[Bitcoin-development] bitcoind and C++ namespaces?
Slowly warming to C++ namespaces. How about starting small, and wrapping most stuff inside a bitcoin namespace? Bike shedding can be done at any point; the main idea is to start small, and gain experience. -- Jeff Garzik Senior Software Engineer and open source evangelist BitPay, Inc. https://bitpay.com/ -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev ___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: Vote on the blocksize limit with proof-of-stake voting
On 10 June 2013 06:09, John Dillon wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA256 > > It has been suggested that we leave the decision of what the blocksize to > be > entirely up to miners. However this leaves a parameter that affects every > Bitcoin participant in the control of a small minority. Of course we can > not > force miners to increase the blocksize if they choose to decrease it, > because > the contents of the blocks they make are their decision and their decision > only. However proposals to leave the maximum size unlimited to allow > miners to > force us to accept arbitrarily large blocks even if the will of the > majority of > Bitcoin participants is that they wish to remain able to validate the > blockchain. > > What we need is a way to balance this asymetrical power relationship. > > Proof-of-stake voting gives us a way of achieving that balance. > Essentially for > a miner to prove that the majority will of the poeple is to accept a larger > blocksize they must prove that the majority has in fact voted for that > increase. The upper limit on the blocksize is then determined by the > median of > all votes, where each txout in the UTXO set is one vote, weighted by txout > value. A txout without a corresponding vote is considered to be a vote for > the > status quo. To allow the voting process to continue even if coins are > "lost" > votes, including default votes, are weighted inversely according to their > age > in years after 1 year. IE a vote with weight 1BTC that is 1.5 years old > will be > recorded the same as a <1 year old vote weighted as 0.67BTC, and a 1 day > old > and 6 months old UTXO are treated equivalently. The 1 year minimum is > simply to > make voting required no more than once per year. (of course, a real > implementation should do all of these figures by block height, IE after > 52,560 > blocks instead of after 1 year) > > A vote will consist of a txout with a scriptPubKey of the following form: > > OP_RETURN magic vote_id txid vout vote scriptSig > > Where scriptSig is a valid signature for a transaction with nLockTime > 500,000,000-1 spending txid:vout to scriptPubKey: > > OP_HASH160 H(OP_RETURN magic vote_id txid vout vote) OP_EQUAL > > vote_id is the ID of the specific vote being made, and magic is included to > allow UTXO proof implementations a as yet unspecified way of identifying > votes > and including the weighted median as part of the UTXO tree sums. (it also > allows SPV clients to verify the vote if the UTXO set is a Patricia tree of > scriptPubKeys) vote is just the numerical vote itself. The vote must > compute > the median, rather than the mean, so as to not allow someone to skew the > vote > by simply setting their value extremely high. Someone who still remembers > their > statistics classes should chime in on the right way to compute a median in > a > merkle-sum-tree. > > The slightly unusual construction of votes makes implementation by wallet > software as simple as possible within existing code-paths. Votes could > still be > constructed even in wallets lacking specific voting capability provided the > wallet software does have the ability to set nLockTime. > > Of course in the future the voting mechanism can be used for additional > votes > with an additional vote_id. For instance the Bitcoin community could vote > to > increase the inflation subsidy, another example of a situation where the > wishes > of miners may conflict with the wishes of the broader community. > > Users may of course actually create these specially encoded txouts > themselves > and get them into the blockchain. However doing so is not needed as a > given > vote is only required to actually be in the chain by a miner wishing to > increase the blocksize. Thus we should extend the P2P protocol with a > mechanism > by which votes can be broadcast independently of transactions. To prevent > DoS > attacks only votes with known vote_id's will be accepted, and only for > txid:vout's already in the blockchain, and a record of txouts for whom > votes > have already broadcast will be kept. (this record need not be > authoritative as > its purpose is only to prevent DoS attacks) Miners wishing to increase the > blocksize can record these votes and include them in the blocks they mine > as > required. To reduce the cost of including votes in blocks 5% of every block > should be assigned to voting only. (this can be implemented by a soft-fork) > > For any given block actual limit in effect is then the rolling median of > the > blocks in the last year. At the beginning of every year the value > considered to > be the status quo resets to the mean of the limit at the beginning and end > of > the interval. (again, by "year" we really mean 52,560 blocks) The rolling > median and periodic reset process ensures that the limit changes gradually > and > is not influenced by temporary events such as hacks to large exchanges or > malicious wallet software. The rolling median
Re: [Bitcoin-development] Bitcoin addresses -- opaque or not
On 11 June 2013 17:29, Luke-Jr wrote: > On Tuesday, June 11, 2013 1:11:33 PM Melvin Carvalho wrote: > > For the sake of argument let's say that opaque means that you can tell > > nothing about the address by examining the characters. > > This is true or false based on CONTEXT. > > Obviously, an implementation of transaction handling (eg, wallets) needs > to be > able to translate addresses to and from what they represent. > > On the other hand, things like URI handlers do not (and should not) try to > interpret the address as anything other than an arbitrary word (\w+). > Luke, if you think that the sole purpose of a URI scheme is to be used as a URI handler, I think you've not fully understood the concept. URIs are the global variable of the internet, and as such the need to play nicely with all other URI schemes on the net. They need to be able to be linked to, to be defined and documented. This is important for bitcoin to get right because bitcoin: needs to treated in a special way on the internet, I just saw today that it was treated by some software as a relative URL, which is going to break a ton of stuff. > > > My understanding was that they are NOT opaque, and that if that has > > changed, it will invalidate much at least some wiki page, for examples at > > least some of the following would now be false: > > The wiki goes into much detail on how addresses work, which is not the > concern > of most software in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but may be of interest to humans > and developers working on the one component that operates the "black box" > that > addresses are. > > > > > > > > > These aren't FALSE, they are "true at the moment, but subject to revision > by > newer standards". > > > I also here that there is a LIKELY change from the base58 encoding ... > when > > was this established? > > I stated (on IRC) that it was likely Bitcoin would change from the base58 > encoding for addresses ... at some unspecified time in the future, to some > unspecified new encoding that addressed known limitations of base58. What > those changes will be, or when, are not all established at this time. The > only > currently-planned change to addresses (very loosely defined) is inclusion > of > the Payment Protocol URIs. But the point is that software developers > shouldn't > assume that addresses will remain base58 forever. > I am opposed to address changes in general, until he wider implications are fully understood. > > Luke > -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev___ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
