Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin XT 0.11A

From: Cameron Garnham <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 07:02:19 +0800

I think that it is important to note that Bitcoin XT faces a natural
uphill battle.

Since it is possible to setup atomic inter-fork coin trades. I do not
see how Bitcoin XT could possibly win if Satoshi decides to sell 10000
XTBTC for BTC everyday for the first 100 days after the fork.

In many ways Satoshi gets to decide the winning fork just by his huge
economic investment in Bitcoin.

Here is some simple game-theory for non-consensus forks:

1. Spoil the ballot. Have Bitcoin Core propagate the Bitcoin XT version
string.

2. Encourage all miners to false vote for the Bitcoin XT fork.

- Now people have no-idea what % of the economy Bitcoin XT holds. -
Making it impossible for people to put economic faith behind Bitcoin XT.

3. Setup good Atomic Swap markets.

4. Setup a fork of Bitcoin XT that allows people to easily make a
transaction only on the XT fork (while leaving the original BTC coins
untouched).

This means that the Bitcoin XT fork will be born per-mature. Probably
with only a small % of hashing power behind it (contrary to the almost
100% that falsely claim to support it). It will be embarrassing that for
the goal of larger blocks, XT instead has blocks (before re-adjustment)
every 2h.

The price for XTBTC coins will plummet, Satoshi progressively dumping
his 1M stash over a year or so will make sure that it doesn't recover
either.

I cannot see how Bitcoin XT is but-not in a extremely weak position from
game theory.

I'm sure smarter people than I could come up with even more ways to
disrupt non-consensus forks.

Cam.

On 16/8/2015 6:39 AM, muyuubyou via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> I posted this to /r/BitcoinMarkets but I thought I might post it here as
> well.
> 
> ---
> Currently 0 mined blocks have voted for XT.
> 
> If it ever gets close to even 50%, many things can happen that would
> reshape the game completely.
> 
> For instance:
> 
> - Core could start boycotting XT by not relying to them and/or not relying
> from them.
> 
> - Core could appropriate the version string of XT, making it impossible to
> know how much they are progressing and a losing bet to actually execute the
> fork.
> 
> This kind of node war if the factions were sizeable would make it very
> risky to transact at all - balances in new addresses could end up
> vanishing. Usability of the system would plummet.
> 
> Note that any disagreement between the network and the biggest economic
> actors - mainly the exchanges at this point, "wallet services" maybe -
> would mean BTC plummets. Hard. And so would confidence.
> 
> It's a risky game to play.
> ---
> 
> PS: I consider this attempt at takeover about as foul as it gets. The
> equivalent of repeating a referendum until a yes is obtained: the
> reasonable reaction to this is actively blocking said "referendum". There
> was a fair play alternative which is voting through coinbase scriptSig like
> plain 8MBers are doing, or like BIP 100 proposes for dynamic adjustment.
> Once a majority is obtained in this way, devs have to react or if they
> don't then this sort of foul play would be justified. But this wasn't the
> case.
> 
> -----
> 為せば成る
> 
> 
> 
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