Benefits for Bitcoin users
Counterparty provides us (Bitcoins users) the ability issue shares, pay dividends and trade on a distributed exchange using BTC (without the need for XCP). This is a valuable functionality for all Bitcoin users and increases Bitcoin's value proposition. It is not in the best interest of Bitcoin users to shutdown this valuable functionality. Especially when there are competitors like - - Ethereum, Nxt, Protoshares, eMunie whom will have asset trading platforms built into their blockchain.

Unfortunately, it sounds like the Counterparty team is not interested in being a teamplayer and working with Bitcoin development, and giving Bitcoin no choice but to activate self-defences.

Please distinguish between Counterparty "team" members (there are only two developers) and the supporters, fans, and investors (the rest of us) who are certainly feeling frustrated and confused, and can't always make sense of what seem like arbitrary rules.

We're not going to regress from relaying our transactions through the main Bitcoin network to relaying them, through central points of failure, directly to some subset of mining pools that have specifically whitelisted us with a patch. We won't depend on any feature not supported by vanilla Bitcoin Core, even if it means storing the message data in unprunable, (or even unspendable!) outputs for the time being.

You're asking them to do something that isn't trasmitted on the normal bitcoin infrastructure.  To this point the blockchain has been agnostic, so this is abnormal.  How is that statement bitcoin-hostile?

You're asking them to do something that isn't trasmitted on the normal bitcoin infrastructure.  To this point the blockchain has been agnostic, so this is abnormal.  How is that statement bitcoin-hostile?

PhantomPhreak is saying that he will NOT do something that depends on enlisting a small subset of mining pools, precisely because he wants to be a team player and build only on "vanilla Bitcoin Core."

Let's have some figures, shall we? Tarsnap charges 300 picodollars byte-month. Assume ten thousand full nodes with their own blockchain, that's 3 microdollars byte-month, or 3*12*80 microdollars year = 0.3 cents year for 80 bytes. But of course the cost of storage falls exponentially, let's say a three year halving time; then the total lifetime cost for storing your 80 byte OP_RETURN on every full node in the Bitcoin network is given by the sum of a geometric series with first term 0.3 cents and common ratio 2^(-1/3).

That's a total cost of 1.5 cents. At current prices, and with the above generous assumptions made on behalf of miners and other full node operators, the correct maximum additional charge for a filled 80 byte OP_RETURN is 0.025 mBTC (it can be argued that the additional demand for Bitcoin created by permitting new uses is a driver of increased Bitcoin prices and thus should lead to a discount, but that's harder to quantify). So just set that as the default until floating mining fees are introduced in (hopefully) 0.10. Bitcoin users who don't want to "provide" that storage can go ahead and not run a full node.

The idea Luke-Jr raises occasionally of a social contract existing between Bitcoin node operators to store and process only financial transactions needs dealing with. Bear in mind that in his maximalist interpretation, absolute consensus between all node operators is morally required to change that contract. It falls through on several grounds, principally vagueness and lack of historical support. Vagueness we've seen in this thread: no-one is quite clear on what makes a transaction financial. Is a transaction transferring a currency other than Bitcoin part of the social contract? Is a transaction containing what is effectively routing data (c.f. stealth addresses) fully financial, or is the additional stuff an anonymity functionality not part of the social contract? And so on. As to historical support, allow me to quote from someone who would know:


The thing is, Luke, that like it or not, Satoshi is/was a libertarian, and his creation embodied the 'take it or leave it' aspect of that political philosophy. Consensus means a consensus of mining power. Coordination means passing around proofs of work. If you feel that the amount of storage space the blockchain needs is too onerous to justify running your huge mining network, then by all means take your ball and go home, or for that matter start playing a different game - you have every right to reject whatever blocks you wish. Bitcoin will be just as pure as the majority of mining power wishes it to be.

Jesus Christ, what a troll!

Take your goatee and go away please?