Discussion:
[bitcoin-dev] NIST 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview
CANNON via bitcoin-dev
2018-01-29 00:40:32 UTC
Permalink
January 20 2018

(I am also forwarding this message to the bitcoin mailing list just in case there
are other technological errors that could use correction in this draft paper or
anything that should be added with my comments.)

To the authors of this paper,
I am commenting on Draft NISTIR 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview located at
https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/nistir/8202/draft/documents/nistir8202-draft.pdf

Just in case that document is modified or removed I have also downloaded
it to redistribute this error ridden draft at a later point if neccesary,
and I also had the Internet Archive save a copy here for sake of archival reasons
to give context to this message.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180124170359/https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/nistir/8202/draft/documents/nistir8202-draft.pdf

There are a couple things I would like to contribute on regarding some
corrections needed in this paper. I must say, the content in this paper is
making me doubt the credibility of the NIST. I am starting to wonder if the
NIST is also incompetent with lack of credibility just like with most other
government institutions. Falsified information published as truth such as this
only expose their ignorance and incompetence and also propagate such ignorance
to other institutions and people whom rely on NIST for information or research.
The information presented in this paper is technologically invalid and contains
false information. I understand that mistakes happen, but this specific section
regarding "8.1.2 Bitcoin Cash (BCC)" is obviously written without prior research.
Even if research was done no citation is included to back these claims.
I ask you to please conduct research and validate information before publishing it,
especially when the credibility of the NIST is at stake.

I will proceed to outline some corrections.

1. Bitcoin Cash uses the ticker BCH, BCC is the ticker for BitConnectCoin

2. "When SegWit was activated, it caused a hard fork"
This is incorrect information. Segwit was not a hardfork. Rather segwit was
a softfork meaning that it is backwards compatible with unupgraded nodes and
miners. With it being a softfork it actually prevents a fork in the blockchain
by still being valid to unupgraded nodes and miners. Because segregated witness
is not a hardfork its use is optional.

3. "and all the mining nodes and users who did not want to change started
calling the original Bitcoin blockchain Bitcoin Cash (BCC)"
The original bitcoin blockchain is still called Bitcoin. Segwit did not create
any fork in the blockchain. Bitcoin Cash however was a hard fork that resulted
in a forked blockchain and new altcoin.
Bitcoin is Bitcoin,
Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin Cash.

4. "Technically, Bitcoin is a fork and Bitcoin Cash is the original
blockchain."
Technically, that statement is not truth.

Bitcoin Cash was forked from the original Bitcoin blockchain to create
the altcoin "Bitcoin Cash" (BCH) by people whom believe that the blocksize
should be large enough to accomodate all individual transactions on the main
chain. Without going into any of my personal opinions of which one is better
(bitcoin vs. "bitcoin cash") technically Bitcoin Cash was a hardfork and is
not the original chain but a forked one. It is a hardfork as the blocks
generated by BCH are incompatible with BTC nodes. Because of this lack of
backwards compatibility, and the resulting fork in blockchain is why BCH is
technically a hardfork.

This is just one section of this paper I have read thus far. It makes me
wonder how many other fallacies are throughout this paper. I also wonder how
many other NIST papers exist out of draft form that contain errors. Even
the smallest amount of research could have prevented this in the case of
this paper, unless you are intentionally pushing false information.

I hope these comments are of benefit to the improvement of this paper.

Cannon
PGP Fingerprint: 2BB5 15CD 66E7 4E28 45DC 6494 A5A2 2879 3F06 E832
Email: ***@cannon-ciota.info

NOTICE: ALL EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE NOT SIGNED/ENCRYPTED WITH PGP SHOULD
BE CONSIDERED POTENTIALLY FORGED, AND NOT PRIVATE.
CANNON via bitcoin-dev
2018-01-29 01:08:24 UTC
Permalink
Slight correction to email I just posted titled "NIST 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview"
The date in top of email states Jan 20, corrected date is Jan 28th which can be validated
also by verifying my signature (gpg includes timestamp when signing).

I also sent email with corrected date to NIST comments email address.
CANNON via bitcoin-dev
2018-01-30 01:43:22 UTC
Permalink
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: RE: NIST 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:25:05 +0000
From: Yaga, Dylan (Fed) <***@nist.gov>
To: CANNON <***@cannon-ciota.info>

Thank you for your comments.
You, along with many others, expressed concern on section 8.1.2.
To help foster a full transparency approach on the editing of this section, I am sending the revised section to you for further comment.

8.1.2 Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
In 2017, Bitcoin users adopted an improvement proposal for Segregated Witness (known as SegWit, where transactions are split into two segments: transactional data, and signature data) through a soft fork. SegWit made it possible to store transactional data in a more compact form while maintaining backwards compatibility. However, a group of users had different opinions on how Bitcoin should evolve – and developed a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain titled Bitcoin Cash. Rather than implementing the SegWit changes, the developers of Bitcoin Cash decided to simply increase the blocksize. When the hard fork occurred, people had access to the same amount of coins on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
CANNON via bitcoin-dev
2018-01-30 03:30:21 UTC
Permalink
On 01/30/2018 01:43 AM, CANNON via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: RE: NIST 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview
> Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:25:05 +0000
> From: Yaga, Dylan (Fed) <***@nist.gov>
> To: CANNON <***@cannon-ciota.info>
>
> Thank you for your comments.
> You, along with many others, expressed concern on section 8.1.2.
> To help foster a full transparency approach on the editing of this section, I am sending the revised section to you for further comment.
>
> 8.1.2 Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
> In 2017, Bitcoin users adopted an improvement proposal for Segregated Witness (known as SegWit, where transactions are split into two segments: transactional data, and signature data) through a soft fork. SegWit made it possible to store transactional data in a more compact form while maintaining backwards compatibility. However, a group of users had different opinions on how Bitcoin should evolve and developed a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain titled Bitcoin Cash. Rather than implementing the SegWit changes, the developers of Bitcoin Cash decided to simply increase the blocksize. When the hard fork occurred, people had access to the same amount of coins on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-***@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>

This is much better than the original. My question, the part where it says segwit makes transactions more compact, I thought that transactions are not more compact but rather they just take advantage of extra blockspace beyond that of 1 MB? Yes they would appear to be more compact to un-upgraded nodes due to the witness being stripped, but the transactions are not actually more compact right?
Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev
2018-01-30 07:22:55 UTC
Permalink
On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 03:30:21AM +0000, CANNON via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> On 01/30/2018 01:43 AM, CANNON via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> >
> >
> > -------- Forwarded Message --------
> > Subject: RE: NIST 8202 Blockchain Technology Overview
> > Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:25:05 +0000
> > From: Yaga, Dylan (Fed) <***@nist.gov>
> > To: CANNON <***@cannon-ciota.info>
> >
> > Thank you for your comments.
> > You, along with many others, expressed concern on section 8.1.2.
> > To help foster a full transparency approach on the editing of this section, I am sending the revised section to you for further comment.
> >
> > 8.1.2 Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
> > In 2017, Bitcoin users adopted an improvement proposal for Segregated Witness (known as SegWit, where transactions are split into two segments: transactional data, and signature data) through a soft fork. SegWit made it possible to store transactional data in a more compact form while maintaining backwards compatibility. However, a group of users had different opinions on how Bitcoin should evolve and developed a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain titled Bitcoin Cash. Rather than implementing the SegWit changes, the developers of Bitcoin Cash decided to simply increase the blocksize. When the hard fork occurred, people had access to the same amount of coins on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > bitcoin-dev mailing list
> > bitcoin-***@lists.linuxfoundation.org
> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> >
>
> This is much better than the original. My question, the part where it says segwit makes transactions more compact, I thought that transactions are not more compact but rather they just take advantage of extra blockspace beyond that of 1 MB? Yes they would appear to be more compact to un-upgraded nodes due to the witness being stripped, but the transactions are not actually more compact right?

That's absolutely right; this is why segwit is a blocksize increase first and
foremost rather than some kind of transaction size optimization.

It'd be good to get that corrected as well.

--
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
CANNON via bitcoin-dev
2018-02-06 02:08:24 UTC
Permalink
On 01/31/2018 11:16 AM, Damian Williamson wrote:
> I disagree with the correctness of the following statement:
>
>
>> Rather than implementing the SegWit changes, the developers of Bitcoin Cash decided to simply increase the blocksize.
>
>
> I would suggest "Rather than being satisfied with the implementation of SegWit changes alone, the developers of
> Bitcoin Cash decided to also increase the blocksize.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Damian Williamson

You do realize that segwit includes many improvements of which are unrelated to scaling? These same improvements of which
simply increasing the blocksize alone would not fix or enable. Segwit is not just a blocksize increase.
Bitcoin Cash, while increasing the blocksize directly, from my understanding has yet to implement the
improvements and capabilities that segwit enables.

One example being, with transactions hashes being able to be calculated in advanced prior to signing
(due to the signature being in different section than that used
to calculate the transaction ID) it is possible to create transaction trees, enhanced smart contracts, trustless mixing protocols,
micropayment networks, etc...

Segwit also increases the security of signatures.

There are lots of other things segregated witness enables as well.

By saying "..segwit changes alone.... decided to also..." Bitcoin Cash has not implemented segwit. Bitcoin Cash only
increased the blocksize.

that wording above at least from the way I read it, seems to imply that Bitcoin Cash has segwit.
Damian Williamson via bitcoin-dev
2018-02-06 07:07:26 UTC
Permalink
This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.
CANNON via bitcoin-dev
2018-02-18 16:20:13 UTC
Permalink
This post might be inappropriate. Click to display it.
Loading...