<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:2015-06-01&#xA;📝 Original message:&gt;&#xA;&gt; It&#39;s surprising to see a core dev going to the public to defend a proposal&#xA;&gt; most other core devs disagree on, and then lobbying the Bitcoin ecosystem.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I agree that it is a waste of time. Many agree. The Bitcoin ecosystem&#xA;doesn&#39;t really need lobbying - my experience from talking to businesses and&#xA;wallet developers months ago is they virtually all see raising capacity as&#xA;a no brainer ... and some of them see this &#34;debate&#34; as despair-inducing&#xA;insanity.&#xA;&#xA;What&#39;s happened here is that a small number of people have come to believe&#xA;they have veto power over changes to Bitcoin, and they have also become&#xA;*wildly* out of step with what the wider community wants. That cannot last.&#xA;So, short of some sudden change of heart that lets us kick the can down the&#xA;road a bit longer, a fork is inevitable.&#xA;&#xA;Just be glad it&#39;s Gavin driving this and not me ... or a faceless coalition&#xA;of startups.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Decentralization is the core of Bitcoin&#39;s security model and thus that&#39;s&#xA;&gt; what gives Bitcoin its value.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;No. Usage is what gives Bitcoin value.&#xA;&#xA;It&#39;s kind of maddening that I have to point this out. Decentralisation is a&#xA;means to an end. I first used Bitcoin in April 2009 and it was perfectly&#xA;decentralised back then: every wallet was a full node and every computer&#xA;was capable of mining.&#xA;&#xA;So if you believe what you just wrote, I guess Bitcoin&#39;s value has gone&#xA;down every day since.&#xA;&#xA;On the other hand, if you believe the markets, Bitcoin&#39;s value has gone up.&#xA;&#xA;Apparently the question of what gives Bitcoin its value is a bit more&#xA;complicated than that.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; : to incentive layer 2 and offchain solutions to scale Bitcoin : there are&#xA;&gt; promising designs/solutions out there (LN, ChainDB, OtherCoin protocole,&#xA;&gt; ...), but most don&#39;t get much attention, because there is right now no need&#xA;&gt; for them. And, I am sure new solutions will be invented.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I have seen this notion a few times. I would like to dispose of it right&#xA;now.&#xA;&#xA;I am one of the wallet developers you would be trying to &#34;incentivise&#34; by&#xA;letting Bitcoin break, and I say: get real. Developers are not some&#xA;bottomless fountain of work that will spit out whatever you like for free&#xA;if you twist their arms badly enough.&#xA;&#xA;The problems that incentivised the creation of Bitcoin existed for decades&#xA;before Bitcoin was actually invented. Incentives are not enough. Someone&#xA;has to actually do the work, too. All proposals on the table would:&#xA;&#xA;   - Involve enormous amounts of effort from many different people&#xA;   - Be technically risky (read: we don&#39;t know if they would even work)&#xA;   - Not be Bitcoin&#xA;&#xA;The last point is important: people who got interested in Bitcoin and&#xA;decided to devote their time to it might not feel the same way about some&#xA;network of payment hubs or whatever today&#39;s fashion is. Faced with their&#xA;work being broken by armchair developers on some mailing list, they might&#xA;just say screw it and walk away completely.&#xA;&#xA;After all, as the arguments for these systems are not particularly logical,&#xA;they might slave over hot keyboards for a year to support the Lightning&#xA;Network or whatever and then discover that it&#39;s no longer the fashionable&#xA;thing ... and that suddenly an even more convoluted design is being&#xA;&#34;incentivised&#34;.&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150601/cfb40524/attachment.html&gt;</html></oembed>