So thats who you are

What do you mean

Naga-bull

Your pic is a monerochan+nagatoro show no?

Yeah i wasn't really hiding that i like the series

I should redo the profile pic, stable diffusion has come a long way since when i first made it

s/when//

<ofrnxmr[m]> "So thats who you are" <- Was this supposed to mean you just realized where the character is from? Sounded so accusing 😂

* Was this supposed to mean you just realized where the character is from? Sounded so accusatory 😂

Yeah, just realized now haha

<monerobull[m]1> "Just use ChatGPT /s" <- I should. You'll know that I didn't used it because of all the weird error though haha

But I've been playing with chatgpt it's amazing nothing short of amazing

Hi peeps. May I just jump in? Looking for physical meetups of cypherpunks in European cities and ave no clue where to start.

yosef33 an upcoming meetup monerokon.com

vikCake[m]: see dm when you have time :)

P2Pool hashpower share has skyrocketed to 20%. It may be temporary: miningpoolstats.stream/monero

I see main p2pool at 10.5%, pie chart says 10.8%

mini is less than 5% of main

miningpoolstats.stream measures the last 100 blocks.

so it doesn't show current HR?

yeah I see the diff between HR and network HR

There are a few ways to estimate hashrate. One of them is the share of the last 100 blocks.

So every additional block by pure luck pushes up a pool's share by 1% ...

If you want some null hypotheses tested, let me know :P

Not a bad idea, come to think of it

20%?

I see more like 11.% from observer according to Monero vs P2Pool hashrate

last 6h or so

mini still at 0.5%

it goes up/down depending on the time of day

you can use this

$ curl p2pool.observer/api/stats/difficulty | jq -r '.[] | "\(.timestamp) \(.difficulty/10)"' | feedgnuplot --domain --timefmt '%s' --lines --nopoints --title "P2Pool Hashrate" --ylabel "Hashrate" --set 'format y "%.0s %cH/s"' --unset grid --terminal 'qt size 1280,720'

DataHoarder: Your null hypothesis is rejected at p-value = 0.009298 :P

that gets hashrate over time

in a nice plot

irc.gammaspectra.live/b5ddc93b6398914a/image.png

same for mini etc.

In other words, under the assumption that true hashrate share is 11%, the probability of observing P2Pool finding 20 of the last 100 blocks( which we have in fact observed) is 0.93%. Less that 1% chance.

it had good luck, yeah

This is a two-sided test

80% over the last few

irc.gammaspectra.live/74ae10306670fbf3/image.png

R line to do the test: binom.test(c(20, 80), p = 0.11)

otherwise, it can be rejected shares

4BB is usually quite laggy

hmm, does it include any blocks not tracked on observer as well?

sometimes a few others make it to monero that don't show up on observer (different nonces) and I'm not tracking them yet, given it can be backfilled later

0.93% is a pretty good chance, it can happen

it's better to scroll down and check the pie chart, it uses the last 1000 blocks

11.8% there

Does anyone have a strong argument or hypothesis as to why the Lightning Network will not work as a scaling solution for Bitcoin? Or do you all think the more likely outcome is that Lightning Network will enable Bitcoin to scale for hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of transactions per day?

Bitcoin needs fees

If nobody uses the main chain, Bitcoin security has to drop

And for those who do use it, will have to pay extreme costs.

This is with or without lightning, as tx/block is limited

^ this

So you are envisioning a scenario where people perform a Layer 1 transaction to open lightning channels or liquidity, but because they are cheap and don't want to pay high fees, they never close the channel to settle on Layer 1? Basically people perform a Layer 1 tx to open up liquidity for them within the lightning network --> Just continue to perform tx's in lightning without ever returning to the base layer?

Lightning payments are reliable when the network has a highly centralized hub-and-spoke model. If the network has low centrality, there is low liquidity in channels to actually make a payment, or payments fail from connectivity issues, or both.

Rucknium[m]: I had heard something along these lines before. However what are the problems associated with a centralized hub-and-spoke model?

fr33_yourself: moneroresearch.info/index.php?action=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=86 Zabka, P., Foerster, K.-T., Decker, C., & Schmid, S. 2022, "A centrality analysis of the lightning network."

fr33_yourself someone *must* pay for the mining security of the network. Right now, it comes mainly from the block reward. But once that becomes small enough (a few halvings from now), people will have to start paying huge fees in order to maintain a network hashrate comparable to today. If nobody performs L1 transactions, then mainchain security will drop so much that it will be very easy to 51% attack the L1 network

Censoring transactions, easy surveillance, vulnerability to single points of failure. Many issues

And by "high fees", we're talking 50+ $/tx average fee

So even opening+closing a payment channel will cost 100+$, and it will take 100 lightning transactions just to end up with an average fee of 0.10 $/tx

And that's in the best case scenario, where there are just enough L1 transactions to fill the 1MB block limit

Rucknium[m]: It's possible to censor transactions if going through "hubs" in the lightning network? The entity maintaining the liquidity or routing can block/stop a lightning payment getting routed through it?

Any less transactions than that, and the average fee will have to go up in order to keep the same mining incentive

more than 1MB realistically with LN txs

cause it segments them into additional data

fr33_yourself: Absolutely they can block it. I think a lot of people think that LN is an OK idea since they don't understand what is actually happening to make a payment. It's like beads on an abacus.

merope: I see, so even in this case of only $50 base layer tx fee, the fees are still 10 cents and upward within lightning.

Derp, it will be 1000 transactions to end up with 0.10 $/tx avg

fr33_yourself: Recommended reading: medium.com/@peter_r/the-answer-to-y…work-quiz-was-a-1-coin-d8125c056758

You guys are ignoring layer 3

It’s going to be huge

Welcome to my fedimint

Rucknium[m]: So since you can't push a tx permissionlessly to the mem-pool like one can with Layer 1, then it's easy to imagine state or bank-sponsored entities setting up hubs that require compliance for tx's to pass through

"But Lightning channels do not work that way. What is critical to understand is that the beads cannot leave their string. The total number of beads on any string must remain constant through the routing process. Beads can shift from side to side, but they cannot “hop” from one string to another."

fr33_yourself: Yes. IMHO, censorship is a critical threat to LN...if people care about censorship.

And think about it. If an institution has a lot at risk, will I let payments cross my channels that I don't KYC? Chainalysis already has a Lightning "know your transaction" service.

fr33_yourself[m]: No. It means that once you open a payment channel to someone, you will have to make 1000 transactions within that channel to end up with a "reasonable" average tx fee. So if you open a channel with your buddy to pay for the pizza, you'll have to send money back and forth 1000 times before the fees you paid to open that channel become "negligible"

<merope> "fr33_yourself someone *must* pay..." <- When fees on Bitcoin Layer 1 go up after a few halvings, in practice where do you think people will move to? Other chains with better Layer 1 scaling or will they try to run to Lightning? And then presumably you are referring to a scenario where a non-profit entity could purchase a large amount of ASICs (after asic mining becomes unprofitable) and 51% attack the network?

The hubs, big or small, can just disconnect from nodes they don't like for any reason: reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ro15rb/li…work_node_owner_closing_ln_channels

Any layers built on top of a L1 system will depend on that L1. If L1 crumbles, so does everything on top of it. Can't use lightning if L1 grinds to a halt/becomes trivial to 51%

Someone, explain one thing to me. When BTC emission dries out, and everyone moves to L2 and stops paying fees on L1, how will BTC miners survive?

<merope> "Derp, it will be 1000 transactio..." <- So really in order for Lightning payments to be inexpensive the users needs to use centralized hubs and/or perform multiple "abacus-style" back and forth payments prior to returning to the base layer?

<Rucknium[m]> "fr33_yourself: Recommended..." <- Thank you for sending through these resources. I will read through them.

sech1 They won't. Hence my previous statement: somebody *must* pay for the mining incentive. And the only way to maintain a level of security comparable to today's, is for users to start paying massive tx fees

<Rucknium[m]> "And think about it. If an..." <- So it's possible to stop/block any transaction from an entity that a hub/channel doesn't know? Any pseudonymous payments can be rejected? And by the looks of your comment Chainalysis is already working on making this point of enforcement easier?

BTC's problem is literally growing exponentially because the block reward subsidy is decaying exponentially. The only way for the subsidy's security to remain constant is exponential growth in BTC purchasing power. A risky bet.

An impossible bet: a few halvings from now, its market cap would have to surpass the entire world's GDP for the system to stay afloat

Yes and they can generally figure out the source of the LN tx _if_ they control the hubs or have info from them: moneroresearch.info/index.php?actio…n=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=130 Sharma, P. K., Gosain, D., & Diaz, C. 2022. "On the anonymity of peer-to-peer network anonymity schemes used by cryptocurrencies."

"For instance, our analysis reveals that in the widely deployed Lightning Network, with 1% strategically chosen colluding nodes the adversary can uniquely determine the originator for about 50% of the total transactions in the network."

(And it would have to keep going past that point by multiple orders of magnitude before the end of emission)

<merope> "No. It means that once you..." <- I see, so lightning could function to some extent so long as you are connecting directly to the other counter-party and ensure that you both wait a meaningful time (multiple back and forth abacus moves) before closing the channel. Is this the only scenario where lightning can serve a decent use-case?

As far as I know, yes

IMHO, individual payment channels with parties that you transact with frequently seem fine. The problem comes when you try to link together thousands of channels into a network. And then require that your whole system relies on that network.

I have always been careful to distinguish between research on Monero payment channels and second layers.

<Rucknium[m]> "IMHO, individual payment..." <- Yes, after reading through some of what you sent I can see how connecting too many channels together could be quite complicated and problematic.

Opening a channel with "lots of beads" directly to the counterparty with whom you frequently transact seems to be the highest utility use-case for lightning. Otherwise if you are routing through other people's channels indirectly to reach your counterparty, then it is easy to imagine a "1 bead" scenario where one of the indirect channels has low liquidity forcing the size of your transaction to be smaller.

<Rucknium[m]> "The hubs, big or small, can just..." <- And the issue with this is that you can get "rug-pulled" by them closing the channel in a state that doesn't accurately represent your trade balance and/or that you are forced to pay a high fee on the base layer when the counterparty closes the channel?

I suppose the ability to disconnect from nodes for any particular reason also means that it can prevent you from reaching the desired receiver indirectly via the hubs channels.

<merope> "Any layers built on top of a..." <- That makes sense. I'm curious where you think Bitcoin users will move to as fees increase notably on the Base Layer in the future? Other chains or will they try to shift their operations into Lightning? I suppose you are implying that it doesn't matter really which of those two occurs because fewer and fewer users will be paying up the large fees on the base layer, hence

eventually ASIC mining becomes unprofitable?

On paper, they also could fix the problem by changing the system. Which would basically mean transforming Bitcoin into Monero, since the solution is implementing a reasonable tail emission + monero-style dynamic block size

<Rucknium[m]> "BTC's problem is literally..." <- This seems to be a critical point that could quickly end any discussion of lightning being a feasible solution at this time state in the future.

But that assumes that there are enough people in charge that are willing to make the change

merope: This would effectively mean admitting defeat and only lend technical credibility to Monero as it arrived at this "superior" technical solution prior to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has been a living fossil for quite a while

<merope> "An impossible bet: a few..." <- Could you run through a specific step by step analysis of how this would play out though? At what exact point does Bitcoin Layer 1 become subject to non-profit 51% attack?

BTC could not even find a (social) way to raise the block size limit. Fracturing is one of BTC's biggest threats. Tail emission would fracture BTC, so it will likely never be done.

What's the point of a modular system, when you never upgrade the parts with better ones?

More formal research, supporting endor's points: moneroresearch.info/index.php?actio…n=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=101 Budish, E. (2022). "The economic limits of bitcoin and anonymous, decentralized trust on the blockchain."

Rucknium[m]: I agree with your take that it is unlikely that we will see a Tail Emission on BTC

Rucknium[m]: In this case, denial would inevitably lead to the death of the system. It will be a long and slow death, but ultimately people will stop paying out of their pocket to support a system that serves no useful purpose anymore

I would guess that a reason that big institutions are not adopting BTC is that they know BTC faces a death spiral in a decade or two. Budish has presented his research in many places.

fr33_yourself[m]: I've been writing a paper about this for a while. Still not done unfortunately (still dealing with some shit that is delaying all my work), but I will publish it eventually

fr33_yourself[m]: fr33_yourself: The Budish (2022) paper has the exact math.

fr33_yourself[m]: The point of a 51% attack *is* profit

Right now BTC is safe because it pays ~220 $/second for its miners to keep working

Yes, but any powerful government may be the "non-profit" actor that could kill BTC with a permanent 51% attack.

Ah, in that sense - yes

merope: Nethash directly follows this value. So when the mining incentive drops, nethash eventually follows

Governments don't even necessarily have to pay for the mining hardware. They can just take it by force.

(For reference, the highest it has ever been is ~1000 $/second)

So you can easily calculate how much hashrate you can support at different tx fee levels

Rucknium[m]: blackrock, literally the world's largest institution as measured by assets under management, has "adopted" bitcoin in some respects

in addition to fidelity and others

Making more fiat by playing an unregulated market does not equal adoption

And the answer is that, if the mining incentive drops too much, then even a few thousand asics (a small farm) will be able to attack the network

and arguing over semantics on irc does not change reality 🤷‍♀️

Blackrock will get out of BTC before it death spirals

from what I see and read and hear bitcoin "institutional adoption" far exceeds every other cryptocurrency combined

<Rucknium[m]> "I would guess that a reason that..." <- The top is in? Haha

jwinterm: Can you grok the math of Budish (2022)? I assume you can

?

chicagobooth.edu/faculty/directory/b/eric-budish ?

<Rucknium[m]> "Yes, but any powerful government..." <- Is your point here that this could happen already?

Budish (2022) is not a breakthrough paper. Its conclusions are pretty obvious

fr33_yourself[m]: Right now, not really

Rucknium[m]: Also governments can just print money to "pay" for hardware etc

I'm familiar with the arguments about btc subsidy going away and variety of problems arising

selfish-mining etc

Yes. This paper that I linked above: moneroresearch.info/index.php?actio…n=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=101

<Rucknium[m]> "Governments don't even necessari..." <- Yeah, they could send the police force to capture the mining facilities and force them to continue producing ASICs exclusively for them or face death/excessive jail time.

Right now it would be much easier to attack/compromise the mining pools, or use force to take over mining farms

sure, this is why I hedge my btc with grin :P

But in the future, it will be just cheaper and easier to buy today's dismissed asics

but imo btc still has best chance at remaining dominant form of decentralized money well into the future, certainly for the next decade

Jwinterm, at the next halving btc has a lot if room it has to grow

It may have a chance, but it won't be through any technical merit for sure

6.25*19000=usd that miners expect in revenue

<merope> "And the answer is that, if the..." <- So basically this is one way that you could see BTC failing after a few more halvings? Block reward falls --> Higher fees per tx --> Users moving to other chains or Lightning --> Less fee revenue for BTC miners accompanied by falling block reward --> Hashrate falling and more ASICs coming offline --> Non-profit entity sneakily accumulates a bunch of ASICs and 51% attacks BTC

--> chain is compromised and the price crashes as people sell for fiat, precious metals or other cryptos?

Budish (2022) also discusses Monero's situation for "repurposable" hardware, i.e. CPUs. Monero also has a 51% attack threat from governments. It's just different. And the problem isn't going to get exponentially worse if Monero's purchasing power is stable or growing over time.

Is it decentralised when alot of funds hold a vast majority?

if it is proof of work it doesn't really matter who holds what

fr33_yourself: it could fall at the next 1-2 halvings..

Thats a lot of lost money, hashrate, or increased effeciency or decreased costs

<ofrnxmr[m]> "Also governments can just..." <- Yes, this is a threat for all crypto-currencies right?

Ok but isnt then just stocks in a company when you have a total limit of btc?

fr33_yourself: It looks more likely that the "Higher fees per tx --> Users moving to other chains or Lightning" steps will be skipped

Funds dump btc price drops

?

fr33_yourself[m]: Imo, this *will* happen. It's just a matter of time. It will be 6-7 halvings before the issue becomes significant, but then it will get exponentially worse after each halving. So 20-30 years (assuming nothing changes)

jwinterm: Once of Budish's points is that PoW works OK if the total value of the system is low. But yes PoW isn't an invincible system by any means.

<merope> "Right now it would be much..." <- This seems accurate.

Bitcoin's value to protect is a stock. The security needed to protect it is a flow. That's the real stock-to-flow model.

I appreciate academic analysis, but things change quickly, even for the glacially slow moving bitcoin network (by cryptocurrency standards), so I just hedge my bets as best I can and watch it unfold

If they change quocklyz that means an asic-asic

<jwinterm> "but imo btc still has best..." <- Why do you believe this when the others in this channel have shown issues with Bitcoin's hashrate security down the pipe after a few more halvings?

observable history

Because a lot of people hold btc

And the logic says that if people dont sell the price cant go down

also in my experience dealing with people around the world, they generally prefer to be paid in dollars or bitcoin

But the blockchain can still fail / has already

and the fraction preferring bitcoin has grown a lot over last 5 years or so

<Rucknium[m]> "Budish (2022) also discusses..." <- This makes sense to me.

<ofrnxmr[m]> "Also governments can just..." <- But that hardware has to be actually manufactured somewhere by someone. Also, this scenario never really made much sense to me: if they had to actually print a significant amount of money *just* to buy hardware to attack a crypto, then it would mean that the crypto has already won

That pic I sent is why l2 is required

At least, in Monero's case, they would have to compete with the rest of the global demand for cpus

And that pic absolutely doesnt pay the cost to run the network. Its just traffic blocking the network

ofrnxmr[m]: that is a huge tx

14 kB

<ofrnxmr[m]> "Thats a lot of lost money..." <- Yes, because BTC price, fees, or hardware/electric efficiency must double every 4 years right?

1 sat/vB vry cheap

jwinterm @jwinterm:libera.chat: thousands of them

I mean it probably has hundreds of outputs - paying hundreds of people for a total fee of $2 not bad

Only 3000tx took up 30 blocks of space

And it was sustained for maybe 12+ hours

hardware/electricity efficiency doesn't really matter for BTC security. What matters is the real cost (inflation-adjusted fiat, purchasing power, whatever you want to call it).

And if you thought those were big, these were the ones after those ones

jwinterm @jwinterm:libera.chat: the tx were all identical in size and fee, but contained different amounts. Looked like just sending to themself.

<Rucknium[m]> "fr33_yourself: It looks more..." <- How though? Even if the block-reward falls notably, if user's continue to be frogs getting boiled and pay up the now increased tx fees (post-halving) then the miners stay profitable right?

The network get attacked ^

ofrnxmr: IMHO, those large txs don't really indicate any flaw in BTC's model. They are probably just someone testing something or doing it because it gives them a thrill.

I would guess it is just pool paying out or exchanges batch sending

It happens regularly. BTC doesnt have more than 200-600 real tx afaict

The rest are just flooding to force people to pay more

fr33_yourself: Key fact: Changes in BTC fees are determined entirely by user _demand_. Supply of block size is fixed. So if users won't pay, then fee won't increase

While likely mining their own tx

<merope> "Imo, this *will* happen. It's..." <- Intuitively I would agree that there are still a couple of decades before the block reward and fee issue becomes deeply aggravated.

ofrnxmr[m]: static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-cont…/Press-X-To-Doubt-Feature-Image.jpg

Miners _cannot_ decide to just "charge more" for block space. This is covered by...yet another paper :P

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share my new site with you. It's a verifiable lottery game for Monero and Wownero. The link is NeroWin.net

I will spam on tweeter for nerowin[m], pls don't exit scam ser

It's covered by this paper, but it should be fairly obvious from basic economic analysis: moneroresearch.info/index.php?action=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=78 Huberman, G., Leshno, J. D., & Moallemi, C. (2021). "Monopoly without a Monopolist: An Economic Analysis of the Bitcoin Payment System."

<Rucknium[m]> "Bitcoin's value to protect is..." <- I see, so the problem Bitcoin users will face isn't dilution like fiat which suffers from supply inflation, but rather the flow of fees they must pay 20-30 years from now to secure the network?

Rucknium[m]: Of course - but eventually the users *will* have to actively start paying more if they want the miners to stay. Because if they don't, then the miners will leave and the system will be vulnerable

endor00: Yes. My guess was that the system will more likely go straight to the step of being vulnerable. In 2017 it looked like fees might pay for security, but fees are still low. "Good" for most users, but bad for long-term security

And to be fair, im not just a hater

These things are why I couldnt stay in btc

And what lead me to monero

And it's a potential death spiral because people will sell BTC when they see it is becoming vulnerable, which makes the BTC purchasing power to fall, which make miners sell their hardware to survive, which makes BTC more vulnerable, which makes people sell, which...

<merope> "But that hardware has to be..." <- I disagree with your conclusion. In this scenario, Crypto may have scared them enough to spur them to act, but if they are able to acquire sufficient hardware to perform a sustained 51% attack and wreck the chain then they had the last laugh.

<merope> "At least, in Monero's case, they..." <- Agree, but it's not a certainty they couldn't secretly set up an NSA mining pool hehe. Not likely though.

That's why p2pool is important

Best of both worlds of solo and pooled mining

ofrnxmr[m]: there's a lot of smart people working on bitcoin and a lot of "smart money" that owns bitcoin, I guess I just don't trust my own intelligence as being so superior against all these other humans with a brain 🤷‍♀️

wownero monero-project/research-lab #98#issuecomment-1383233249

w0w

fr33_yourself[m]: Yeah, I know. But there's also the aspect of the message that they would be sending through such an attack. It would be an admission of defeat - it would tell everyone that the only way they have to stop people is to destroy the tool that they're using to break free

yes wownero is the vanguard, wtf u guys talking about btc here?

And this tool is open-source, decentralized, and basically impossible to censor at this point

<Rucknium[m]> "fr33_yourself: Key fact: Changes..." <- Oh, so miner's can only drive up fees in BTC by filling up blocks via sending transactions to themselves? If so then BTC really is in a precarious situation given enough time for the reward to dwindle...

nioc: I was telling everyone how much I love the one true coin

fr33_yourself: No, they can't drive up fees by doing that, either

di you mean me?

of crs

<Rucknium[m]> "Miners _cannot_ decide to just..." <- I'll take your word for it. You are very knowledgeable. If this is true though, then BTC miner's really are quite reliant on user demand (number of tx's in mempool) and price action...

plowsof11: Oh good lord, that minexmr2 guy is a fucking cancer

(And a fucking scammer)

It's the same as mining empty blocks. If one miner fills their block by their own spammed transactions (which they get those fees back anyway), another miner will take the transactions that the previous miner left in the mempool since it is the profit-maximizing thing to do. I said that the Huberman et al. (2021) had mostly obvious analysis on that point, but maybe it's better to say that they work out the math very convincingly.

He still tries to promote his pool in many posts on reddit, pretending that since it's implemented on top of p2pool it's decentralized, when in fact it's exactly the same as all other centralized pools

And plays dumb every time someone proves him wrong and tells him to cut the bullshit

Had to use the wayback machine just to show how full of shit he is

"Totally not a scam, trust me bro. Block template? What's that?"

Ugh

<merope> "Of course - but eventually the..." <- So BTC believers and users must voluntarily and actively increase the fees they pay to miners and/or pump up the price to the stratosphere to increase the block reward in fiat value, otherwise the network will be very vulnerable after "x" halvings?

This is Theorem 1 in the paper. The explanation of the proof is "The proof relies on free riding by small miners. For example, large miner i may choose to process only transactions with a fee above b′, leading to a subgame in which some users increase their transaction fees above b′ to avoid being delayed when miner i is selected. If the increased fees outweigh the loss from not processing transactions with a fee lower than

b′, choosing such a block assembly policy can increase miner i’s expected transaction fees per block...."

"However, this creates a larger increase in the expected transaction fees per block of small miners because small miners benefit from the increased fees while still processing all transactions. Entry by small miners increases the aggregate computational power so that small miners break even. Because small miners collect more fees than a large miner attempting to affect fees, free entry implies the large miner either breaks even or

is strictly worse off."

<ofrnxmr[m]> "And to be fair, im not just a..." <- I understand that you are not simply hating. The arguments laid out by you, Rucknium and endor00 all seem valid and are based on sound reasoning. I appreciate this.

fr33_yourself[m]: Exactly

Rucknium[m]: This explanation does not really convince me though, for multiple reasons

<Rucknium[m]> "And it's a potential death..." <- I see... Yes, what you say here is true. Once the first real domino falls it's all doomed from there forward...

There's no point for a large miner to reject txes below a certain fee, if there's still room in a block. Might as well fill it all up

And small miners can play the same game too - the only difference is that their choice will have less weight on the network

<merope> "That's why p2pool is important" <- It's not possible to compromise p2pool? I haven't throughly investigated the degree of trustlessness associated with it.

endor00: I think you are agreeing with the paper

The paper says "Consider Scenario A. Scenario A cannot happen for reasons 1, 2, 3."

Overall, yeah

Or "will not happen" if individual actors are profit-maximizing

<merope> "Yeah, I know. But there's also..." <- They already did this though. They did it to Gold during the Great Depression. Yet, the populace didn't seem to markedly disturbed by the rug pull.

fr33_yourself[m]: If you trust/verify p2pool's code, then you're pretty much good. P2pool "can't be compromised" because individual miners control their own block template (like when solo-mining), but they still get the benefits of pooled mining (regular and frequent rewards)

Rucknium[m]: Ah ok, did not read it very thoroughly

<merope> "And this tool is open-source..." <- Gold was in the same boat. Gold is effectively open-source, decentralized and impossible to censor. However, this is somewhat off the topic of BTC long-term security. It's more so the stupidity and cowardice of the individual during the confiscation as opposed to a testament to the strength of the government.

I probably made it more confusing by not stating the theorem itself, but just the explanation. The theorem uses certain definitions so it's not very self-contained.

Extracting gold is a much more complex process, and requires a ton of resources upfront, as well as legal permits and owning suitable land. That's something that very few people have.

Mining Monero requires one computer/device with a decent cpu to get started. That's a significant fraction of the global population

Not the same boat

And carrying gold around to pay people is not very simple/comfortable. Hard to use for buying small and cheap items, plus the risk of scams like counterfeit gold

Carrying crypto around requires one mobile phone at a minimum

<Rucknium[m]> "This is Theorem 1 in the paper..." <- Yes, this seems to be rational behavior on the part of miner i. I can see how this could lead to problems down the pipe because it is ultimately dependent on a user with a high enough urgency of getting filled in the next block on BTC to pay the exorbidant fee. The concept is that eventually the b fee becomes so high that it leads to miners simply taking what they can get.

That's why the paper's title is "Monopoly without a monopolist". Bitcoin, as a payment system, charges users by limiting supply of payments (limiting block space). That seems to be monopolistic behavior. But individual miners (or even mining pools) cannot actually act like monopolists.

One of the paper's conclusions is that Bitcoin needs congestion to raise revenue for miners. That gives me doubts about Bitcoin Cash's long-term security model.

> <@endor00:matrix.org> Extracting gold is a much more complex process, and requires a ton of resources upfront, as well as legal permits and owning suitable land. That's something that very few people have.

>

> Mining Monero requires one computer/device with a decent cpu to get started. That's a significant fraction of the global population

Your first paragraph is true, but does not change the fact that Gold+Silver+Copper is a better currency setup for in person transactions than Monero, plus Metals face no blockchain size limitations infinite scalability.

<merope> "And carrying gold around to..." <- Carrying Gold and spending Gold is effective, simple and comfortable for high value transactions. Your point regarding small transactions is valid, which is why Silver and likely even Copper would need to circulate as well. Counter-feit gold is valid, becomes less of an issue as merchant adoption of precious metals increases as more merchants will possess means of verifying the

purity of bullion and coins. However, these metals would need to circulate meaningfully before merchants go through the effort of purchasing equipment that can verify purity.

<merope> "Carrying crypto around requires..." <- This is true, but ignores the fact that no blockchain can handle all of the world's transactions. Plus the inconvenience of having to wait for sync times and confirmations in physical stores.

<Rucknium[m]> "That's why the paper's title is..." <- Very interesting and a fitting title. Describes Bitcoin's network well.

<Rucknium[m]> "One of the paper's conclusions..." <- This is interesting, because Monero faces low congestion and has reached its final block reward state yet the network is presently secure.

<Rucknium[m]> "One of the paper's conclusions..." <- Are there any other crypto-currencies aside from Monero that have alternative scaling solutions (not tail emission), which could persist with long-term security?

Nano, which you probably know, has a different security model. Its scaling capabilities are not great and it has had spam problems.

Proof-of-stake is another one of course.

<fr33_yourself[m]> "This is true, but ignores the..." <- I don't think that's true. ArticMine's calculations show that Monero could already get quite close to Visa levels of transactions per second with *today's* protocol - the main bottleneck being internet speed for relaying data around. And that's before you even consider the additional capacity brought by payment channels and other L2 systems (which have already been shown to be possible)

<Rucknium[m]> "One of the paper's conclusions..." <- So Bitcoin Layer 1 will likely fail given that it is a Monopoly without a Monopolist and Lightning Network will fail because the base layer will fail. However, how do things play out for Monero's network over the next 20-30 years? What prevents blockchain size from outpacing full node's SSD space in a world where Monero daily transactions approaches or exceeds

400,000-500,000?

What would prevent that would be a continuation of the tech progress in SSD capacity and cost

And Monero's growth has not outpaced storage space growth so far, so by the time we'll get to those levels we will have cheap enough storage available

Will that happen? We can't be sure

Rucknium[m]: What makes you say that Nano faces scaling problems? I think I remember reading about the spam attacks. Also isn't proof of stake dead in the water from the start since it's just a matter of financial resources to achieve greater than 51% of the validation stake?

merope: Yes, but running a full node under this Visa level scenario becomes rather difficult. Wouldn't 80-90%+ of Monero's full nodes go offline in a scenario where our chain grows past 4 to 6 terabytes within the next 5 to 10 years?

Why does Nano face scaling problems? For one, its nodes couldn't handle the spam.

Rucknium[m]: Oh yeah haha i forgot that the selling point was that it had no fees lol

There are estimates of Nano's current maximum tx/second. They aren't that high.

<merope> "I don't think that's true..." <- So you think Layer 2 solutions won't work on Bitcoin, but will work on Monero. Why?

fr33_yourself[m]: Unrealistic premise. Not even sure if we could get to numbers that high in that timeframe, even if blocks were completely full to the limit 24/7 starting today

Ultimately, the real differentiating factor in scaling right now is the way the system is set up. Bitcoin relies on hardcoded limits - which are fine until you hit them, and then you're in trouble. Nano tries to make things free, but they just end up paying the cost of scaling elsewhere. Monero is the one that tries to balance the costs with the actual usage level of the system

fr33_yourself[m]: Level 2 solutions are not bad per se. But they *require* a functional L1 as a foundation. If L1 fails (and Bitcoin's current setup will), then L2 goes down with it

<Rucknium[m]> "Will that happen? We can't be..." <- This is my concern. I have a question though. If we, the Monero community, observe that adoption and daily transactions are steadily outpacing SSD capacity improvements, could we tweak the dynamic block size expansion to tighten it? Basically we could still have block expansion, but a much slower block expansion algorithm, to prevent full nodes from getting overwhelmed. Is

there any reason that the developers, researchers, and users couldn't make this intervention to restrict the number of tx's per block if we saw that it was necessary?

Monero's L1 has better balance and setup, so it provides a better foundation for building other layers on top

merope: I understand your points here and I agree with your analysis here.

fr33_yourself[m]: Yes we can. In fact, the last hardfork actually *increased* those scaling parameters, to allow the chain to grow faster in the future

There's a github issue with all the analysis somewhere

merope: I see, so a Layer 2 set-up isn't destined to fail from the start so long as it is designed and implemented carefully? Or at least we aren't sure yet that Layer 2 is complete hogwash as a scaling idea?

But the minimum tx fee was increased about 5x in the last hard fork.

Yup, to mitigate the spam potential

Rucknium[m]: So we the community, devs and researches can play with these parameters to adapt to unforseen or unfortunate scenarios we may being to observe in the future?

I am not sure that Layer 2 for Monero is complete hogwash, but IMHO more likely than not it is hogwash. (Get ready for another paper).

merope: Alrighty, thanks for explaining that. So if there was enough consensus and push, we could also decrease those scaling parameters to prevent the chain growth per day from becoming "excessive" according to community consensus?

fr33_yourself[m]: We can, though each change requires a hardfork - so you can't just tweak back and forth all the time, you have to make a decent analysis and come up with a reasonable number

Tang, W., Wang, W., Fanti, G., & Oh, S. (2020). "Privacy-utility tradeoffs in routing cryptocurrency over payment channel networks." moneroresearch.info/index.php?actio…n=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=120

Ultimately, it boils down to predictions of network growth and the cost of storage

"Our results suggest that in practice, PCNs [payment channel networks] should operate either in the low-privacy or low-utility regime; it is not possible to get large gains in utility by giving up a little privacy, or large gains in privacy by sacrificing a little utility."

merope: I understand this and that is rather fair. I don't think the "mass adoption" will sneak up on us and I also don't think we will see a spike in adoption for "n" months only to be followed by a crash in daily tx.

Although maybe this paper can help privacy on layer 2: moneroresearch.info/index.php?action=resource_RESOURCEVIEW_CORE&id=90 Corradini, F., Mostarda, L., & Scala, E. 2022, "Zeromt: Multi-transfer protocol for enabling privacy in off-chain payments."

Rucknium[m]: So your TLDR is that a PCN or layer 2 solution in Monero would sacrifice some privacy and hence be undesirable to network users

The main problem with routing on payment channel networks like Lightning is that to route payments you need to know how much funds are in each channel, which eliminates privacy.

And to work well they should be centralized, which gives information to surveillance

Rucknium[m]: Rucknium, what is your take on Monero being able to handle or respond to half a million tx per day every day if we wake up five years from now and SSDs are equivalent in capacity to today? Do you think this would require a hardfork to tweak the dynamic block expansion algorithm and "nerf" or slow the block expansion? Is this possible or feasible and would it be something the community could get behind?

Rucknium[m]: I agree with your take. I also think a large chunk of Monero users deeply appreciate the confidentiality that bulletproofs provide, so it's unlikely that Monero peeps would want to sacrifice this privacy for the ability to transact in a PCN.

Even most BTC users dont want to transact on a PCN. Look at the available merchant data between LN and on-chain BTC transactions.

Rucknium[m]: That

Rucknium[m]: That's true. I've seen the statistics from coincards and other similar services.

I haven't closely looked at Monero's dynamic block size formulas. IMHO, the bigger priority is to make sure the code itself scales. Looks for bottlenecks, suboptimal data processing algorithms, etc.

jberman is working on some of that.

Bitcoin Cash did some scaling tests. Monero should do the same

> <@rucknium:monero.social> I haven't closely looked at Monero's dynamic block size formulas. IMHO, the bigger priority is to make sure the code itself scales. Looks for bottlenecks, suboptimal data processing algorithms, etc.

> jberman is working on some of that.

Do you think Monero's block size formulas could be tweaked if we observe that adoption (average daily transactions) is outpacing hardware improvements? Or are we fully commited to our current formula without the ability to "tigten" its expansion?

"Complete work stress testing how daemons handle a transaction pool under heavy load to both gauge daemon performance, and to help get PR 8076 - reduce wallet round trips to the daemon across the finish line after gauging its impact on pool processing performance."

I think the formulas could be adjusted, yes. I don't think the formulas have been peer-reviewed enough. For example, no economists have reviewed them as far as I know.

> <@rucknium:monero.social> ccs.getmonero.org/proposals/j-berman-3months-full-time-4.html

> "Complete work stress testing how daemons handle a transaction pool under heavy load to both gauge daemon performance, and to help get PR 8076 - reduce wallet round trips to the daemon across the finish line after gauging its impact on pool processing performance."

I see. Thanks for sending this. However, my question is more so if we as the community, developers etc. have the option of tightening block expansion formula in the case that hardware solutions aren't as rosey as we hope.

We expect, at a minimum, to have at least one more hard fork in Monero's history for Seraphis. We could adjust it then, at the very least. The Seraphis hard fork will be contingent on community approval/acceptance/review, of course.

Rucknium[m]: I see. If in a high adoption scenario, we can tighten the block expansion algorithm to prevent the full nodes from getting maxxed out, then this is a serious merit to Monero and significantly increases its probability of long term success. Otherwise, if we are fully banking on hardware improvements, then precious metals seem like they would be the only remaining money alternative to fiat which can actually

handle a large user-base.

Anything and everything can be changed. It's just code. The issue is having someone actually do it, and convincing others that the proposed changes (if any) are a good idea.

Rucknium[m]: I see. I don't think this high adoption scenario will occur before the Seraphis fork, but rather in about 20 to 30 years time, so as long as we can tweak things to save the network as a whole, and there is broad enough consensus to do so, then this is a huge merit for Monero.

merope: Got it. That alleviates some of my anxiety about future risk scenarios that could manifest. It logically makes sense to, if we can get an address overhaul pushed through in seraphis, then I imagine anything could fly so long as the reasoning is sound and there is sufficient community support.

Even if hardware improves signficiantly over the next 20 years plus, isn't it delusional to believe that Monero adoption could exceed 100s of millions of people though? At the very least I don't think that Monero can become the most liquid commodity and become a unit of account. I think there must also be other currencies that serve as media of exchange in different scenarios.

100s of millions isnt very many

Thats a population YouTube video

I think it might even be a stretch for Monero to soak up all online transactions (that's crazy high volume). So I do have my doubts that a "libertarian" future where fiat is out of the picture and physical settlements are made with metals and online transactions settled with Monero is a pipe-dream.

What I really like about the Monero community is that if someone shows that there is a problem with good arguments and data, usually that problem is fixed if there is a solution to it. For example, this recent issue with too many p2pool payout outputs reducing user privacy and causing blockchain bloat.

All? Why assume all, how much further can you stretch?

Monero doesnt have to consume all to hit those numbers

Not even a majority

There are billions of people sending money online

5% isnt a stretch

Many people pointed out a potential issue over the past year. With data, I showed that the issue was very real. duggavo came up with a solution. sech1 implemented the solution.

My concern/inquiry is if Monero can handle a majority of people's online transactions as opposed to solely serving a small libertarian / privacy oriented market?

Yes, Monero can. Because most of its hard limits are dictated by the hardware available, and not by the protocol itself

Rucknium[m]: I agree. It's not that I have any beef with Monero or the community and I appreciate what the project stands for. It's just that I'm wondering how many people it can serve.

Why wonder aka doubt? Instead, look at the data about what it does do

Like I mentioned earlier: we could already get significantly close to large digital payment processors with hardware and infrastructure that exists today

Why Monero features were implemented such as tail emission, block penalty, dynamic blocks etc were implemented

merope: Don't you think that Monero is fine, but that it alone can't serve as "money"? That fiat or precious metals must perform as a medium of exchange alongside Monero for particular transactions, such as physical person to person transactions?

Visa etc might process 3500tx/sec, but its also delayed by 2 days

visa needs faster blocktimes

Stocks etc as well, none of these things we compete with actually confirm faster than us

ofrnxmr[m]: Could you send me a link? I've seen ArticMine's video presentation, but is the best resource and I should refresh my memory again?

No, I think Monero is just fine as a form of digital money. And Monero does not need a physical counterpart - though we would, in case the power ever goes down

But I don't think precious metals are a viable option. There's a reason why we moved away from those

They might be fine for people to invest in, but they're not practical for day-to-day payments (and anecdotal evidence of people using them does not prove that they would be viable for a large-scale economy)

nothing beats staring at a piece of gold when the sun hits it just right

Hi everyone. I'm so excited to be here and to learn more about monero project

#monero:monero.social Bossangoa:

:P

ofrnxmr[m]: I agree with what you are saying here, but don't you think the world's economy need some combo of Monero + fiat or Monero + precious metals?

merope: Yes, I am in perfect agreement with you here. So there must also be a physical form of money which circulates alongside Monero.

Cbdc's are coming, and there will never be a time when all governments of the world adopt monero as their native currency

Monero is open source. Its so much easier to fork it then to play the tail end of the oil war

Than*

I think that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy though

<merope> "But I don't think precious..." <- Could you elaborate on this reason?

<merope> "They might be fine for people to..." <- The only difficulty is making change, or divisibility. This could be resolved by using pure Copper coinage of various weights as well. It's rather inconvenient, but could be used to logically eliminate the possibility of fractional reserve banking. I'm a believer in the Austrian School of Economics and hence wish to seperate myself from banks entirely.

Like I said earlier: they're not really practical to carry and use day-to-day, and there are too many risks of scams involved. Everybody would have to walk around with their own digital scale, and there would be too much risk of counterfeit metals

Pure copper coinage?

You mean.. old pennies?

1c coins?

Those went away because is cost more to produce them than their face value, and they are better used in production

Also: how do you resolve disputes on weight? If your scale says your coin is 50 grams and mine only says 45 grams, who's right? How do we quickly decide? How do you prove that one of us is cheating?

Ive sold silver and gold, and sure.. these guys "check" with magnets etc, but God damn its a ridiculous endeavor

15 minutes to check every single transaction, manually

ofrnxmr[m]: I don't understand the comparison/analogy here. It's easier for them to fork it, tweak it, then deploy it anew, than to acknowledge the legitimacy of the mainchain?

Too much effort and complexity. There's a reason why today's coins are based on their face value, and not on the cost of the actual metals used

ofrnxmr[m]: Now imagine doing that in line at the supermarket, with everyone in line behind you staring

fr33_yourself: thats what I am trying to say, yes

merope: Maybe so, but are paper bills any more secure against counter-feiting than precious metals?

endor00: or imagine they say its off weight because its damaged

Yes paper bills are. They are also worthless and easy to handle and dispose of

Going through 10000 bills is easier then going through 10000 coins to check their metal contents

... than*

Think about running a lemonade stand..

merope: If I feel you are being dishonest or adding unncessary friction to the trade, then I go to another store that recognizes the validity of my coin/pure bullion.

Trade?

Exactly. Gold is a barter

That doesn't solve the problem, you're just postponing it

Gold is the product now. Not the money

The whole point of money is to facilitate exchange, so that we don't have to deal with all the issues of barter

Its a terrible means to transfer value. Absolutely terrible. Which is why silver, copper, nickel etc were used

If gold is good, why not use diamonds

Because its not viable with a population over 100000 lol

I'm a Monet maximalist myself. I carry around an original painting, and pay for groceries by cutting it up into little squares

imajin trying to pay for bread using diamond, have to cut it on the spot to pay the proper value

To be fair, bitcoin is the same, except bitcoin has a built in death date. Gold might actually survive forever and be worth money forever. Aka being a great "store" of value

RavFX[m]: And then vacuuming the floor to save all the dust particles that fell all over the place (assuming you didn't breathe them first)

But liquidity? Real buyers for bricks?

If those go, so does the actual value

Its not worth anything if there is no buyers

<ofrnxmr[m]> "Think about running a lemonade..." <- The lemonade stand might have quite a few pounds of copper at the end of the day :) ... I hadn't personally thought of this scenario though, but we do have cars and wheel-barrows right?

<merope> "The whole point of money is to..." <- I agree completely here. So you think fiat is just that much easier than having a system of gold, silver and copper coinage?

Thats why the majority of the money is the world is online

<ofrnxmr[m]> "To be fair, bitcoin is the same,..." <- Gold, Silver and Copper functioned as money in the past though. It's just the government had to remove them from coins due to their metal value increasing above their face value. Government can't inflate metals. It is true that the use of paper notes originates in the market not the government though.

There doesnt exist enough cash to actually withdraw the online amounts

ofrnxmr[m]: This is true. If you were like me and wanted to completely separate myself from banks, how would you go about it?

<Rucknium[m]> "Bitcoin Cash did some scaling..." <- Rucknium, what are some technical merits you think Bitcoin Cash has over Monero, if you had to list any/some?

Use Monero the same way I use cash

But it's not prudent to be 100% allocated to Monero is it? Wouldn't you agree that's excessively correlated to Monero's price and a particular bug or risk event could wreck one's cash-balances/ savings?

Im not 100% monero. I have fiat, of course. Need to pay for or pay to services that are run or controlled by the government

The game is pretty rigged in a lot of the world. True ownership doesnt exist for most people, otherwise id say land

You'd choose land over Gold as a hedge against Monero?

Yes

Id choose land over anything

What about a Short-Term Rental vs. Land vs. Gold? If Land or STR why? You have to pay so much taxes and HOA fees

HOA is only where its totally cucked

USA has laws that lets me defend my land

Yeah HOA is bad

My problem is that I think I lack the defensive forces to defend land in my area against BS from the local gov if I decided not to pay property taxes.

Gold easy to defend and relatively easy to travel with in small enough amounts

If in USA.. move somewhere that people defend their land.. like, the south

There are pockets of people who arent on the internet like us, who are old school. Who dont pay taxes and who live their lives in America

How? Who wants another Waco

The point of land, is to NOT run away

Land is where you keep your goLD on the table, and defend your castle

ofrnxmr[m]: You think there are people living anywhere in the US that own land and are able to evade property taxes? How do they do that?