Re: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen () leitl ! org>
Date: 2008-11-17 19:37:11
Message-ID: 20081117193711.GP11544 () leitl ! org
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----- Forwarded message from Ray Dillinger <[email protected]> -----

From: Ray Dillinger <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:20:23 -0800
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper
X-Mailer: Evolution 2.6.3

Okay.... I'm going to summarize this protocol as I understand it.

I'm filling in some operational details that aren't in the paper
by supplementing what you wrote with what my own "design sense"
tells me are critical missing bits or "obvious" methodologies for
use.

First, people spend computer power creating a pool of coins to use
as money. Each coin is a proof-of-work meeting whatever criteria
were in effect for money at the time it was created. The time of
creation (and therefore the criteria) is checkable later because
people can see the emergence of this particular coin in the
transaction chain and track it through all its "consensus view"
spends. (more later on coin creation tied to adding a link).

When a coin is spent, the buyer and seller digitally sign a (blinded)
transaction record, and broadcast it to a bunch of nodes whose purpose
is keeping track of consensus regarding coin ownership. If someone
double spends, then the transaction record can be unblinded revealing
the identity of the cheater. This is done via a fairly standard cut-
and-choose algorithm where the buyer responds to several challenges
with secret shares, and the seller then asks him to "unblind" and
checks all but one, verifying that they do contain secret shares any
two of which are sufficient to identify the buyer. In this case the
seller accepts the unblinded spend record as "probably" containing
a valid secret share.

The nodes keeping track of consensus regarding coin ownership are in
a loop where they are all trying to "add a link" to the longest chain
they've so far recieved. They have a pool of reported transactions
which they've not yet seen in a "consensus" signed chain. I'm going
to call this pool "A". They attempt to add a link to the chain by
moving everything from pool A into a pool "L" and using a CPU-
intensive digital signature algorithm to sign the chain including
the new block L. This results in a chain extended by a block
containing all the transaction records they had in pool L, plus
the node's digital signature. While they do this, new
transaction records continue to arrive and go into pool A again
for the next cycle of work.

They may also recieve chains as long as the one they're trying to
extend while they work, in which the last few "links" are links
that are *not* in common with the chain on which they're working.
These they ignore. (? Do they ignore them? Under what
circumstances would these become necessary to ever look at again,
bearing in mind that any longer chain based on them will include
them?)

But if they recieve a _longer_ chain while working, they
immediately check all the transactions in the new links to make
sure it contains no double spends and that the "work factors" of
all new links are appropriate. If it contains a double spend,
then they create a "transaction" which is a proof of double
spending, add it to their pool A, broadcast it, and continue work.
If one of the "new" links has an inappropriate work factor (ie,
someone didn't put enough CPU into it for it to be "licit"
according to the rules) a new "transaction" which is a proof
of the protocol violation by the link-creating node is created,
broadcast, and added to pool A, and the chain is rejected. In
the case of no double spends and appropriate work factors for
all links not yet seen, they accept the new chain as consensus.

If the new chain is accepted, then they give up on adding their
current link, dump all the transactions from pool L back into pool
A (along with transactions they've recieved or created since
starting work), eliminate from pool A those transaction records
which are already part of a link in the new chain, and start work
again trying to extend the new chain.

If they complete work on a chain extended with their new link, they
broadcast it and immediately start work on another new link with
all the transactions that have accumulated in pool A since they
began work.

Do I understand it correctly?




Biggest Technical Problem:

Is there a mechanism to make sure that the "chain" does not consist
solely of links added by just the 3 or 4 fastest nodes? 'Cause a
broadcast transaction record could easily miss those 3 or 4 nodes
and if it does, and those nodes continue to dominate the chain, the
transaction might never get added.

To remedy this, you need to either ensure provable propagation of
transactions, or vary the work factor for a node depending on how
many links have been added since that node's most recent link.

Unfortunately, both measures can be defeated by sock puppets.
This is probably the worst problem with your protocol as it
stands right now; you need some central point to control the
identities (keys) of the nodes and prevent people from making
new sock puppets.

Provable propagation would mean that When Bob accepts a new chain
from Alice, he needs to make sure that Alice has (or gets) all
transactions in his "A" and "L" pools. He sends them, and
Alice sends back a signed hash to prove she got them. Once
Alice has recieved this block of transactions, if any subsequent
chains including a link added by Alice do not include those
transactions at or before that link, then Bob should be able to
publish the block he sent Alice, along with her signature, in a
transaction as proof that Alice violated protocol. Sock puppets
defeat this because Alice just signs subsequent chains using a
new key, pretending to be a different node.

If we go with varying the work factor depending on how many new
links there are, then we're right back to domination by the 3
or 4 fastest nodes, except now they're joined by 600 or so
sock puppets which they use to avoid the work factor penalty.

If we solve the sock-puppet issue, or accept that there's a central
point controlling the generation of new keys, then generation of
coins should be tied to the act of successfully adding a block to
the "consensus" chain. This is simple to do; creation of a coin
is a transaction, it gets added along with all the other transactions
in the block. But you can only create one coin per link, and of
course if your version of the chain isn't the one that gets accepted,
then in the "accepted" view you don't have the coin and can't spend
it. This gives the people maintaining the consensus database a
reason to spend CPU cycles, especially since the variance in work
factor by number of links added since their own last link (outlined
above) guarantees that everyone, not just the 3 or 4 fastest nodes,
occasionally gets the opportunity to create a coin.

Also, the work requirement for adding a link to the chain should
vary (again exponentially) with the number of links added to that
chain in the previous week, causing the rate of coin generation
(and therefore inflation) to be strictly controlled.

You need coin aggregation for this to scale. There needs to be
a "provable" transaction where someone retires ten single coins
and creates a new coin with denomination ten, etc. This is not
too hard, using the same infrastructure you've already got; it
simply becomes part of the chain, and when the chain is accepted
consensus, then everybody can see that it happened.



Bear



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Deryk Makgill, who is a felon under various laws.. (@wakgill) twitteó: Wow! Ray Dillinger (one of first people to reply to Satoshi/comment on Bitcoin code) wrote an email declaring it a "failure" today.

'The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping.' https://t.co/LWGZ8cqE3g https://twitter.com/wakgill/status/1343946053205307394?s=20

Básicamente la mejor información sobre el código la aportó Ray Dillinger, en el 2013 publicada en BitcoinTalk, bajo el seudónimo de Cryddit

Copyright (c) 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin source from November 2008.
December 23, 2013

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=382374.0

Básicamente la mejor información sobre el código la aportó Ray Dillinger, en el 2013 publicada en BitcoinTalk, bajo el seudónimo de Cryddit

Copyright (c) 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto

Bitcoin source from November 2008.
December 23, 2013

https://www.bitpost.app/tx/4d7529062f42a0251cf7096cbb01a1e5bb8c492965a982bea72b6a5a6434abaa

Re: Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ...
February 07, 2015
Cryddit / @RayDillinger

For what it's worth: 

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Several attempted "abuses" of the blockchain under the 1MB limit have proved Hal right about needing the limit at least for launching purposes.  A lot of people wanted to piggyback extraneous information onto the blockchain, and before miners (and the community generally) realized that blockchain space was a valuable resource they would have allowed it.  The blockchain would probably be several times as big a download now if that limit hadn't been in place, because it would have a lot of random 1-satoshi transactions that exist only to encode information for altcoins etc.

At this point I don't think random schmoes who would allow just any transaction are getting a  lot of blocks. The people who have made a major investment in hashing power are doing the math to figure out which tx are worthwhile to include because block propagation time (and therefore the risk of orphan blocks) is proportional to block size. So at this point I think blockchain bloat as such is no longer likely to a problem, and the 1MB limit is no longer necessary.  It has been more-or-less replaced by a profitability limit that motivates people to not waste blockchain bandwidth, and miners are now reliably dropping transactions that don't pay fees. "

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.msg10388435#msg10388435

Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale."

Re: Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ...
February 07, 2015
Cryddit / @RayDillinger

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.msg10388435#msg10388435

If anyone can falsify my claims, I go to prison. I have sworn in testimony that I am Satoshi Nakamoto, and I created bitcoin. To journalists, there is no way to prove. Anything can be taken and twisted in social media. You can't do that in court if you twist the narrative and you lie you face the consequences.

Others who claim to be Satoshi so that they can gain fame have to prove their point. Each point of evidence needs to be falsifiable. If it can be falsified, they face prison time. There is nothing from any of these people that I cannot falsify. I can demonstrate categorically in court with evidence that all of these people have created a false narrative to either defraud people or engage in other scams.

Those like Gizmodo and Wired were not interested in the real story. It's the same as that author who wanted to paint me in the same light Julian Assage. But of course, is the false narrative we get to take part. The way that that story was written was to sell a populist idea of what bitcoin and Satoshi mean, and it is not what I intended. It is not why I invented bitcoin, and it is not the story that needs to be told.

What I expect to happen is that people like Roger and Vitelik will oppose me because they know their scams require that I do not get a voice. They will seek to censor me and will be seen to do such. Then, everything that there claiming will be shown to be false and malicious. Next, we would expect many of the other scammers who have to double down to attack, and they can claim that they worked with me and that they were part of this and this is why we need to keep some things close. If everything is out there, I cannot discredit others who seek to say that they were part of the Satoshi group.

That idiot in BCH, David and others he worked with planned Jihan and wanted me to be a part of a larger group early on which gives them power. People like Bear, Hal and Dave, helped me, but they did not create bitcoin. They didn't even really know what bitcoin was. Even Dave wrote not a single line of code. He gave me a few grammatical suggestions on the Whitepaper and his real role was keeping me psychologically sane as I dealt with these people. He was a sounding board and a friend.

What we are going to find is the narrative changes to say that these were part of my group. We already see this. If they know the full story, these people can twist and become seemingly part of it and lie, it becomes hard for us to weed them out.
But going forward, I have things they don't know. And they won't be able to give them before we get them in court and tear them apart. Once we have a few people torn apart, preferably people who are under oath and then demonstrated to have perjured themselves we can ensure that others know that if they do this if they seek to add themselves to my story, I always have something that will ruin them.

This is why we need court because otherwise other people are going to twist the story and continue their scams.

CSW
May 25, 2019

https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1558795610306000?thread_ts=1558795604.305900&cid=C5131HKFX

On p. 7 they write:

By the time he released the paper, he had already coded the entire system. In his own words, “I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper.” Based on historical estimates, Satoshi likely started formalizing the Bitcoin concept sometime in late 2006 and started coding around May 2007.

Worth pointing out that Hal Finney and Ray Dillinger — and likely several others – helped audit the code and paper before any of it was publicly released. https://www.ofnumbers.com/category/bitcoin/

On p. 7 they write:

By the time he released the paper, he had already coded the entire system. In his own words, “I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper.” Based on historical estimates, Satoshi likely started formalizing the Bitcoin concept sometime in late 2006 and started coding around May 2007.

Worth pointing out that Hal Finney and Ray Dillinger — and likely several others – helped audit the code and paper before any of it was publicly released.

Book Review:
Cryptoassets
by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar.
Posted on July 17, 2018
https://www.ofnumbers.com/category/bitcoin/



Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond (Inglés) Pasta dura – octubre 19, 2017
by Chris Burniske and Jack Tatar.
https://www.amazon.com/Cryptoassets-Innovative-Investors-Bitcoin-Beyond/dp/1260026671

yes, this was in one of the other threads and yes it ignores everything I set about bitcoin

Basically, there were two versions of b-money and the concept of CryptoCredits

CryptoCredits was the internal currency of the proposed blacknet system.

people like Tim and Wei wanted the first version

http://www.weidai.com/bmoney.txt

if you read this, you will see that there is a first and the second protocol

these are not compatible

The first protocol was designed for untraceable money. The second was discarded and never followed up because it allows for traceability, this is what was added into bitcoin to make it bitcoin.

Bitcoin was never designed to be the first protocol

I never intended it to be the first

others including Bear want to system for crypto anarchy, I do not.

and, the thing they don't seem to get is there is a dialectic between bitcoin and they are complete opposites. You cannot modify bitcoin, it only works in the format of the second protocol and this is all that I worked on to make work

the bit that was always missing was the economics of the system

the reality was they were not interested

I don't need to punish people as Wei and others believed, I simply have them as commercial entities.

they want crypto anarchy

I just created a system that uses competing companies

if you read the second protocol you'll see that it's bitcoin minus the economic incentives

https://ia600208.us.archive.org/10/items/cyphernomicon/cyphernomicon.txt

Both Hal and Bear.

And, As usual I missed this

Both of them wanted b-money protocol 1.

Both wanted, not-Bitcoin.

But, I thought Hal knew what he was doing and telling me and I listened, and was foolish enough not to trust myself.

I believed people when they told me Bitcoin was flawed

The truth, it was fine. The flaw was my willingness to listen and not to dogmatically hold onto my original concept tighter.

CSW
Dic 29, 2020
https://metanet-icu.slack.com/archives/C5131HKFX/p1609266408180200

https://www.tg-me.com/CSW_Slack/2412

Who created Bitcoin?
Craig Wright reveals alleged contributors for the first time
| Full Interview
Crypto Finder
Publicado el 27 abr. 2019
https://youtu.be/8_SoIXUBIhw

44:30 How Hal Finney & Ray Dillinger helped

[Cryptography] Bitcoin is a disaster.
https://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2020-December/036510.html