing hash rate distribution, some well known mining pool operators have stated that they will support the UASF by allowing miners choice, although their total hash rate is not enough to secure a majority. A company hiring many crucial Bitcoin protocol developers controls some of its own small hash rate now according to its CEO. So the Bitcoin network is at a high risk of being split on Aug 1st, 2017.

BIP148 is very dangerous for exchanges and other business. There is no sign of significant economic support behind BIP148 and when it is alive as a blockchain, the economic support would most likely be based on speculation. The mining activity behind a UASF chain may stop without notice, and investors who buy in the BIP148 propaganda may lose all their investment. Any exchanges that decide to support a UASF token after the forking point need to consider the stagnation risk attached to it.

There is no replay protection on a BIP148 chain. Transactions will be broadcast on both chains and users cannot prevent them from being confirmed on both. Exchanges must stop withdrawals and deposits at the forking point for some time, and deploy their own coin splitting methods. If you want to learn more, please read from the References section of this post: Mitigating Bitcoin Forking Risk during Network Upgrade.

The UASF chain presents a risk of the original chain being wiped out. If there is no contingency plan, all economic activity that occurs on the original chain after the UASF forking point will face the risk of being wiped out. This has disastrous consequences for the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. UASF is an attack against users and enterprises who disagree with activating SegWit right now without a block size increase, which is a very important clause in the Hong Kong agreement made by the global Bitcoin community in February, 2016. The chain reorg risk is more significant than imaged, as analyzed by Peter R. in BUIP055,

Rationale for Reorg Protection

The probability (P) that the big-block chain reorgs back to the small-block chain is given by

P = (q/p)^2

where p is the fraction of the hash power mining the big-block chain and q is the fraction of the hash power remaining on the small block chain [2]. With 75% of the hash power supporting larger blocks, the probability of a reorg is 11%.

 

Protection Plan

This plan is for a User Activated Hard Fork, or UAHF. You can find technical specs here:

https://github.com/bitcoin-UAHF/spec/

The activation time is configurable. We will do the hard fork at 12 hours and 20 mins later than UASF. The epoch time stamp will be 1501590000.

There is “must be big” rule at the fork block. The block size of the fork block must be larger than 1,000,000 Byte. Fork block means the first block which adopt the consensus rule change.

It will accept block of which the size is less than 8MB and we, miners, will soft-limit the block size to less than 2MB.

There will be a soft fork rule added into the protocol to limit the sigops per transaction within 20K.

The block size will not be a part of hard-coded consensus rule for us in the future after the fork block. Miners who generate large blocks will be punished by economic incentives, but not limiting the block size.

There will be replay attack protection that is available for exchanges and wallet developers. You can find the spec here:

https://github.com/Bitcoin-UAHF/spec/blob/master/replay-protected-sighash.md

Bitmain will use some of its own hash rate and work with the developer community to have a contingency plan based on UAHF. We will develop options for miners to voluntarily join us.

Bitmain will mine the chain for a minimum of 72 hours after the BIP148 forking point with a certain percentage of hash rate supplied by our own mining operations.

Bitmain will likely not release immediately the mined blocks to the public network unless circumstances call for it, which means that Bitmain will mine such chain privately first. We intend in the following situations to release the mined blocks to the public (non-exhaustive list):

  1. The BIP148 chain is activated and subsequently gains significant support from the mining industry, i.e. after BIP148 has already successfully split the chain;
  2. Market sentiment for a big block hard fork is strong, and economic rationale drives us to mine it, for example, the exchange rate is in favor of big-block Bitcoin;
  3. If there is already a significant amount of other miners mining a big-block chain publicly and we decide that it is rational for us to mine on top of that chain. In such a case, we will also consider joining that chain and give up our privately mined chain so that the public UAHF chain will not be under the risk of being reorganized.

Once Bitmain starts to mine a UAHF chain publicly, we will mine it persistently and ignore short-term economic incentives. We believe a roadmap including the option to adjust block size will serve users better so we expect it to attract a higher market price in the long term. The economic network will expand faster, and the winning odds will be higher in a highly competitive cryptocurrency market.

We share the same belief with some very early Bitcoiners, that decentralization means that more than 1 billion people in 200 countries are using Bitcoin as a saving currency and payment network, and that it comprises of hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin services, traders, exchanges and software. We do not believe that decentralization means a 1MB block size limit or a responsibility to constrain the block size so that a Raspberry Pi can run a full node while the fee per Bitcoin transaction is higher than the daily income in most developing countries. We believe Bitcoin needs to offer people an alternative to flourish without depending on powerful authorities that charge fees that can be as high as 100$/transaction.

 

Software Development

Currently, there are at least 3 client development teams working on the code of the spec. All of them want to stay quiet and away from the propaganda and troll army of certain companies. They will announce themselves when they feel ready for it. Users will be able to install the software and decide whether to join the UAHF.

The softwares are expected to be ready before July 1st, and it will be live on testnet by then.

 

Future Roadmap

If New York agreement activates

We wish that New York agreement will be developed and carried out well. It is the last hope for Bitcoin to scale unitedly in face of the BIP148 threat. We will try our best to deploy and activate it as soon as possible.

If BIP148 activates

Then UAHF will be alive on the same day. The UAHF chain will protect the economic transactions that are under risk of reorganization because of UASF.

Later, we will support the activation of SegWit on the UAHF chain if there is no patent risk associated with SegWit and if the arbitrary discount rate of witness data segment is removed. The weight parameter, which is designed for artificial rates, may need to be deleted and we need to be frank and straightforward in the software code about different limitations on different kind of blocks and other parameters. A SegWit without the artificial discount rate will treat legacy transaction type fairly and it will not give SegWit transactions an unfair advantage. It will also help the capacity increasing effect of SegWit more significantly than with the discounted rate. We will also push for and encourage changes in code, in main block or in extension block, that will make Lightning Network run more safely and reliably than Core’s present version of SegWit does.

Extension blocks will be developed as a framework to encourage multiple protocol development teams to bring innovations and capacities into the Bitcoin protocol. Some important but aggressive innovations can be introduced without affecting all Bitcoin users or companies around the world. This will accelerate the innovation of Bitcoin protocol. Sidechains will also be encouraged after the associated security issues have been reviewed by the technical community. Miners are genuinely driven by the hope that Bitcoin will be a success.

We will encourage and help various multi-layer solutions come into production. As a very early investor of RootStock, we identified the potential of another important competing cryptocurrency. We are already working closely with authors of other multilayer solutions.

A new SPV security service by full nodes should be promoted, and further research and libraries that are compatible with the SPV model should also be promoted among wallet developers.

If Bitcoin can combine Bitcoin NG by Emin and Lumino by Sergio together, then a throughput increase of the current Bitcoin network to up to 100x can be easier to achieve with a block size of around 100KB but of a higher block generation frequency. The original Bitcoin NG is a hard fork proposal, but we can soft fork it into the protocol with the extension block framework. At the same time, RootStock, co-founded by the inventor of Lumino, is also trying to implement Lumino on RootStock. Lumino will work perfectly with Lightning Network. It will be interesting to see which implementation will bring Lumino into production first, and in what ways.

Schnorr Signature is also under last stage review.

The diversification of client development shall be promoted. Defensive Consensus concept is under development and will help in the mining industry. Defensive Consensus will help the Bitcoin network work safely while multiple implementations work together.

There are and will be other good innovations in the Bitcoin community that have not been well promoted because of various reasons. We seek to actively work with those innovations.

BUIP056 will be developed to manage the block size issue before a fully automatic and mathematical block size governance model is widely accepted. As evidenced in the past years of debate, miners have proved to be very conservative and willing to work with the wider economic community. The rough roadmap of the block size increase for the next few years is below.

 

Time Block size, Byte
Now 1,000,000
2017 Aug 2,000,000
2017 Sept 4,194,304
2018 April 5,931,641
2018 Aug 8,388,608
2019 April 11,863,283
2019 Aug 16,777,216
After 2019 Aug Depends on further research

Weak blocks will have to be developed and deployed, before the block size increase reaches 8MB.

 

References

For other parties in the ecosystem, we recommend detailed research on effects of the UASF. All Bitcoin businesses must be prepared on that day to mitigate or eliminate the risks that UASF carries.

Mitigating Bitcoin Forking Risk during Network Upgrade, https://github.com/digitsu/splitting-bitcoin

If you want to learn more about minority forks, please see Meni Rosenfeld’s presentation:

How I learned to stop worrying and love the fork  https://fieryspinningsword.com/2015/08/25/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-fork/

A Fork in the Road: Must we Choose a Path?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkJHOpuvQo0&feature=youtu.be

Here is a letter to help you understand the history and full picture of the great debate on Bitcoin scaling, even you are not miners:

An Open Letter to Miners

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6befxw/an_open_letter_to_bitcoin_miners_jonald_fyookball/

Here is another blog help you to understand what will happen on the BIP148 fork:

https://medium.com/@jimmysong/uasf-bip148-scenarios-and-game-theory-9530336d953e

 

(We have also published the translated versions of this blog post in Deutsche, עִברִית, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, русский and Español )

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin

Antminer Firmware Update -April 2017

April 27, 2017 / / 6 Comments

There is a new controversy regarding a feature in the firmware of Bitmain’s Antminer series of Bitcoin miners which allegedly claims that Bitmain can remotely shut down Antminers. This feature was designed and coded by the same team that is responsible for the firmware of Antminers. As the firmware has always been open-source, the feature was never intended to be malicious.

We need to clarify the intention of having this feature. We planned to add this feature to the code to empower customers to control their miners which often times can be hosted outside their premises. This was after more than one incident of miners being stolen from a mining farm or being hijacked by the operator of the mining farm:

  1. In 2014, around 1,000 Antminers were withheld from the owner by a hosting service provider in Shenyang, China.
  2. In 2015, around 2,000 units of Antminers were withheld from the owner by a hosting service provider in Georgia.
  3. In 2017, Bitmain’s own miners were withheld and sold without its consent in Canada.

This feature was intended to allow the owners of Antminer to remotely shut down their miners that may have been stolen or hijacked by their hosting service provider, and to also provide law enforcement agencies with more tracking information in such cases. We never intended to use this feature on any Antminer without authorization from its owner. This is similar to the remote erase or shutdown feature provided by most famous smartphone manufacturers.

However, this feature was never completed. We started to develop this feature since Antminer S7 and wanted to finish its development on the Antminer S9. We hoped to make it a useful feature that we could advertise to our customers. But, due to some technical problems, we were unable to finish the development of this feature and shut down the testing server in December 2016.  It is a bug to leave the code there before the feature is fully complete and acknowledged to the users. This bug has now been pointed out in context of Bitcoin’s scaling roadmap debate and has caused considerable misunderstandings within the Bitcoin community. We apologize for this.

Following are the models affected by this bug:

  • Antminer S9
  • Antminer R4
  • Antminer T9
  • Antminer L3
  • Antminer L3+

Since MITM and DNS hijacks can exploit this bug we would like to apologize to our customers for a degraded level of security caused by this. We should also note that the existing stratum protocol is vulnerable to MITM and DNS hijacks, and that the mining industry needs to work together on design of the next generation mining protocol.

Moving on, we have released the new updated source-code on GitHub and new firmware on our website which removes this bug. We recommend all Antminer owners to upgrade their firmware to the updated firmware from the list below and strongly advise to not download any firmware provided by a third-party which can lead to unexpected outcomes in function and can also be potential phishing attacks.

Antminer S9 firmware
Antminer T9 firmware
Antminer R4 firmware
Antminer L3 firmware
Antminer L3+ firmware

Source code on GitHub

Source-code for Antminer S9, T9 and R4: https://github.com/bitmaintech/bmminer-mix
Source-code for Antminer L3 and L3+: https://github.com/bitmaintech/setup-A8 which includes https://github.com/bitmaintech/ltc_frimware inside.

Alternatively, we advise owners of mining farms that run Antminers to set the DNS record on their routers of auth.minerlink.com to 127.0.0.1 in the /etc/hosts file by the following method:

1. Use ssh to login to the miner
2. Run command:   echo “127.0.0.1     auth.minerlink.com” >> /etc/hosts
3. Run command:   sync

 

The controversy around this code has brought our attention to improve the design in order to address vulnerabilities that were pointed out by the community recently. For this, we thank the community for pointing out bugs and contributing to our open-source codebase. We would also like to take this opportunity to express our solidified belief in the open source community and express our renewed commitment to improving the quality and testing methods of our code.

We will continue the development of this feature to provide a technical protection for mining rig owners to host their miners in remote locations. We will add a switch to this feature, and this switch will be closed by default. Customers will be able to set up and configure their own authentication server. Before we finish this development, such a code will not be in the firmware we release from now on.

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin

Regarding Recent Allegations and Smear Campaigns

April 7, 2017 / / 13 Comments

 

When the concept of Bitcoin was first introduced on a cryptography mailing list by Satoshi Nakamoto, certain developers purported to have already “proven that decentralized consensus was impossible”. Today, the same developers offer a similarly specious “proof” that the implementation of long-published ASIC optimizations is some kind of “attack” on the Bitcoin network.

We’d like to clear the air.

Bitmain has tested ASICBOOST on the Testnet but has never used ASICBOOST on the mainnet as implied in Gregory Maxwell’s proposal. We ask conclusive proof from whoever claims this to be false because such baseless claims are toxic for the Bitcoin space. We also believe the math used by Gregory Maxwell is incorrect and that the method is not practical in a production environment.

Our ASIC chips, like those of some other manufacturers, have a circuit design that supports ASICBOOST. However, the ASICBOOST method has not been used by us on the mainnet. We have not seen any evidence yet on the main net that anyone has used it in the patented way.

Bitmain holds the ASICBOOST patent in China. We can legally use it in our own mining farms in China to profit from it and sell the cloud mining contracts to the public. This, however profitable, is not something we would do for the greater good of Bitcoin.

The mining equipment produced by Bitmain for its own use is in no way intended to be technically superior or more power-efficient than the equipment it sells to the public. The ASICBOOST method has not been employed by Bitmain to increase the power-efficiency of the miners in its own mining farms.

Bitcoin mining equipment depreciates rapidly. Bitmain has constantly been introducing newer more efficient miner models for all. As such the statement that the deployment of ASICBOOST, which can lead to a 20% difference in power efficiency, is some kind of negative development for Bitmain’s business model is false. Bitmain has shown the ability to adapt and thrive in the constantly changing and extremely challenging Bitcoin mining environment. Whether ASICBOOST is used or not, Bitmain will continue to produce more efficient miners.

Bitmain had always supported the Hong Kong Agreement, which means Segwit plus a hard fork to 2MB block size, until we no longer felt that it was going to happen in the foreseeable future. In fact, Bitmain is publicly on record as historically supporting SegWit and Lightning Network in the context of the Hong Kong agreement, and any accusations to the contrary are completely false and specious.

Miners love multi-layer solutions like Lightning Network. To support these off-chain solutions, Bitmain is very supportive of fixing malleability issues. At the same time, we also believe the first layer, which has been well-tested by time, is very important and should not be crippled. We are worried about the policy and precedence set by Bitcoin Core in this regard.

“Tothemoon”, an extension blocks plan proposed recently by Purse.io using a new Bitcon protocol implementation called Bcoin, could be designed to be incompatible with ASICBOOST much like Segwit is. ASICBOOST is not a deterrent to Bitmain’s support of SegWit or Tothemoon. SegWit is not running in production because the conditions made clear in the Hong Kong agreement have not been met, in which we foresee a non-witness block size increase coming together with SegWit. Bitmain’s co-CEO Jihan Wu has clearly expressed support for Tothemoon recently. Tothemoon is a real and standard block size increase, but not through an arbitrary witness discount policy.

Gregory Maxwell’s recent proposal suggests changing 2^32 collision to 2^64 collision to make ASICBOOST more difficult. The result of this would be a loss for the patent owners and the Bitcoin protocol. The patent owners will get nothing and Bitcoin protocol will become more complicated. The only beneficiary will be the technical bureaucrats who are engineering it. The more complicated the protocol is, the higher the cost and barrier to have multiple implementations become. We confirm that we support multiple implementations because they will bring more innovation and better security to the network, while threatening the monopolistic position of certain developers.

Bitmain has continuously been advocating for increasing the Bitcoin block size. Increasing the block size will make the collisions even more difficult, damaging the potential benefits of Bitmain’s gain from the private ASICBOOST assumed by Maxwell’s proposal. The conspiracy theories do not add up here.

There are better ways to resolve the issues that Gregory Maxwell’s proposal seeks to address. Adversarial thinking is not the only way. We suggest working with the patent owners so that the patent could be used by the public. If all mining equipment could use ASICBOOST, it will lower the J/GH cost and the total network hash rate will increase, making the Bitcoin network even stronger. So, the ASICBOOST method is not a “covert attack” on the Bitcoin PoW function. It is an engineering optimization.

The best method to leverage ASICBOOST is by using the Bitcoin block header’s version bits. Patent owner Timo has mentioned it in the patent. Gregory Maxwell’s proposal seems to be missing this point. Usage of these bits was proposed by Timo Hanke through Bitcoin Core’s BIP process but it was declined by Gregory Maxwell and Core developers.

Bitcoin Core is now almost controlled by a small secretive committee. Anyone with a basic sense about human history can tell that this is the starting of a dictatorship. Calling out an optimization an “attack” is playing a political trick to grab power.

The proposal mentions “reverse engineering of a particular mining chip demonstrated conclusively that ASICBOOST has been implemented”. This statement seems directed towards Bitmain. We believe the Bitcoin community needs more constructive contributors than it needs such policing.

The proposal does not mention Bitmain, however, an orchestrated troll army within the community was effectively able to spread rumors around Bitmain. Most Bitcoin companies currently have a strong fear of such notorious assets working for certain people. Bitcoin’s value of liberty is in danger.

The Bitcoin community suffered a grave misfortune when Maxwell lead the coup against Gavin Andresen and removed his Github commit access. It is now incumbent upon us as a community to figure out how to find a new core developer group that does not busy itself with attacking one of Bitcoin’s largest investors (Ver), one of its largest exchanges (Coinbase), and its largest mining equipment provider (Bitmain).

There is a history of character assassinations against those who have spoken against SegWit or Core’s roadmap. Gregory Maxwell’s latest round of attempts follow his previous patterns. Maxwell has previously attacked one of most important Bitcoin maintainers Gavin Andresen, one of the earliest public Bitcoin advocates and investors Roger Ver, founder and CEO of one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges Brian Armstrong, the first author of Lightning Network Joseph Poon, and now Bitmain’s co-CEO Jihan Wu. He has even called his fellow Core contributors who signed the Hong Kong agreement “dipshits”. Such hostility is destructive for Bitcoin.

We have very firm belief that the block size of Bitcoin will be increased. It is the Bitcoin that our co-founders signed up for, it is the roadmap designed by Satoshi and it is the destiny of Bitcoin. We will protect it at any cost.

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin
bitcoin blockchain alternatives

BitPay Says Alternatives Not as Compelling as the Bitcoin Blockchain

March 25, 2017 / / 0 Comments

BitPay co-founders Stephen Pair and Tony Gallippi have been around Bitcoin for about as long as anyone else in the industry. The company was founded in 2011, and their actions generally indicate the future direction of the industry.

“When we started in 2011, we would be excited to get five or six transactions through BitPay in a day.” said Pair in a fireside chat with Gallippi, held during the recent Distributed: Markets 2017 conference in Atlanta.

BitPay would go on to cut deals with the likes of Microsoft, Newegg, Expedia and other major corporate customers to provide payment processing services.

Challenges for Bitcoin’s Use in Consumer Payments

While many early Bitcoin adopters claimed the P2P digital cash system was going to replace the use of credit cards and completely overthrow the banking system in 2013, things haven’t exactly panned out that way — at least not yet.

Bitcoin is currently dealing with some issues as a consumer payments platform, mainly because the system is experiencing growth at a rate faster than it can safely scale.

“We have seen an increase in customer service inquiries because of transaction confirmation delays for bitcoin purchasers,” Pair told Bitcoin Magazine in an interview. “We’re also seeing substantially higher transaction fees on our own settlement transactions.”

Recently, BitPay decided to stop covering Bitcoin network fees on invoice payments.

“This friction is making us get more creative in how we do user experience design for delayed payment states on the BitPay platform,” said Pair. “Often delays are an educational opportunity to explain how the Bitcoin network works and point people to wallets that use dynamic transaction fees. Copay and BitPay wallet users have been largely immune from transaction delays because their wallets calculate transaction fees dynamically.

“Our designers and engineers are constantly attuned to how we can make using Bitcoin intuitive,” Pair added.

The lightning network is a proposed method of dealing with the issues related to transaction delays and higher transaction fees on the Bitcoin network. The transaction caching layer would effectively enable potentially improved versions of many of the features people have associated with Bitcoin in the past, such as instant transactions at nearly no cost.

“We’re exploring all possible solutions for scalability,” Pair said. “It’s not a surprise to us that Bitcoin needs to scale — scalability is something we’ve been thinking about for years. The only surprise is that while we anticipated short-term bumps in the throughput, we thought that changes for more on-chain throughput would have happened a couple of years ago. This slow movement to increase network throughput is something we did not foresee. At some point we’re going to reach an actual scalability limit that will only be overcome through solutions like these.”

Some have wondered whether companies like BitPay may turn away from Bitcoin and toward alternative options, such as altcoins or permissioned blockchains, due to the historically high U.S.-dollar-denominated fees and general congestion on the network.

“We have carefully studied the most significant alternatives to the Bitcoin blockchain and have concluded that none of them are compelling,” Pair responded.

Bitcoin’s Use in Consumer Payments Is Still Growing

Although Pair admitted Bitcoin has some issues with scaling right now, BitPay is still seeing growth in the use of the technology among consumers.

“Bitcoin is the fastest, most secure and most cost-effective means of doing value transfer on the internet,” said Pair. “We think of ourselves as a payment innovator, and from a functional perspective, consumer payments and B2B payments are no different on the Bitcoin network and on BitPay’s platform.”

At the Distributed: Markets fireside chat, Gallippi claimed that their transaction count has more than doubled over the past year. Much of that growth, he said, has been seen in the areas of digital goods and video games. Specifically, he pointed to digital distribution platform Steam’s acceptance of bitcoin through BitPay as a source of this growth, and pointed out that there is a lot of overlap between the Bitcoin and gamer communities;

Growth for Bitcoin Outside of Consumer Payments

In addition to continued growth in the area of consumer payments, Pair noted that BitPay is also seeing growth in the use of Bitcoin for B2B money transfers.

“We’re seeing significant interest and transaction volume growth from businesses that need to transfer value to other businesses,” said Pair. “Bitcoin is a fantastic solution for these business-to-business transfers, especially when it comes to international payments, where bank transfers are still slow and inefficient.

“They’re using our platform for billing and settling internationally with a lot of their suppliers,” Pair stated during the fireside chat.

Gallippi added that there has been an uptick in the use of Bitcoin for payment disbursements.

“It’s not that easy to pay people on a regular basis to the majority of the world. Eastern Europe, Israel, Africa, India [and] the Middle East — where a lot of these apps are being [developed] — it’s very difficult to pay them,” said Gallippi, as he explained how app stores pay developers who sell apps on their store.

Gallippi noted that for the app store example or digital marketing companies, BitPay can receive one payment from the business and then disburse payments in bitcoin at all of the endpoints.

“We built that product originally because we had our own needs to pay our own employees in bitcoin,” added Pair. “We’ve got a lot of Fortune 500 companies coming to us now every day asking us to solve these kinds of payments problems.”

 

Written by Kyle Torpey for Bitcoin Magazine | Original article: www.bitcoinmaga….

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin
moscow-mayor-blockchain-infrastructure-payments-security

Moscow Eyes Blockchain Tech for Infrastructure and Security

March 10, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The Moscow City Government supports the optimization of the transport infrastructure with the use of blockchain technology through the “shared registry” system when it comes to controlling land-based transportation.

Blockchain technology will help create more transparent, just and reliable models for travel fare payment and system financing.

Sources in the room told Bitcoin Magazine that in a meeting with principal blockchain experts, Maksim Liksutov, deputy mayor of Moscow and head of the Moscow City Transport Agency, stated that the city’s primary task at the moment is to establish and support a safe and reliable data transmission system both within the department as well as with suppliers. He went on to suggest that a blockchain shared registry system would be an appropriate mechanism.

Liksutov was also enthusiastic about the potential for blockchain technology to facilitate the application of biometric information techniques, especially in terms of security solutions. He noted that with its data verification abilities, blockchain technology’s distributed nature could mean easier verification for travelers, while providing widespread confirmation of identities where necessary.

“Using blockchain technology in transactions between users and machines (which requires a high level of trust and permissions) is a question of time. This technology could be used also as an unprecedented anti-terror system,” the lead coordinator of Blockchain International, Alexander Mikheev, told Bitcoin Magazine.

According to the Mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin, these steps will become a part of a wider initiative the government will take to ensure advancement of new technologies. “Such projects are only begging to be realized in various areas, and we, without a doubt, owe it to ourselves to keep, in that respect, leading the array of cities across the globe,” Sobyanin said in a televised public address.

Among the other industries that will benefit from the integration of blockchain technology are the property sector, banks, health services, electrical power systems, digital commerce and tourism. “The users will just have to input their personal data once (or the company data), after which the information will be verified in the blockchain network in all the governmental and private structures, including banks and insurance companies,” Sobyanin said.

Written by Peter Chawaga for the Bitcoin Magazine | Original article: www.bitcoinmaga….

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin
gold ounce bitcoin value

One Bitcoin Just Became Worth More Than One Ounce of Gold

March 3, 2017 / / 0 Comments

One bitcoin has now, at least briefly, been worth more than one ounce of gold, hitting $1239.9 at the bitcoin exchange Bitstamp, while an ounce of gold was priced at $1238.67.

The last time a single bitcoin might have been worth more than an ounce of gold happened in November 2013, more than three years ago. Having taken place based on Mt. Gox pricing models, possibly manipulated due to internal Mt. Gox trading bot(s), the legitimacy of bitcoin’s first dance with gold parity faces continued scrutiny. Regardless, the price of gold in bitcoin terms is now trading at an all-time low.

When, according to Mt. Gox, the bitcoin price exceeded that of an ounce of gold, it had just broken through the $1,000 threshold. Similarly, the bitcoin price crossed the $1,000 mark January 1 before gold-bitcoin parity in the first week of January 2017.

Everything You Need to Know Before SEC Bitcoin ETF DecisionIn April 2011, bitcoin realized parity with the US dollar. It later reached parity with silver (so nicknamed the “devil’s metal” for its ties to populism) at approximately $29.65 per bitcoin on February 19, 2013.

Bitcoin Outshines Troy Ounce of Gold in 2016

Bitcoin, long called ‘digital gold’ due to its strict coin creation protocol involving a computational process dubbed ‘mining,’ performed as a better safehaven, perhaps, than gold bullion.

Gold demand stoked by Negative Interest Rate Policies (NIRP) in Japan led to stalwart demand for the ‘yellow metal’ by July 2017. Gold fell nearly 20% for the remainder of the year.

Bitcoin increased more than 125% over the course of 2016. Fiat crises throughout 2016 in emerging or underdeveloped markets like India, China, Venezuela, and Greece is perceived to have benefited bitcoin more than gold.

Bitcoin: Gold’s “Digital Counterpart”

In “An Analysis of Bitcoin Exchange Rates,” economist Jacob Smith, who calls bitcoin a “digital counterpart” of gold,  “highlights the similarities between the traditional commodity and its new digital counterpart.” He writes:

…the most appropriate way to think about bitcoins is as digital gold. While nominal bitcoin prices are extremely volatile and seemingly uncorrelated with other nominal exchange rates, relative bitcoin prices or implied nominal exchange rates are indeed highly cointegrated with conventional market exchange rates. This mirrors the relationship between physical gold and conventional nominal exchange rates…

One Bitcoin is Now Worth More Than One Ounce of Gold for First Time
Casascius gold bitcoin.

The bitcoin and gold markets have long been intertwined. One of the most popular companies early in bitcoin’s existence, Casascius, produced the most expensive physical bitcoin ever produced, one of which sold for $1,000,000 in 2013.

Comprised of one ounce of fine gold (which was worth about one-third the value of 1,000 BTC when produced), Casascius offered the coins at $5,500. An owner of one such rare coin recently used bitcoin’s price rise as an opportunity to share the rarity on Reddit. The redditor explained how it worked:

“I have a confirmation code that proves that my passphrase unlocks an encrypted private key that maps to the bitcoin address on the coin,” the coin holder wrote. “If I ever sell these coins, I will give the passphrase and confirmation code to the buyer. So the only trust is that Mike Caldwell didn’t screw up and not put the correct encrypted private key under the hologram. So far, Mike’s work has been top notch. But of course, would you trust it with $1M if you have that kind of money? That is for you to decide. Do note that I have not funded these with any BTC.”

Everything You Need to Know Before SEC Bitcoin ETF Decision

At gold-bitcoin parity, the bitcoin market cap ($18 billion) expressed as a percent of gold in circulation ($7 trillion) is currently at about 0.388%. Bitcoiners see this as evidence of bitcoin’s room for growth.

The last time bitcoin approximated the gold price, however, it marked the top of the bull run in 2013 for the digital currency.

 

Written by Justin Connell for Bitcoin.com | Original article: news.bitcoin.co…

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin
Russian Bank Vnesheconombank Executive Bitcoin

Russian Bank’s VP Says Bitcoin is the Only Successful Blockchain

February 23, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Over the past couple of months, Russian politicians and banks have been changing their tune when it comes to blockchain technology and cryptocurrency solutions. On February 21 Nikita Smirnov vice president of the state-owned bank Vnesheconombank had some positive things to say about the digital currency bitcoin. In fact, Smirnov believes the Bitcoin network is the only “successful” blockchain technology.

‘A New Philosophical Concept’

Russia’s relationship with digital currencies has been confusing, to say the least. Over the past few years, a few Russian bureaucrats have perceived bitcoin use as a criminal activity. Moreover, in the past, there have also been website blockades against bitcoin domains such as BTC-e and Localbitcoins. However, it seems politicians and banks are slowly changing their minds towards the country’s relationship with bitcoin. Just recently Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister, Alexey Moiseev told the public that bitcoin was “not a threat,” and Russia’s largest bank Sberbank has also been bolstering blockchain technology.

Now one of Russia’s well-known state banks Vnesheconombank (VEB) vice president has told the regional publication Kommersant that bitcoin has many benefits. Additionally, Nikita Smirnov says that bitcoin has an indisputable network effect.

“Bitcoin is the only blockchain technology in the world that has widespread adoption,” explains Smirnov. “It has existed for several years already, people tried to hack it, but no one has succeeded. So right now, if you ask whether there’s another algorithm, which established itself as a solution to distributed consensus problem, then the answer is probably NO.”

As of the present moment, the only successful solution to that problem is Bitcoin.

‘Bitcoin Forms a Symbiotic Relationship with Humans’

Meanwhile, the Russian bank Sberbank has been researching and developing its own enterprise-grade distributed ledger prototype for quite some time. Sberbank CEO Herman Gref believes commercial blockchains will be ready in two years and the company is working with the government on this project. However, according to the VEB vice president bitcoin is really the only successful blockchain today and can be considered a positive bacteria in his opinion.

Bitcoin is kind of a philosophical concept. Compare it to a bacteria, which exists separately from humans, but is in a symbiotic relationship with humans. But the word bacteria has a negative connotation, whereas Bitcoin in many ways is a positive thing, which satisfies many necessities, involves people in the process and allows itself to exists in this way.

Vnesheconombank also works with the Russian government managing state debts and pension funds. The bank, instituted in 1922, has grown significantly over the past few years acting as a progressive “Russian Development Bank.” Smirnov’s opinion may not reflect the bank’s official stance towards bitcoin but may push the bank to research the cryptocurrency further.

“[Bitcoin] truly is a new philosophical concept, which isn’t very well understood quite yet,” Smirnov concluded in his interview.


Written by Jamie Redman for Bitcoin.com | Original article: https://news.bitcoin.co….

What do you think about the vice president of Vnesheconombanks statements? Do you agree that Bitcoin is the only successful blockchain implementation? Let us know in the comments below.

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin
Bitcoin in Japan

Bitcoin in Japan to be a Legal Payment Method Soon

February 9, 2017 / / 1 Comment
Bitcoin will soon be legally recognized as a method of payment in Japan. The bill with provisions for cryptocurrencies has recently passed through the period of public consultation and will enter into force in April.

Bitcoin.com examines what the bill means and how it could affect Bitcoin with Special Counsel at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, Ken Kawai, who has held numerous speaking engagements on the legal issues of virtual currency regulations in Japan.

Countdown: The Long Awaited Bill

Since Bitcoin’s inception, its legal position in Japan has not been clear. The first bill containing provisions for virtual currencies including Bitcoin was submitted to the Diet last
March. It amends the existing Payment Services Act and the Act on Preventing of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds.

“The revision of the Payment Services Act, which sets out the basic framework of virtual currency regulation, was promulgated last June”, Kawai told Bitcoin.com. The drafts of detailed regulations and guidelines were published in December and the period for public consultation on the bill ended on January 27, he continued, adding that:

The new regulations will enter into force in April 2017.

New Method of Payment but Not Currency

This bill defines virtual currencies including bitcoin and imposes
certain regulations on virtual currency exchange services with the aim to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing as well as to protect users.

While the bill recognizes them as a new method of payment in Japan, virtual currencies are not classified as “currencies” however. Kawai confirmed:

“Virtual currency” is distinguished clearly from “currency” in the regulations.

Even though Bitcoin is not considered a currency, being recognized by the government as a payment method will “likely
have a positive effect on people’s mind and facilitate usage of VC’s [virtual currencies]”, he believes.

Bitcoin usage has already been growing considerably in Japan. Japanese exchange Coincheck revealed significant growth in its user base, rising from 14,000 users last April to 76,400 in January. In addition, the exchange reported gigantic growth in the number of bitcoin-accepting merchants using its service. Also, Japanese giant GMO Internet group has recently announced that it would be developing a bitcoin exchange and wallet service.

Meanwhile, Japan now has the second-largest bitcoin trading volume globally, according to Coinhills.

Bitcoin’s Other Legal Considerations in Japan

While usage as a payment method should not be affected whether bitcoin is legally considered a ‘currency’ or not, Kawai explained that, from a legal standpoint, there are some considerable differences.

“For instance, if they are defined as “currencies”, lending of VCs must comply with Money Lending Control Act (which requires lenders to register as “Moneylenders”) and VCs’ derivatives must comply with the Financial Instrument Exchange Act”, he described.

Some other countries have classified virtual currency as an asset or property for tax purposes such as the U.S. Recently, Israel has issued a draft which considers Bitcoin an asset, therefore imposing Value Added Tax (VAT) as well as capital gains tax on bitcoin transactions.

However, for Japan, this bill does not define virtual currency as “property”. Instead, virtual currencies are defined as ‘proprietary value’, Kawai contrasted, adding that “a precedent of Tokyo District Court denies the concept of having ‘property rights’ of Bitcoin”. Furthermore, “it is not uncertain what is the legal nature of proprietary value in Japanese civil laws”, he clarified, adding that “I do not expect that the government is leaning towards proactively considering it as “property”.

 

Written by Kevin Helms for Bitcoin.com | Original article: https://news.bitcoin.co…

---------------------
Liked this article? Share it with others:

Facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterestlinkedin
Follow Us for Latest News & Articles:

Facebooktwittergoogle_pluslinkedin
« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 blog.bitmain.com

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑