{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1s4lj77xuzcu7wy04afcr487f0r3za0f8n2775xrpkld2sv639mjqsd44kw","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1s4lj77xuzcu7wy04afcr487f0r3za0f8n2775xrpkld2sv639mjqsd44kw","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2015-08-04\n📝 Original message:On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev \u003c\nbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e I would say that things already demonstrately got terrible. The mining\n\u003e landscape is very centralized, with apparently a majority depending on\n\u003e agreements to trust each other's announced blocks without validation.\n\u003e\nAnd that is a problem... why?\n\nAs far as I can tell, nobody besides miners running old and/or buggy\nsoftware lost money due to outsourced mining validation (please correct me\nif I'm wrong-- I'm looking forward to Greg's post-mortem). The operators of\nbitcoin.org seem to have freaked out and pushed the panic button (with dire\nwarnings of not trusting transactions until 20 confirmations), but theymos\nwas well known for using an old, patched version of Core for\nblockexplorer.com so maybe that's not surprising.\n\nAs Bitcoin grows, pieces of the ecosystem will specialize. Satoshi's\noriginal code did everything: hashing, block assembly, wallet, consensus,\nnetwork. That is changing, and that is OK.\n\nI understand there are parts of the ecosystem you'd rather not see\nspecialized, like transaction selection / block assembly or validation. I\nsee it as a natural maturation. The only danger I see is if some unnatural\nbarriers to competition spring up.\n\n\u003e Full node count is at its historically lowest value in years, and\noutsourcing of full validation keeps growing.\n\nBoth side effects of increasing specialization, in my opinion. Many\ncompanies quite reasonably would rather hire somebody who specializes in\nrunning nodes, keeping keys secure, etc rather than develop that expertise\nthemselves.\n\nAgain, not a problem UNLESS some unnatural barriers to competition spring\nup.\n\n\n\u003e I believe that if the above would have happened overnight, people would\n\u003e have cried wolf. But somehow it happened slow enough, and \"things kept\n\u003e working\".\n\u003e\n\u003e I don't think that this is a good criterion. Bitcoin can \"work\" with\n\u003e gigabyte blocks today, if everyone uses the same few blockchain validation\n\u003e services, the same few online wallets, and mining is done by a cartel that\n\u003e only allows joining after signing a contract so they can sue you if you\n\u003e create an invalid block. Do you think people will then agree that \"things\n\u003e got demonstratebly worse\"?\n\u003e\n\u003e Don't turn Bitcoin into something uninteresting, please.\n\u003e\n\u003e Why is what you, personally, find interesting relevant?\n\nI understand you want to build an extremely decentralized system, where\neverybody participating trusts nothing except the genesis block hash.\n\nI think it is more interesting to build a system that works for hundreds of\nmillions of people, with no central point of control and the opportunity\nfor ANYBODY to participate at any level. Permission-less innovation is what\nI find interesting.\n\nAnd I think the current \"demonstrably terrible\" Bitcoin system is still\nINCREDIBLY interesting.\n\n-- \n--\nGavin Andresen\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150804/10def7f8/attachment-0001.html\u003e"}