Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev
On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 11:01:36AM -0800, Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev wrote: > > A 6 month investment with 3 months on the high subsidy and 3 months on low > > subsidy would not be made… > > > > Yes, this is the essential point. All capital investments are made based on > expectations of

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev
On 03/02/2016 12:08 PM, Paul Sztorc wrote: > On 3/2/2016 2:01 PM, Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev wrote: >>> A 6 month investment with 3 months on the high subsidy and 3 months on >> low subsidy would not be made… >> >> Yes, this is the essential point. All capital investments are made based >> on

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread David A. Harding via bitcoin-dev
On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 05:53:46PM +, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > What you are proposing makes sense only if it was believed that a very > large difficulty drop would be very likely. > > This appears to be almost certainly untrue-- consider-- look how long > ago since hashrate was 50% of what it

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Eric Voskuil via bitcoin-dev
> A 6 month investment with 3 months on the high subsidy and 3 months on low > subsidy would not be made… Yes, this is the essential point. All capital investments are made based on expectations of future returns. To the extent that futures are perfectly knowable, they can be perfectly

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Tier Nolan via bitcoin-dev
On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 4:27 PM, Paul Sztorc via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > For example, it is theoretically possible that 100% of miners (not 50% > or 10%) will shut off their hardware. This is because it is revenue > which ~halves, not profit. It depends on

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev
On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 02:56:14PM +, Luke Dashjr via bitcoin-dev wrote: > To alleviate this risk, it seems reasonable to propose a hardfork to the > difficulty adjustment algorithm so it can adapt quicker to such a significant > drop in mining rate. BtcDrak tells me he has well-tested code

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread David A. Harding via bitcoin-dev
On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 02:56:14PM +, Luke Dashjr via bitcoin-dev wrote: > To alleviate this risk, it seems reasonable to propose a hardfork to the > difficulty adjustment algorithm so it can adapt quicker to such a significant > drop in mining rate. Having a well-reviewed hard fork patch

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Guarantees Strong, not Eventual, Consistency.

2016-03-02 Thread Emin Gün Sirer via bitcoin-dev
> The entire point of the definition of eventually consistency is that your > computer system is running continously and DO NOT have a final state, and > therefore you must be able to describe the behavior when your system either > may give responses to queries across time that are either

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Bryan Bishop via bitcoin-dev
On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 8:56 AM, Luke Dashjr wrote: > We are coming up on the subsidy halving this July, and there have been some > Luke, One reason "hard-fork to fix difficulty drop algorithm" could be controversial is that the proposal involves a hard-fork (perhaps necessarily so, at my first

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Dave Hudson via bitcoin-dev
I think the biggest question here would be how would the difficulty retargeting be changed? Without seeing the algorithm proposal it's difficult to assess the impact that it would have, but my intuition is that this is likely to be problematic. Probabilistically the network sees surprisingly

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Tier Nolan via bitcoin-dev
If a hard-fork is being considered, the easiest is to just step the difficulty down by a factor of 2 when the adjustment happens. This means that miners still get paid the same minting fee per hash as before. There isn't that much risk. If the hashing power stays constant, then there will be 5

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Jérémie Dubois-Lacoste via bitcoin-dev
> BtcDrak tells me he has well-tested code for this in his altcoin Could you be more explicit, which altcoin is that? > I am unaware of any reason this would be controversial Probably not until you get to the details of any proposal. What is your exact proposal here? Algorithm? Parameters? As you

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Luke Dashjr via bitcoin-dev
On Wednesday, March 02, 2016 3:05:08 PM Pavel Janík wrote: > > the network. This would result in a significantly longer block interval, > > which also means a higher per-block transaction volume, which could > > cause the block size limit to legitimately be hit much sooner than > > expected. > >

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardfork to fix difficulty drop algorithm

2016-03-02 Thread Pavel Janík via bitcoin-dev
> the network. This would result in a significantly longer block interval, > which > also means a higher per-block transaction volume, which could cause the block > size limit to legitimately be hit much sooner than expected. If this happens at all (the exchange rate of the coin can accomodate

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Guarantees Strong, not Eventual, Consistency.

2016-03-02 Thread Natanael via bitcoin-dev
To say that Bitcoin is strongly consistent is to say that the memory pool and the last X blocks aren't part of Bitcoin. If you want to avoid making that claim, you can at best argue that Bitcoin has both a strongly consistent component AND an eventually consistent component. The entire point of