BCH miner donation plan update

Chinese have been the main group funding infrastructure at this point as far as I'm aware.

Never heard this before. How did chinese fund infrastructure, to whom, how much? Jiang is not answering, so he likely donated nada.

Can't believe you continue to push your terrible opinions. I've looked at your YouTube page and would be appreciative if you could do more videos on lambos and girls. Or perhaps you could write a read.cash article on how to be an anti-peer-to-peer electronic cash shill. Because my BCH holdings are down so much I am looking for some online work. Perhaps you or your friends would be willing to pay me to also spread FUD.

Jiang,

Do not pay any heed to swaggering blowhards like Marc.

The improvements Jiang offers do a lot to assuage legitimate concerns. Still not a perfect plan by any means. The idea of a Dominant Assurance Contract offers a lot of benefits. It would be reasonable to see how the work of the developers working on that turns out. If it works, it might be preferable to Jiang's plan.

Agreed 👍

https://read.cash/@aleenajoe/how-will-the-development-tax-imposed-by-bch-affect-btc-mining-9b8049d3

Forking is a way to certain doom. We need to measure what the majority wants before the fact, not after.

We need to measure what the majority wants before the fact

historically that didn't keep the minority from forking

Historically it was never done.

that's because we have no reliable way to do it

That's because we were not building tools to do it. We must build such tools. We must not fork the chain again.

I agree

edit: actually I'm not sure I agree. what kind of tools?

tools to measure what coin holders want. https://bmp.virtualpol.com/voting, but for BCH holders.

sorry if I'm mistaken, but the BMP (Bitcoin Miner Parliament) is about voting with hashrate, not coin holdings?

and we were talking about

We need to measure what the majority wants before the fact

and I thought you meant "majorit of holders"?

yes, thats why i said something like BMP, but for bch holders (instead of being just for miners)

ok, I see. sorry, that took a while

Bitcoin needs to be able to operate anonymously. Legal contracts are not anonymous.

No need to mine at a loss for BMP voting. All chains count.

Google translate of im_uname's post: If you are willing to spend three months mining at a loss to vote and throw this money into the sea, it is better to take out the money that is going to be lost directly, which is not a small sum. Will this end?

And if it isn't working after 6 months, let's try something different.

I don't understand how people view things like playing with consensus rules like it's a game. It's really not a game. Unless you are sure that what you are doing is not going to be dangerous, you should stay away from orphaning blocks and taking money from people. You can't just experiment with different rules regarding the fundamentals of an active blockchain. When you want to experiment with different fundamentals, you make a new coin, you don't 51%-attack (well... "66%-attack") an existing currency to enforce your opinion on it.

I agree with the sentiment of your comment, though I fail to see the 'danger' in this proposal. A 6-month period of sending 12.5% (or potentially less) of the mining reward to fund development isn't inherently dangerous.

you should stay away from orphaning blocks and taking money from people

I think that's a little disingenuous - no one will be actively orphaning any blocks, no more than miners currently do if blocks are mined that don't follow the mining rules. Same with "taking money"; no one's BCH is going to be taken away from them (nor can it be). If you're a miner that continues mining BCH, yes you'll be affected, and you'll have to decide if you're willing to mine with the rules of the majority of BCH miners or whether you'd prefer to mine a different SHA256 chain.

When you want to experiment with different fundamentals, you make a new coin, you don't 51%-attack (well... "66%-attack") an existing currency to enforce your opinion on it

Fundamentally there is no difference there really. If you have a majority of the hashpower and enforce rules, it's up to the remainder of the miners to decide what they want to do with their own hashpower - continue mining with the new rules or 'fork' and create a different coin. This is nothing new, and is how the mining rules are supposed to be decided. Unfortunately in the last few years, there have been a few contentious rule changes and forking has happened a lot, but ideally in most cases everyone ends up following the majority of miners even if they disagree with them.

Changing the mining rules without having 100% consensus is not the same thing as a 51% attack, 66% attack, 80% attack, 99% attack or any kind of attack! Especially when you consider how much Jiang's incentives are likely aligned with those of other BCH miners, HODLers, developers, hobbyists, etc. In my opinion, to claim this is an attack is similar to claiming that low-fee or coffee-priced purchases using BCH is 'spam'.

A 6-month period of sending 12.5% (or potentially less) of the mining reward to fund development isn't inherently dangerous.

The period is not relevant because the danger comes from the fact that the nature of the coin is changed. Nobody was signing up for Dash-like governance when we bought BCH. If we wanted that kind of governance we'd buy Devcoin or Dash. It is dangerous to alter the fundamentals of the coin. The coins are supposed to be distributed in a specific way. Changing the way they are initially distributed turn this into a different coin in my opinion. Doing that with a soft-fork so that people cannot avoid it is even worse and I consider it a 51% attack on the network. Blockstream forced Segwit on us and we left, now miners here are trying to once more change the fundamentals of the coin by altering the distribution of coins.

no one will be actively orphaning any blocks, no more than miners currently do if blocks are mined that don't follow the mining rules.

That's not true. I never saw anyone suggesting to turn this dev fund into a hard fork. I have said from the very beginning (read my last two articles for proof) that if they decided to own up to it and do it as a hard fork, I would be fine with it. But they are suggesting to do it as a soft fork (and please forgive me if I misunderstood the current proposal) and orphan blocks of those that follow the hardcoded rules but don't follow the soft-forked rules. Hopefully BU can find a way to orphan blocks that follow the forced-donations rule in order to create a split so that we can see what miners actually want to follow. But it is not easy to do so, they will have to blacklist addresses and still be able to detect normal donations to the dev funds without orphaning blocks that contain them.

Same with "taking money"; no one's BCH is going to be taken away from them

Let me put it this way: Say one day someone from BTC moves a ton of hashpower to BCH and starts orphaning blocks that don't donate half the coinbase to him. Is he taking someone's BCH or not? I'd say he is. I'm saying the same here. The difference is that here the money is taken and given to devs for a good purpose, but that doesn't mean that the money is not taken from people against their will.

it's up to the remainder of the miners to decide what they want to do with their own hashpower - continue mining with the new rules or 'fork' and create a different coin.

Once more, I am sorry if misunderstood the new proposal but this is not what I understand that is being proposed. The changes will not mark the blocks as incompatible with the old rules. The proposal is to change the rules in a way that is not detectable unless we examine the coinbase transaction and blacklist addresses. If you actually wanted to let people decide whether they want to follow or not, you would mark the blocks with the new donation rule in some way that would cause a split with the old code, and leave behind everyone not interested in updating to your new coin distribution rules.

It is also good to point out that neither side of such a fork would have a right to be the only one called BCH.

If you're a miner that continues mining BCH, yes you'll be affected, and you'll have to decide if you're willing to mine with the rules of the majority of BCH miners or whether you'd prefer to mine a different SHA256 chain.

The market will decide in the end which side of the fork will still be called BCH. Although I doubt that either sides wants to fork. Yet, it is very clear which side looks more like Bitcoin as described in the whitepaper and which side looks more like Dash and Devcoin.

I am not against all changes, nor do I take the whitepaper as the bible, but I don't like how people are proposing radical changes based on their personal priorities about whether development or marketing or whatever else is more important. The coinbase is to entice miners to mine blocks, period. If we start now, after so many years, to reporpose it with whatever each one of us thinks is important then we'll end up funding every single thing in the ecosystem. This is not Bitcoin... This is Devcoin, this is Dash, this is Zerocash.

Fundamentally there is no difference there really. If you have a majority of the hashpower and enforce rules, it's up to the remainder of the miners to decide what they want to do with their own hashpower - continue mining with the new rules or 'fork' and create a different coin.

From the beginning I've also said that if the majority of miners wants to do something, they have a right to do it. They make the rules. I am though against them that they are not owning up to it and doing it like a hard-fork. I am also against radical changes. The miners have a right to remove the inflation cap as well, and keep mining more and more coins if they want to. Does that mean that this is Bitcoin? They also have a right to enforce a 1MB limit on BCH as well, does that mean that it's still BCH? They are chainging the fundamentals, just like BTC changed the fundamentals twice, when they added Segwit and when they refused to remove the block size limit. They had every right to do it, it was a shitty decision and we split into another coin. If BCH does something that makes it less "Bitcoin" and more "Dash" then some will split again, at least own up to your proposed change, and do it as a hard-fork instead of taking the same path as Segwit did.

Changing the mining rules without having 100% consensus is not the same thing as a 51% attack, 66% attack, 80% attack, 99% attack or any kind of attack!

When you orphan blocks to alter what is allowed to be recorded as history, that's a 51% attack. It is not always bad because it may be a "defensive attack" that aligns clearly with Bitcoin's intented usage (like Avalanche orphaning blocks that try to let people steal with doublespends), but funding developers or anyone else is definitelly not clearly aligning with Bitoin's intented usage, everyone of us has a different opinion about what is currently more important: funding developers, funding marketing or funding miners to further secure the chain.

Especially when you consider how much Jiang's incentives are likely aligned with those of other BCH miners, HODLers, developers, hobbyists, etc.

Their incentives are so obviously not aligned. If they were, we wouldn't be having this conservation.

In my opinion, to claim this is an attack is similar to claiming that low-fee or coffee-priced purchases using BCH is 'spam'.

I don't see the parallel. But I should clear this up again: not all 51% attacks are necessarily bad. This one is because it is done to change the fundamentals. And it is not done as a hard-fork even though it can technically be done as a hard-fork, which demonstrates that those who do it want to force it on everyone unless BU (or, any other dev team which is against forced donations, writes code to detect the force-donation blocks by implementing blacklists etc.

I have a reservation about the direct donation though, because the miner may choose to fund their own projects, essentially sending their money to their pocket. How are you going to address it?

excellent question