New ABC code release departs (further) from Nakamoto consensus

Bitcoin ABC has just released its Bitcoin ABC 0.18.5 that adds “deep reorg protection” which will effectively render blocks permanent once confirmed ten times.

Feedback on the update, as announced on Twitter, Reddit, and other forums, was quick and critical, with many indicating the proof-of-work (PoW) system subverted to whoever first manages to get ten confirmations. However, ABC explained the feature was a “safeguard” that “helps users, businesses, and exchanges stay secure and free from disruption.”

nChain lead developer Steve Shadders tweeted his reaction to the update, saying, “Nakamoto consensus is now dead on the ABC chain… They do not believe in bitcoin.”

Under Nakamoto consensus, the more confirmations of a block, the higher the probability of being accepted by the network. Miners are thus incentivized to devote sufficient hash power for their operations, and receive a reward for blocks mined.

Yours.org creator Money Button had earlier criticized ABC’s use of “endless checkpoints” as not being of a decentralized protocol, which leads one to question if ABC should still be considered Bitcoin at all.

Defending the reorg-protection feature on Reddit was Olivier Janssens, Bitcoin entrepreneur, who said that in the event of a malicious miner mining blocks, full nodes will be able to not accept the blocks anyway. This is assuming ABC nodes could consistently make a distinction between honest and malicious miners.

Bitcoin SV’s developer nChain had long warned of ABC using Bitcoin BCH as a developer’s experimental playground. Reorg protection is just the latest of several code changes since the November 15 hard fork, that appear as ABC’s means of defending itself while the hash war between it and Bitcoin SV continues.

As far as CoinGeek is concerned, such changes by ABC weren’t arrived at by consultation with those in the BCH community. Miners who don’t like the changes, however, do have Bitcoin SV as an option where miners’ choice is a priority while maintaining the strength and stability of the Bitcoin protocol.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The post New ABC code release departs (further) from Nakamoto consensus appeared first on Coingeek.

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New ABC code release departs (further) from Nakamoto consensus

Bitcoin ABC has just released its Bitcoin ABC 0.18.5 that adds “deep reorg protection” which will effectively render blocks permanent once confirmed ten times.

Feedback on the update, as announced on Twitter, Reddit, and other forums, was quick and critical, with many indicating the proof-of-work (PoW) system subverted to whoever first manages to get ten confirmations. However, ABC explained the feature was a “safeguard” that “helps users, businesses, and exchanges stay secure and free from disruption.”

nChain lead developer Steve Shadders tweeted his reaction to the update, saying, “Nakamoto consensus is now dead on the ABC chain… They do not believe in bitcoin.”

Under Nakamoto consensus, the more confirmations of a block, the higher the probability of being accepted by the network. Miners are thus incentivized to devote sufficient hash power for their operations, and receive a reward for blocks mined.

Yours.org creator Money Button had earlier criticized ABC’s use of “endless checkpoints” as not being of a decentralized protocol, which leads one to question if ABC should still be considered Bitcoin at all.

Defending the reorg-protection feature on Reddit was Olivier Janssens, Bitcoin entrepreneur, who said that in the event of a malicious miner mining blocks, full nodes will be able to not accept the blocks anyway. This is assuming ABC nodes could consistently make a distinction between honest and malicious miners.

Bitcoin SV’s developer nChain had long warned of ABC using Bitcoin BCH as a developer’s experimental playground. Reorg protection is just the latest of several code changes since the November 15 hard fork, that appear as ABC’s means of defending itself while the hash war between it and Bitcoin SV continues.

As far as CoinGeek is concerned, such changes by ABC weren’t arrived at by consultation with those in the BCH community. Miners who don’t like the changes, however, do have Bitcoin SV as an option where miners’ choice is a priority while maintaining the strength and stability of the Bitcoin protocol.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

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I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election”

We have not yet seen Nakamoto Consensus in true action as it was ruined by a market manipulation last week during the BCH hash vote. Bursts of transient hash (especially hash taken from customers of cloud mining on the rival BTC network) are not Proof of Work meant to decide Bitcoin rules as envisioned in the original Satoshi white paper and are a form of cheating. Under a true Nakamoto Consensus vote, this would have been decided easily in favour of Bitcoin SV to restore and lock the original Bitcoin protocol and enable massive scaling, since over 70 percent of sustained hash supported locking and scaling leading up to the November upgrade. Bitmain and Bitcoin.com should not be rewarded by the exchanges for cheating, and should not get the BCH infrastructure.

We always planned for this to be a long fight and still continue voting with our sustained hash power until the rented hash is gone, as I always said we would do. That said, here is my suggested way forward:

It is clear that ABC has forked away from the original Bitcoin design to the extent that there is no real technical way to combine the two technologies (ABC and original Bitcoin) anymore. Many are even suggesting that ABC has implemented so many changes (CTOR, OP_CheckDataSig, and especially their new checkpoints after November 15 hard fork) that they in fact created a new genesis block, and have forked off to something new which is neither Bitcoin nor even BCH anymore. I also saw some people are calling ABC’s new coin “BAB” because it’s no longer BCH, and even the Bitfinex exchange lists it now as BAB.

It is also clear that the 64 MB block mined yesterday with Bitcoin SV proves to the world that we are correct and that Bitcoin, as originally designed, can already scale quite massively. We think without the distraction of this hash election, we can already mine 128 MB blocks and we are predicting potentially 1GB blocks on SV in 12 months, once more technical work is done.

CoinGeek is the owner of the largest sustained hash on BCH for months leading up to the November upgrade and therefore the leader of efforts to make sure we give the original Bitcoin design (which Satoshi Nakamoto said should be set in stone) an opportunity to show its true genius and power. We will accept that all exchanges list ABC’s coin as BAB (Bitcoin ABC) and Bitcoin SV’s coin as BSV (Bitcoin SV). Note, we are on record as saying the Wormhole token protocol used on ABC’s chain is technically no longer Bitcoin, so ABC’s coin would be Bitcoin in name only. We also want all wallets, payment processors and other service providers to do the same, and we want the ABC faction to work with us to push this through. For this, both sides agree not to attack each other’s chain, and let the chains compete as separate offerings in the marketplace. Basically, both sides give up the claim for BCH and start even.

Additionally, CoinGeek and friends will make sure that no one in our camp launches any legal proceedings related to the manipulation of customers’ BTC hash or last week’s DDoS attack on CoinGeek’s website.

I think this would be a counted as a win-win and should be accepted by all sides, as I for one want to get back to my true passion, focusing on massively scaling Bitcoin to enterprise levels.

Bitcoin is sound money that can grow for the world and we have already proven this with Bitcoin SV when we mined the 64 MB block yesterday.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The post I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election” appeared first on Coingeek.

Read More

I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election”

We have not yet seen Nakamoto Consensus in true action as it was ruined by a market manipulation last week during the BCH hash vote. Bursts of transient hash (especially hash taken from customers of cloud mining on the rival BTC network) are not Proof of Work meant to decide Bitcoin rules as envisioned in the original Satoshi white paper and are a form of cheating. Under a true Nakamoto Consensus vote, this would have been decided easily in favour of Bitcoin SV to restore and lock the original Bitcoin protocol and enable massive scaling, since over 70 percent of sustained hash supported locking and scaling leading up to the November upgrade. Bitmain and Bitcoin.com should not be rewarded by the exchanges for cheating, and should not get the BCH infrastructure.

We always planned for this to be a long fight and still continue voting with our sustained hash power until the rented hash is gone, as I always said we would do. That said, here is my suggested way forward:

It is clear that ABC has forked away from the original Bitcoin design to the extent that there is no real technical way to combine the two technologies (ABC and original Bitcoin) anymore. Many are even suggesting that ABC has implemented so many changes (CTOR, OP_CheckDataSig, and especially their new checkpoints after November 15 hard fork) that they in fact created a new genesis block, and have forked off to something new which is neither Bitcoin nor even BCH anymore. I also saw some people are calling ABC’s new coin “BAB” because it’s no longer BCH, and even the Bitfinex exchange lists it now as BAB.

It is also clear that the 64 MB block mined yesterday with Bitcoin SV proves to the world that we are correct and that Bitcoin, as originally designed, can already scale quite massively. We think without the distraction of this hash election, we can already mine 128 MB blocks and we are predicting potentially 1GB blocks on SV in 12 months, once more technical work is done.

CoinGeek is the owner of the largest sustained hash on BCH for months leading up to the November upgrade and therefore the leader of efforts to make sure we give the original Bitcoin design (which Satoshi Nakamoto said should be set in stone) an opportunity to show its true genius and power. We will accept that all exchanges list ABC’s coin as BAB (Bitcoin ABC) and Bitcoin SV’s coin as BSV (Bitcoin SV). Note, we are on record as saying the Wormhole token protocol used on ABC’s chain is technically no longer Bitcoin, so ABC’s coin would be Bitcoin in name only. We also want all wallets, payment processors and other service providers to do the same, and we want the ABC faction to work with us to push this through. For this, both sides agree not to attack each other’s chain, and let the chains compete as separate offerings in the marketplace. Basically, both sides give up the claim for BCH and start even.

Additionally, CoinGeek and friends will make sure that no one in our camp launches any legal proceedings related to the manipulation of customers’ BTC hash or last week’s DDoS attack on CoinGeek’s website.

I think this would be a counted as a win-win and should be accepted by all sides, as I for one want to get back to my true passion, focusing on massively scaling Bitcoin to enterprise levels.

Bitcoin is sound money that can grow for the world and we have already proven this with Bitcoin SV when we mined the 64 MB block yesterday.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The post I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election” appeared first on Coingeek.

Read More

I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election”

We have not yet seen Nakamoto Consensus in true action as it was ruined by a market manipulation last week during the BCH hash vote. Bursts of transient hash (especially hash taken from customers of cloud mining on the rival BTC network) are not Proof of Work meant to decide Bitcoin rules as envisioned in the original Satoshi white paper and are a form of cheating. Under a true Nakamoto Consensus vote, this would have been decided easily in favour of Bitcoin SV to restore and lock the original Bitcoin protocol and enable massive scaling, since over 70 percent of sustained hash supported locking and scaling leading up to the November upgrade. Bitmain and Bitcoin.com should not be rewarded by the exchanges for cheating, and should not get the BCH infrastructure.

We always planned for this to be a long fight and still continue voting with our sustained hash power until the rented hash is gone, as I always said we would do. That said, here is my suggested way forward:

It is clear that ABC has forked away from the original Bitcoin design to the extent that there is no real technical way to combine the two technologies (ABC and original Bitcoin) anymore. Many are even suggesting that ABC has implemented so many changes (CTOR, OP_CheckDataSig, and especially their new checkpoints after November 15 hard fork) that they in fact created a new genesis block, and have forked off to something new which is neither Bitcoin nor even BCH anymore. I also saw some people are calling ABC’s new coin “BAB” because it’s no longer BCH, and even the Bitfinex exchange lists it now as BAB.

It is also clear that the 64 MB block mined yesterday with Bitcoin SV proves to the world that we are correct and that Bitcoin, as originally designed, can already scale quite massively. We think without the distraction of this hash election, we can already mine 128 MB blocks and we are predicting potentially 1GB blocks on SV in 12 months, once more technical work is done.

CoinGeek is the owner of the largest sustained hash on BCH for months leading up to the November upgrade and therefore the leader of efforts to make sure we give the original Bitcoin design (which Satoshi Nakamoto said should be set in stone) an opportunity to show its true genius and power. We will accept that all exchanges list ABC’s coin as BAB (Bitcoin ABC) and Bitcoin SV’s coin as BSV (Bitcoin SV). Note, we are on record as saying the Wormhole token protocol used on ABC’s chain is technically no longer Bitcoin, so ABC’s coin would be Bitcoin in name only. We also want all wallets, payment processors and other service providers to do the same, and we want the ABC faction to work with us to push this through. For this, both sides agree not to attack each other’s chain, and let the chains compete as separate offerings in the marketplace. Basically, both sides give up the claim for BCH and start even.

Additionally, CoinGeek and friends will make sure that no one in our camp launches any legal proceedings related to the manipulation of customers’ BTC hash or last week’s DDoS attack on CoinGeek’s website.

I think this would be a counted as a win-win and should be accepted by all sides, as I for one want to get back to my true passion, focusing on massively scaling Bitcoin to enterprise levels.

Bitcoin is sound money that can grow for the world and we have already proven this with Bitcoin SV when we mined the 64 MB block yesterday.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The post I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election” appeared first on Coingeek.

Read More

I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election”

We have not yet seen Nakamoto Consensus in true action as it was ruined by a market manipulation last week during the BCH hash vote. Bursts of transient hash (especially hash taken from customers of cloud mining on the rival BTC network) are not Proof of Work meant to decide Bitcoin rules as envisioned in the original Satoshi white paper and are a form of cheating. Under a true Nakamoto Consensus vote, this would have been decided easily in favour of Bitcoin SV to restore and lock the original Bitcoin protocol and enable massive scaling, since over 70 percent of sustained hash supported locking and scaling leading up to the November upgrade. Bitmain and Bitcoin.com should not be rewarded by the exchanges for cheating, and should not get the BCH infrastructure.

We always planned for this to be a long fight and still continue voting with our sustained hash power until the rented hash is gone, as I always said we would do. That said, here is my suggested way forward:

It is clear that ABC has forked away from the original Bitcoin design to the extent that there is no real technical way to combine the two technologies (ABC and original Bitcoin) anymore. Many are even suggesting that ABC has implemented so many changes (CTOR, OP_CheckDataSig, and especially their new checkpoints after November 15 hard fork) that they in fact created a new genesis block, and have forked off to something new which is neither Bitcoin nor even BCH anymore. I also saw some people are calling ABC’s new coin “BAB” because it’s no longer BCH, and even the Bitfinex exchange lists it now as BAB.

It is also clear that the 64 MB block mined yesterday with Bitcoin SV proves to the world that we are correct and that Bitcoin, as originally designed, can already scale quite massively. We think without the distraction of this hash election, we can already mine 128 MB blocks and we are predicting potentially 1GB blocks on SV in 12 months, once more technical work is done.

CoinGeek is the owner of the largest sustained hash on BCH for months leading up to the November upgrade and therefore the leader of efforts to make sure we give the original Bitcoin design (which Satoshi Nakamoto said should be set in stone) an opportunity to show its true genius and power. We will accept that all exchanges list ABC’s coin as BAB (Bitcoin ABC) and Bitcoin SV’s coin as BSV (Bitcoin SV). Note, we are on record as saying the Wormhole token protocol used on ABC’s chain is technically no longer Bitcoin, so ABC’s coin would be Bitcoin in name only. We also want all wallets, payment processors and other service providers to do the same, and we want the ABC faction to work with us to push this through. For this, both sides agree not to attack each other’s chain, and let the chains compete as separate offerings in the marketplace. Basically, both sides give up the claim for BCH and start even.

Additionally, CoinGeek and friends will make sure that no one in our camp launches any legal proceedings related to the manipulation of customers’ BTC hash or last week’s DDoS attack on CoinGeek’s website.

I think this would be a counted as a win-win and should be accepted by all sides, as I for one want to get back to my true passion, focusing on massively scaling Bitcoin to enterprise levels.

Bitcoin is sound money that can grow for the world and we have already proven this with Bitcoin SV when we mined the 64 MB block yesterday.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The post I have a plan to end the world’s first Bitcoin hash “election” appeared first on Coingeek.

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Bitcoin ABC doesn’t believe in Bitcoin BCH

The only going debate regarding how to proceed with the Bitcoin BCH blockchain has led some to claim that the upcoming hard fork in November could lead to a new cryptocurrency being created. Those who understand the importance of blockchain integrity, and the place Bitcoin BCH plays in the advancement of digital currencies, are working together to ensure that this doesn’t happen. But, there is a minority of individuals who are apparently pushing for it to happen.

One of these is Bitcoin ABC. The development team has repeatedly spoken out against several advances that are being added to Bitcoin BCH, including the Nakamoto Consensus. Per the application’s white paper, “They (the miners) vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.”

However, the Bitcoin ABC doesn’t like this idea. One of the team’s developers, Johnathan Toomim, was asked why Bitcoin ABC is against the model, to which he responded, “Because it doesn’t work! Nakamoto Consensus would work for a soft fork but not a hard fork. You [can’t] use a hash war to resolve this issue! If you have different hard forking rule sets you are going to have a persistent chain split no matter what the hash rate distribution is. Whether or not we are willing to use Nakamoto consensus to resolve issues is not the issue right here. What the issue is, is that it is technically impossible.”

To put it bluntly, this – coupled with other recent developments of which Bitcoin ABC has been apart – show that the developers don’t believe in Bitcoin BCH. They don’t believe, despite overwhelming evidence, that the blockchain can continue as has been designed and seem to be determined to create their own cryptocurrency.

If that’s what they want to do – create their own cryptocurrency – then that’s what they need to do. Just because they don’t understand why models such as the Nakamoto consensus and canonical transaction ordering (CTOR) work doesn’t mean that they need to try to kill them. Given that all of the information on how to create a cryptocurrency is out in the public and is open source, perhaps it’s time that they concentrate on creating their own digital currency and let Bitcoin BCH continue to be the blockchain it is now – one that works.

Note: Tokens on the Bitcoin Core (segwit) Chain are Referred to as BTC coins. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is today the only Bitcoin implementation that follows Satoshi Nakamoto’s original whitepaper for Peer to Peer Electronic Cash. Bitcoin BCH is the only major public blockchain that maintains the original vision for Bitcoin as fast, frictionless, electronic cash.

The post Bitcoin ABC doesn’t believe in Bitcoin BCH appeared first on Coingeek.

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