@edgelogic
Sorry, but comments like: "For the record, at LTB we will be switching all our nodes over to BitcoinXT to ensure we stay on the proper chain when the fork is triggered early next year." Just confirm a clear bias and partiality.. "the proper chain" ... really?
When I say "proper chain", I mean "longest chain". If we use BitcoinXT, but nobody else does and no fork ever happens, we will still be on the "proper chain". However if we use Bitcoin Core and don't switch when the fork happens (which remember, only happens when a supermajority is triggered), then yeah we will be on the wrong chain.
A site such as LTB always had an opportunity to try and be impartial, but apparently has never bothered. Mike Hearn's open letter justifying his actions is full of so many logical contradictions its embarrassing. The essential nature of the whole Bitcoin movement is about 'consensus', anyone going along with this coup, clearly doesn't understand that. Disruptive innovation takes time.. Those who lack patience and want to force their ideas through without clear consensus are not in this for the right reasons.. But the history of the crypto currency movement over the last few years is full of people who took an opportunistic, tokensistic approach.. (pun intended).
Care to point out the specific contradictions you saw in Mikes post? I didn't notice any, seemed pretty spot on to me. I have been glued to the screen following this the past few days and the only response from the opposing side has been censorship and snarky twitter comments. This isn't something that is being rushed out, this has been a long time coming and many people paying attention have been aware of it.
Also, don't mistake support for XT as any sort of bias for Mike or Gavin specifically. The move to BitcoinXT is about keeping in line with the original values of bitcoin described by Satoshi and outlined in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Global, electronic, P2P cash for the internet. It's the reason we are all here to begin with. Unfortunately much of the Core dev team (see: blockstream folks) seems to have strayed from those values and have decided bitcoin is better suited as a high value settlement network, and that it is better to stall growth and only do things their way, despite what the rest of the ecosystem thinks. If the same sort of deadlock situation happens with BitcoinXT years from now, then it will suffer the same fate.
And to re-quote what @adam just quoted :p
This is how the system is supposed to work. If the big-blockists are able to persuade the majority of miners, exchanges, and users that bigger blocks are better, they will win in the end. If not, the small-blockists will win. Either way, in the end, the shorter chain will be abandoned eventually, and there will be only one Bitcoin again.
Also, forgetting everything else for a moment.. I think it is worthwhile to prove that Bitcoin can be successfully evolved and forked away from the main project maintainers, and still survive afterwards. It's the anti-fragility of the internet in action
