Of the exceedingly modest cadre of people who actually try to keep up with the #trilema logs, there’s something of a consensusi that the density of material has increased, even exploded, of late. The innovative referencing system is largely to thank for this, but the fact remains : panning for golden nuggets in the logs is evermore challenging and the barriers to a successful yeshiva grow ever taller.
To help you along, as ever, here’s a little ditty you’ll almost surely have missed, but if you’re at all keen on “crypto,” it’s one you’ll do well to pause and reflect on :
rothbart: I’ve been trying to grok the SegWitii “theft” incentive – as the bounty grows, so does the PoW defending it – doesn’t this keep the SegWit outputs safe?
mircea_popescu: How did you reason to arrive to that ? There is no PoWiii in SegWit. Whole fucking point of SegWit is to try and take PoW away.rothbart: As in, the attacker would be doing a chain rewrite in order to keep the SegWit outputs on his fork?
mircea_popescu: That made no sense.rothbart: Wouldn’t he have to redo all that PoW since SegWit wen’t active on his fork?
mircea_popescu: No.rothbart: I’ve read the logs, still confused about this.
mircea_popescu: Let’s drop the math for a moment and delve. At time t0, Bitcoin works. At time t1, some wreckers under “public pressure” as discussed well in http://trilema.com/2013/digging-through-archives-yields-gold/ attempt to attack this Bitcoin that works, by producing an alt-Bitcoin, that does not work. The specific way in which the alt-Bitcoin that does not work “works” is by deeding (exactly like deedbot)iv some strings into the Bitcoin chain. On the basis of these mystery strings, OTHER PARTIES, which ARE IN NO WAY BOUND TO THIS, allocate wholly imaginary bitcoins to the sort of imbeciles who buy into this scheme (always and everywhere, the stupid poor. To them it makes sense, they’ve nothing to lose anyway). Now then. At time t2, any of those involved, or any third party, simply SPENDS that Bitcoin. The t1 wreckers may yell all they want this “is not right”. But in bitcoin longest chain prevails, and so the story ends. (To be, of course, rehashed again and again forever, like Mike Gavin’s asshole.)vrothbart: Does the attacker just build upon the main chain, then; sending all the SegWit outputs to himself?
mircea_popescu: Yes.rothbart: Ok, think I’ve got it. How is it that the Power Rangersvi are all BLIND to this?
mircea_popescu: (Always and everywhere, the stupid poor. To them it makes sense, they’ve nothing to lose anyway) but whatever, I don’t mind making money out of MIT’s “Blockchain Of The Future”, like I didn’t mind fleecing “Ripple” or cashing BTC Crash.vii Free bitcoin will continue for as long as USG can draw breath, I’m not against. Let them lose what they can’t invest.rothbart: Anyone, at any point, can claim all SegWit outputs – all they need to do is solve the 80bit hash or whatever?
mircea_popescu: They don’t need to do anything. Just mine a block with it spent, and that’s that. You’re perhaps too new to know this, but the PREVIOUS time there was “miner consensus” it turned out the miners that “voted” and “supermajority” didn’t give the slightest shit about the whole thing, and did NOT actually implement what they were misrepresented as having supported. So the chain forked. The exact same will happen again. “Oh, you had a consensus ? lol.”
Imagine the above in Levitan’s voice, natch. If anyone needs me, I’ll be racing my cars.
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- Certainly more of a consensus than Bitcoin miners or rubber-chicken-eating conpherence-goers could ever hope to achieve. ↩
- SegWit = Segregated Witness, which was “soft-forked” into the more braindamaged versions of the Bitcoin client on August 1, 2017. TRB users are obviously unaffected. ↩
- Proof of Work : hard to solve, easy to verify. Bitcoin’s PoW is based on the SHA256 algorithm. ↩
- deedbot is the authentication, rating, and registraring bot in #trilema. Full commands here. ↩
- If you’re newer to the scene, which there’s no harm in for as long as you do your required reading sooner rather than later, that’d be a reference to this Mike and that Gavin. ↩
- The “Power Rangers” are the Bitcoin “Core” “developers” such as the aforementioned Mike, Gavin, and whoever else USG.NSA has hired in their steads now that they’ve both largely moved on to browner pastures. ↩
- BCrash really was a sweet investment, it has to be said. To moar phorks! Hear hear!!1
BTW have you crashed out yet ? If not, I’m here to help. Ones and ones of clients have already been happily served. ↩