<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-06-15&#xA;📝 Original message:Hi Adam,&#xA;&#xA;Provisional answers below!&#xA;&#xA;- Are you releasing a BIP for that proposal for review?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The work splits like this:&#xA;&#xA;   - Gavin is writing the code and I think a BIP as well&#xA;&#xA;   - I will review both and mostly delegate to Gavin&#39;s good taste around&#xA;   the details, unless there is some very strong disagreement. But that seems&#xA;   unlikely.&#xA;&#xA;   - I have been handling gitian and the patch rebases, the code signing&#xA;   and so on, so far. I&#39;ve also been doing some work to setup the basic&#xA;   infrastructure of the project (website etc).&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;- If the reviewers all say NACK will you take on board their suggestions?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Feedback will be read. There are no NACKS in Bitcoin XT. Patch requests&#xA;aren&#39;t scored in any way. The final decision rests with the maintainer as&#xA;in ~all open source projects.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; - On the idea of a non-consensus hard-fork at all, I think we can&#xA;&gt; assume you will get a row of NACKs.  Can you explain your rationale&#xA;&gt; for going ahead anyway?  The risks are well understood and enormous.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Yes, I have been working on an article that explains how we got to this&#xA;point from my perspective. It is quite long, but only because I want it to&#xA;be readable for people who weren&#39;t following the debate.&#xA;&#xA;Anyway, I think I&#39;ve laid out the gist of it over and over again, but to&#xA;summarise:&#xA;&#xA;If Bitcoin runs out of capacity *it will break and many of our users will&#xA;leave*. That is not an acceptable outcome for myself or the many other&#xA;wallet, service and merchant developers who have worked for years to build&#xA;an ecosystem around this protocol.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; - How do you propose to deal with the extra risks that come from&#xA;&gt; non-consensus hard-forks?  Hard-forks themselves are quite risky, but&#xA;&gt; non-consensus ones are extremely dangerous for consensus.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The approach is the same for other forks. Voting via block versions and&#xA;then when there&#39;s been &gt;X% for Y time units the 1mb limit is&#xA;lifted/replaced.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; - If you&#39;re going it alone as it were, are you proposing that you will&#xA;&gt; personally maintain bitcoin-XT?  Or do you have a plan to later hand&#xA;&gt; over maintenance to the bitcoin developers?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Good question!  I have various thoughts on this, but let&#39;s wait and see&#xA;what happens first. Perhaps the new chain won&#39;t get the majority on it.&#xA;&#xA;In the event that the &gt;1mb chain does eventually win, I would expect Core&#xA;to apply the patch and rejoin the consensus rather than lose all its users.&#xA;That would take XT back to being a fairly small patchset to improve the&#xA;network protocol.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;- Do you have contingency plans for what to do if the non-consensus&#xA;&gt; hard-fork goes wrong and $3B is lost as a result?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Where did you get the $3B figure from? The fork either doesn&#39;t happen, or&#xA;it happens after quite a long period of people knowing it&#39;s going to happen&#xA;- for example because their full node is printing &#34;You need to upgrade&#34;&#xA;messages due to seeing the larger block version, or because they read the&#xA;news, or because they heard about it via some other mechanisms.&#xA;&#xA;Let me flip the question around. Do you have a contingency plan if Bitcoin&#xA;runs out of capacity and significant user disruption occurs that results in&#xA;exodus, followed by fall in BTC price? The only one I&#39;ve seen is &#34;we can&#xA;perform an emergency hard fork in a few weeks&#34;!&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; As you can probably tell I think a unilateral fork without wide-scale&#xA;&gt; consensus from the technical and business communities is a deeply&#xA;&gt; inadvisable.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;Gavin and I have been polling many key players in the ecosystem. The&#xA;consensus you seek does exist. All wallet developers (except Lawrence), all&#xA;the major exchanges, all the major payment processors and many of the major&#xA;mining pools want to see the limit lifted (I haven&#39;t been talking to pools,&#xA;Gavin has).&#xA;&#xA;This notion that the change has no consensus is based on you polling the&#xA;people directly around you and people who like to spend all day on this&#xA;mailing list. It&#39;s not an accurate reflection of the wider Bitcoin&#xA;community and that is one of the leading reasons there is going to be a&#xA;fork. A small number of people have been flatly ignoring LOTS of highly&#xA;technical and passionate developers who have written vast amounts of code,&#xA;built up the Bitcoin user base, designed hardware and software, and yes&#xA;built companies.&#xA;&#xA;How do you think that makes Bitcoin Core look to the rest of the Bitcoin&#xA;world? How much confidence does that give people?&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;Of the overall process, I think you can agree we should not be making&#xA;&gt; technical decisions with this level of complexity and consensus risk&#xA;&gt; with financial implications of this magnitude under duress of haste?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;This debate will never end until a fork makes it irrelevant. There is no&#xA;process for ending it, despite me begging Wladimir to make one.&#xA;&#xA;And there is no haste. We have been debating the block size limit for&#xA;*years*. We have known it must be lifted for *years*. I kicked off this&#xA;current round of debates after realising that Wladimir&#39;s release timeline&#xA;wouldn&#39;t allow a block size limit to be released before the end of the&#xA;year. The reason we&#39;re talking about it now and not next year is exactly to&#xA;ensure there is plenty of time.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; I can sincerely assure you everyone does want to scale bitcoin and&#xA;&gt; shares your long term objective on that&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;I really wish you were right, and I definitely feel you are one of the more&#xA;reasonable ones Adam. But the overwhelming impression I get from a few&#xA;others here is that no, they don&#39;t want to scale Bitcoin. They already&#xA;decided it&#39;s a technological dead end. They want to kick end users out in&#xA;order to &#34;incentivise&#34; (force) the creation of some other alternative,&#xA;claiming that it&#39;s still Bitcoin whilst ignoring basic details ... like the&#xA;fact that no existing wallets or services would work.&#xA;&#xA;Scaling Bitcoin can only be achieved by letting it grow, and letting people&#xA;tackle each bottleneck as it arises at the right times. Not by convincing&#xA;ourselves that success is failure.&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150615/892471da/attachment.html&gt;</html></oembed>