Interesting discussion between Elon and Vlad (RobinHood CEO)
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Interesting discussion between Elon and Vlad (RobinHood CEO)
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) chain often advertises how it can upgrade using hard forks (usually indicating how easy it is).
It sounds all well, but in order to do this, you must have centralized control over the chain such that these hard forks can be pushed down to all clients. If clients (i.e. miners) don't upgrade their code, then they will be working on the old chain while everyone else moves on.
With centralization comes risk. The risk that a person or entity in control can act in a way that is not a consensus decision. This is exactly the risk that has materialized on BCH.
Amaury Séchet is the lead developer of Bitcoin ABC (the reference implementation for BCH). He announced that in November 2020 there will be an upgrade on BCH.
He plans to try another "fix" for the BCH difficulty adjustment algorithm (DAA) which by the way suffers from low hashpower in comparison to BTC - and miners "gaming" the chain. I'm not going to comment on the issues with the DAA here - the second change is the real point of issue.
The second improvement is the addition of a new Coinbase Rule.
How can the coinbase rule be "improved" you ask?
The Coinbase Rule improvement is as follows: All newly mined blocks must contain an output assigning 8% of the newly mined coins to a specified address.
And who owns that address? - yes, the developers (Amaury). Basically, they are taxing each new block with an 8% tax rate.
Ask yourself - how can this be the consensus. Well, it isn't. And I hope it is clear at this point that BCH is NOT a decentralized currency.
Does this sound like Bitcoin to you?
they are taxing each new block with an 8% tax rate.
[...]
Ask yourself - how can this be the consensus. Well, it isn't.
Yeah, I mean it doesn't sound good but... is it really that bad, like 8% on every transaction + mining fees? Pay ~$1 to send $10? That's hilariously much.
Looks like the tax idea never died then! Thought commissar Ver had abandoned this.
Hello everyone!
I thought I should write a quick post since I haven't done so in a while. I'm still alive ;)
In the past few weeks, I've been busy working on a project related to COVID risk. I've learned quite a bit recently about virology and how to model epidemics. One of the most notable things was the bimodal nature of the disease (where many cases are asymptomatic) means it is challenging to contain or know the prevalence.
Now that there are a few serology studies released, we are beginning to see that the disease has affected more people than previously reported. The good news there is that the infection fatality rate (IFR) is likely not as high as the worst-case estimates, but it's still very significant for the older population. If someone told you that 1 out of every 5-10 older adults who get the disease would die, then maybe we can begin to appreciate it's severity. Not that younger people are free of risk either. The latest estimates have reported that 1 out of every 100 people who get the disease will die from it.
That brings me to much of what I observe and read about in terms of younger people unafraid of the disease, not taking precautions, or engaging in risky behaviour. Just because younger people are less likely to die, they still spread the virus and kill others.
Hopefully, everyone is safe. I am curious to hear about your personal experiences where you are.
~ Z
Had it the first week of lockdown (mid-march), 4 days and over, so a mild dose, Gave it to a vulnerable partner and she was out of action for 4 weeks. I did feel guilty for that even though it couldn't be helped. Seems like we have forgotten the scenes of the horrible deaths we saw so much of at the start. I still want to do the best i can for those more vulnerable in my life. It's about reassuring others, particularly those who we care about. I always operate this way and have been more than a little amused by the debate surrounding Covid. Scientism and phillosopy, don't help you breathe or kill pain. These positions people take are theoretical. Wait till you can't help a person you care about and have to watch them suffer, you can then enjoy that wonderful feeling of humility washing over you. I wouldn't take the risk element out of our existence though, younger people should take risks but am old enough to know that experience teaches humility very well
In April I was sick entire month with a mild cold, heavy coughing and night fever. Lost my voice completely. Went into quaraintaine to protect family. My doctor was sure it was due to the Corona virus. When I got better again I got a test to see if I had any antibodies in my blood but there were none, so conclusion was I had had the normal flu. But never had such a thing for so long before, so it is still a bit strange I had all the symptoms right at the peak of the pandemic, but I did not have it. On the other hand, reading about stories of people that had a mild case of Corona and lost all their energy even when they were better. That is not my case luckily.
I'm glad to hear you're better, but a little annoying that you're still at risk of the new virus I imagine.
I consider myself a you low risk person and most of my friends are the same and I live in an academic bubble so I would also claim we're educated and understand the/believe in science. BUT we don't really care about ourselves: 1 in a 100 chance is a risk I take before living in prison for 5 months... Our measurements are for people who don't have a choice like we do! We all have grandparents and I hope where they live kids follow government orders the same I do!
Greetings everyone,
I thought I would write a quick progress update on the status of getting LN transactions up again.
I've implemented all of the fixes for the deposits and withdrawals. Theoretically, I could re-enable now. However, I am going to fix up some other aspects as well, which will further improve the safety of funds.
Here is what I am doing:
Once I have these two other improvements complete and tested, I will be turning LN transactions back on.
Hey @fwtf , I just enabled some limited deposits and withdraws. Do you want to test it and see if it's working for you?
Just made a payment and my 2 delayed deposits just showed up.
That's good. Let me know if withdraw works for you too.
Hello everyone,
I noticed strange activity on the ZapRead LN node. I have stopped it for the time being. Apologies for the inconvenience. I will investigate but hopefully there is no issue.
It looks like some kind of bot activity making withdraws.
I'll follow up with an update once I sort it out.
I've been hit recently as well. They go thru each LN service and try to automate what they can.
My idiot stole 1000 sats at a time for hours.
Update:
Good news. I was able to re-create the vulnerability in testing, and I was able to implement the fix in testing.
I will be implementing multiple safety fixes but will unfortunately have to leave transactions offline for a bit longer until it is complete.
Anti-fragility!
Seems like withdraw option still not working fine, I tried a withdraw of 499 sats and it didn't deliver, I wonder how long will it take for the issues to be resolved?
I've fixed most of the issues on the test version. I am also updating all financial aspects to improve safety. It's going to take a couple more days I think until it is updated and tested to go back online.
Alex Bosworth - May 13, 2020
Today we're happy to announce that the recent release of LND 0.10.0 has enabled Lightning Labs to release the first major upgrade for Lightning Loop since its beta release: multi-path Loop support. As Loop is a non-custodial service that translates Lightning off-chain funds to blockchain on-chain funds, it is specifically designed to service amounts suitable for the Blockchain that are larger and aggregate many off-chain micropayments. To scale this value up we're adding support for Loop users to leverage multiple channels in a single Loop Out to the chain. We are also raising the limit of a Loop Out from 0.042 BTC to 0.1 BTC.
Since the Loop Beta that we released in February we have also been working on some changes for Loop In. With this multi-path payments release we now have the ability to use multiple channels together to translate on-chain funds to refill your off-chain channels. And we have also added the ability to specify your preferred on-chain fee for Loop In to maximize the cost efficiency of getting your on-chain funds into Lightning.
Using multiple channels for Loop payments is an ideal use-case for the multi-path payments technology. Rebalance operations to move off-chain funds from ten channels onto the chain could previously have required at least ten separate on-chain transactions with Loop Outs or channel closes. With multi-path payments support, these same ten channel rebalances can now be achieved in one on-chain Loop Out operation.
As Loop and Lightning are scaling solutions designed to enable more people to get more out of the Bitcoin Blockchain and spend less in on-chain fees, our goal is to maximally aggregate our transactions when using the blockchain.
If you are already familiar with the recent MPP upgrade in LND, then you know that it allows for a single Lightning payment to take multiple paths to its destination by splitting the payment into multiple pieces and having the receiver put the pieces together on the other side. This is exactly how it works in Lightning Loop, but with an added security guarantee.
In the first version of Lightning Network multi-path payments, it is a system wherein the receiver can potentially choose to receive part of the payment, but they are simply incentivized to not do that as waiting may result in more funds received. In the case of Loop, we can do better than this because in the Loop protocol the initiator of the Loop Out is also the ultimate receiver of the payment. Even though the Loop Out server is receiving a multi-path payment that is not normally logically atomic, the client's control of the payment resolution makes this a logically atomic swap.
In our first release of multi-path support we have some deliberate limitations on the amount of funds that may be swapped. This is because we are still working on hardening the protocol and adding features that allow leveraging multi-path even more than we are today. Technically speaking there are no limits to the amount of aggregation we can achieve using this technique, ultimately unlimited numbers of channels may be used for a Loop Out or Loop In, all resulting in the same single on-chain spend to an HTLC address.
While people love the ability to offload received Lightning funds directly to exchanges or cold wallets with Loop Out, we are also continuing to invest our efforts in new improvements to Loop In which allows for recharging depleted Lightning channels.
Multi-path payments are especially advantageous for Loop In. In a normal usage of the Lightning Network, we'd expect that a user who has created a series of channels will in many cases eventually spend these channels down over time as they make purchases, deposit on exchanges, and use Lightning Apps.
With single-path Loop In, that user could refill a single channel to keep their channel open, but they could also simply create a new channel, and these two options would cost similar amounts of on-chain mining fees. With multi-path Lightning, we unlock the capability for the user to use all of their channels as a single balance, spending multiple channels together. And with multi-path Loop In, we unlock the capability to completely refill all of a user's channels at once with just a single on-chain HTLC.
In order to take advantage of the new Lightning Loop multi-path support, you will need to first install LND 0.10.0. This new release is now the only version of LND that is supported by the current version of the Lightning Loop reference Go client and the only version that supports multi-path payments.
The increase to a 0.10000000 BTC limit and the upgrade of LND to 0.10.0 are still just the beginning of improvements planned to allow even more bitcoins to flow over the Lightning network with minimal cost and friction. If you are interested in higher limits please email us or join our Slack where you can also chat with other users of the service and LND.
Very inspiring discussion!
PS You should buy new mic :D
My knowledge is unfortunately low in this area. What happens if you close the channel - you can log in with Lightning? Will Lightning be just a form of authorization to the accounts we have today?
ZapRead.com has registered for the Lightning Hackathon. Please check it out! https://wiki.fulmo.org/wiki/Challenges_May_2020#Zapread.com
The primary challenge I've posted is an authentication challenge - using your Lightning wallet to register for ZapRead, and to log in!
Develop a C# LNURL-AUTH library which can integrate with .NET (MVC) websites.
Chatroom to get started: https://mm.fulmo.org/fulmo/channels/x-zapread
The secondary challenge I have put forward is to develop offline payments for Lightning. Maybe a bit too ambitious?
See you there!
In case of the tax, very simple solution just don't mine the supposed upgraded chain, and let it be 2 chains, one supports the tax the other doesn't, very simple, centralization my ass, at least you can choose if you want tax or not.
Guess what, I think people will go for the tax so that they can pay development, in the case of Bitcoin, they didn't tax the mining Bitcoin just gave up on trying to be a currency and instead decided to be MoneyGram Lightning Network which is not a currency just a money sending service.
Lightning Network means two onchain transaction fees plus routing fees on top, you can't be a currency with three fees, the best you can hope to be is Western Union. Not to mention you are not private whatsoever.
Bitcoin Cash will charge you a tax, Bitcoin sold out to governments and corporations and gave P2P, that's a hell of price to pay for development, I rather pay 8% than give up peer to peer currency.
By to way I have been using Western Union Lightning Network because to not pay the opening and closing of channels I have been forced to use wallets like Phoenix and wallet of satoshi.
And many other will continue to use lightning this way just to not pay onchain fees and many are starting to think using wallets like that is actually using Bitcoin which is not it is just another PayPal account.
At Phoenix Wallet, you have to pay a fee because it's a non-custodial wallet. And what you can do is:
- Abandon Bitcoin
- Promote Lightning to keep onchain fees as low as possible
- Recommended for fee reduction solutions on the first layer like SegWit, Schnorr, Taproot.
BCH will not allow itself to split, because it would be dead.
I don't care what happens to Bitcoin Cash, for all I care all Bitcoin direct forks should die, just like Bitcoin will. The moment Bitcoin dies, I don't want a fork to say we are the new Bitcoin, I want anyone that holds Bitcoin or any fork to lose their money for forgetting what was supposed a peer to peer currency.
All fiat will start experiencing hyperinflation, and when people try to use Bitcoin to scape hyperinflation than they will realize Bitcoin is not a currency and the price will dump. People will not go to Bitcoin just to hold it at some point they will want to use it, but in a hyperinflation world usage will be so big that tx fees will go so high that people will dump it.
And lightning network will mean double the fees, not to mention custodian wallets may 3ven get a letter saying please give us this and that user funds because we are the government, and since the only way to pay less tx fees is to use custodian wallets, pretty soon people will realize they are using PayPal Lightning Network account when their custodian wallet overlords tell them that the government has ask for their funds and as such they can go and suck a dick for not owning their own keys.
Bitcoin not being a peer to peer currency will only come to light once people try to use it as such, and it will be when people will want to use it the most as a p2p CURRENCY but it will be when they realize they got fuck.
Hyperinflation in fiat currency will show the importance of peer to peer currency with low fees, but if you haven't cash out into something else by that time, you won't even have the possibility to dump because the network will be stuck with higher and higher tx cost.
You don't need to be that smart to realize high transaction fees will be the end of Bitcoin in a hyperinflation world.
Bitcoin is no ordinary cryptocurrency - thousands of developers, millions of users and a very large adoption (for a crypto) make it the largest project in the world.