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Nick Szabo: "@zooko @pwuille @gavinandresen +infinity. Each side is exagerating the importance of their goal. Calm down already." (twitter.com)

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[–]kd0ocr 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (14子コメント)

Satoshi isn't a god. He's a competent C++ programmer and a satisfactory cryptographer. This worship is really strange.

[–]awemany 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (2子コメント)

I don't worship Satoshi but I'd still argue he's pretty creative & wise:

  • he came up with the whole scheme of bitcoin in addition to implementing it, and many people before tried unsuccessfully

  • he knows the multiple ways that there is value in hiding his identity as the creator (personal safety, selling the mystery, increasing the decentralized nature of his project by letting the head/lead disappear)

  • he's thinking very long term (didn't sell his stash)

The idea of cryptographic decentralized money was certainly out there, without the exact ideas on how to implement it.

While thinking about crypto money before BTC myself, I actually came close to his ideas of using chains of hash cash to prove and generate value. I think quite a few must have had similar ideas. But he followed through. And I certainly didn't see the full picture and full value of this approach, though!

Most importantly, I felt decentralized cryptocurrency could be a grave way to impact the world with unforeseeable consequences and found the concept of inventing such a thing and putting it out there of taking on an almost unbearable amount of responsibility. [Edit: For some reason it feels to relate to Nietzsche's ideas...]

That also made me VERY interested as soon as I heard about such a thing (Bitcoin) actually existing, and well, now that it exists and everything isn't as dramatic as envisaged, lets improve and build on this :-)

[–]kd0ocr 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

he came up with the whole scheme of bitcoin in addition to implementing it, and many people before tried unsuccessfully

I agree that it was a good idea that was competently executed. But it doesn't really have an revolutionary ideas.

increasing the decentralized nature of his project by letting the head/lead disappear

Is that why he disappeared, though?

he's thinking very long term

...or he knew that selling those Bitcoins would be tracked.

[–]awemany 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I agree that it was a good idea that was competently executed. But it doesn't really have an revolutionary ideas.

I meant it in the way the he put the pieces together. Hash cash, P2P, and globally longest chain. That is something that is indeed really new. I bet you won't find anything mentioning such a system before his paper in 2008.

[–]Doctoreggtimer -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (10子コメント)

He was a pretty awful programmer and the first version of bitcoin only ran in windows

[–]kd0ocr 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (9子コメント)

I dunno. It was a multi-threaded program that spoke a custom binary protocol written in a non-memory safe language. Objectively, that should've been a disaster.

[–]nullcGreg Maxwell - Bitcoin Expert 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (2子コメント)

This is common "trope" knowledge but it isn't really true. The original Bitcoin code was very clean and compact; used modern safe programming practices (e.g. container objects instead of raw pointers) and was remarkably free of errors; both in design and implementation.

Most of the bugs fixed, though not all, later were also added by later developers.

Some of those comments you've heard are just because the program was not constructed in a modular way; but it was a quite small program, under 20kloc! It's no great crime to write a program that doesn't perfectly anticipate future needs; and having more modularity than needed would have complicated review. Though the initial release was windows only, the software was portable, and didn't use any windows specific functionality-- unlike basically any typical windows software.

The initial versions of bitcoin showed either considerable experience or enormous amounts of study; but they were unpretentious-- like many things in Bitcoin, you could describe it as small simple words combined with powerful ideas.

Sometimes these comments came from some of before we had significant experience building consensus code; or from those who still don't have that experience... Satoshi's implementation had some consensus flaws but none the less appears to have had a defect rate lower than basically every extension that has come after; it's just exceptionally hard to get the trickier consensus parts right.

[–]kd0ocr 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Sometimes these comments came from some of before we had significant experience building consensus code; or from those who still don't have that experience... Satoshi's implementation had some consensus flaws but none the less appears to have had a defect rate lower than basically every extension that has come after; it's just exceptionally hard to get the trickier consensus parts right.

In fairness, given that Satoshi worked on Bitcoin for two years before releasing it, it's probably much better tested than most of the Bitcoin extensions.

[–]nullcGreg Maxwell - Bitcoin Expert 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Correct-- though many of the people who slam the software quality claim there were "no tests" or that the software was "untested".

It's quite clear to me that it wasn't the case; it's just that no one gave the speaker the tests! (If you're trying to be anonymous it's probably important to say as little as possible.)

[–]itisike 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

How often do newly coded P2P protocols fail?

(Also, the first version had numerous problems, right? Weren't there a bunch of stuff fixed later?)

[–]kd0ocr 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

How often do newly coded P2P protocols fail?

Um. All the time? They have some vulnerability that gets found in half an hour, or they're unusably slow, or they just don't work without a bunch of fiddling.

(Also, the first version had numerous problems, right? Weren't there a bunch of stuff fixed later?)

The output overflow bug comes to mind. As for anything else, I've not been part of Bitcoin for long enough to say.

[–]itisike 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm feeling like we should make a distinction between "toy" protocols that were coded up quickly, and "serious" protocols; I expect that would screen off most of the failures.

There was a bug wherein the block reward would be reinstated in the far future.

[–]Doctoreggtimer -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (2子コメント)

It was, the original releases had such flaws at letting people send negative amounts of coins, overflowing the number of coins into the billions and even letting people spend other people's coins. It was written terribly at first.

[–]kd0ocr 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

It was, the original releases had such flaws at letting people send negative amounts of coins,

This didn't happen.

overflowing the number of coins into the billions and

This happened.

even letting people spend other people's coins. It was written terribly at first.

What are you talking about?

[–]Doctoreggtimer -1 ポイント0 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just because things happened before 2013 when you got into bitcoin, doesn't mean they never happened. Actually look up early versions of bitcoins. They had all those issues and more.