ChainTipper - High-Speed Non-Custodial ChainTipping - open Beta
ChainTipper has been in closed Beta for quite a few months and it has matured enough to open the beta up to a larger crowd.
But what is ChainTipper?
Motivation
If you've ever used chaintip on reddit and you're like me, you'll find the process rather cumbersome: after writing a comment mentioning u/chaintip you have to go to your message inbox and copy the recpipient (or relay) address chaintip sends you. (@tibanne (author of chaintip) has recently sped up delivery of this message greatly, so at least there is no waiting time any more, but still: you have to go to the inbox and find that message). Next you whip out your wallet to make the tipping transaction. Your mileage may vary (having to pull up qr code, copy-pasting and whatnot), but this takes more time. Then you can navigate back to the reddit thread and pick up reading.
Idea
Clearly for a real bitcoiner custodial solutions (like we had before with tippr, for example) are not an option.
So I came up with the idea to implement a bot running on my local machine that has some funds. It would connect to my Reddit account, listen for the chaintip messages and then ease (or even fully automate) the process of making the transactions.
Of course the problem with fully automating the payment was how to determine the tip amount. So I remembered the old tipr bot (custodial) that allowed the use of monikers to state the amount to be tipped right in the tipping comment.
Like this:
For this to work my bot would have to be able to read the tipping comment I wrote and at the time there was no way to find the tipping comment given the chaintip message.
So I talked to Tibanne about the idea. He liked it and said he would include a link to the tipping comment into the chaintip message. He promptly implemented that and I was good to go. This was back in March 2021. https://www.reddit.com/user/tibanne
This is a good place to thank Tibanne for his openness, willingness to accomodate my bot and also to motivate me to actually implement it.
Execution
So, thanks in part to @georgedonnelly constantly advertising people should build more, I got off my lazy ass and started implementig.
So, I started implementing and once I had a functional version I started looking for beta testers using the following teaser video (it's now aged, but you can still see the workflow):
https://lbry.tv/@ChainTipper:6/Teaser_4:6
Closed Beta
This was end of April 2021. With the help of Tibanne I found some great beta-testers for a closed beta.
This is a good place to thank them. Especially Jon F and Remora_101 have been extremely helpful in finding bugs, making suggestions and just generally keeping me motivated to continue working on ChainTipper. https://www.reddit.com/user/remora_101
Thank you guys!
Open Beta
This is where YOU come in! Check the resources at the end to find out how to join.
In case you want to check it out, please do yourself a favor and read at least the first part of the manual titled "A note about Safety and Security". https://github.com/molecular/chaintipper/blob/release/doc/manual/manual.md
Feature Overview
This is what the current version (beta18) offers:
This is what it can do (and how)
Will connect to your reddit account, reading chaintip messages from your inbox
Links itself to a local Electron-Cash wallet to be able to create and broadcast transactions.
Will try to parse an amount like "u/chaintip 1 beer" (yes, monikers are back!) from the tipping comment that is linked from the chaintip message
Will determine wether a tip has been paid by looking at the blockchain (so yes, it will detect payments made from other wallets, too)
Allows to manually pay a bunch of tips.
Will also automatically pay tips meeting certain criteria (max amount, amount moniker parsed successfully)
Helps keep your reddit inbox tidy by marking most chaintip-related messages as "read".
And this is what it cannot (yet) do
Does not allow the user to edit the list of amount monikers (no "u/chaintip 1 myfluffypony" yet)
And this is what it wont ever do
ChainTipper will never be a reddit client with any kind of broader scope, like something to manage your messages with. All functionallity will be tipping-related and most likely remain rather minimalistic.
Links / Resources
I decided to pass on maintaining a website for ChainTipper, so alle the code and release files (plugin zip file to install into EC) can be found on github:
github.com/molecular/chaintipper https://github.com/molecular/chaintipper
github.com/molecular/chaintipper/releases https://github.com/molecular/chaintipper/releases
Also, there's actually a manual:
github.com/molecular/chaintipper/blob/release/doc/manual/manual.md https://github.com/molecular/chaintipper/blob/release/doc/manual/manual.md
To report bugs, make suggestions or just chat, please use one of the following options
github.com/molecular/chaintipper/issues https://github.com/molecular/chaintipper/issues
t.me/chaintipper https://t.me/chaintipper
reddit.com/r/chaintipper/ https://www.reddit.com/r/chaintipper/
Problems with the wallet: couple days ago and today my wallet was showing "$0.00". I know there's funds in there because my electron-cash copy of the wallet shows funds.
Updating wallet balance by clicking doesn't help. It blinks for a while but doesn't find the coins.
The elephant in the room - BCH PoW fail?
I used to think PoW was far superior to PoS, but I'm currently rethinking this belief, at least regarding minority chains such as Bitcoin Cash.
Marc De Mesel suggested in a recent video of his to consider forking BCH to PoS and this is what finally triggered me to think about this option more seriously. He may be right in saying "maybe it's a little bit too much", but I'm certainly in favor of considering the option seriously. https://read.cash/@MarcDeMesel https://youtu.be/ch8gSbrIfh8?t=720
I need help in thinking this through and that's why I'm writing this article. It will be biased towards doing a fork towards Proof of Stake in BCH and that's **not** because I strongly support it at this point. It's because it hopefully helps me think through the option and maybe it inspires discussion more readily than some unbiased blablabla would.
The flawed assumptions about PoW
**"good guardians"**: Miners are incentivized to take good care of the chain. This assumption is based on there being nothing else that could be done with mining hardware (or rather a mining operation in more general terms) that would be more valuable than mining Bitcoin. This was true in GPU/FPGA days and that assumption got even stronger when sha256 ASICS entered the market.
**"no barrier to entry"**: everybody can mine, no permission necessary. There is nothing keeping anyone from installing a publicly available opensource mining node software onto some cumputer and connect it to the Bitcoin network in order to participate in mining Bitcoin. You don't need to register an account with any central company or institution. You don't need to be human, you don't need to be from earth, you just need computing hardware and a network connection. You simply don't need permission.
Note that it seems Satoshi was making both of these assumptions in the white paper and I used to make these assumptions, too. In fact over time they turned into beliefs I didn't question much any more. *"I've thought it through and that's whats true. Period"*
Why I think those assumptions are flawed
**"good guardians"**: I don't believe this is true for minority chains. Miners can always switch their equipment to another chain, so there always *is* something equally valuable to use the operation for in case something bad happens to the coin in question.
**"no barrier to entry"**: From the wording I used ("no barrier" instead of "permissionless participiation") it already becomes clear that this is not the case. Not everybody can mine. Everybody might have "permission", yes, but that doesn't mean it's feasable: successfully mining SHA256 in an economically sustainable way requires access to cheap enough electricity and access to efficient enough mining equipment. It also requires the operation to have a certain scale and thus require a certain amount of capital investment. If these conditions aren't met, you're not going to be competitive and soon enough you're not going to be a miner, because you're simply going to be priced out. Your operation will be too inefficient either due to too large operational overhead cost (scale too low), due to too large operational cost (electricity cost too high), or due to too large capital cost (mining hardware to inefficent in terms of hash per dollar).
Why I didn't notice the elephant entering the room
When the **"no barrier to entry"**-assumption crumbled (I noticed first-hand, because I had to quit mining in the "fall" of 2011. First by mining moving to places with cheap electricity and then by the introduction of ASICS, I brushed it off and told myself: *"it's not so bad... these guys will be good guardians of the coin, we can trust them to that extent because they are incentivized in that way."* So basically I fell back to the "good guardians" assumption.
When the **"good guardians"** assumption crumbled, I didn't notice. It was post-BCH split and I was all entangled in hoping BCH would flip BTC soon so I really didn't see it clearly since I believed ("hoped", rather) the minority chain situation would be temporary. I told myself: Jihan has a lot of BCH and he loves BCH and so do at least some of the other BCH miners. *"Look: they're throwing hash at a huge cost to get the coin started, so obviously they're believers, holders and good guardians of BCH."* Well, this might be true coincidentally, but it's not due to any built-in incentives for miners. Rather, it's because they happen to *also* be holders and they happen to also be believers. The emphasis here is on "happen to" and "coincidental". This means we cannot be sure this remains to be the case... it's not "built-in".
The thought experiement: IFP goes into effect, we fork off?
Let's assume the following happens (which I don't think is unlikely): IFP activates through BIP-9 voting and is actually supported by majority hash after activation. 5% of the block reward (probably has to be renamed at that point) flows to Bitcoin ABC (or other projects) for development.
Let's be frank: I want no piece of that coin (at least in the long run) and I'll probably detach emotionally from it (it's already starting). I'm sure I'm not alone. **At that point I'll support a split**. **I** **don't want** a split, but having the IFP pill forced down my throat is just not "an option" for me so I'll "vote" with what I have available to me: my feet.
But how *could* we possibly fork off? Certainly just making a non-IFP version of the node and getting some miners to use it is going to result in a minority-of-a-minority chain, because if majority of the hash had been against the IFP, it wouldn't have been activated and supported by majority hash. So really the only option is to switch the mining algo.
The case for PoS
Considering other PoW algorithms (or multi-PoW or whatever there is) is one thing, but why not go the full mile and consider PoS? The coin is distributed enough already so maybe a "transitional" approach (first PoW, then a mix and then transition to PoS) can be skipped in the case of BCH?
Proof of Stake, at least on naive inspection (which is what I'm doing here), brings the two assumptions back to the table:
**"no barrier to entry"**: clearly the barrier is much lower than with PoW: no need for cheap electricity or hard-to-get specialized hardware: A simple VPS will do.
**"good guardians"**: if implemented right, those that hold coins are the ones who can mint blocks and those that hold coins are naturally incentivized to be good guardians because they are holders and hurting the coin value will hurt them. To make this true, there would probably have to be a mechanism that ensures those minters don't turn around and sell their coins right away after minting. They may have to be "locked for staking" for a period of time. Also to avoid people just buying up a bunch of coins right before some important voting takes place it might be good to require a certain coin age for staking. But these are all points I'd like to discuss because frankly: I haven't thought this through.
**The problems with PoS**
well, see the comment section, I hope.
love you guys, molec
Donations of a fish - on voluntary development funding.
This doesn't come easy for me, but after pondering for quite a while, I decided to publish my past donations to BCH projects. So here is a (incomplete) list:
(sorry they're not in chronological order because they come from different wallets and I had to redact names of individuals and also some unrelated donations (I filtered for "donation"))
Total: 59 BCH worth 22,975 USD at the respective times of donation.
Why I am publishing this?
I think publishing this data can open some eyes and maybe even mobilize some people into action who have been asleep.
What's the story?
A couple of days back I got woken up by an article on read.cash (my new home ❤️):
Risk for Bitcoin Cash = UP (@MarcDeMesel) https://read.cash/@MarcDeMesel/risk-for-bitcoin-cash-up-1efa3dbb
What the actual FUCK? A plan to forcibly funnel a part of **all** (not just their) coinbase rewards via some central company to "the developers" by redirecting 12.5% of the issuance to this company and orphaning any blocks that don't participate in the scheme? I later found this Infrastructure Funding Plan by Jiang Zhuoer of BTC.TOP mining pool explaing ~~the idea~~ what would be done without any debate. https://medium.com/@jiangzhuoer/infrastructure-funding-plan-for-bitcoin-cash-131fdcd2412e
I was shocked.
What an affront to the ideals of Bitcoin! I could go on a rant here, but I'll spare you that. It's not the point and others have argued way more eloquently what is wrong with that plan. Let's just say:
That plan is a huge mistake in my view.
I also had to read that Bitcoin ABC was apparently unable to make use of (some of?) the donations they received because of some KYC/AML issues and that Amaury didn't believe in the voluntary donation model. Another blow! Look at the abc donations in my screenshot and imagine how that makes me feel.
What I'm doing now?
As a first step I decided to **stop all donations** to BCH infrastructure. What sense does it make at this point with this disastrous plan on the table?
I've also been hitting the **sell BCH** button quite a bit. I'm not going to give you any numbers, but a couple days back it would've been unimaginable to me to sell this many BCH... a substantial amount already and growing each day.
I've also become very emotional, oscillating between **anger and sadness**.
What's the point of this article?
The point is that I believe voluntary donation model *can* work and I want to show people that there are actually voluntary donations happening. Maybe I also want to wake some people up (holders mainly): I didn't make these donations out of generosity, I made them to strengthen my investment and in an attempt to make Bitcoin succeed as money for the people.
I also want to show the effect of even suggesting this plan has on parts of the community and I want to put myself as an example here. Another divide? Another split?
Is there hope / a solution? What can be done to save the day?
Much damage has already been done (although not awfully apparent in price at this point), but I think there is hope. The recent Update by bitcoin.com for example and the many concerned voices make it conceivable that this plan might not be put into action after all (despite that "no-debate" bullshit). https://read.cash/@Bitcoin.com/update-on-developer-funding-83695ebc
I think what *could* be done to greatly improve the situations is to show that the voluntary funding model *can* in fact work. This would require:
"the developers" to publish some information on how much funding they actually need and for what exactly they intend to use them and also to provide a way to give them funds in a way that enables them to actually use them
"the holders" (and businesses, really) to voluntarily (but *actually*) put up substantial funds for the above (if they haven't already and repeat if they have).
"the miners and pools" to stfu, mine for profit and pay for software out of their own coffers if necessary
probably someone to coordinate and organize a fundraise (for the next 6 months is enough to compete with the disaster plan ;-)).
I'm very low on time, but if others take matter to their hands and get something going, I'm sure I will contribute substantially from the BCH I then have left.
love you all ❤️
molecular
@molecular