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Upcoming Bitcoin Hard Fork & /r/bitcoin censorship

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• adam

  

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  @shmadz

  Welcome Mike as our new bitcoin overlord? This feels wrong.

  Wrong? Mike (and Gavin, apparently) just wants to get more than 75% of nodes to all use the same client. A client that he has complete control over.

  Once the switch is made, it will make it easier for Mike to roll out some of his other pet projects. Perhaps we get redlists with v11.1?

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Edit @Adam - re: "benevolent dictator or deadlock" .. how can you be sure that Mike Hearn is benevolent? Or that once he is given the keys to the kingdom he will stay that way?

  Once given the keys to the kingdom in the land of open source, if you behave badly with them then somebody BitcoinXT's you explaining why you're making bad decisions (or at least that you are) and the pendulum swings back to indecision 2015 where deadlock is percieved as better than the instability of non-benevolent or even just arbitrary dictator.

  And I haven't heard anyone mention the second part of the protocol change, the doubling every 2 years...

  I don't know anything about this, link or any light you can shed?

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 7:57 AM
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• cherapple

  

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  Another option would be to follow the example of Dash and let those who contribute to the system by running nodes vote on network-impacting decisions. If such a system could work the same for Bitcoin.

  I don't disagree with this as a better feedback mechanism but it doesn't seem to solve our problem now. Also important to note that the against-xt camp will argue that XT will decrease the number of participating nodes which reduces to efficacy of the proposed change.

  Frankly though I dont think either side is anxious to onboard more stakeholders with opinions unless they're supportive of their desired ends. This isn't really about getting consensus it's about two groups of developers thinking fundamentally the others are wrong, and since the proposals are mutually exclusive there can only be one winning side.

  Agreed. When you're in the middle of a conflict, it's not the time to make changes designed to prevent conflict. Such a decision would likely cause another crisis of disagreement. It certainly has been a problem to have decision-making centralized to a few developers. At least with the ability to choose to run a node and vote, people would feel like they have other options besides complaining and raising storms of disagreement.

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 7:57 AM
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• bcohen

  

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  https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h7cu4/lets_talk_bitcoin_sends_an_alert_upcoming_bitcoin/

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 7:57 AM
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• ademczuk

  

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  @adam

  @ademczuk I appreciate the alert but as a casual user I can see that Mike hearn (or whomever he represents) has created a problem to solve. @adam If XT cannot solve scaling then this fork is an attack.

  Isn't block size actually a problem? Both camps seem to disagree about when it will become a problem that must be dealt with but both sides do seem to identify it as a problem. XT wants to solve it by avoiding it, classic wants to solve it by running into it which would force people to pick between a dysfunctional protocol (hit the limit with no solution in play) or building on top while keeping the protocol the same.

  It does not seem like this is a problem only in the minds of Mike Hearn - am I incorrect in the above?

  The apache tribe was defeated by admiting that they could only survive by cenctralising their livestock. You tought me this in your first 20 episodes.

  Centralization and decentralization happens at many levels simultaneously, as an individual you are a decentralized agent of the human race but as an entity you are a centralization of the decentralized molecules that make up YOU.

  Much the same here, you can make the arguement that either side wishes to centralize it just depends on what you're talking about.

  XT thinks non-bitcoin structures built on top is an inferior solution because it makes the bitcoin network unable to function as a decentralized protocol without handing off actual transactions to off-chain processors. Even if the processing is trustless, suddenly we have trusted parties acting as a major part of the enabling layer where in a pure bitcoin system we do not.

  Classic thinks decentralization of nodes and miners is what matters

  And to be clear, both XT and Classic seem to believe in centralization of decisionmaking the question just is how centralized is it.

  XT seems to be "discuss with everybody but two people have more say in decisionmaking and in the event of a tie its just one guy"

  Classic seems to be "discuss with everybody and everybody has equal say and in the event of one person not liking a proposal nothing will happen"

  Either way its centralized, the question is do you bias more towards "improvement" or do you bias more towards "preservation"

  As I said, no right answers but I very much don't think it's a clear cut case of "Mike wants to be a dictator"

  I standby the observation that the sense of urgency feels artificial considering the ddos attack bitcoin is undergoing and has not yet broken the system. What do I know as a guy who just races 3D printed quadcopters for a living?

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:06 AM
  Last Edited: August 16, 2015 at 4:07 PM
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• twebit

  

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  What ever happened to the hard fork policy at bitcoin.org? https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy Does the XT violate this policy? Always wondered?

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:12 AM
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• shmadz

  

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  @Adam afaik they intend to increase blocksize using BIP 101

  "Proposal to increase maximum possible block size, starting at 8MB in January 2016 and increasing on-pace with technological growth to 8,192MB in twenty years."

  This is the part that scares me. Increasing block size is not a solution to scaling, it is a stopgap.

  While I agree that 1MB is too restrictive, there must remain some kind of scarcity in the blockchain, otherwise you are opening up an entire new vector of attack. (Likely the kinds of spam attacks that the limit was implemented to mitigate in the first place) (Not even gonna get into miner rewards and how do you run a fee market if there is no scarcity)

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:16 AM
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• MaxEntropy

  

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  Anyone who is working in software development will understand that Hearn and Andresen are hi-jacking the Bitcoin project. Hearn's argument in Medium today, is not believeable and not relevant, as he does not discuss the complete set of code changes in his XT version.

  These are my thoughts:

  1: Given that Andresen is currently a salaried employee of MIT and that he is presumably responsible for the other developers of the Bitcoin Core software - it is bizarre that MIT would let this employee function in the manner that Andresen does.

  What do I mean:

  A: Andresen literally throws his project and the development group under the bus, in order to switch to the Bitcoin XT version which is run out of London by Hearn.

  B: Andresen opens the Bitcoin network up to code changes that are way beyond that of the Block Size feature, as Hearn has made 100+ code changes to Bitcoin fork since 2014 December.

  C: Andresen os offshoring the Bitcoin development to London, England. Sure, you can say that the developers are global, but what is clear is that Bitcoin product control (arguably) has moved from the Bitcoin Foundation (California), to MIT (US East coast) to Lomdon, if Bitcoin XT is adopted.

  2: Andresen appears to have lost control of the Bitcoin Core developers at MIT, and has thus jumped to the only other implementation of significance. If this is true, then we should dig into the issues at MIT.

  3: Andresen has shown that he is not capable of leading developers, projects, or holding the respect of the community. If Andresen had access to a compiler he could have taken the initiative and developed specific Block Size features himself. This did not happen. If there is a move to Bitcoin XT, then Andresen will be a poster child for the new XT software in the U.S., while the real control will be in London. Again, sure the developers can be global but the control will reside in London.

  4: Who is funding Hearn? It is time to look into who Hearn's group of developers and advisors are.

  Hearn's Medium letter of 2015 August lacks merit.

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:16 AM
  Last Edited: August 16, 2015 at 8:21 AM
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• adam

  

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  @twebit What ever happened to the hard fork policy at bitcoin.org? https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy Does the XT violate this policy? Always wondered?

  I emailed Gavin for comment on this - One important question is who actually does this apply to? Bitcoin.org isn't an "official" anything, just another site on the internet that can pick what info it displays

  So the 'official" policy might just mean it won't be linked from bitcoin.org

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:18 AM
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• pooktwo

  

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  @twebit What ever happened to the hard fork policy at bitcoin.org? https://bitcoin.org/en/posts/hard-fork-policy Does the XT violate this policy? Always wondered?

  They just state that they will not promote any hard forks on bitcoin.org, so i would not expect to see XT on the website. However Bitcoin is open sourced, so something like XT is permission-less, you dont ask anyone if your aloud to fork an open source project.

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:21 AM
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• PTheD

  

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  @markxmayer I'd love to hear Andreas' thoughts on this.

  Dito!

  Posted on August 16, 2015 at 8:22 AM
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