Last night, as I put the finishing touches on an article about Bitcoin governance that I had been working on for days, BitMain was crafting their own treatise on Bitcoin governance. The irony: they posted a blog in the real world that I pitched as a hypothetical. This alternate universe where Bitcoin's primary governance protocol, that relies heavily on Miners and Developers, is corrupted by the selfish interests of colluding Miners and Developers. Except, in my theoretical future, the monopolizing Miners would be one or all of the big three (Nvidia, AMD and Intel). Instead ButMain essentially becomes the sole monopoly with its own set of "developers" who wish to remain anonymous. After reading the company's blog post this morning, which I think was supposed to be a warning against BIP 148, BitMain convinced me that UASF is ABSOLUTELY necessary.
Prior to last night, I was leaning towards the UASF SegWit activation though I needed to do a little more reading on the BIP. But BitMain's blog post demonstrated the selfish interest of a singular company in the Bitcoin community and that company's desire to impose its wil on others at all costs. The BitMain "contingency" proposal worries me quite a bit in a couple of areas:
Developer Transparency
They patronize the Core Development team then refuse to tell us who are working on the code for this "contingency" plan. Might these secret developers be the same people who worked on Bitcoin Unlimited's flawed code that we're now about to entrust with a $50B network? They might be, but we do not know because we have no idea who these people are. The condescending tone about the Bitcoin Core Developers would be overlooked as childish banter but if you're going to criticize them, they at least have a face, Twitter handle, e-mail address and website to criticize; they, have skin in the game.Code Testing
BitMain says that their contingency code will be released on Friday in its alpha form. What testing has this code undergone? Have other developers tried to hack it? Have the Core Developers been given an opportunity to explore code compatibility with the existing network? I can only speculate that the answers to these questions are "none, no and no." So why should we trust BitMain to be the "protector" of the Bitcoin protocol when the company clearly demonstrates a lack of concern for stable code, especially when dealing with billions of other people's money?An Emerging Dictatorship
Ok, let's say that BitMain's solution is the one that we follow. This would be that BitMain's miners would have nearly complete control of all mining capability on this new chain AND BitMain would essentially control the Developers on that chain. The only way to register disatisfaction with the system would be to walk away. Walk away from Bitcoin.
No thank you BitMain for following your chain, even in the event of a protracted BIP 148 activation. This statement makes absolutely clear that BitMain's sole purpose from the beginning of this block size debate was to have absolute control over the Bitcoin protocol Mining and Developing. If people follow their chain, they'll be signing up for a blockchain completed dictated by l BitMain. It will be no different than Ethereum.
This is why BitMain has made me a UASF believer: with or without BitMain, Bitcoin can survive. Read my thoughts on a potential Bitcoin governance model for post-UASF activation.
Everything about this post is wrong. Bitmain is finally doing what the community has been asking for years to do - which is raise the blocksize limit so Bitcoin can scale to more transactions.
Limiting bitcoin blocks to 1MB for this long was NOT what was envisioned by Satoshi and certainly not what people who adopted early on signed on for. SegWit is a huge change to the original bitcoin code and adds a huge amount of technical debt in that it adds hacks that aren't good coding practices, and don't lend themselves to new developers being able to understand the code.
When Bitmain is talking about other dev teams, this is healthy for bitcoins decentralization because now you don't have one team - Core - making all the decisions. Especially given that Core development was bought out by Blockstream, a company created/funded by too-big-to-fail AXA. The previous CEO of AXA was Henri de Castries, also Chairman of Bilderberg - just so you know what kind of company they are. These are people who have an the most interest in Bitcoin failing at its goal of being p2p digital cash.
To the OP, if you want to fork off from majority hashpower when the fork happens, that is fine. You will have a coin that has SegWit, and only 1MB blocks. With only 30% present hashpower, blocks will only be mined on UASF chain every 30 minutes - at most. The already huge backlog will get worse and fees will go through the roof. Meanwhile, the big block chain will be at least 50% and it blocks will slowed down too, but it will be adding 2,3, even 4MB blocks to keep up with transactions, bringing down the backlog and fees.
I think your UASF chain will last but mere hours on the exchanges, as any miner who chooses to follow it will lose money by the hour. I'm glad that you're supporting it though. Getting the Powers That Be on their own chain that fails is the optimal scenario to get rid of them forever.
First, if you're going to repudiate my article, you should be specific. I'm an evidence-driven writer. Point out specifically what is incorrect. I'll be willing to correct any inconsistencies but nothing in your reply refutes anything that I wrote. Now, my turn.
First, WHO in the Bitcoin has been asking for larger blocks other than Roger Ver and Jihan Wu? What the community has been asking for are shorter transaction times and lower fees. There are multiple ways to pay that bill. One way is through block size increases, another equally viable method is through SegWit. The root issue is not block size, it is shorter transactions times and lower fees. Let's keep the discussion focused on that issue.
Second, you mentioned that "Limiting bitcoin blocks to 1MB for this long was NOT what was envisioned by Satoshi and certainly not what people who adopted early on signed on for." Did you know Satoshi personally? I imagine not. In that case, you have no idea what Satoshi envisioned. At risk of blaspheming my religion, it would be the equivalent of me saying that "God envisions ..." I have no idea what God wants. Equally, you have no idea what Satoshi envisioned. What we do KNOW is that businesses and individuals demand shorter transaction times and lower fees. Frankly, I don't think the average person is even aware or cares about the size of the next block. What they care about is their transaction happening quickly and at low cost, THAT is the promise of Bitcoin, Satoshi be damned.
You talk about SegWit adding a lot of technical doubt? It's much less technical doubt after over 1 year of testing than the less than 30 days of testing of the SegWit 2X protocol proposed by BitMain. Moreover, BitMain's proposal doesn't even excite in the spirit of SegWit 2X. The protocol was supposed to implement SegWit FIRST then the block size increase. BitMain implements the block increase first, which hasn't been tested at all, THEN SegWit at some future date. That's code for ... Bullshit.
In terms of the Core Dev Team and new Dev teams, I think that any reasonable Bitcoiner would be open to any reasonable Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP). But as a Bitcoiner who has been in the space for the better part of 4 years, I want to know who the heck is making the code. Interestingly, BitMain has these shit-hot coders but we can't know who they are because they don't want to open themselves up to scrutiny. As I've stated in previous posts, people may not be 100% behind the Bitcoin Core Developers but THEY have skin in the game. They have put themselves out there. I don't want to be a part of a new Fed Reserve System where we don't know who the heck the people are behind the green curtain. No thanks. And not all the Core Devs work at Blockstream so your Core Dev argument about AXA is moot.
On your point about the execution of the UASF ... as the Zen master once said ... we'll see. You think there will be 30% hash power ... I think there will be more. Especially in the shadow of BitMain's arrogance in issuing their Bitcoin ultimate, I think there will be more support for immediate SegWit than you think. 1 August 2017 will be the BID. I can't wait.
Point-by-point, I deconstructed your arguments. The field is yours.